Understanding Romans 3:31
Dec 27, 2013 9:35:43 GMT
Post by Colossians on Dec 27, 2013 9:35:43 GMT
This material is for the teaching of the Body of Christ, however the author reserves copyright over it.
Forward
Unfortunately many modern bible versions essentially guess at the meaning of certain passages, the 'ripple effects' of such (unfortunately) spreading out in ever-widening errors. Romans 3:31 is case in point.
The New Living Translation:
“Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law? Of course not! In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law.”
The Message:
“But by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don’t we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it.”
And most of the remaining versions err also in their stating that our establishing the law through faith means we “uphold” (“keep/support”) the law.
___
Just before verse 31 we have been told:
1. Our righteousness is “without the law” (v21,28)
2. Our righteousness is by faith and not the law (v22)
3. The law is supplanted by a new law called “the law of faith” (v27)
And finally, just to make sure we are quite clear on the matter, Paul tells us that God is not only the God of the Jews (who have the law), but the God of the Gentiles (who do not have the law and who therefore were disadvantaged if righteousness were to any extent linked to following the law).
Here it is:
“Is He the God of the Jews only? is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith” Rom 3:29,30.
A strange set of arguments indeed, to tell us to uphold the law.
Below we show the true meaning of Romans 3:31.
____________________________
UNDERSTANDING ROMANS 3:31
“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law” Romans 3:31.
The biblical template for the verse
Firstly we are put on notice by the sudden introduction of some very distinct terms – “establish” and “make void” – that something a little unusual is going on here.
It is possible, we might suppose, that Paul just happened to pluck these two heretofore unmentioned notions out of the air, but we must remember that Paul was of the Sanhedrin – he was expert in the law. We might therefore rather expect to find the template for this strange, apparently-discordant statement, in the law.
And in fact we do find it in the law, as the entire 30th chapter of the book of Numbers. The reader is therefore requested to read Numbers 30 from beginning to end, before proceeding, and to use the King James Version of the bible.
The Establishment Law
Numbers 30 is wholly dedicated to what we shall call “The Establishment Law”.
It concerns personal vows/bonds/oaths made to God by various kinds of persons: men (v2), daughters still under their father’s authority (v3-5), widowed or divorced women (v9).
Most pre-eminently, it concerns the personal vows/bonds/oaths made to God by wives (v6-8, v10-15).
Moving into the detail of the latter scenario, we see that because a wife was under the authority of her husband, her vows were only said to be established provided her husband did not overturn them.
Here it is:
“And if she vowed in her husband's house, or bound her soul by a bond with an oath; And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her, and disallowed her not: then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she bound her soul shall stand” Num 30:10,11.
This is a very important point: her vows were established without a word, by her husband. That is, they were established passively and by default.
The Voiding Law
Of course it follows that if her husband overturned her vows when he heard them, they would not be established. So what we shall refer to as “The Voiding Law” is of course the reciprocal of the Establishment Law.
Here it is:
“But if her husband hath utterly made them void on the day he heard them; then whatsoever proceeded out of her lips concerning her vows, or concerning the bond of her soul, shall not stand: her husband hath made them void; and the LORD shall forgive her” Num 30:12.
The two laws in one breath
And so the very next verse (13) sums up the situation in one:
"Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void" Num 30:13.
Thus far ...
And so Paul does not in fact pluck these words “establish” and “make void” out of the air at the end of his discourse at Romans 3, but rather produces a ‘grab’ from the Jewish Establishment and Voiding laws: his conceptual template is what is detailed at Numbers 30.
Applying this template thus far then, we see that when Paul declares:
“do we make void the law through faith? ... no ... we establish the law”,
what he is actually saying is:
“does the fact that we have now come to faith mean that we now declare the law void? No in fact it is the other way around: the fact that we have come to faith means that we necessarily allow the law to stand as it is”.
And we shall progressively show below just what he means by this, and why it has nothing at all to do with keeping the law.1
1 Some may have to this point thought that we are about differentiating between a believer’s (inadvertent) fulfilment (via love) of the “righteousness of the law” (Rom 8:4), and the keeping of the exact law itself. But rather, we are about showing that what Paul has said at Rom 3:31 has to do with something completely other, and that to miss such is to miss a unique and incisive (NT) application of Jewish law indeed.
The True-Husband Law
Above we stopped at v13, which we showed summed up just nicely the Establishment Law and the Voiding Law in one statement.
Here it is again for convenience:
“Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void” Num 30:13.
