Godbey's Commentary - Acts - Romans - Enter His Rest

29. “Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles; yea, indeed of the Gentiles,
30. “Since there is one God who will justify the circumcision and the uncircumcision through
faith.” We need not wonder at the amount of apparently substantial repetition in this argument
proclaiming God’s great law of pardon to all the world indiscriminately, whether Pagan, Papist,
Moslem, Jew, Gentile, or Protestant. It is simply by faith alone, without works wrought by yourself,
a preacher, a church member, or anything else.
31. “Then do we make void the law through faith? It could not be so, but we establish the law.”
Here Paul answers the silly objections which I have often heard abused by Satan’s preachers; i.e.,
that we who preach the utter non-essentiality of all legal obedience in order to justification, are
making void the law, i.e., setting it aside and treating it with contempt. This is simply the bogus
pleading of spiritually ignorant people. If we had to be justified by the law we would all be sent to
hell, for the simple fact that we are all law-breakers. Hunting in the Bible for justification through
legal obedience is like the criminal ransacking the statute book to find his pardon. It is not there, but
on the contrary he finds his condemnation boldly written on every page. Not we, but unfallen beings,
such as Adam in Eden and the angels in heaven, can possibly be justified by the law. Transgressors
can receive nothing but condign punishment. Well does Paul say that instead of nullifying we
establish the law, boldly affirming the impossibility of its nullification under the hypothesis of our
justification by faith alone without works, from the simple fact that our faith receives and
appropriates Christ, who alone in all this world has kept and verified the law, not only by His active
obedience to all of its mandates, but by His passive obedience, satisfying the violated law in the
vicarious atonement which He made by His substitutionary death in our room and stead. When you
seek justification by works, you are depending on your own obedience, which is “filthy rags in the
sight of God” — a miserable and irretrievable breakdown. When we are justified by faith we lay hold
of Christ, our glorious substitute, who has perfectly satisfied the law both actively and passively in
every respect. Consequently we have victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil, in time and in
eternity.