Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Romans 3:23
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
23. all have sinned ] Lit. all sinned: the Gr. aorist. Probably the time-reference of the tense is to the original Fall of Man, regarded as involving the individual experience of sinfulness in the case of each person. See however on Rom 1:19.
come short ] A present tense. The result of the Fall is that they are now “short of the glory of God.” The word translated “come short” is translated “to be in want” (Luk 15:14); “to suffer need” (Php 4:12); “to be destitute” (Heb 11:37). Here the context suggests that modification of its root-meaning given in E. V.: “to suffer from defect,” “to fail to attain.” “ The glory of God ” must here be His moral glory, His holiness and its requirements. In many passages the Word “glory” is used with evident reference to the Divine moral attributes mercy, faithfulness, love as well as to Divine power. See Rom 6:4; 2Co 4:4 (“the gospel of the glory of Christ”); Eph 1:12; Eph 1:14; 1Ti 1:11 (“the gospel of the glory of the blessed God”). Fallen man lies hopelessly below the standard of the spiritual law which is the expression of the essential holiness of God.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For all have sinned – This was the point which he had fully established in the discussion in these chapters.
Have come short – Greek, Are deficient in regard to; are lacking, etc. Here it means, that they had failed to obtain, or were destitute of.
The glory of God – The praise or approbation of God. They had sought to be justified, or approved, by God; but all had failed. Their works of the Law had not secured his approbation; and they were therefore under condemnation. The word glory ( doxa) is often used in the sense of praise, or approbation, Joh 5:41, Joh 5:44; Joh 7:18; Joh 8:50, Joh 8:54; Joh 12:43.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Rom 3:23
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.
Sin as a fact
I. The necessity of a clear sense of sin.
1. The gospel is a glorious remedy for a universal and otherwise incurable disease; and the first step must ever be to make us sensible of that disease. For one of its most dangerous symptoms is, that it makes men insensible of it. And, seeing that the remedy is not one which can be simply taken once for all, but requires long application, a man must be very thoroughly persuaded that he has the disease before he will take the necessary trouble to be cured of it. Let us try and see what all having sinned means.
2. When any of us looks cut upon mankind, or within himself, one thing can hardly fail to strike him. It is the presence of evil. From the first, mans history has been a history of going wrong and doing wrong. From the first, our own personal history has been a history of interrupted good and interfering bad.
3. Some have said, Dont tell people about it; forget that there is evil in yourself; and you and they will become good. It may be true that there is such a dark spot in nature; but gazing upon it is painful and useless; look at the bright side. But do you suppose that evil in our nature can be thus got rid of? Try it for a day–for an hour; then take strict unsparing account. And if more time is wanted, try it for a year; then retire and trace your path during the time. Does not every man see that it would be simply the tale of the silly ostrich over again, which imagines itself safe from the hunter by hiding him from its sight? No; a man who wants to get rid of evil must open his eyes to it, stand face to face with it, and conquer it.
II. Sin is distinguished from every other evil.
1. There are bodily pain, discomfort, misery, common to us and to all. Now, if we can manage to flee away from them, we thereby get rid of them. We need not study their nature. But the man who wishes to avoid evil in this world must be awake and alive to the forms and accesses of evil. His very safety consists in it. Therefore evil is a matter of a totally different kind from bodily pain, misery, or death.
2. Evil is not by any means our only inward source of annoyance and hindrance. Everyone has defects and infirmities. But none of these do we look upon as we look upon evil. Let it be shown that we are dull, or feeble, or inferior to some others, we put up with it, we excuse it, we make ourselves as comfortable as we may under it; but let it be once shown that we have wished, said, done, that which is evil, and we know at once that there is no excuse for it. We may try to show that we did it inadvertently, or by force of circumstances, or in some way to lessen our own share in it, but the very labour to construct an excuse shows that we hold the evil itself, as evil, to be inexcusable. So far, then, this evil is something which our nature itself teaches us to revolt from and abhor. No son of man ever said or could say, from his inmost heart, Evil, be thou my good. It requires more than man ever to say this.
III. Sin is the transgression of law.
1. What we have said shows that there is a law implanted in our nature by which evil is avoided and good desired. All our laws, public opinion, even our ways of thinking and speaking, are founded on this.
2. Now, when man says or acts evil, what sort of a thing does he do? Is it a necessary condition of our lives that we must enter into compact with evil? Certainly not. Every protest against, resistance to, victory over it, proves that evil is not necessary to our being. But true as this is, the freedom from and victory over evil is not that after which all men are striving. One man seeks sensual gratification; another wealth; a third power; a fourth reputation, etc., etc.; and so, not mans highest aim to be good, but an aim very far below this is followed by even the best of mankind sometimes. Now every one of these lower objects, if followed as an object, does necessarily bring a man into contact and compromise with evil. Greed, intemperance, injustice, unkindness, overweening opinion of self, and a hundred other evil things beset everyone in such courses of life.
3. When a man lives such a course he is disobeying that great first law of our being by which we choose the good and abhor the evil. Now, whenever we do this we sin. All sin is transgression of law.
4. Now, sin is committed against a person. And this law of good and evil of which we have been speaking, springs from that Holy and Just One who hath made us and to whom we are accountable. All sin is against Him.
IV. All have sinned. And in dwelling on this, the fact that all men have inherited the disposition to sin, necessarily comes first. And, inheriting this disposition, but with it inheriting also the great inward law of conscience warning us against evil, we have again and again followed, not the good law, but the evil propensity. In wayward childhood this has been so; in passionate youth; in calm, deliberate manhood. Now, then, this being so, can sin be safe? Can a sinner be happy? Sin is and must be the ruin of man, body and soul, here and hereafter. (Dean Alford.)
The charge of sin universal
I. The charge here brought is that of having sinned, and a most solemn and awful charge it is. Fools, indeed, make a mock at sin; and that they do so, is a proof of their folly. God is love; and consequently His law requires love. To love God with all the heart, and their fellow beings as themselves, is the essence of that law. To break this law is sin; and sin produces only misery and ruin. To charge a person with having sinned is to charge him with having acted contrary to the purpose for which he was made; with having failed to love and obey the best and greatest of beings; with being guilty of the same conduct with that which cast the angels out of heaven, and man out of Paradise. Surely this is a solemn charge. Do we want other examples of the evil of having sinned? Why the Flood? why the fire upon the people of Sodom and Gomorrah? etc. Because they had sinned. Or, to give a more awful and decisive example, why did the Son of God die on the Cross? Because He had taken upon Himself the nature and the cause of sinners.
II. The persons against whom it is brought. There is no difference; for all have sinned, in their progenitor and representative, and in their own persons also. But this is a truth unpalatable to the pride of man. And under the influence of this principle he will be disposed yet further to ask, What! is there no difference? no difference between righteous Abel and wicked Cain? between impenitent Saul and contrite David? Are they all equally guilty before God? In one sense all these persons are not alike. They have not all sinned in the same manner, in the same measure, to the same degree. Here there is a wide difference between them. But in the sense spoken of in the text they are all alike. They have all sinned; and here there is no difference. Though they may not be equally guilty, yet they are all guilty before God.
III. The extent of the charge here brought. All have sinned, and, by so doing, have come short of the glory of God. This expression signifies–
1. To fall short of rendering to God that glory to which He is entitled. He requires that all His creatures shall glorify Him. He has created them for His glory; and when they fulfil the purpose for which He created them, then they do glorify Him. Thus the heavens declare the glory of God. What, then, was the end and purpose for which man was made? To love, obey, and serve his Maker. By opposition to His will he comes short of the glory of God. Man, a living, rational being, is placed, not like the other works of creation, under a law of necessity which he cannot break, but under a moral restraint, by which he ought to be kept in the path of duty. But he is not so kept by it. He dishonours God in his very gifts, and endeavours, according to his power, to introduce confusion into His works, and to defeat His great and gracious designs.
2. The failing to obtain that glory which God originally designed for man. God originally designed man for a glorious immortality. But by sin he fell short of that glory; he forfeited and lost it. This, indeed, was the consequence of not rendering to God the glory due to Him. Having been unwilling to glorify God, he could no longer expect to be glorified with God. Conclusion: Perhaps you say, Why, this doctrine takes away all hope. Would you drive us to despair? No, not to a despair of salvation, but to a despair of justifying yourselves before God. But in Christ there is a full and gracious pardon for all your sins; there is glory offered to you again. (E. Cooper.)
The test of a sinner
A young man once said to me, I do not think I am a sinner. I asked him if he would be willing his mother or sister should know all he had done or said or thought–all his motives and desires. After a moment he said, No, indeed, not for all the world. Then can you dare to say, in the presence of a holy God, who knows every thought of your heart, I do not commit sin? (J. B. Gough.)
Mans sinfulness and inability
I. It is universally admitted that there is something wrong in mans nature.
1. In every one of us there is a something good which perceives a something bad; also something which whispers of an ideal state–a kind of reminiscence of a lost condition.
2. To account for this it suffices if we think of our nature as having had, originally controlling it, a supreme love which has been largely but by no means entirely lost. That in us which accuses us when we do wrong and commends us when we do right cannot be sinful, but must be holy. And so there is in us all a viceroy asserting kingship in the name of the true Sovereign of our souls. As a matter of fact we look upon one another as beings not entirely trustworthy. If man be not a depraved creature, why this universal suspicion? And yet we are not so depraved as not to know that we are depraved.