But/and we will now note that it was up to the husband as to whether or not he chose to establish his wife's oaths or make them void: either way was optional. In this sense then what we have referred to as The Establishment Law and The Voiding Law, are not really laws per se, for if there is no penalty no matter which path one chooses, one cannot be said to be under a law.
Which of course stands to reason: any application of this ‘law’ was necessarily a private matter internal to the husband-wife relationship and therefore not that which fell within the jurisdiction of the judges of Israel.
But there was one vital verse remaining in the chapter, and in this verse we do in fact find a penalty:
“But if he shall any ways make them void after that he hath heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity” Num 30:15.
And thus we are introduced to what we shall call “The True Husband Law”, for the true husband will be he who seeks to shoulder the responsibility for the well-being of the marriage, and therefore he who will not allow his wife to put pressure on herself in such regard.
That is, we are led to understand that the bearing of the wife’s “iniquity” would consist of the very practical day-to-day absorption of the idiosyncrasies peculiar to such weaker ‘other half’ (see Col 3:19, 1 Pe 3:7). For as we have indicated, the oaths the true husband will have voided will no doubt have consisted of his wife’s attempts to rid herself of any self-considered vices which to her mind declared her deficient in some way or another.
And yet there was no up-front evidence that he would be able to bear such 'penalty' without eventually retaliating in one form or another.
We therefore conclude that The True-Husband law was none other than that to which Paul refers just a little earlier at v27 as “the law of faith”, for “faith is the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1) ... and more comprehensively, “faith which worketh by love” (Gal 5:6), for we know that love “never faileth” (1 Cor 13:4,8).
Which brings us to conclude that such husband was a type for Jesus Christ and His Cross, for only He who is Himself love, will never fail to love.
And to conclude that the oaths voided were a type for the demands of the law written on the heart of every man, which laws are taken away in Christ.
“and the government shall be upon His shoulder” Is 9:6.
The law, the law, and the law
Imagine two squares of equal size, one coloured in, the other consisting of white space.
Call the one that is coloured in “the law”, and designate it as referring to the commandments within the books of the Torah/Pentateuch.
Call the one consisting of white space “THE LAW”, and designate it as referring to the books of the Torah/Pentateuch themselves.
Place the law directly over the top of THE LAW (which you are entitled to do, for both have the same name) so that only the law can be seen. This is the situation with the Jew: the veil is over his heart as he reads Moses (see 2 Cor 3:15) so that all he can see is the law.
Now shrink the law so that it sits some ways within the borders of THE LAW. The white space now exposed between the borders of the law and THE LAW, is where the references in THE LAW which allude to the justification which is in Christ, will be found. (Our shrinking of the law will represent the revelation of the Spirit so that we now see Christ in THE LAW – the greater the revelation, the less relevant the law.)
And so we will recall how that Jesus on the road to Emmaus began to teach the two with whom He walked all about Himself, beginning with the books of Moses (Luke 24:27): He was in fact expounding the ‘white space’.
Now note what Paul says in his lead up to our head verse:
[20] “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. [21] But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; [22] Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: [23] For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; [24] Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”.
At v20 he is primarily referring to the law2, as he speaks of deeds (keep the Sabbath, don’t steal, etc).
2 Strictly speaking this “the deeds of the law” at Rom 3:20 is in reference to the deeds referred to within THE LAW. However because this equates on the pragmatic axis to (the requirement to keep) the law, we have said here that he is primarily referring to the law.
And then at v21a he tells us that our righteousness is now no longer related to the law, and accordingly follows up at v21b-24 with the declaration that such (new) state of affairs is in fact witnessed by “the law and the prophets”.
He has therefore at this point (via this “the law and the prophets”) conclusively switched the focus from the narrower the law to the more general (the books that are) THE LAW3, which latter he has necessarily lumped together with the prophets by virtue of the fact that the witness to which he refers – the righteousness resulting from the (coming)4 Cross of Christ – was common to both.5
3 This is also a feature of Jesus’ words at Mt 5:17: in saying He had come to fulfil “the law and the prophets”, He was simply referring to the entire Old Testament (in particular the prophetic and revelatory aspect of it), and not, as many superficially presume, declaring that He had come to keep the law.
4 It will be clear here that we are not declaring that such righteousness was not available before the Cross, but that such righteousness, whether BC or AD, was by virtue of the Cross.
5 The overall message of THE LAW is in fact so in line with that of the prophets, that at 1 Cor 14:21 Paul includes Isaiah in the law: THE LAW and the prophets were on the broader level together THE LAW.
