CAVEAT: This is an edited version of the orginal. It is a stripped-down version of the content regarding the first eight chapters of Romans. You will note the use of an elipsis where I made the choice to chop something out for the sake of brevity. I also chose to update some of the language, such as five-hundred year old usage of man to indicate humankind.
"This Epistle is the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy themself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul. One can never read or ponder it too much, and the more it is understood, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes.
...[Romans] is a bright light, almost enough to illuminate all the Scripture.
To begin with, we must know its language and understand what St. Paul means by the words law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh, Spirit, etc. Otherwise, no reading of it has any value.
The word "law" you must not take in human fashion as a teaching about what works are to be done or not done. That's s how it is with human laws — laws fulfilled by works, even though there is no heart in them. But God judges according to what is at the bottom of the heart, and for this reason, His law makes its demands on the inmost soul and cannot be satisfied with works...
St. Paul concludes, in chapter 2, that the Jews are all sinners and says that only the doers of the law are righteous before God. He means by this that no one is, in their works, a doer of the law; on the contrary, he says, "You teach not to commit adultery, but you committest adultery" and "When you judge another, you condemn yourself, because you do the same thing that you judge"; as if to say, "You live a fine outward life in the works of the law and judge those who do not, and you know how to teach everyone; you see the splinter in the other's eye, but of the beam in your eye you are not aware."
For even though you keep the law outwardly, with works, from fear of punishment or love of reward, nevertheless, you do all this without willingness and pleasure, and love for the law; but rather with unwillingness, under compulsion; and you would rather do otherwise if the law were not there. The conclusion is that you hate the law at the bottom of your heart.
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Thus, you teach others but not yourself, and you know not what you teach and have yet to understand the law rightly. The law increases sin, as he says in Chapter 5, because the more the law demands what persons cannot do, the more they hate it.
For this reason, he says in Romans 7:14, "The law is spiritual." What is that? If the law were for the body, it could be satisfied with works, but since it is spiritual, no one can satisfy it unless all you do is done from the bottom of the heart. But such a heart is given only by God's Spirit, who makes a person equal to the law so that they acquire a desire for the law and do nothing out of fear and compulsion but everything out of a willing heart. That law, then, is spiritual, which will be loved and fulfilled with such a spiritual heart and requires such a spirit.
Where that Spirit is not in the heart, there is sin, displeasure with the law, and hostility toward it, though the law is good and just and holy.
Accustom yourself to this language, and you will find that doing the works of the law and fulfilling the law are very different. The work of the law is everything that one does or can do toward keeping the law of their own free will or by their powers. But since under all these works and along with them, there remains in the heart dislike for the law and the compulsion to keep it, these works are wasted and have no value. That is what St. Paul means in Romans 3:20, when he says, "By the works of the law, no person becomes righteous before God." ...
To fulfill the law, however, is to do its works with pleasure and love and to live a godly and good life of one's own accord, without the compulsion of the law. This pleasure and love for the law is put into the heart by the Holy Ghost, as he says in Romans 5:5. But the Holy Ghost is not given except by faith in Jesus Christ, as he says in the introduction. Faith does not come, save only through God's Word or Gospel, which preaches Christ, that He is God's Son, and has died and risen again for our sakes, as he says in Romans 3:25 (God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement) 4:25 (He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification)
Hence, faith alone makes one righteous and fulfills the law, for out of Christ's merit, it brings the Spirit, and the Spirit makes the heart glad and free, as the law requires it to be. Thus, good works come out of faith. That is what he means in Romans 3:31, after he has rejected the works of the law, so that it sounds as though he would abolish the law by faith; "Nay," he says, "we establish the law by faith," that is, we fulfill it by faith.
Sin, in the Scripture, means not only the outward works but all the activities that move persons to the outward works, namely, the inmost heart, with all its powers. Thus, the little word "do" ought to mean that a person falls into sin and walks in sin. No outward work of sin does this, unless a man goes into sin altogether, body and soul. And the Scriptures look especially into the heart and regard the root and source of all sin, which is unbelief in the inmost heart. So, faith alone makes one righteous and brings the Spirit, and produces pleasure in good, eternal works, so unbelief alone commits sin, and brings up the flesh, and produces pleasure in bad external works, as happened to Adam and Eve in Paradise.
Hence, Christ calls unbelief the only sin when he says, in John 16:8, "The Spirit will rebuke the world for sin, because they believe not in me."
For this reason, before good or bad works are done, which are the fruits, there must first be faith or unbelief in the heart, which is the root, the sap, the chief power of all sin...