3. It is often argued that we are here in a state of probation. But man as man has had his probation and has fallen. Adams tree of knowledge of good and evil tested his obedience. Our Tree of Life–Jesus Christ–tests our obedience. Only with a difference. The first man, knowing only good, wanted to know what evil was. We, having in ourselves the knowledge of good and evil, are put upon trial, whether we will adhere persistently to that which is good–good personalised in Christ.
II. What does this condition mean?
1. There is suggested the explanation of incompleteness. Our nature, say some, is moving on gradually towards perfection. Give it time and it will come out according to the highest idea that the best and most intelligent man has of it. Unhappily, except under certain conditions, and in a certain environment, man as he grows older does not grow better. And this idea does not account for our sense of guilt. It leaves out too much. There are too many facts which lie outside of it. It only covers a part of the ground.
2. It needs along with it the idea of depravation. The sense of not being right, of being wrong, is in us all. And it is an internal trouble which men would get away from if they could. But no man can get away from himself. No external condition can eradicate it. Men try all sorts of devices to rid themselves of it. Sometimes they change their opinions, but that does not alter the inward condition. The bad consciousness is there all the time, and there is no other word but sinfulness which will express its nature. For it is certain that there are in man not only defects which mean weakness, but also a parent defect which means guilt.
III. This degeneration is total. It affects the whole nature. Our nature is so connected, part with part, that degeneration in one region means degeneration in every region. If a man be unjust in his feelings he will be unjust in his thinking and action. It is the merest rubbish to talk of a man being good at heart and bad everywhere else. Whatever affects the centre of our nature affects also every part of it to the outermost extremities. If there be impure blood in the heart there will be impure blood in every vein. And there is no kindness in any teaching which leads men to assume that sinfulness is only an eruption on the skin and not a disease of the heart. Only fools make a mock at sin.
IV. The view we take of this fact of sinfulness will influence our estimate of every other vital truth. If sinfulness be only ignorance we need only a Teacher; if only disease, a Physician; if only error, an Example. But if it be something more, we need in Him who is to deliver us from it a power other than that possessed by the Teacher, etc. Sinfulness means ignorance, error, disease; but it means a great deal more. In many a case it means that state of heart in which the idea of God is more hateful than the idea of the devil. I have known fallen men and women who never ceased praying God be merciful to me a sinner, and I cannot forget Christs words–The publicans and harlots enter the kingdom of God before you. There are sins of the flesh which destroy reputation, which bring misery, social degradation, and much else. There are sins of the spirit which bring none of these, and yet which put men and women at even a farther distance from God. Of what condition of heart is he who is amiable and placid until someone speaks to him such a truth as God is Love, God is Light, God so loved the world? etc. To err is human, but to contemn and reject the claims of Deity, that is not human, but fiendish. No one has ever taken a true measure of what sinfulness is until he has considered it in this, its most terrible form. I want you to feel the exceeding sinfulness of sin, for only then will you be able to appreciate the exceeding goodness of God who willeth not the death of a sinner, but that all should come to repentance. Where sin abounded grace did superabound. No man who looks away from his sin to his Saviour need despair, but then he must look to Him as Saviour. If a man can grow out of this condition of sinfulness by natural development; if every old man be nearer to the ideal of manhood than when he was young, then a Teacher, etc., is needed; but if man is helpless to deliver himself from sinfulness, then he who is to meet the necessities of the case must be human to understand him, but more than human to deliver him from an enemy stronger than man himself. (Reuben Thomas, D. D.)
Coming short of Gods glory
Different persons, according to the difference of their habits of thought, or their education, or their moral attainments, take a very different standard of what sin is. But here we have Gods definition–whatever comes short of the glory of God, that is sin.
I. God measures sin by the degree in which the act, or the word, or the thought, injures or grieves him. This must be so. The only true rule for the estimate of any sin must be taken from the mind of Him whose mind is law, and whom to offend against constitutes sinfulness. Do not say, Are not we forbidden to seek our own glory? How, then, can God seek His own glory? For the reason why no creature is to seek his own glory is because all glory belongs to the Creator. What does it mean to come short of the glory of God? It may mean to come short of heaven, or to be unworthy of any praise from God, or to come short of that which is indeed Gods glory–His perfect image and likeness; to fail to reach, in its purity, the only motive which God approves–a desire for His own glory. It appears to me that though all the other senses are included in the words, yet that their great primary intention is the last.
II. This brings me to the motive of human action.
1. You who can read only what speaks to the outward senses, think most of words and actions. And, as naturally, God will look at the sources more than at the streams of every mans moral being. So it will be at the last great account. All the deeds and sayings of a man will then stand forth to give evidence to a certain inward state of the man, according to which everyone will receive his sentence.
2. And yet even we judge of things by their motives. Why do we value the most trivial gift, the act of a moment, a smile, a glance of the eye, more than all the treasures of substance?
3. Note some of the legitimate motives which may actuate us.
(1) It is legitimate to wish to be happy. Therefore God stirs us up by promises, and lifts us up by beatitudes. It would be contrary to common sense to say that we may not do anything for the sake of going to heaven.
(2) It is a step above that–to do or bear with the desire that we may become holier.
(3) But higher, because less selfish, ranges the motive of a true ambition to make others happy.
(4) And still higher the lofty, Christ-like focus, concentrating the whole will upon this–Father, in me glorify Thyself.
4. To all these principles of action, except the last, there attaches a shadow. The wish to be happy, even where the things we desire are spiritual, may degenerate into religious selfishness. The longing to be holy will often turn into morbid self-examination and a restless disquietude. The ambition to be useful easily becomes vitiated with–I will not say the love of human applause–but a desire to be liked. But the motive to do anything for Gods glory has no shadow, and is that which makes all the other motives right. It is right to endeavour to be happy, mainly because our happiness gives glory to God as the result of the finished work of Christ. It is right to study to be holy, because where God sees holiness He sees His own reflection, and He is satisfied. It is right to set ourselves to be useful, because it extends the kingdom of God. Here, then, lies the wrongness of everything that is done on any inferior principle–it comes short of the glory of God. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Missing the mark
The word sin alike in the Hebrew and the Greek means missed the mark, as an archer might. When one is interested in rifle shooting the picture is easily realised and not easily forgotten.
I. The mark, the centre, the bulls eye, that man is to make his aim through life, is the glory of God.
1. And what is that? The outshining of Gods attributes; Christ is the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person. We can, at best, be but broken images, interrupted rays of His light. But still that is what we are to aim at–becoming ourselves, and reflecting to the world around us some images of the holiness, goodness, and love of God.
2. In this shooting we are a spectacle to men. See us they will, and judge from us the character and the worth of the religion we profess. The various professions or trades we may follow are but the courses which our bullets take amidst the various influences to the right or to the left, to be allowed for by the shooter. Our bullets must pass through them without erring, and in all alike the aim is to be one–to manifest the character of the God we serve. Those occupations are not in themselves the true centre to be aimed at–they are but the means of reaching the glory of God.
II. Missing this mark is sin. St. Paul lays it to the charge of all alike.
1. The standard is a high one–to aim directly and always at Gods glory. But, then, man occupies a high position, made above all creation, blessed with faculties above all creatures for being the glory of God; placed with opportunities of being so now, and the promise of being more so hereafter.
2. Shall we complain that we are so high in the creation, or complacently stoop down from it and forfeit the crown held out for us to take, like Bunyans man with the muck rake? Was not he missing the mark of life? He took up, as many do, a handful of dirt–he lost the crown of gold. We speak of men having made a good hit when they have succeeded in a telling speech, or a successful speculation, or a fortunate match, but what have they hit if they have not sought to honour God? Certainly not the glory of God, nor have they advanced the true purposes of life.
3. Now a rifle is made to shoot straight; if it will not do so, however perfect the polish of its barrel, or the finish of its lock or stock, it is useless, and you throw it on one side or break it up. The more complete it seems the more vexed you are with it for its utter failure in the one work for which you had it made. God has made us for the one object of glorifying Him, and if we fail in that, then whatsoever else we have which decorates us–intellect, politeness, science, art, position, wealth–all tend not to diminish but to increase our condemnation.
4. What our condemnation may be I do not pretend to fathom; but if the words mean no more than that having been made for the highest purpose, and then having utterly failed, we are henceforth cast on one side as useless, our powers broken up, and our opportunities taken from us, they will mean enough to stir us to redeem the time. We should not like to meet the exposure of such a shame. Pindar describes the return of a combatant from the great National Games. He speaks of him as hiding himself along the byways, not venturing to enter by the gates into his city, or to be seen in any public place. Why? Because he had missed the mark. He went out in the name of his city, equipped by his fellow citizens, to win honour for their name, and to give them glory. But he has failed, and he dare not meet them. We have failed, and we must all appear before the judgment seat, that everyone may receive the things done in his body.
III. To what does this lead us?
1. We must realise more and more our condition as sinners. Let any man solemnly ask himself, How much of God has the world seen in me? How much of His glory have I reflected?