___
But let’s take another look at this 2-squares paradigm of ours, for it exists elsewhere in Paul’s writings:
In his letter to the church at Galatia, Paul spends a good deal of time rebuking those who wished to go back under the law (which they were particularly evidencing by way of a desire to be circumcised, but which necessarily involved a good deal more than circumcision – see Gal 5:3).
And so he asks them:
“Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?” Gal 4:21
and then proceeds to recount the story in THE LAW (in particular the book of Genesis) of Sarah and Hagar, pointing out that, allegorically speaking, those who live by the Spirit are free as Sarah was free, and those who live by the law are bound as Hagar was bound.
That is, he begins his challenge referring primarily to the law – “ye that desire to be under the law” – but/and then promptly shifts the focus to (the more comprehensive) THE LAW in order to show them that in fact the (higher-ranked) THE LAW alluded to the fact that the law within its pages is supplanted by faith for all in Christ.
___
Of course what we are leading up to here is that at Romans 3:31 he does similar: because his topic has been largely concerned with sin and righteousness, he knows his audience will initially take his meaning as:
“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law”
when it will in fact be:
“Do we then make void THE LAW through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish THE LAW”.
That is, his intent is to take the reader off guard by way of an unannounced paradigm shift which, once caught on to by the reader, would provide the ‘shock value’ necessary to shift the reader’s focus from the law to the far better “the law of faith” alluded to in the pages of THE LAW.
“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” Rom 10:4.
Summary
Romans 3:31 tells us that, by virtue of the faith of Christ now resident in us, we necessarily say nothing against the body of writings known as “the law” which pointed to such faith and which we have in the section above represented as "THE LAW", and in saying nothing against those writings, necessarily allow them to stand, which according to Jewish definition, is to establish them.
Primarily, we establish the part of the writings of the law to which Paul's words "establish" and "make void" directly lead us: we establish the True Husband Law of Numbers 30:15.
And so Romans 3:31 has nothing whatsoever to do with keeping or fulfilling the law of commandments, but rather and to the contrary, puts the nail in the coffin of such law once and for all.
For in God’s eyes coffins and crosses are apparently the same thing.
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross” Col 2:14.
Amen.
Forward
Unfortunately many modern bible versions essentially guess at the meaning of certain passages, the 'ripple effects' of such (unfortunately) spreading out in ever-widening errors. Romans 3:31 is case in point.
The New Living Translation:
“Well then, if we emphasize faith, does this mean that we can forget about the law? Of course not! In fact, only when we have faith do we truly fulfill the law.”
The Message:
“But by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don’t we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it.”
And most of the remaining versions err also in their stating that our establishing the law through faith means we “uphold” (“keep/support”) the law.
___
Just before verse 31 we have been told:
1. Our righteousness is “without the law” (v21,28)
2. Our righteousness is by faith and not the law (v22)
3. The law is supplanted by a new law called “the law of faith” (v27)
And finally, just to make sure we are quite clear on the matter, Paul tells us that God is not only the God of the Jews (who have the law), but the God of the Gentiles (who do not have the law and who therefore were disadvantaged if righteousness were to any extent linked to following the law).
Here it is:
“Is He the God of the Jews only? is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith” Rom 3:29,30.
A strange set of arguments indeed, to tell us to uphold the law.
Below we show the true meaning of Romans 3:31.
____________________________
UNDERSTANDING ROMANS 3:31
“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law” Romans 3:31.
The biblical template for the verse
Firstly we are put on notice by the sudden introduction of some very distinct terms – “establish” and “make void” – that something a little unusual is going on here.
It is possible, we might suppose, that Paul just happened to pluck these two heretofore unmentioned notions out of the air, but we must remember that Paul was of the Sanhedrin – he was expert in the law. We might therefore rather expect to find the template for this strange, apparently-discordant statement, in the law.
And in fact we do find it in the law, as the entire 30th chapter of the book of Numbers. The reader is therefore requested to read Numbers 30 from beginning to end, before proceeding, and to use the King James Version of the bible.
The Establishment Law
Numbers 30 is wholly dedicated to what we shall call “The Establishment Law”.
It concerns personal vows/bonds/oaths made to God by various kinds of persons: men (v2), daughters still under their father’s authority (v3-5), widowed or divorced women (v9).
Most pre-eminently, it concerns the personal vows/bonds/oaths made to God by wives (v6-8, v10-15).
