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LECTURE LXXIX.

ROMANS, X, 3-5.

"For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doth those things shall live by them."

THERE should be no difficulty in fixing whether the term righteousness in this passage must be understood according to its personal or its legal sensewhether that righteousness which designates a character that is marked by its virtues and its graces; or that which is pronounced by a judge, or him who is entitled thereby to its honours and rewards. In this place, as in others, the context clears up the text. For example in Matthew, v, 20-the righteousness which is there spoken of cannot be mistaken for any other than the personal-that being made obvious by the illustrations which follow, and whence it appears that its superiority over the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees lies in the higher style of certain virtues which are there specified. And again in Galatians, iii, 21, there can be as little mistake, when we affix the legal or judicial meaning to the righteousness there spoken

of it being such a righteousness as could have given life, and which is viewed therefore not in the moral graces of which it is made up, but in the rewards, even those of a blissful eternity, which are judicially conferred upon it—just as the ministration of death in 2 Cor. iii, 7, is clearly juridical, it being termed in ver. 9, the ministration of condemnation, for death is the penalty of sin: And so the ministration of righteousness contrasted therewith must be juridical also, it being the ministration of life, even that life which is the reward of righteousness. In like manner when one looks to the verse before us in conjunction with the verses which immediately succeed, there should be no difficulty in settling the judicial import of the term righteousness throughout this whole passage of the apostle's argument as being, not the righteousness which has its place in the character or person of a disciple, but the righteousness which can be plea'd or stated by him at the bar of jurisprudence when he stands there as a claimant for the rewards and honours of eternity. In short it is the righteousness which gives a right to eternal life or which challenges eternal life as its due that righteousness which the Jews fell short of, because they sought to establish it by the merit of their own doings, while they refused to make use of the plea which God offered to put into their hands as a righteousness that He would accept this being a righteousness of which they were ignorant, or would not acknowledge, or would not submit themselves thereto. "For they

being ignorant of God's righteousness," or of that righteousness on the ground of which or consideration of which He would take man into acceptance; "and going about to establish a righteousness of their own," seeking to make good their title to heaven, as rightful claimants to its inheritance on the strength or merit of their own proper services.

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they would not submit themselves unto the righteousness of God," but sought to be justified in their own way which was by their own works, rather than by His method of justification.

My only additional remark on this verse is, that, in the ignorance there spoken of, there is something more than the mere passive blindness of those who cannot help themselves because of the total darkness by which they are encompassed. It was very much the ignorance of those who would not open their eyes. There was an activity, a will in it, as much as there was in the other things ascribed to them in these words-in the 'going about' to establish a different righteousness from that which they would not acknowledge, or would not submit to-resisting it, in fact, because of their not liking it. This forms the true principle on which the condemnation of unbelief rests. 66 They love the darkness rather than the light;" and so the ignorance or unbelief is criminal-just as far as there were affection and choice in it. Even as the Gentiles "liked not to retain God in their knowledge" -even so the Jews liked not in this instance to

admit God into their knowledge, or give entertain

ment in their minds to that way of salvation which He had devised for the recovery of a guilty worldeven the transference of man's sins to the person of Christ, and the transference of Christ's righteousness to the persons of all who believe in Him. It is the part which the will has in it that makes ignorance the proper object of a vindictive retribution; and so when Christ cometh, He will take vengeance on those who know not God, and obey not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The will has to do with the want of obedience; and so far as the want of knowledge is punishable, the will has to do with that want also. There is a wilful resistance to the light-though a resistance this it must be admitted which the light itself may overcome by the greater force of its evidence, by the greater brightness and intensity of its own manifestation-just as Paul's ignorance and unbelief were overpowered by the light that shone upon him near Damascus; and as the faith of converts in the present day is carried, when God is pleased to reveal Christ in them, by commanding the light to shine out of darkness, or by calling them out of darkness into the marvellous light of the gospel.

Ver. 4. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.' There is one obvious sense in which Christ is the end of the law; and that is when the law viewed as a schoolmaster brings us to the conclusion, as to its last lesson, that Christ is our only refuge our only righteousness-thereby shutting us up unto the

faith. But this is not the sort of end which is meant here. We should have a more precise understanding of the verse by taking the word end as equivalent to purpose-and that a purpose too which the law was fitted to serve not merely after it was broken; but at the time of its original institution, and when it was first set up for the moral government of men. Now that the law has been violated, and we are the outcasts of its rightful condemnation, it is good to be schooled by it into the lesson that Christ is our only hiding-place, in whom there is no condemnation; and thus to make Christ the end or the final landing-place of that educational process through which we are conducted, when studying the high precepts and authority of the law, and our own immeasurable distance and deficiency therefrom. It is not thus however that this verse is to be understood; and for the right determination of what it signifies, we should go back to one of the purposes for which the law was given at the time of its first ordination-a purpose to be gained, not after the breaking of it, but which would have been gained by the keeping of it. One of these purposes was to secure the moral rightness of man's character and conduct. But another of these purposes was to secure for him a legal right to eternal life. The one was the end of the law for his personal holiness. The other was the end of the law for his judicial righteousness; and this is what we hold to be precisely the end of the law for righteousness' in our text. Its direct and