2. We must go back to the same butts and shoot again for a truer aim. Go to your seat in Parliament, or your books, or your shop, and there aim afresh at rising to the glory of God, forgetting those things which are behind, etc. True, it will not be so easy now that ones hand is unsteadied by neglecting to aim aright; true, it will not be so simple now that many Ere looking on and wondering what in the world you are changing for, to shoot straight under their critical eye; but such sense of sin, such turning from it to God in Christ again, such trusting hope that with His aid we may succeed, will bring with it His forgiveness for the past and His guidance for the future; and we may yet, with His encouragement, hit the mark and glorify Him. (Canon Morse.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 23. For all have sinned:] And consequently are equally helpless and guilty; and, as God is no respecter of persons, all human creatures being equally his offspring, and there being no reason why one should be preferred before another, therefore his endless mercy has embraced ALL.
And come short of the glory of God] . These words have been variously translated. Failed of attaining the glory of God: Have not been able to bring glory to God: Stand in need of the glory, that is, the mercy of God. The simple meaning seems to be this: that all have sinned, and none can enjoy God’s glory but they that are holy; consequently both Jews and Gentiles have failed in their endeavours to attain it, as, by the works of any law, no human being can be justified.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
For all have sinned: q.d. No wonder there is no difference, when both the one and the other have the guilt of Adams transgression imputed to them, and have original corruption inherent in them, from whence proceed very many actual transgressions.
And come short of the glory of God; i.e. of the glorious image of God, in which man was at first created; or, of communion with God, in which the glory of a rational creature doth consist; or rather, of the eternal glory, which they come short of, as men that run a race are weary, and fall short of the mark.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
23. for all have sinnedThoughmen differ greatly in the nature and extent of theirsinfulness, there is absolutely no difference between the best andthe worst of men, in the fact that “all have sinned,”and so underlie the wrath of God.
and come short of thegloryor “praise”
of Godthat is, “havefailed to earn His approbation” (compare Joh12:43, Greek). So the best interpreters.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For all have sinned,…. This is the general character of all mankind; all have sinned in Adam, are guilty by his sin, polluted with it, and condemned for it; all are sinners in themselves, and by their own actual transgressions; this is the case of the whole world, and of all the men in it; not only of the Gentiles, but of the Jews, and the more righteous among them: hence there is no difference in the state and condition of men by nature; nor is there any reason from and in themselves, why God saves one and not another; nor any room to despair of the grace and righteousness of Christ, on account of persons being, in their own view, the worst of sinners:
and hence it is, that they are all
come short of the glory of God; either of glorifying of God; man was made for this purpose, and was capable of it, though now through sin incapable; and it is only by the grace of God that he is enabled to do it: or of glorying: before him; sin has made him infamous, and is his shame; by it he has forfeited all external favours, and has nothing of his own to glory in; his moral righteousness is no foundation for boasting, especially before God: or of having glory from God; the most pure and perfect creature does not of itself deserve any glory and praise from God; good men, in a way of grace, will have praise of God; but sinners can never expect any on their own account: or of the glorious grace of God, as sanctifying and pardoning grace, and particularly the grace of a justifying righteousness; man has no righteousness, nor can he work out one; nor will his own avail, he wants a better than that: or of eternal glory; which may be called the glory of God, because it is of his preparing, what he calls persons to by his grace, and which of his own free grace he bestows upon them, and will chiefly lie in the enjoyment of him; now this is represented sometimes as a prize, which is run for, and pressed after; but men, through sinning, come short of it, and must of themselves do so for ever: or rather of the image of God in man, who is called “the image and glory of God”, 1Co 11:7, which consisted externally in government over the creatures; internally, in righteousness and holiness, in wisdom and knowledge, in the bias of his mind to that which is good, and in power to perform it; of all which he is come short, or deprived by sinning.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Sinned (). Constative second aorist active indicative of as in 5:12. This tense gathers up the whole race into one statement (a timeless aorist).
And fall short ( ). Present middle indicative of , to be (comparative) too late, continued action, still fall short. It is followed by the ablative case as here, the case of separation.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Have sinned [] . Aorist tense : sinned, looking back to a thing definitely past – the historic occurrence of sin.
And come short [] . Rev., fall short : The present tense. The A. V. leaves it uncertain whether the present or the perfect have come is intended. They sinned, and therefore they are lacking. See on Luk 14:14. The word is not merely equivalent to they are wanting in, but implies want under the aspect of shortcoming.
The glory of God [ ] . Interpretations vary greatly. The glory of personal righteousness; that righteousness which God judges to be glory; the image of God in man; the glorying or boasting of righteousness before God; the approbation of God; the state of future glory.
The dominant meanings of doxa in classical Greek are notion, opinion, conjecture, repute. See on Rev 1:6. In biblical usage : 1. Recognition, honor, Phi 1:11; 1Pe 1:7. It is joined with timh honor, 1Ti 1:17; Heb 2:7, 9; 2Pe 1:17. Opposed to ajtimia dishonor, 1Co 11:14, 15; 1Co 14:43; 2Co 6:8. With zhtew to seek, 1Th 2:6; Joh 5:44; Joh 7:18. With lambanw to receive, Joh 5:41, 44. With didwmi to give, Luk 17:18; Joh 9:24. In the ascriptive phrase glory be to, Luk 2:14, and ascriptions in the Epistles. Compare Luk 14:10 2. The glorious appearance which attracts the eye, Mt 4:8; Luk 4:6; Luk 12:27. Hence parallel with eijkwn image; morfh form; oJmoiwma likeness; eidov appearance, figure, Rom 1:23; Psa 17:15; Num 12:8.
The glory of God is used of the aggregate of the divine attributes and coincides with His self – revelation, Exo 33:22; compare proswpon face, ver. 23. Hence the idea is prominent in the redemptive revelation (Isa 60:3; Rom 6:4; Rom 5:2). It expresses the form in which God reveals Himself in the economy of salvation (Rom 9:23; 1Ti 1:11; Eph 1:12). It is the means by which the redemptive work is carried on; for instance, in calling, 2Pe 1:3; in raising up Christ and believers with Him to newness of life, Rom 6:4; in imparting strength to believers, Eph 3:16; Col 1:11; as the goal of Christian hope, Rom 5:2; Rom 8:18, 21; Tit 2:13. It appears prominently in the work of Christ – the outraying of the Father ‘s glory (Heb 1:3), especially in John. See Rom 1:14; Rom 2:11, etc.
The sense of the phrase here is : they are coming short of the honor or approbation which God bestows. The point under discussion is the want of righteousness. Unbelievers, or mere legalists, do not approve themselves before God by the righteousness which is of the law. They come short of the approbation which is extended only to those who are justified by faith. 30
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “For all have sinned,” (pantes gar hemarton) “Because all sinned (have sinned);” This is an inspired, accurate, historical fact, sustained by human experiences, testimonies, and the Holy Scriptures. Deeds of sin are fruits of an innate, inborn, inherent sin nature. Psa 51:5; Psa 58:3; Jas 1:15; 1Ki 8:46; Ecc 7:20; Isa 53:1.
2) “And come short,” (kai husterountai) “And come short;” Life’s deed-ledger has an heavy sin balance, sin debit, against every person –the sin debt is against God and debars each unpardoned person any Divine approved, praise, or approbation from God. All sinners have made a failing grade, in God’s test of holiness, without which none can see him, Rom 11:32; Gal 3:22; Heb 10:14; Rev 21:27.
3) “Of the glory of God,” (tes dokes tou theou) “Of the glory or glory-presence of God;- none can see or enter heaven except or unless he is born again, receives pardon from sin, and a new nature through repentance to God and trust in Jesus Christ, Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5-6; Luk 13:3; Luk 13:5; Rom 5:1-2.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
23. There is indeed no difference, etc. He urges on all, without exception, the necessity of seeking righteousness in Christ; as though he had said, “There is no other way of attaining righteousness; for some cannot be justified in this and others in that way; but all must alike be justified by faith, because all are sinners, and therefore have nothing for which they can glory before God.” But he takes as granted that every one, conscious of his sin, when he comes before the tribunal of God, is confounded and lost under a sense of his own shame; so that no sinner can bear the presence of God, as we see an example in the case of Adam. He again brings forward a reason taken from the opposite side; and hence we must notice what follows. Since we are all sinners, Paul concludes, that we are deficient in, or destitute of, the praise due to righteousness. There is then, according to what he teaches, no righteousness but what is perfect and absolute. Were there indeed such a thing as half righteousness, it would yet be necessary to deprive the sinner entirely of all glory: and hereby the figment of partial righteousness, as they call it, is sufficiently confuted; for if it were true that we are justified in part by works, and in part by grace, this argument of Paul would be of no force — that all are deprived of the glory of God because they are sinners. It is then certain, there is no righteousness where there is sin, until Christ removes the curse; and this very thing is what is said in Gal 3:10, that all who are under the law are exposed to the curse, and that we are delivered from it through the kindness of Christ. The glory of God I take to mean the approbation of God, as in Joh 12:43, where it is said, that “they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.” And thus he summons us from the applause of a human court to the tribunal of heaven. (118)
(118) [ Beza ] gives another view, that the verb ὑστεροῦνται, refers to those who run a race, and reach not the goal, and lose the prize. The “glory of God” is the happiness which he bestows; (see Rom 5:2😉 of this all mankind come short, however much some seemed to labor for it; and it can only be attained by faith. [ Pareus ] , [ Locke ] , and [ Whitby ] give the same view. Others consider it to be “the glory” due to God, — that all come short of rendering him the service and honor which he justly demands and requires. So [ Doddridge ] , [ Scott ] , and [ Chalmers ] But [ Melancthon ] , [ Grotius ] and [ Macknight ] seemed to have agreed with [ Calvin ] in regarding “glory” here as the praise or approbation that comes from God. The second view seems the most appropriate, according to what is said in Rom 1:21, “they glorified him not as God.” — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(23) All have sinned and come short.Strictly, all sinned; the Apostle looking back upon an act done in past time under the old legal dispensation, without immediate reference to the present: he then goes on to say that the result of that act (as distinct from the act itself) continues on into the present. The result is that mankind, in a body, as he now sees them, and before they come within the range of the new Christian system, fall short of, miss, or fail to obtain, the glory of God.
