RECONCILIATION AND FAILURE OF THE LAW123

While the apostle could say we know this, we ourselves must confess that many do not. This quotation (Rom.

3:10-19) is made to those under the law, and not to those who are confessedly without the law. Much confusion

would have been avoided had this distinction been maintained.

It is not sufficiently recognized that the law is the occasion of sin, owing to the nature of the human heart. Every

mouth, truly, is stopped, and all the world found guilty before God, so that the Jew can find no ground for boasting

over the less favoured Gentile. Indeed, the Scriptures indicate that the Jew as a whole, with the greater light of

revealed truth, could not produce one `righteous' nor one `good' nor one `seeker after God'. Yet Job was a `perfect

man'. Melchisedec was a priest of the most high God, confessedly greater than Abraham, and Enoch so walked with

God and testified concerning prevailing ungodliness that `God took him'. If we push the words `none righteous'

beyond their context, we shall simply be found contradicting such passages as Hebrews 11:4, which tells us that God

bore testimony that Abel was righteous. None of these, however, were ever `under the law' in the sense that

Romans 3 intends. So far as man being able to fulfil the righteous requirements of the law is concerned, Romans 8:3

declares it to be an impossibility.

But why read the extraordinary requirements of the law into the requirements of conscience and creation? Do

we not recognise that many sins are of purely legal making? Before the outbreak of the awful war of 1914, many

acts were perfectly honest, just and good, which under the Defence of the Realm Act (known as D.O.R.A.) suddenly

became crimes. If we can only keep this simple illustration in mind, we shall the better perceive the different lines

of teaching that must exist when dealing with the Jew under the law, and the Gentile apart from the law. One act

performed by a Jew would be a sin, yet the same act performed by a Gentile would be perfectly innocent. What is

the object of the apostle's argument? To demonstrate for ever the utter futility of the Judaizing party who

endeavoured to fasten upon the necks of the Gentiles the grievous yoke of the law. We can understand, with this

illumination, why the apostle so strenuously opposed the slightest attempt to put the Gentiles into such a system of

bondage, and why in `Galatians' he attacks the attempt with all the force of his being. Here in Romans, if with less

fire, yet with more logic, he cuts away all idea of substituting the law for the blessed gospel, bringing this section to

a close with the words:

`Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight: FOR BY THE LAW IS THE KNOWLEDGE OF

SIN' (Rom. 3:20; 4:15; 5:20; 7:7; 1 Cor. 15:56; Gal. 3:19).

The law was spiritual, but man was carnal; the adding of the law aggravated sin, and as the apostle puts it, `sin

revived, and I died'. It may be of service to show how clearly parallel were the sins of Israel, though under the law,

with the rebellion of the nations without the law:

`They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image. Thus they changed their (My) glory into the

similitude of an ox that eateth grass! ... They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor (cf. Num. 25:1-3), and ate

the sacrifices of the dead. Thus they provoked Him to anger with their inventions ... Thus were they defiled with

their own works, and went a whoring with their own inventions' (Psalm 106:19,20,28,29,39).

Not only is there this parallel between the nations and the nation as to idolatry, uncleanness and wicked

inventions, but both are described as `changing' the glory of God into the likeness of some creature. The `giving up'

of the nations, three times spoken of in Romans 1 (verses 24,26, and 28), is echoed in Psalm 81:9-12 :

`There shall no strange god be in thee ... My people would not hearken ... so I gave them up unto their own

hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels'.

There is certainly no saving power in the law. Nothing but the death and resurrection of Christ, the gospel of

God concerning His Son, can be of any avail to Jew or Gentile.

The nations, although taught by nature and conscience, sinned and came short.

Whosoever sins, whether Jew or Gentile, incurs judgment.  Deliverance only through

A 2:17 to 3:8.

The Jews, although possessing the law, sinned and came short.