Moving into the detail of the latter scenario, we see that because a wife was under the authority of her husband, her vows were only said to be established provided her husband did not overturn them.
Here it is:
“And if she vowed in her husband's house, or bound her soul by a bond with an oath; And her husband heard it, and held his peace at her, and disallowed her not: then all her vows shall stand, and every bond wherewith she bound her soul shall stand” Num 30:10,11.
This is a very important point: her vows were established without a word, by her husband. That is, they were established passively and by default.
The Voiding Law
Of course it follows that if her husband overturned her vows when he heard them, they would not be established. So what we shall refer to as “The Voiding Law” is of course the reciprocal of the Establishment Law.
Here it is:
“But if her husband hath utterly made them void on the day he heard them; then whatsoever proceeded out of her lips concerning her vows, or concerning the bond of her soul, shall not stand: her husband hath made them void; and the LORD shall forgive her” Num 30:12.
The two laws in one breath
And so the very next verse (13) sums up the situation in one:
"Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void" Num 30:13.
Thus far ...
And so Paul does not in fact pluck these words “establish” and “make void” out of the air at the end of his discourse at Romans 3, but rather produces a ‘grab’ from the Jewish Establishment and Voiding laws: his conceptual template is what is detailed at Numbers 30.
Applying this template thus far then, we see that when Paul declares:
“do we make void the law through faith? ... no ... we establish the law”,
what he is actually saying is:
“does the fact that we have now come to faith mean that we now declare the law void? No in fact it is the other way around: the fact that we have come to faith means that we necessarily allow the law to stand as it is”.
And we shall progressively show below just what he means by this, and why it has nothing at all to do with keeping the law.1
1 Some may have to this point thought that we are about differentiating between a believer’s (inadvertent) fulfilment (via love) of the “righteousness of the law” (Rom 8:4), and the keeping of the exact law itself. But rather, we are about showing that what Paul has said at Rom 3:31 has to do with something completely other, and that to miss such is to miss a unique and incisive (NT) application of Jewish law indeed.
The True-Husband Law
Above we stopped at v13, which we showed summed up just nicely the Establishment Law and the Voiding Law in one statement.
Here it is again for convenience:
“Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void” Num 30:13.
But/and we will now note that it was up to the husband as to whether or not he chose to establish his wife's oaths or make them void: either way was optional. In this sense then what we have referred to as The Establishment Law and The Voiding Law, are not really laws per se, for if there is no penalty no matter which path one chooses, one cannot be said to be under a law.
Which of course stands to reason: any application of this ‘law’ was necessarily a private matter internal to the husband-wife relationship and therefore not that which fell within the jurisdiction of the judges of Israel.
But there was one vital verse remaining in the chapter, and in this verse we do in fact find a penalty:
“But if he shall any ways make them void after that he hath heard them; then he shall bear her iniquity” Num 30:15.
And thus we are introduced to what we shall call “The True Husband Law”, for the true husband will be he who seeks to shoulder the responsibility for the well-being of the marriage, and therefore he who will not allow his wife to put pressure on herself in such regard.
That is, we are led to understand that the bearing of the wife’s “iniquity” would consist of the very practical day-to-day absorption of the idiosyncrasies peculiar to such weaker ‘other half’ (see Col 3:19, 1 Pe 3:7). For as we have indicated, the oaths the true husband will have voided will no doubt have consisted of his wife’s attempts to rid herself of any self-considered vices which to her mind declared her deficient in some way or another.
And yet there was no up-front evidence that he would be able to bear such 'penalty' without eventually retaliating in one form or another.
We therefore conclude that The True-Husband law was none other than that to which Paul refers just a little earlier at v27 as “the law of faith”, for “faith is the evidence of things not seen” (Heb 11:1) ... and more comprehensively, “faith which worketh by love” (Gal 5:6), for we know that love “never faileth” (1 Cor 13:4,8).
Which brings us to conclude that such husband was a type for Jesus Christ and His Cross, for only He who is Himself love, will never fail to love.
And to conclude that the oaths voided were a type for the demands of the law written on the heart of every man, which laws are taken away in Christ.
“and the government shall be upon His shoulder” Is 9:6.
The law, the law, and the law
Imagine two squares of equal size, one coloured in, the other consisting of white space.
Call the one that is coloured in “the law”, and designate it as referring to the commandments within the books of the Torah/Pentateuch.
Call the one consisting of white space “THE LAW”, and designate it as referring to the books of the Torah/Pentateuch themselves.