Glory of God.What is this glory? Probably not here, as in Rom. 8:18; Rom. 8:21, the glory which will be inaugurated for the saints at the Parusi, or Second Coming of the Messiahfor that is something futurebut, rather, something which is capable of being conferred in the present, viz., the glory which comes from the favour and approval of God. This favour and approval Jew and Gentile alike had hitherto failed to obtain, but it was now thrown open to all who became members of the Messianic kingdom. (Comp. for the sense, Rom. 2:29, and for the use of the word, as well as the sense, Joh. 12:43, they loved the praise [glory] of men more than the praise [glory] of God.)
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
23. All have sinned The all is all mankind, past, present, and future; the have sinned is, in the Greek, an instance of the apostle’s aoristic tenses, in which past, present, and future are comprehended. (See notes on Rom 4:12; Rom 8:29; Rom 9:22.) The tense is equivalent to a perpetual present, “an eternal now,” and so the phrase is tantamount to all men sin. It thus accords in sense with come short, which in the Greek is actually in the grammatical present. And the fact that both verbs express a perpetual fact explains, decisively, we think, the following phrase, about which commentators so much differ the glory. The phrase come short is borrowed from a racer’s failure to attain the goal. The goal is the heavenly glorification. All men sin, and, apart from Christ, fail of the blessed goal, the final glory of God.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘For all have sinned, and are falling short of the glory of God,’
The reason why this righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ is necessary is now given. It is because, as had been demonstrated in Rom 1:18 to Rom 3:20, all have sinned and are continually revealing it by falling short of the glory of God. Note the change of tense. All ‘have sinned’ (compare Rom 5:12), thus being in a state of sin, and they are now continually falling short of His glory. Here the ‘all’ is universal. It covers all men and women. The equating of sin with falling short of the glory of God brings out the root nature of sin. It is to come short of what God intended, and still intends, that we should be. It is to come short of absolute perfection, to come short of divine purity. It is to come short of God’s moral glory. It is to fail to be God-like. Any man who claims that he has not sinned must recognise that he is talking about achieving complete God-likeness. For the glory of God is His glory as revealed in the beauty of holiness (1Ch 16:29; Psa 29:2). We may consider in relation to this verse Isa 43:7, ‘I have created him for my glory’, in other words so that through his perfection God might be glorified.
We may see examples of this in Isa 6:1-7 where Isaiah experienced the glory of the LORD and cried out, ‘woe is me, for I am totally undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I come from a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts’. And again in Job 42:5-6 where the sight of the glory of the LORD made Job aware of his utter sinfulness, so that he cried out, ‘I abhor myself, and repent in sackcloth and ashes’. Compare also, ‘let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD Who exercises covenant love, justice and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the LORD’ (Jer 9:24). See also Psa 90:16-17. So the glory of God is found in His love, justice and righteousness.
These ideas may be related to the Jewish tradition that in the Garden Adam shone with the glory of God, something which he lost when he sinned, thus indicating that all fall short of man’s original innocence, an idea to which all Jews would have given consent. But it is questionable whether Paul has this in mind here.
Others see doxa tou theou as signifying ‘the praise of God’ (compare Joh 12:43) or ‘the approbation of God’. The idea then is that they are falling short of being what God can praise (compare 1Co 4:5), which really contains the same idea as above.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Rom 3:23. And come short of the glory of God “They have failed of rendering him that glory which was so justly his due; and thereby have not only made themselves unworthy of the participation of glory and happiness with him, but stand exposed to his severe and dreadful displeasure.”
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Rom 3:23 . ] The sinning of every man is presented as a historical fact of the past, whereby the sinful state is produced. The perfect would designate it as a completed subsisting fact. Calvin, moreover, properly remarks that according to Paul there is nulla justitia “nisi perfecta et absoluta,” and “si verum esset, nos partim operibus justificari, partim Dei gratia, non valeret hoc Pauli argumentum.” Luther aptly observes: “They are altogether sinners, etc., is the main article and the central point of this Epistle and of the whole Scripture.”
.] They have sinned, and in consequence of this they lack , there is wanting to them, etc. This very present expression, as well as the present participle , ought to have kept Hofmann from understanding of all believers; for in their case that no longer applies (Rom 5:1 f., Rom 8:1 al [820] ), and they are not but ; but, as becoming believers, they would not yet be .
. ] The genitive with (Diod. Sic. xviii. 71; Joseph. Antt. xv. 6, 7) determines for the latter the sense of destitui . See Lobeck, a [821] Phryn. p. 237. Comp on 1Co 1:7 . They lack the honour which God gives , [823] they are destitute of the being honoured by God, which would be the case, if the did not occur; in that case they would possess the good pleasure of God, and this, regarded as honour , which they would have to enjoy from God: the . Comp Rom 2:29 ; Joh 12:43 , compared with Joh 5:44 . Kllner’s objection to this view, which first offers itself, of . as the genitive auctoris, which is also held by Piscator, Hammond, Grotius, Fritzsche, Reiche, de Wette, Tholuck, and others, following Chrysostom (comp Philippi), that it is not the fault of men if they should not have an honour, which proceeds from God , is of no weight; since it certainly is the fault of men, if they render it impossible for a holy God to give them the honour which proceeds from Him. Moreover, Kllner’s own explanation: honour before God (quite so also Calvin; and comp Philippi), which is said according to the analogy of human relations, in point of fact quite coincides with the above view, since in fact honour before God, or with God (Winzer), is nothing else than the honour that accrues to us from God’s judgment. Comp Calvin: “ita nos ab humani theatri plausu ad tribunal coeleste vocat.” Accordingly, the genitive is here all the less to be interpreted coram , since in no other passage (and especially not in . , see on. Rom 1:17 ) is there any necessity for this interpretation. This last consideration may also be urged against the interpretation of others: gloriatio coram Deo; “non habent, unde coram Deo glorientur,” Estius. So Erasmus, Luther, Toletus, Wolf, Koppe, Rosenmller, Reithmayr, and others. It is decisive against this view that in all passages where Paul wished to express gloriatio , he knew how to employ the proper word, (Rom 3:27 ; 2Co 7:14 ; 2Co 8:24 al [828] ). Others, again, following Oecumenius (Chrysostom and Theophylact express themselves too indefinitely, and Theodoret is altogether silent on the matter), explain the . to mean the glory of eternal life , in so far as God either has destined it for man (Glckler), or confers it upon him (Bhme, comp Morison); or in so far as it consists in partaking the glory of God (Beza, comp Bengel and Baumgarten-Crusius). Mehring allows a choice between the two last definitions of the sense. But the following proves that the cannot in reality be anything essentially different from the , and cannot be merely future. Utterly erroneous, finally, is the view of Chemnitz, Flacius, Sebastian Schmid, Calovius, [831] Hasaeus, Alting, Carpzov, Ernesti, recently revived by Rckert, Olshausen, and Mangold, that the is the image of God; “ a godlike ,” as Rckert puts it, and thus gets rid of the objection that is not synonymous with . But how arbitrarily is the relation of the genitive thus defined, altogether without the precedent of a similar usage (2Co 11:2 is not a case in point)! That the idea of the image of God is not suggested by anything in the connection is self-evident, since, as the subsequent . . [832] abundantly shows, it is the idea of the want of righteousness that is under discussion. Hofmann and Ewald have explained it in the same way as Rckert, though they take the genitive more accurately (a such as God Himself possesses). The latter [833] understands “the glory of God which man indeed has by creation, Psa 8:8 , but which by sin he may lose for time and eternity, and has now lost.” Compare Hofmann: “Whatsoever is of God has a share, after the manner of a creature, in the glory of God. If this therefore be not found in man, the reason is that he has forfeited the relation to God in which he was created.” But even apart from the fact that such a participation in the glory of God had been lost already through the fall (Rom 5:12 ; 1Co 15:22 ), and not for the first time through the individual here meant, it is decisive against this exposition that the participation in the divine nowhere appears as an original blessing that has fallen into abeyance, but always as something to, be conferred only at the Parousia (Rom 5:2 ; 1Th 2:12 ) as the with Christ (Rom 8:17 f.; Col 3:4 ); as the glorious of God (comp also 2Ti 4:8 ; 1Pe 5:4 ); and consequently as the new blessing of the future (1Co 2:9 ). That is also the proleptic in Rom 8:30 , which however would be foreign to the present connection.
[820] l. and others; and other passages; and other editions.
[821] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.
[823] The genitive . cannot, without arbitrariness, be explained otherwise than was done in the case of . . In consequence of his erroneous exposition of . . (see on Rom 1:17 ), Matthias understands here “glory such as is that of God ,” i.e. the glory of personal holiness .
[828] l. and others; and other passages; and other editions.
[831] He takes as “gloria homini a Deo concessa in creatione;” this gloria having been the divine image, which we forfeited after the fall.
