21-The position of the Justified

The position of the Justified

All chap. 5 (it must be admitted) is highly difficult. Any reader can pick out of it sublime ideas and inspiring ‘texts,’ but the connexion of the whole is exceptionally baffling. The first two verses indeed are transparent enough: but immediately after them perplexing questions arise and before we have reached v. 11 (beyond which, in this paragraph, I do not propose to go) one wishes with all one’s heart that, either one could be certain the text is unimpaired, or else there were opportunity for asking one who knew from outside evidence, how thought follows after thought.

Consider first the five opening verses. What about the leading verb? Is it ἔχομεν (with A.V. and the American Revisers) or ἔχωμεν (with R.V. and the huge preponderance of MS. authority)? Take we comfort in the thought that copyists were highly prone to confuse the long ‘o’ and the short: so that after all MSS. in such a case need not count for everything. And further let us ask ourselves whether “Let us have peace” is more likely than “We have peace” in this context. For me, I should opine, that if one has not peace, it is a futile thing to cry ‘Go to! let us have it.’ Ἔχομεν be it then.

5:1-6. “Being then set right with God thanks to faith, we are at peace with Him, through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom we have also gotten our access to that favoured position in which we stand. And we exult in the hope of God’s glory. Yes, and we also exult in our tribulations, being sure that affliction engenders fortitude, and fortitude proved valour, and proved valour hope, and hope brings not to shame.”

“All because the Love of God is shed forth in our hearts by reason of the Holy Spirit, that has been given us; for while we were still weak, Christ, when the day arrived, died for ungodly men.” In vv. 1, 2, 3 the American revisers eliminate all imperatives. If any is to stand, it would be the second καυχώμεθα. Yet the atmosphere of the passage seems to call for the present there, as well as in the other two verbs. The thought of the προσαγωγή is a link between this Epistle and ‘Ephesians.’ There it is mentioned twice, here only once. The χάρις, to which we have access, is necessarily a ‘state’: from ‘Galatians’ we remember wrong faith can extrude us from it (Galatians 5:4). The ἐπʼ ἐλπίδι (of v. 2) gives the ground of the ‘exultation.’ We cannot say ‘glory’ here because of the following δόξης. The nature of the ‘hope’ is not very clearly defined. God’s ‘glory’ suggests the Shekinah. On the other hand, it may be not the ‘glory’ which is God’s, but the ‘glory’ He means for us-shall we say, the lost image? The great passage about ‘glory,’ in 2 Cor. 3 (see especially v. 18), was penned before our Epistle: but I doubt if that can help us. The truth is, we cannot possibly know what our ‘Hope’ does comprehend. And there we must leave it. The paradoxical ‘exultation’ in ‘tribulations’ is of a parenthetic character. Adversity has its uses. Courage, in its lower, and its more developed form (δοκιμή), is the natural fruit of it. And perfect courage strengthens ἐλπίς. The οὐ καταισχύνει here is thought to be derived from Psalm 22 (ἤλπισαν καὶ οὐ κατῃσχύνθησαν). How the ὅτι, which follows next, and the clause which it introduces connect with the preceding matter, it were hard to say. But we can see that the Divine Law must minister to that joyful attitude of mind, of which the Apostle is speaking. Nor again, are we quite at our ease in estimating the relation of v. 6 to the rest of the context. One would be rather tempted to treat as one parenthesis all the words from οὐ μόνον δέ as far as καταισχύνει; and place them in a bracket as wholly subsidiary. Then the death of Christ would be brought into intelligible relation with the hope of the Glory of God. And not only is there much difficulty in unravelling the thought. The reading in v. 6 presents a further obstacle. Εἴ γε, εἰ γάρ, ἔτι γάρ, εἰς τί γάρ, ἵνα τί γάρ, are all offered; and of these it is shrewdly supposed that εἴ γε presents most likelihood of being original. But what are we to make of it? is the ‘love of God in our hearts’ (that is, the sense of God’s great Love) emphasised by this clause with εἴ γε? And do we not rather need εἴπερ?

I confess I cannot manage to marshal the sequence of thought in a satisfactory chain. All I can say is this. Clearly there is an ‘a fortiori’ contained in the ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν. That we should naturally link with the thought of the ‘hope.’ Our hope of some great good thing is obviously much strengthened by the thought of what ‘Love Divine’ has achieved for us already.

Let me add, that I should insert a full stop after τοῦ δοθέντος ἡμῖν, read ἔτι γάρ for εἴ γε, and cut out the second ἔτι altogether. This implies a certain lack of confidence in the MSS. But I think the phenomena will justify such an emendatory diffidence. The truth is, manuscripts have yielded up their store: now the critic’s art begins-or should begin. From all this perplexity we turn, with something of relief, to what the Apostle says of the grandeur of Christ’s Love.

5:7-11. “Why! scarcely for a righteous man is any prepared to die. I say, for your good man (maybe) a man might nerve himself to die.”

“But God establishes His own love in this that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died on our behalf. Much more then, having been accepted now through His blood, shall we be rescued by His means from the wrath of God.”

“If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved by His Life.…”

“And not only so, but we exult also at (the thought of) God, through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom we have now gotten our reconciliation.” In chap. 5 so far we have had three grounds of joyfulness or ‘exultation’ mentioned. The ‘hope of glory,’ tribulations, and lastly the thought of God. The relation of ἐν Θεῷ to διὰ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν (in v. 11) I apprehend to be this. Man could not speak of ‘glorying’ in God at all, were it not for the new relation established in Jesus Christ. In other words, the relative clause (διʼ οὗ ἐλάβομεν) at the verse’s end explains what the writer means by “rejoicing in God through Jesus Christ.” In vv. 7 and 8 one is tempted to suspect a dittographia. I do not think any distinction between δίκαιον and ἀγαθόν will help us. The same thing is said twice over; and one wonders if two separate readings can possibly have been combined. There is, to be sure, another element of repetition in the passage; for the statement of v. 6 is restated in v. 8. But that restatement is fuller. In v. 9 the σωθησόμεθα (as being coupled with ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς) bears the narrower sense of ‘rescue’: the other lower down must be taken in a larger meaning. At least, so I should say. That σωθησόμεθα appears to me to look forward to the final redemption. The ‘dying’ Christ brought the first one; the eternally ‘living’ Christ will bring about the other. The ‘saving’ from the wrath, in a sense, is yet to be; so is this other. They have neither to do with the ‘now.’ The third ground of ‘glorying’-introduced by a participle, not an unusual phenomenon in the Pauline style-is, as it were, an afterthought.