Place the law directly over the top of THE LAW (which you are entitled to do, for both have the same name) so that only the law can be seen. This is the situation with the Jew: the veil is over his heart as he reads Moses (see 2 Cor 3:15) so that all he can see is the law.
Now shrink the law so that it sits some ways within the borders of THE LAW. The white space now exposed between the borders of the law and THE LAW, is where the references in THE LAW which allude to the justification which is in Christ, will be found. (Our shrinking of the law will represent the revelation of the Spirit so that we now see Christ in THE LAW – the greater the revelation, the less relevant the law.)
And so we will recall how that Jesus on the road to Emmaus began to teach the two with whom He walked all about Himself, beginning with the books of Moses (Luke 24:27): He was in fact expounding the ‘white space’.
Now note what Paul says in his lead up to our head verse:
[20] “Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. [21] But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; [22] Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: [23] For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; [24] Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”.
At v20 he is primarily referring to the law2, as he speaks of deeds (keep the Sabbath, don’t steal, etc).
2 Strictly speaking this “the deeds of the law” at Rom 3:20 is in reference to the deeds referred to within THE LAW. However because this equates on the pragmatic axis to (the requirement to keep) the law, we have said here that he is primarily referring to the law.
And then at v21a he tells us that our righteousness is now no longer related to the law, and accordingly follows up at v21b-24 with the declaration that such (new) state of affairs is in fact witnessed by “the law and the prophets”.
He has therefore at this point (via this “the law and the prophets”) conclusively switched the focus from the narrower the law to the more general (the books that are) THE LAW3, which latter he has necessarily lumped together with the prophets by virtue of the fact that the witness to which he refers – the righteousness resulting from the (coming)4 Cross of Christ – was common to both.5
3 This is also a feature of Jesus’ words at Mt 5:17: in saying He had come to fulfil “the law and the prophets”, He was simply referring to the entire Old Testament (in particular the prophetic and revelatory aspect of it), and not, as many superficially presume, declaring that He had come to keep the law.
4 It will be clear here that we are not declaring that such righteousness was not available before the Cross, but that such righteousness, whether BC or AD, was by virtue of the Cross.
5 The overall message of THE LAW is in fact so in line with that of the prophets, that at 1 Cor 14:21 Paul includes Isaiah in the law: THE LAW and the prophets were on the broader level together THE LAW.
___
But let’s take another look at this 2-squares paradigm of ours, for it exists elsewhere in Paul’s writings:
In his letter to the church at Galatia, Paul spends a good deal of time rebuking those who wished to go back under the law (which they were particularly evidencing by way of a desire to be circumcised, but which necessarily involved a good deal more than circumcision – see Gal 5:3).
And so he asks them:
“Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?” Gal 4:21
and then proceeds to recount the story in THE LAW (in particular the book of Genesis) of Sarah and Hagar, pointing out that, allegorically speaking, those who live by the Spirit are free as Sarah was free, and those who live by the law are bound as Hagar was bound.
That is, he begins his challenge referring primarily to the law – “ye that desire to be under the law” – but/and then promptly shifts the focus to (the more comprehensive) THE LAW in order to show them that in fact the (higher-ranked) THE LAW alluded to the fact that the law within its pages is supplanted by faith for all in Christ.
___
Of course what we are leading up to here is that at Romans 3:31 he does similar: because his topic has been largely concerned with sin and righteousness, he knows his audience will initially take his meaning as:
“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law”
when it will in fact be:
“Do we then make void THE LAW through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish THE LAW”.
That is, his intent is to take the reader off guard by way of an unannounced paradigm shift which, once caught on to by the reader, would provide the ‘shock value’ necessary to shift the reader’s focus from the law to the far better “the law of faith” alluded to in the pages of THE LAW.
“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” Rom 10:4.
Summary
Romans 3:31 tells us that, by virtue of the faith of Christ now resident in us, we necessarily say nothing against the body of writings known as “the law” which pointed to such faith and which we have in the section above represented as "THE LAW", and in saying nothing against those writings, necessarily allow them to stand, which according to Jewish definition, is to establish them.
Primarily, we establish the part of the writings of the law to which Paul's words "establish" and "make void" directly lead us: we establish the True Husband Law of Numbers 30:15.
And so Romans 3:31 has nothing whatsoever to do with keeping or fulfilling the law of commandments, but rather and to the contrary, puts the nail in the coffin of such law once and for all.
For in God’s eyes coffins and crosses are apparently the same thing.
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross” Col 2:14.
Amen.