Paul’S Conclusion
PAUL’S CONCLUSION
ROMANS 3:28-31
Do Jews and Gentiles then have different ways of coming to God?
A better rendering of the opening phrase “For we hold that” might be “Therefore we conclude …” (3:28, KJV). The words ring out with the confidence of the writer. Such firm conclusions were worked out in the anguish of soul in the years of retreat and searching which followed the shattering event of the Damascus Road.
There cannot be two distinct religious systems, one based on the Law and applicable to a chosen people, and the other based on faith, and available for the other division of humanity, as the Jew conceived humanity. Paul is anticipating and closing a desperate breach in his line of argument which his continually present and imaginary Jewish objector might be likely to make.
Why? There were those of his race who imagined a monopoly on God. Paul’s view of God was based on the old covenant and Abraham, in this closely woven letter, is never far from his thinking. “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” implied a religion far wider than one race, and presupposed a God who was God of all humanity. Jew and Gentile could, by the same argument, have only one way of salvation.
Paul knew very well, from his own agonizing experience, how difficult it was for his fellow Jews to throw off the deep preoccupations of a narrow belief which had penetrated from childhood all their thinking, their whole personality, their complete view of God and God’s world. He drives his argument about salvation by faith with ruthless honesty and urgency to its only possible conclusion but he passes on the same comforting thoughts which had come to his aid when he found himself thrust to his vast reappraisal of all he had believed.
Quite clearly the Lord’s word, contained in the oral tradition, was in his mind. He came, he said, not to annul the Law, but to fulfill it. Therefore the closing verse of this chapter, and the conclusion of a main line of the whole argument of the letter. The Law only finds meaning if it is bound to the ultimate revelation of God’s long-standing purpose. Two further lines of proof are to follow, one in chapter 4 and another in chapters 6 to 8: the just demands of the Law, by no means made void, are met only in believers.