[832] . . . .
[833] Similarly already Melancthon: “gloria Dei, i.e. luce Dei fulgente in natura incorrupta , seu ipso Deo carent, ostendente se et accendente ardentem dilectionem et alios motus legi congruentes sine ullo peccato.” Previously (1540) he had explained: “gloria, quam Deus approbat.”
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Ver. 23. All have sinned ] The first man defiled the nature, and ever since the nature defileth the man. Adam was a parent, a public person, a parliament man, as it were; the whole country of mankind was in him, and fell with him.
Short of the glory of God ] i.e. Of his image now obliterated, or of his kingdom, upon the golden pavement whereof no dirty dog must ever trample. It is an inheritance undefiled, 1Pe 1:4 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
23. [ should be rendered fall short , not, as E. V., “come short,” since this latter may be taken for the past tense, after the auxiliary “ have .”]
] Of the praise which comes from God , see reff. (so Grot., Thol., Reiche, Fritz., Meyer, Rckert, De Wette): not, ‘ of praise in God’s sight ’ (Luther, Calv., Estius, Kllner): nor, ‘ of glory with God ,’ as ch. Rom 5:2 (c [15] , Beza, al.), for the Apostle is not speaking here of future reward, but of present worthiness: nor, of the glorious image of God which we have lost through sin (Calov., al., Rckert, Olsh.), which is against both the usage of the word, and the context of the passage.
[15] cumenius of Tricca in Thrace, Cent y . XI.?
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Rom 3:23 . must be rendered in English “have sinned”; see Burton, Moods and Tenses , 54. expresses the consequence = and so come short of the glory of God. To emphasise the middle, and render “they come short, and feel that they do so,” though suggested by the comparison of Mat 19:20 with Luk 15:14 (Gifford), is not borne out by the use of the N.T. as a whole. The most one could say is that sibi is latent in the middle: to their loss (not necessarily to their sensible or conscious loss) they come short. The present tense implies that but for sin men might be in enjoyment of “ ”. Clearly this cannot be the same as the future heavenly glory of God spoken of in Rom 5:2 : as in Joh 5:44 ; Joh 12:43 , it must be the approbation or praise of God. This sense of is easily derived from that of “reputation,” resting on the praise or approval of others. Of course the approbation which God would give to the sinless, and of which sinners fall short, would be identical with justification.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Romans
WORLD-WIDE SIN AND WORLD-WIDE REDEMPTION
Rom 3:19 – Rom 3:26
Let us note in general terms the large truths which this passage contains. We may mass these under four heads:
I. Paul’s view of the purpose of the law.
But Paul sets forth another view of its purpose here; namely, to drive home to men’s consciences the conviction of sin. That is not the only purpose, for God reveals duty primarily in order that men may do it, and His law is meant to be obeyed. But, failing obedience, this second purpose comes into action, and His law is a swift witness against sin. The more clearly we know our duty, the more poignant will be our consciousness of failure. The light which shines to show the path of right, shines to show our deviations from it. And that conviction of sin, which it was the very purpose of all the previous Revelation to produce, is a merciful gift; for, as the Apostle implies, it is the prerequisite to the faith which saves.
As a matter of fact, there was a far profounder and more inward conviction of sin among the Jews than in any heathen nation. Contrast the wailings of many a psalm with the tone in Greek or Roman literature. No doubt there is a law written on men’s hearts which evokes a lower measure of the same consciousness of sin. There are prayers among the Assyrian and Babylonian tablets which might almost stand beside the Fifty-first Psalm; but, on the whole, the deep sense of sin was the product of the revealed law. The best use of our consciousness of what we ought to be, is when it rouses conscience to feel the discordance with it of what we are, and so drives us to Christ. Law, whether in the Old Testament, or as written in our hearts by their very make, is the slave whose task is to bring us to Christ, who will give us power to keep God’s commandments.
Another purpose of the law is stated in Rom 3:21 , as being to bear witness, in conjunction with the prophets, to a future more perfect revelation of God’s righteousness. Much of the law was symbolic and prophetic. The ideal it set forth could not always remain unfulfilled. The whole attitude of that system was one of forward-looking expectancy. There is much danger lest, in modern investigations as to the authorship, date, and genesis of the Old Testament revelation, its central characteristic should be lost sight of; namely, its pointing onwards to a more perfect revelation which should supersede it.
II. Paul’s view of universal sinfulness.
In Rom 3:23 the same fact of universal experience is contemplated as both positive sin and negative falling short of the ‘glory’ which here seems to mean, as in Joh 5:44 , Joh 12:43 , approbation from God. ‘There is no distinction,’ but all varieties of condition, character, attainment, are alike in this, that the fatal taint is upon them all. ‘We have, all of us, one human heart.’ We are alike in physical necessities, in primal instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the common experience of sinfulness.
Paul does not mean to bring all varieties of character down to one dead level, but he does mean to assert that none is free from the taint. A man need only be honest in self-examination to endorse the statement, so far as he himself is concerned. The Gospel would be better understood if the fact of universal sinfulness were more deeply felt. Its superiority to all schemes for making everybody happy by rearrangements of property, or increase of culture, would be seen through; and the only cure for human misery would be discerned to be what cures universal sinfulness.
III. So we have next Paul’s view of the remedy for man’s sin.
The message is so familiar to us that we may easily fail to realise its essential greatness and wonderfulness when first proclaimed. That God should give righteousness, that it should be ‘of God,’ not only as coming from Him, but as, in some real way, being kindred with His own perfection; that it should be brought to men by Jesus Christ, as ancient legends told that a beneficent Titan brought from heaven, in a hollow cane, the gift of fire; and that it should become ours by the simple process of trusting in Jesus Christ, are truths which custom has largely robbed of their wonderfulness. Let us meditate more on them till they regain, by our own experience of their power, some of the celestial light which belongs to them.
Observe that in Rom 3:22 the universality of the redemption which is in Christ is deduced from the universality of sin. The remedy must reach as far as the disease. If there is no difference in regard to sin, there can be none in regard to the sweep of redemption. The doleful universality of the covering spread over all nations, has corresponding to it the blessed universality of the light which is sent forth to flood them all. Sin’s empire cannot stretch farther than Christ’s kingdom.
IV. Paul’s view of what makes the Gospel the remedy.
‘Redemption’ implies captivity, liberation, and a price paid. The metaphor of slaves set free by ransom is exchanged in Rom 3:25 for a sacrificial reference. A propitiatory sacrifice averts punishment from the offerer. The death of the victim procures the life of the worshipper. So, a propitiatory or atoning sacrifice is offered by Christ’s blood, or death. That sacrifice is the ransom-price through which our captivity is ended, and our liberty assured. As His redemption is the channel ‘through’ which God’s grace comes to men, so faith is the condition ‘through’ which Rom 3:25 we make that grace ours.
Note, then, that Paul does not merely point to Jesus Christ as Saviour, but to His death as the saving power. We are to have faith in Jesus Christ Rom 3:22. But that is not a complete statement. It must be faith in His propitiation, if it is to bring us into living contact with His redemption. A gospel which says much of Christ, but little of His Cross, or which dilates on the beauty of His life, but stammers when it begins to speak of the sacrifice in His death, is not Paul’s Gospel, and it will have little power to deal with the universal sickness of sin.
The last verses of the passage set forth another purpose attained by Christ’s sacrifice; namely, the vindication of God’s righteousness in forbearing to inflict punishment on sins committed before the advent of Jesus. That Cross rayed out its power in all directions-to the heights of the heavens; to the depths of Hades Col 1:20; to the ages that were to come, and to those that were past. The suspension of punishment through all generations, from the beginning till that day when the Cross was reared on Calvary, was due to that Cross having been present to the divine mind from the beginning. ‘The judge is condemned when the guilty is acquitted,’ or left unpunished. There would be a blot on God’s government, not because it was so severe, but because it was so forbearing, unless His justice was vindicated, and the fatal consequences of sin shown in the sacrifice of Christ. God could not have shown Himself just, in view either of age-long forbearance, or of now justifying the sinner, unless the Cross had shown that He was not immorally indulgent toward sin.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
have. Omit.
Sinned. Greek. hamartano. App-128. In the first Adam as the federal head of the old creation.
come short. Greek. hustereo. Only here in Romans. Occurs sixteen times, always in the sense of failing, or lacking. Compare Mat 19:20 (first occ). Mar 10:21. Joh 2:3. Heb 12:15.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
23. [ should be rendered fall short, not, as E. V., come short, since this latter may be taken for the past tense, after the auxiliary have.]
] Of the praise which comes from God, see reff. (so Grot., Thol., Reiche, Fritz., Meyer, Rckert, De Wette): not, of praise in Gods sight (Luther, Calv., Estius, Kllner): nor, of glory with God, as ch. Rom 5:2 (c[15], Beza, al.),-for the Apostle is not speaking here of future reward, but of present worthiness: nor, of the glorious image of God which we have lost through sin (Calov., al., Rckert, Olsh.), which is against both the usage of the word, and the context of the passage.
[15] cumenius of Tricca in Thrace, Centy. XI.?
