B. Two Old Testament precedents (4:1–8)
B. Two Old Testament precedents (4:1–8)
Paul has already said that this ‘righteousness of God … apart from law’ is attested by the Law and the Prophets—i.e. by the Old Testament. This must now be shown more fully, and Paul undertakes to show it principally from the story of Abraham, with a side-glance at the experience of David.
Of all the righteous people in the Old Testament record, none could surpass Abraham—‘Abraham, my friend’, as God calls him in Isaiah 41:8. God’s own testimony to Abraham is recorded in Genesis 26:5, ‘Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.’ What about Abraham, then? If it is by works that a person is justified in God’s sight, Abraham would have a better title than most, and he would be entitled to take some credit for it. But that is not God’s way. God’s way is clearly indicated in the record of Genesis 15:6: when the divine promise came to Abraham, in spite of the extreme improbability of its fulfilment by all natural considerations, ‘he believed the Lord; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.’ Paul had already made this statement the basis of an ad hominem argument to the churches of Galatia, when some of their members were disposed to abandon the principle of faith for that of legal works. Now he makes it the text for a more systematic exposition of the principle of faith.
Abraham’s acceptance with God was clearly not based on his works, good as they were. Paul’s argument is not merely textual and verbal, dependent on a selection of Genesis 15:6 in preference to other texts from the patriarchal narrative which might have pointed in another direction. For Abraham’s good works, his obedience to the divine commandments, were the fruit of his unquestioning faith in God; had he not first believed the promises of God he would never have set out for the promised land or conducted his life there in the light of what he knew of God’s will. No; when God gave Abraham a promise (in the fulfilment of which, incidentally, the whole gospel was bound up), he simply took God at his word, and acted accordingly.
Now mark the difference, Paul goes on. When a man works for some reward, that reward is his due; when he simply puts his trust in God, it is by pure grace that his faith is reckoned to him for righteousness.
Nor is Abraham an isolated instance of the principle of justification by faith: another Old Testament example lies ready to hand in the case of David. Paul now quotes the opening words of Psalm 32 in which the psalmist, in joyful relief at the assurance of divine pardon, celebrates the blessedness of one ‘whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered … to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity’. Here, plainly, is someone else, of whose guilt there could be no question, who nevertheless has received God’s free pardon and been pronounced ‘Not guilty’ before the tribunal of heaven. And if we examine the remainder of the psalm to discover the ground on which he was acquitted, it appears that he simply acknowledged his guilt and cast himself in faith on the mercy of God.
Thus, in addition to the text from the Prophets (Hab. 2:4b) quoted already in 1:17, Paul now appeals to texts from the Law (Gen. 15:6) and from the Writings (Ps. 32:1–2), showing that God’s way of righteousness through faith is attested in all three divisions of the Hebrew Bible.
1. What then shall we say about Abraham.…? Several other versions adopt the fuller (and preferable) reading, ‘What then shall we say that Abraham has found?’ To the question in this form the answer would be: justification by faith, through God’s grace.
Our forefather according to the flesh. In view of the qualifying phrase ‘according to the flesh’ (cf. 1:3; 9:3, 5), ‘our’ means ‘of us Jews’; in another sense (cf. verses 11–12, 16–17 below), Abraham is the father of all believers, whether they be Jews or Gentiles by birth.
3. ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ See Galatians 3:6 for Paul’s earlier quotation and application of Genesis 15:6.
5. To one who … trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness. The God whose grace Paul proclaims is the God who alone does great wonders. He created the universe from nothing (1:19–20), he calls the dead to life (4:17), he justifies the ungodly. That is the greatest of all his wonders: creation and resurrection are manifestations of the power of the living and life-giving God, but the justifying of the ungodly is prima facie a contradiction of his character as the righteous judge of all.
Abraham was not ungodly; he was a man of outstanding piety and righteousness. But the principle on which Abraham was justified, being one that excludes the idea of accumulating merit by works of piety and righteousness, is one that is equally available to the ungodly, who have no such works to rely on. So the tax-collector in the parable went home ‘justified’ rather than the Pharisee, not because his merit was greater (it was much less) but because, realizing the futility of self-reliance, he cast himself entirely on God’s grace (Luke 18:9–14). But the description of God as the one ‘who justifies the ungodly’ is so paradoxical as to be startling—not to say shocking. In the Old Testament the acquittal of the guilty and the condemnation of the innocent are alike repeatedly denounced as the acts of unjust judges. Indeed, for the better guidance of judges in the administration of justice the God of Israel offers himself as their example: ‘I will not acquit the wicked’, he says (Exod. 23:7)—or, as it might well be rendered, ‘I will not justify the ungodly.’ In the LXX version of those words the same Greek terms are used to convey what God forbids in the law as Paul here uses to declare what God in fact does in the gospel. No wonder that Paul thought it necessary above to maintain that God, in justifying sinners, nevertheless preserves his personal integrity. Once they are justified, indeed, the ungodly should cease to be ungodly, but it is not on the basis of any foreseen amendment of their ways that they are justified. If we fail to appreciate the moral problem involved in God’s forgiving grace, it may be because we have ‘not yet considered how serious a thing is sin’.14 The paradox of the justifying of the ungodly is resolved in 5:6, ‘Christ died for the ungodly’.
6. So also David … Psalm 32 is ascribed to David in the titles of both MT and LXX. There is a formal link between Psalm 32:1–2, quoted in verses 7–8, and Genesis 15:6, quoted in verse 3, in that the verb ‘reckon’ is common to both passages. In rabbinical exegesis such a link was held to encourage the interpretation of the one passage by the other, by the principle called gĕzērâ šāwâ (‘equal category’).15 Paul uses this principle here, but the link is not a merely formal one: the non-imputation of sin, in which the psalmist rejoices, amounts to the positive imputation of righteousness or pronouncement of acquittal, for there is no verdict of ‘Not proven’ in God’s law-court.