Between grace and gift, there is this difference. Grace means properly God's favor, or the good-will God bears us, by which He is disposed to give us Christ and pour the Holy Ghost with His gifts into us. This is clear from chapter 5, where he speaks of "the grace and gift in Christ."
The gifts and the Spirit increase in us daily, though they are imperfect. There remains in us the evil lust and sin that war against the Spirit, as he says in Romans 7:14 ("the law is spiritual but I am unspiritual") and Galatians 5:17 (the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh")
Nevertheless, grace does so much that we are accounted wholly righteous before God. For His grace is not divided or broken up, as are the gifts, but it takes us entirely into favor, for the sake of Christ our Intercessor and Mediator, and because of that, the gifts are grown in us.
In this sense, then, you understand chapter 7, in which St. Paul still calls himself a sinner, and yet says, in Romans 8:1, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ because of the gifts and the Spirit. Because the flesh is not yet slain, we still are sinners. But because we believe and have a beginning of the Spirit, God is so favorable and gracious to us that He will not count the sin against us or judge us for it, but will deal with us according to our faith in Christ, until sin is slain.
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Faith is a divine work in us. It changes us and makes us born anew of God (John 1:13); it kills the old Adam and makes altogether different persons, in heart and Spirit and mind and powers, and it brings with it the Holy Ghost. O, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith; and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly...
Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a person would stake their life on it a thousand times. This confidence in God's grace and knowledge of it makes believers glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and with all His creatures, and this is the work of the Holy Ghost in faith. Hence, a person is ready and glad, without compulsion, to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, in love and praise of God, who has shown him this grace; and thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate heat and light from fire... Pray God to work this faith in you...
Righteousness IS such a faith and is called "God's righteousness" because God gives it and counts it as righteousness for the sake of Christ, our Mediator, and makes a person give to every other person what they owe them. For through faith, a person becomes sinless and comes to take pleasure in God's commandments; thus they give to God the honor that is His and pays Him what he owes Him; but they also serve others willingly, by whatever means they can, and thus pays a debt to everyone.
Such righteousness, nature, free will, and all our powers cannot be brought into existence. No one can give themself faith, and no more can they take away their own unbelief; how, then, will they take away a single sin, even the very smallest? Therefore, all that is done apart from faith, or in unbelief, is false; it is hypocrisy and sin, no matter how good a show it makes.
You must not so understand flesh and Spirit as to think that flesh has to do only with unchastity and Spirit only with what is inward, in the heart; but Paul, like Christ, in John 3:6, calls "flesh" everything that is born of the flesh; i.e., the whole man, with body and soul, mind and senses, because everything about him longs for the flesh.
Thus it would be best if you learned to call a person "fleshly" who thinks, teaches, and talks a great deal about high spiritual matters, but without grace. From the "works of the flesh," in Galatians 5:20, you can learn that Paul calls heresy and hatred "works of the flesh," and in Romans 8:3,
(For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.)
On the other hand, he calls a person spiritual who is occupied with the most external kind of works, as Christ, when He washed the disciples' feet, and Peter, when he steered his boat, and fished. Thus "the flesh" is a man who lives and works, inwardly and outwardly, in the service of the flesh's profit and of this temporal life; "the spirit" is the man who lives and works, inwardly and outwardly, in the service of the Spirit and the future life...
It is right for a preacher of the Gospel first, by a revelation of the law and of sin, to rebuke everything and make sin of everything that is not the living fruit of the Spirit and of faith in Christ, so that men may be led to know themselves and their own sinfulness, and become humble and a ask for help.
In chapter 3, he puts them all together in a heap, and says that one is like the other; they are all sinners before God, except that the Jews have had God's Word. Not many have believed in it, but that does not mean that the faith and truth of God are exhausted; and he quotes a saying from Psalm 51:4, that God remains righteous in His words. Then Paul comes back to this again and proves by Scripture that they are all sinners and that by the works of the law no man is justified, but that the law was given only that sin might be known.
Then he begins to teach the right way by which men must be justified and saved, and says, They are all sinners and without praise from God, but they must be justified, without merit, through faith in Christ, who has earned this for us by His blood, and has been made for us a mercy-seat by God, Who forgives us all former sins, proving thereby that were we aided only by His righteousness, which He gives in faith, which is revealed in this time through the Gospel...
Thus, the law is set up by faith, though the works of the law are put down by it...