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Rom 3:23. , have sinned) that is, they have contracted the guilt of sin. Both the original act of sin in paradise is denoted, and the sinful disposition, as also the acts of transgression flowing from it. The past tenses often have an inchoative meaning along with the idea of continued action; such as , , , , , I have believed, and still continue to believe; I have hoped, and still continue to hope; I have loved, and still continue to love; I have obeyed, and still continue to obey; I have established myself, and still establish myself.- , and come short) From the past tense, have sinned, flows this present, come short, and by this word the whole peculiar advantage [Rom 3:1] of the Jews, and all the boasting of all flesh, are taken away; the former is a thing done [past], and the latter is a thing now established; each of them [ and ] denotes deficiency; they do not attain, ch. Rom 9:31.- , of the glory of God) The glory of the living God Himself is signified, which bestows life, ch. Rom 6:4; and to this, access was open to man if he had not sinned; but, as a sinner, he fell short of this end of his being; nor does he now attain to it, nor is he able, by any means, to endure that glory which would have [but for sin] shone forth in him, Heb 12:20, etc.: Psa 68:2. Hence he has become subject to death; for glory and immortality are synonymous terms, and so, also, are death and corruption; but Paul does not more expressly mention death itself, until after the process of justification, and its going forth even to [its issue in] life, have been consummated; he then looks at death as it were from behind. ch. Rom 5:12. Therefore, the whole state of sin is most exquisitely pourtrayed thus, in this masterly passage: They come short of, or are far from the glory of God; that is, they have missed [aberrarunt a: erred from] the chief end of man; and in this very fact is implied [included], at the same time, every lesser aberration. But those who are justified recover the hope of that glory, along with most immediately realized glorying [viz., in Christ] in the meanwhile (of which [i.e. of boasting] in themselves, they had been deprived, Rom 3:27), and [recover] the kingdom in life. See, by all means, ch. Rom 5:2; Rom 5:11; Rom 5:17, Rom 8:30, at the end of the verse. Wherefore, the antithetic idea to they have sinned, is explained at Rom 3:24, and the following verses; and ch. 4 throughout, on justification; the antithetic idea to they have come short, is set forth in ch. 5, with which, comp. ch. Rom 8:17, and the following verses.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Rom 3:23
Rom 3:23
for all have sinned,-For all, Jews and Gentiles, have sinned against the law, hence cannot be justified by it.
and fall short of the glory of God;-[This glory of God not only manifests, but communicates, itself, being reflected in such of his creatures as are capable of knowing and loving and growing like him. Paul, therefore, calls man the image and glory of God (1Co 11:7), because he is capable of receiving and reflecting Gods glory. The complete manifestation of divine perfection is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2Co 4:6). The glory of God in Christ shining forth in the gospel upon the believers heart transforms him into the light in the Lord (Eph 5:8); and so we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit (2Co 3:18). The transformation begins here, but mans full participation in the glory of God is the hope of our high calling reserved for us in heaven.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
sinned
Sin, Summary: The literal meanings of the Heb. and (Greek – sin,” “sinner,” etc)., disclose the true nature of sin in its manifold manifestations. Sin is transgression, an overstepping of the law, the divine boundary between good and evil Psa 51:1; Luk 15:29, iniquity, an act inherently wrong, whether expressly forbidden or not; error, a departure from right; Psa 51:9; Rom 3:23, missing the mark, a failure to meet the divine standard; trespass, the intrusion of self-will into the sphere of divine authority Eph 2:1, lawlessness, or spiritual anarchy 1Ti 1:9, unbelief, or an insult to the divine veracity Joh 16:9.
Sin originated with Satan Isa 14:12-14, entered the world through Adam Rom 5:12, was, and is, universal, Christ alone excepted; Rom 3:23; 1Pe 2:22, incurs the penalties of spiritual and physical death; Gen 2:17; Gen 3:19; Eze 18:4; Eze 18:20; Rom 6:23 and has no remedy but in the sacrificial death of Christ; Heb 9:26; Act 4:12 availed of by faith Act 13:38; Act 13:39. Sin may be summarized as threefold: An act, the violation of, or want of obedience to the revealed will of God; a state, absence of righteousness; a nature, enmity toward God.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Justification
For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.Rom 3:23-24.
1. What is the position of a sinning moral being under the government of God? It is that of guilt, which means that he both deserves and is liable to punishment. It is also that of depravity, or the polluting influence of his sin upon his own soul. The way of relief from the first of these difficulties is through the atonement of Christ. The method of relief from the second is through the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
2. The object of the text is to explain the method of gaining relief from that element of guilt which involves liability to punishment. The question is, how shall the iron link between sin and penalty be broken and the transgressor be allowed to escape? But this is not all. Not only is it necessary that the connection between sin and penalty should be broken; but also that the connection between obedience and reward should be re-established. A real salvation involves not only release from penalty, but a title to life. Unless this title to life can be achieved, conscience cannot be quieted, nor can any reliable hope of future well-being be kindled in the heart. To accomplish both these ends, the sinner must be justified in the full sense of that term; and the most important inquiry which can be raised by the mind of man is, How can man be just with God?
3. Manifestly man cannot justify himself. He cannot satisfy the penalty and yet live. He can satisfy it by enduring it; but that is a supposition which implies his ruin, and his salvation on that contingency is self-contradictory and impossible; he cannot be saved and at the same time lost. He cannot fulfil the law; for his sin has so corrupted his moral nature that all the acts which flow from it are tainted, and he is unable to render that perfect obedience which the law demands, and which alone can carry its rewards. How, then, shall a transgressor of the law be justified?
4. The Gospel gives the answer to the question in the words of the text, Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Since man cannot effect his own justification, if accomplished at all it must be done for him by some one else. The Gospel answers the great question by the doctrine of a substitute for the hopeless transgressor, undertaking to do for him what it was impossible for him to do for himself; and the development of that wonderful conception constitutes the essence and the chief distinction of the Christian religion. The development of the grand thought of a substitute for the sinner embraces all the distinctive doctrines of Christianity: justification by faith, atonement, redemption, imputation, the divinity of the Redeemer, the infinitude of the Divine grace, and the absolute effectiveness of the work done for the deliverance of the transgressors of the Divine law.
The subject is Justification. The text contains
I. The Need of JustificationFor all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.
i.Sin.
ii.All have sinned.
iii.Short of the Glory of God.
II. The Manner of JustificationBeing justified freely by his grace.
i.Justification.
ii.Of Gods Free Grace.
III. The Means of JustificationThrough the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
i.Redemption.
ii.The Redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
I
The Need of Justification
All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.
i. Sin
1. We are constantly being haunted by something we have done or have not done, because we have done it or have not done it. And this is not a characteristic of one man or another, but of all men. There are vast differences between men, ranging from the heights of sainthood to the depths of depravity, but there is this feature common to alla sense that there is a gap between what they are and what they ought to be. There are men who are given over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness; and there are men so good that they make others feel as though they belonged to a better World; but if you could look into their hearts and listen to their confession, you would find that the best as well as the worst are conscious of this gap, this dislocation, this contrast between ought and is. There is none that doeth good, no, not one; we have all gone out of the way, i.e. the way of perfect, ideal goodness.
2. There are two ways of explaining this strange but universal fact in human life; and there is a third way which more or less combines the two.
(1) The first way is that which till recently was universal among Christian thinkersthat man is a being who was created not only innocent, but in a sense perfect, and that he has dropped into a lower condition which is untrue to his real nature, and which shows itself by this feeling of remorse or sorrow for what he is. Man, in other words, is a fallen creature.
(2) The second way of accounting for the fact of sin is quite a recent one, but it is held by probably the majority of thinking people now. That theory tells us that man is not a fallen being, who began his career in a better or perfect state, but one who has climbed up from a lower stage by a process of evolution. In this respect, he is not different from other creatures, who have all climbed up from some lower form of life to their present position. But he is different from all other creatures in this, that in virtue of a God-given gift, he is not the mere creature of heredity and circumstances, but has a certain power to assist or retard his own further development in every sense. He is a creature not made, but in the making; and he has been taken into partnership by his Creator, so that he can help God (or hinder Him) in the work of perfecting his own nature. In other words, there is a lower nature in him derived from his animal origin, strong and vital and full of passionate desires. There is a higher nature in him, which is weak and frail and undeveloped, but of infinite worth. There is thus a conflict ever going on within him between the lower nature and the higher, and because he is within limits free to choose between this and that, he is able to help on or to hinder his higher true self from gaining the victory over his lower.
(3) Now man is certainly a creature in process of development. He is advancing in a hundred directions; and the impulse to advance is so powerful that, though it acts fitfully and is often checked and thrown back, it never really ceases to act; so that when humanity goes back in one direction it tends to recover itself, and to realize in one way what it fails to realize in another. None the less certain is it that there is something more the matter with human nature as it is than a feeling of not having progressed fast enough. The human conscience testifies to a feeling of some moral disaster or calamity that has fallen upon it. It is haunted by a stronger feeling than that of failure to attain. Some poison has mingled with the very blood of the soul, so to speak. We come into the world weighted not only with our animal nature, but with a paralysis or sickness in our higher nature itself. We cannot call our animal desires wrong; they are healthy and good in themselves; they conduce to the continuance and vigour of our being; we cannot dispense with them. The mischief does not seem to be there, but higher up, in the will itself. Now no mere evolutionary theory can account for this fact of our nature; and it is this which the old theory of the Fall attempts to account for, and which, when broadly conceived, it does account for. At some distant period of our history as a raceperhaps at the very beginninga wrong turn was taken, and its consequences, passed on through the mysterious law of heredity, continue to this day. Man is a rising creature, with a principle of betterment deeply implanted within his nature which has never been quite uprooted; but he is also a fallen creature, whose nature has been thrown out of gear through the effects of habitual sin, which has largely paralysed the power to rise. And so man is a distracted, struggling, tormented creature, dragged in different ways, unable on the one side to sink contentedly into evil, and to forget God and goodness in that evil, and yet on the other unable to shake off the incubus and burden of this sinful nature, which clings to him in spite of all his endeavours to free himself from it, and makes him cry out, Who shall deliver me from this body of death?
