ROAMING THROUGH ROMANS: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith’” (Rom. 1:16-17). Isaac Grubbs, professor of Exegesis in the College of the Bible at Lexington, Ky., published a commentary on Romans in 1913 in which he declared: “The Gospel versus the Law is one theme of which [Paul] never loses sight in the elaboration of the details of this wonderful production. . .There are no less than five cardinal terms, keywords, which already suggest a fivefold antithesis between grace and legalism, between Christianity and Judaism…” Professor Grubbs drew these five points from Romans 1:16: 1. POWER VS. LEGAL WEAKNESS: The gospel is the power of God to salvation. The law has no power in this regard. “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4). The weakness was not in the law but in the flesh. 2. OF GOD VS. HUMAN WEAKNESS: It is God who must save us and not we ourselves. Our justification is based not on the righteousness of man but on the righteousness of God: “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God” (Rom. 10:3). Paul took confidence in the fact that he had not “a righteousness of my own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Phil. 3:9). It is only on the basis of merit that the law can justify, but the gospel justifies on the basis of grace. 3. UNTO SALVATION VS. LEGAL CONDEMNATION: Here is the difference of results. The gospel brings life, but “…the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death” (Rom. 7:10). “Cursed is everyone who continues not in all things of the law to do them” (Gal.3:10). “Thus the only hope for man with his imperfections is to pass from under a mere legal system, which can only justify the sinless, to a dispensation of grace, which is clothed with divine power to ‘justify the ungodly’” (Grubbs). 4. TO EVERYONE VERSUS JEWISH EXCLUSIVENESS: “There is no difference,” wrote Paul, “for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:21-23). There is a universal need and the gospel provides equally the gift of salvation. 5. WHO BELIEVES VERSUS LEGAL WORKS: Here is a difference of conditionality; a contrast between faith and works. “The dictum of the Law is: ‘Do this and thou shalt live.’ The maxim of the Gospel is: ‘the just shall live by faith.’ “Doing” is the ground of legal justification. “Believing” is the condition of gracious justification. Professor Grubbs has a great deal more to say regarding the perversion of this doctrine. We have touched lightly on such and must let that suffice. KG
Posted on: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:37:38 +0000