After the first three chapters, in which sin is revealed and faith's way to righteousness is taught, he begins, in chapter 4, to meet certain objections. First, he takes up the one that all men commonly make when they hear of faith, that it justifies without works. They say, "Are persons, then, to do no good works?" Therefore Paul takes up Abraham's case, and asks, "What did Abraham accomplish, then, with his good works?... Were his works of no use?" He concludes that Abraham was justified by faith alone, without any works; nay, the Scriptures, in Genesis 15:6, declare that he was justified by faith alone, even before the work of circumcision.
But suppose the work of circumcision contributed nothing to his righteousness, though God commanded it, and it was a good work of obedience. Surely, no other good work will contribute anything to righteousness in that case. On the other hand, if Abraham's circumcision was an external sign by which he showed the righteousness that was already his in faith, then all good works are only external signs which follow out of faith, and show, like good fruit, that a man is already inwardly righteous before God.
With this powerful illustration, out of the Scriptures, St. Paul establishes the doctrine of faith which he had taught before, in chapter 3. He also brings forward another witness, David, in Psalm 32:1 who says that a man is justified without works, although he does not remain without works when he has been justified. Then he gives the illustration a broader application, and concludes that the Jews cannot be Abraham's heirs merely because of their blood, still less because of the works of the law, but must be heirs of Abraham's faith, if they would be true heirs.
For before the law — either the law of Moses or the law of circumcision — Abraham was justified by faith and called the father of believers; moreover, the law works wrath rather than grace, because no one keeps it out of love for it and pleasure in it, so that what comes by the works of the law is disgrace rather than grace. Therefore faith alone must obtain the grace promised to Abraham, for these examples were written for our sakes, that we, too, should believe.
In chapter 5, he comes to the fruits and works of faith, such as peace, joy, love to God and every person, confidence, boldness, joy, courage, and hope in tribulation and suffering. For all this follows, if faith be true, because of the over-abundant goodness that God shows us in Christ, so He caused Him to die for us before we could ask it, even while we were still His enemies. Thus we have it that faith justifies without any works; and yet it does not follow that men are, therefore, to do no good works, but rather that the true works will not be absent...
In chapter 6, he takes up the special work of faith, the conflict of the Spirit with the flesh, for the complete slaying of the sin and lust that remain after we are justified. He teaches us that by faith we are not so freed from sin that we can be idle, slack, and careless, as though there were no longer any sin in us.
There is sin; but it is no longer counted for condemnation, because of the faith that strives against it. Therefore we have enough to do all our life long in taming the body, slaying its lusts, and compelling its members to obey the Spirit and not the lusts, thus making our lives like the death and resurrection of Christ and completing our baptism — which signifies the death of sin and the new life of grace — until we are entirely pure of sins, and even our bodies rise again with Christ and live forever.
And that we can do, he says, because we are in grace and not in the law.
He himself explains that to mean that to be without the law is not the same thing as to have no laws and be able to do what one pleases; but we are under the law when, without grace, we occupy ourselves in the work of the law... Grace, makes the law dear to us, and then sin is no more there, and the law is no longer against us, but with us.
This is the true freedom from sin and the law, of which he writes...that it is liberty only to do good with pleasure and live a good life without the compulsion of the law. Therefore, this liberty is spiritual, which does not abolish the law but presents what the law demands: pleasure and love.
In chapter 7, Paul concludes that the law, rightly understood and thoroughly comprehended, does nothing more than remind us of our sin, and slay us by it, ... and all this is taught and experienced by our conscience when it is really smitten by the law.
In chapter 8, he encourages these fighters, telling them not to condemn the flesh; and he shows further what the nature of flesh and Spirit is, and how the Spirit comes from Christ, who has given us His Holy Spirit to make us spiritual and subdue the flesh. He assures us that we are still God's children, however hard sin may rage within us, so long as we follow the Spirit and resist sin, to slay it.
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Thus in this Epistle we find most richly the things that Christians ought to know--what is law, Gospel, sin, punishment, grace, faith, righteousness, Christ, God, good works, love, hope, the cross, and also how we are to conduct ourselves toward everyone, whether righteous or sinner, strong or weak, friend or foe.
All this is ably founded on Scripture and proved by his own example and that of the prophets. Therefore, it appears that St. Paul wanted to comprise briefly in this one Epistle the whole Christian and evangelical doctrine and to prepare an introduction to the entire Old Testament; for, without doubt, he who has this Epistle well in his heart, has the light and power of the Old Testament with them.
Therefore let every Christian exercise themself in it habitually and continually. To this may God give His grace. Amen.
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