Any theory or teaching which in any way blurs the meaning of sin as an awful and devastating mischief, for which there can be no excuse, seems to me to cut at the very root and nerve-centre of the spiritual life. Sin is the one (and perhaps the only) thing in the universe which it is impossible to justify; it is by definition the thing that ought not to be. Once we begin to whittle away its meaning, and make it a stage in progress, a fall upward, a necessary or inevitable episode in the experience of an evolving creature, we empty it of its distinctive meaning, and strike at the very heart of every genuine moral effort. I can see that physical evili.e. suffering and calamity and limitation and losshas many helpful functions to fulfil; but moral evilsinis the one thing that has no function to fulfil; it is a purely destructive, disintegrating force, an essential blight, a backward, downward, stumble of the soul; it ought not to be, or ever to have come into being, at any time in the life of any creature of Gods making.1 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones.]
The fact that the only perfect being, the only typical man whom the world has ever seen, was made perfect through suffering, yet without sin, shows how essentially different the problems of suffering and sin are, inextricably as they are interwoven in human experience. Suffering is one of the needful conditions of our physical life, preserving us from danger, stimulating us into a larger life in virtue of our efforts to overcome it, and sweetening our proud and self-indulgent nature by its discipline. But sin is the mortal enemy of our highest, our spiritual life; and as such alone are we justified in dealing with it. That is the Christian view from the beginning; and it is the only view that can safeguard the soul in its perilous journey through this world.1 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones.]
ii. All have sinned
1. From the first man that breathed in Eden to the last man that will look on the sun, we are one family, under the rule and protection of one Providence, borne down by the same burden und looking for the same better land. We are a living and unbroken unitypast, present, and to be. We are all conscious of the same bias to wrong-doing. We are all sinners. There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. It is not simply that our nature bears an inherited taint and fault, called original sin; but we have yielded ourselves to voluntary sinfulness. Our last condemnation comes not from our inheritance of original infirmity, but from that personal estate of sins we have wilfully committed. It is the presence of the individual will in sin that renders it an object of punishment. All have sinned.
The Apostle does not assert that there are not degrees of wickedness and lower depths of guilt; he only declares, with uncompromising assurance, that all have come short of the standard. It is one thing for human nature to possess some beautiful remainders of good; it is another question whether human nature, even at its best, has enough good to save and restore itself. A famous temple of Rome, or of Greece, or of India, lying in ruins, may have fragments of splendid sculpture buried among the rubbish; but the splendid fragments cannot build once more the splendid temple. A young woman on her death-bed may have a face as lovely as a poets fancy, with
The gleam
Of far-off summers in her tresses bright.
She is dying, nevertheless! The sinful heart may have tender passions and noble impulses; but they are only soiled fragmentsbeautiful things hiding the horror of death.2 [Note: H. E. Lewis.]
2. But how does St. Paul prove it? You will see the answer in the first two chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. He proves it, not speculatively, but historically; not by logic, but by experience; not by development of a theory, but by an appeal to fact. Mankind in his days was divided into two great sectionsJews and Gentileswith no consciousness as yet that the middle wall of partition which separated them from each other had been finally broken down. Each section hated, each despised, the other. The Jew despised the Gentile as a shameful reprobate; the Gentile hated the Jew as a grovelling impostor. But neither realized his true condition; neither was at all awake to the fact that he had sinned.
(1) Certainly the Gentiles were not. Paul begins with them. They were, as a class, dead to all sense of sin; they were in that meridian of evil which St. Paul calls past feeling. A stage there may have been in the national as in the individual life, in which they felt their guiltiness; early in their career, before the love of innocence was dead, before the tenderness of conscience was seared; and later, too, the stage came to them, as it comes to all, when the Furies took their seats upon the midnight pillow. But from the soul of their youth the sense of wounded innocence was too often swept away like the dew from the green grass; and from the social life it vanished in universal corruption. The life of Greece, for which some writers sigh as having been so infinite in fascination, was bright, no doubt, in its first gaiety, in its ideal freshness. But when youth was gone; when strength failed; when health was shattered; when on the dead flowers of life age shed its snows; when Death came nearer and nearer with the dull monotony of his echoing footfall, and they saw no life beyondlife in Hellas was not gay then. Take her at her most brilliant period, when her most immortal temples were built, her most immortal songs written, her most immortal statues carved, and we see the seamy side and ragged edges of the life of Greece revealed in the sensual wickedness of Aristophanes; we see its fierce, untamed, soul-rending passions recorded in the stern pages of Thucydides. Her own poets, her own satirists, her own historians will teach us that to have been naked and not ashamed was to have been expelled from Paradise; to be past feeling for sin was to be removed utterly from even the possibility of blessedness. And as for the Romans
On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
(2) Nor was the Jew. So far from feeling himself sinful, he looked on himself alone as being the just, the upright, the chosen. He spoke with contemptuous disgust of the Gentiles as sinners and dogs and swine. Of course, in a vague general way, he assented to vague general confessions, as when the High Priest laid his hands on the head of the scapegoat, and said, O God, the God of Israel, pardon our iniquities, our transgressions, and our sins. But, on the whole, in the Pharisaic epoch, which began even in the days of Ezra, the Jews were infinitely satisfied with themselves. They held (as the Talmud often shows us) that no Jew could possibly be rejected; that God looked on him with absolute favouritism; that the meanest son of Israel was a prince of the kings of the earth. The pride which caused this serene unconsciousness of their own guiltthe fact that they so little recognized the plague of their own hearts, was the worst thing about them. They knew not that they were miserable, poor, blind, and naked. It was the self-induced callosity of formalism. It was the penal blindness of moral self-conceit. Are we blind also? asked the astonished Pharisees of Christ. And He said unto them, If ye were blind ye would have no sin; but now you say, We see, therefore your sin remaineth. The fact, then, that Jew and Gentile alike were ignorant of their own guilty condition was the deadliest element of their danger. For
When we in our viciousness grow hard
O misery ont!the wise gods seel our eyes;
In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us
Adore our errors; laugh ats while we strut
To our confusion.
It seems to me that people get into the way of identifying sin with one kind of sinthe sin of the outcastsand forget the sins of character, of the Pharisees, and of the wicked, wise conspirators against human good and happiness, who are eminently the Bible type of the sinners who have everything to fear.1 [Note: Life and Letters of Dean Church, 265.]
A soul made weak by its pathetic want
Of just the first apprenticeship to sin
Which thenceforth makes the sinning soul secure
From all foes save itself, souls truliest foe,
Since egg turned snake needs fear no serpentry.2 [Note: R. Browning, The Ring and the Book.]
3. The Apostle proves that all have sinned by pointing to the facts around him. The facts of experience prove it still. Take the irreligious worldthe vast masses who do not even profess religion, who never set foot in a place of worship. Take the vast army of unhappy drunkards, reeling through a miserable life to a dishonoured grave. Take the countless victims of sins of impurity. Take trade and commerce, with its adulterations, its dishonesties, its reckless greed, its internecine struggles between capital and toil. Are these mere words, or are they indisputable facts? Is there no gambling? Are there no wild, greedy, dishonest speculations? Is the common conversation of men what it should be? Is the drink trade and its consequences an honour to us? Does God look with approval on the opium traffic? Are the amusements of the nation satisfactory? Can we regard with complacency the accessories of the turf? Are the streets of Londonreeking as they do with open and shameless temptationwhat the streets of a Christian capital should be? Would a Paul or an Elijah have had no burning words of scathing denunciation at what the stage and the opera sometimes offer to the rich, and the music-hall and the dancing-room to the poor? How many of the rich understand what it is to be generous? How many of the poor are alive to the duty and dignity of self-respect? Are there no base and godless newspapers? Did not a great statesman write but recently about one of the thousands of lies, invented by knaves and believed by fools? Is the general tone of what is called society healthywith its gossip, and its fashion, and its luxury, and its selfish acquiescence in the seething misery around?
It may seem somewhat extreme, which I will speak; therefore let every man judge of it, even as his own heart shall tell him, and no otherwise; I will but only make a demand: If God should yield to us, not as unto Abraham, if fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, yea, or if ten good persons could be found in a city, for their sakes that city should not be destroyed; but, if God should make us an offer thus large, Search all the generations of men since the fall of your father Adam, find one man that hath done any one action, which hath past from him pure, without any stain or blemish at all; and for that one mans one only action, neither man nor angel shall feel the torments which are prepared for both: do you think that this ransom, to deliver men and angels, would be found among the sons of men?1 [Note: Hooker, Works, iii. 493.]
I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man at large presents: of organized injustice, cowardly violence, and treacherous crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They cannot be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his efforts to do right. But where the best consistently miscarry, how tenfold more remarkable that all should continue to strive; and surely we should find it both touching and inspiriting, that in a field from which success is banished, our race should not cease to labour.2 [Note: R. L. Stevenson, Pulvis et Umbra.]
