Romans 3:5

(d.) Nor does God’s glory derived from overruling man’s sin excuse the Jewish any more than the Gentile sinner, Romans 3:5-8 .

5. Commend the righteousness of God The Jew now makes a bold turn. He admits himself the sinner and God the righteous. But how excellent a thing has his sin accomplished! It has set God’s rectitude in a clearer light! How righteous, then, is the Jew whose very sins glorify God!

What shall we say? How can we condemn the Jew? The apostle answers this question by retorting another. God does nevertheless take vengeance; does he so unrighteously? There is, then, a fair issue between God and the Jew. Is God unrighteous? Not only does St. Paul over and over raise the question whether there is unrighteousness with God, but the whole book of Romans is an argument to show that God’s course with the Jews is the right one; under the assumption that there are other courses which it would be wrong for God to pursue, and which he does not pursue just because they are wrong. That is, a course is not right because God pursues it, but God pursues it because it is right. The righteousness of God appears in this, that from eternity to eternity he does, with a most divine freedom, choose and determine not for the wrong, but for the right, the holy, and the best. (See our work on “The Will,” page 316.) And the apostle assumes this fundamental rightness in God as a first principle in no way to be contradicted. The predestinarian must not, therefore, grimly argue, “God has a right to do what he pleases with his creatures, even decree their sin and then damn them for it.” God has, indeed, a right to do what he pleases with his creatures, just because he, in fact, pleases to do perfectly right. Were there a God over the universe who pleased to do wrong, such a God would have no right to do as he pleases. But to say that the creature cannot be imagined to receive a treatment which would be unjust even from its Creator reverses all true idea of justice; and in fact by saying that injustice would be justice annihilates the very idea of justice.

We are bound to assume, with the apostle, that such a course must not be attributed to God, because it would be infinitely wrong, and God is infinitely right.

Speak as a man In entertaining the question of the divine rectitude, I do for a moment speak of God as men speak of each other. The sentence is an apologetic parenthesis for the apparent irreverence.