4. The sense of sin, which in previous generations was so acute and full of torment, seems to have recently lost a good deal of its edge and insistence. Men are not troubled as they used to be with a sense of the awful reality and devastating nature of the evil in their hearts. And there are teachers who defend this attitude. Sir Oliver Lodge, for instance, has said, in one of his many recent excursions into the realm of theology, that the man in the street does not trouble himself much about his sins nowadays; and he seems to justify this change of front. Another leading thinker has even more boldly said in effect that sin is only a mistaken and misleading searchas it were, in the wrong directionfor the larger life, i.e. for God; or in other words, that it is only an attempt to realize ones possibilities on the wrong plane of effort and experience. This has shocked many people because of the blunt and vivid way it was put, and well it may. None the less it expresses the unspoken idea of a great many thinkers. The old Puritan attitude of fear and shame and sorrow at the thought of evil, the conviction that it is an offence in the sight of God, at which He is infinitely pained in His heart, and which rouses His loving but awful indignationthis has given way to the notion that sin, after all, is only an incident of development, that it is one of the necessary conditions of ethical progress, and that, this being so, God cannot be angry with us if we go wrong on our way towards getting into the right road. This attitude is combined with a theory that, since God is omnipotent, He will see to it that in the end every sinner is somehow or other brought back to Himself. Men who sin may be going out of their way to find Him, but find Him they will in the end and at last. Otherwise God can never be all in all.
As a matter of fact, the higher man of to-day is not worrying about his sins at all; his mission, if he is good for anything, is to be up and doing.1 [Note: Sir Oliver Lodge, in Hibbert Journal, April 1904, 466.]
Said a woman to me last week: I cannot feel that my heart is desperately wicked; have I to?2 [Note: T. R. Williams.]
I knew a man once who lived a scandalously immoral life, and when he tired of it committed suicide quite deliberately. He left behind himfor he was a man of lettersa copy of verses addressed to his Father in heaven, in which he told Him that he was coming home to dwell with Him for ever. That was an extreme instance perhaps; but extreme only because this man, being well-educated and accustomed to express his thoughts in verse, was moved to put on record his absolute lack of any sense of sin.3 [Note: R. Winterbotham.]
5. A misconception as to the real nature of sin, and what it consists in, is one reason why many have little or no consciousness of it; why they are not quickened to repentance and confession; why we hear so often such statements as these, I am no worse than others, I have never committed any crime, I do not feel that I am a miserable sinner; or the proud thanksgiving of the Pharisee, God, I thank thee I am not as other men are. In all such cases Gods standard of requirement is fatally misunderstood; the length and breadth of His law are not discerned; the love and purpose of His heart are most inadequately conceived. Once let the light of heaven shine out in all its native brightness, and the darkness of earth will be revealed in striking contrast. He who has felt the love of God, and has recognized Him as a Father, must have felt also the baseness and guilt of sinmust, ere long, have said, like the Prodigal, I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.
I have never yet met the man who disputed the fact of his being a sinner; but I have met with many who admitted it, and yet lived on in the world as gaily as if it entailed no further consequences. When I proceed to inquire how this can possibly be, it always strikes me, as the chief reason, that men do not give themselves leisureto reflect. All around me appear to labour under an indescribable distraction of mind. I cannot otherwise account for the decided manner in which they admit many propositions, and yet do not draw from them the conclusions that are obviously manifest. Since the hour in which I first clearly apprehended the one truth that I am a sinneragainst God, I likewise perceived, as clearly, that there is no business in life so important as to recover His favour, and become His obedient child. Before that discovery, it always seemed to me as if my life had no proper aim. It was then, for the first time, that I became aware for what purpose I was living. No doubt I had a certain object, even before, but it was one of which I felt ashamed, and therefore did not acknowledge even to myself. It was, in truth, to enjoy the things of this world, and to be honoured in the eyes of men. And to thousands at my side, although they too are ashamed to confess it, this is the sole wreath for which they strive. If, however, they would take time to reflect, the mere perceptions of the understanding would show them the folly of their conduct. For, supposing our joys and hopes to have their centre in this world, what a painful thought that we are every day withdrawing further away from it! whereas, if eternity be our end and aim, how pleasing to think that to it we are every day advancing nearer!1 [Note: A. Tholuck.]
iii. St. Pauls Definition of Sin
All have sinned, says St. Paul, and fall short of the glory of God. That seems to be his conception of sin. That is sin in its essence. And that includes all under sin, leaving no room whatever for exculpation or escape. For what is it to fall short of the glory of God?
1. The word glory (doxa) is used in the New Testament with two distinct meanings. It means (1) reputation, or (2) brightness, especially the brightness or splendour which radiates from the presence of God. The second must be the meaning here. It is the majesty or goodness of God as manifested to men.
The Rabbis held that Adam by the Fall lost six things, the glory, life (immortality), his stature (which was above that of his descendants), the fruit of the field, the fruits of trees, and the light (by which the world was created, and which was withdrawn from it and reserved for the righteous in the world to come). It is explained that the glory was a reflection from the Divine glory which before the Fall brightened Adams face (Weber, Altsyn. Theol., p. 214). Clearly St. Paul conceives of this glory as in process of being recovered: the physical sense is also enriched by its extension to attributes that are moral and spiritual.1 [Note: Sanday and Headlam, Romans, 85.]
2. What is to fall short of this glory?
(1) The metaphor is taken from the racecourse. To come short is to be left behind in the race, not to reach the goal. And the goal is the glory of God. We may take the glory of God, then, in the first place, in the widest sense. To attain to the glory of God is (a) to enjoy His favour, (b) to be formed in His image, (c) to live in His presence. These three together cover all that the soul of man can desire. They are the sum total of happiness. There is nothing beyond. Adam had them all in Eden before his fall. He was made in the image of God, and he enjoyed the favour and the presence of God. Sin robbed him of them all. And as sinners we by nature come short of them all. The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:7-8). Surely this is the opposite of Gods favour! Then, They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh (Rom 8:5). Remember what the works of the flesh are, as St. Paul gives them in Gal 5:19-21. Surely this is the opposite of the image of God! And then, Without God in the world (Eph 2:12). Surely this is the opposite of Gods presence!
(2) But, in the second place, we may take this definition of sin to mean that men have not lived for the glory of God. This goes deeper than acts; it reaches the motive of human action. We, who can read only what speaks to the outward senses, very naturally think most of words and actions, because they are all of which we can be certainly cognizant. And, as naturally, that great Spirit who reads thoughts as easily as He reads words, will look equally, nay, more than equally, at the inward principles, at the springs more than at the acts of the machine of lifeat the sources more than at the streams of every mans moral being. For here lies the differencewe generally think feelings important because they lead to conduct; God lays stress upon conduct because it indicates feelings. So it will be at the last great account. All the deeds and sayings of a man will then stand forth in the lighteach one in its clearness. But to what purpose? That the man may be judged of those things? Certainly not. But they are witnesses, called up to give evidence before men and angels, to a certain inward invisible state of the man, by which, and according to which, every one will receive his sentence and his eternal award. The real subject-matter of inquiry in that day will not be actions, nor words, but motives.
(3) And, in the third place, the expression, Fall short of the glory of God, may meanand probably in the Apostles mind did meanfailure to reach the moral glory of God, the inexorable perfectness of His character, with which we must correspond in order to be at peace with Him.
Let us understand well the greatness of the Divine requirement from man, for it is the measure of the Divine love. The love of God can be satisfied with nothing less than its own perfection. It is to this that He seeks to bring us. Anything less than this, any coming short of His glory, is, in His sight, sin; a missing of our true human aim; a failure to reach the stature of the perfect manto be complete in Christ Jesus, to be washed in His blood, to be clothed with His righteousness, to be filled with His spirit.1 [Note: J. N. Bennie.]
The perfect revelation of that glory is in Jesus Christ, who is the brightness of the Fathers glory, and the express image of His person. In Him, the image of God, men were originally created; in Him they live and move and have their being. That same Divine Word and Son is the life and light of men, the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. So in this way we reach a true harmony between the declaration of St. Paul in the text, that a coming short of the glory of God is the universal human sin, and the witness of the Holy Spirit, who, as expressly foretold by our blessed Lord, ever since His descent on the Day of Pentecost, has been convincing the world of sin, because men believe not in Christ.1 [Note: J. N. Bennie.]
3. Notice, then, that in this statement that all have sinned, St. Paul is not charging every man with the commission of crime, or of open acts of wickedness such as the world condemns and the laws of men punish. But he declares that all, without exception, have missed the true aim of their being; have fallen short of the mark which they ought to have hit; have failed wilfully in attaining the end of their life. They have not entered into and fulfilled the purpose of God; they have not answered His gracious call; they have not gone forth to meet Him, or yielded themselves to the patient drawing of His love.
It is a commonplace feeling, if not an actual belief, that if men have not done any great harm they cannot be exposed to any great condemnation. But what is great harm? Is it not missing the very object you were made for? A rifle is made to shoot straight; if it will not do so, however perfect the polish of its barrel, or the finish of its lock or stock, it is useless, and you throw it on one side or break it up. The more complete it seems to your eye in all its workmanship, the more vexed you are with it for its utter failure in the one work for which you had it made.2 [Note: F. Morse.]
Lift up your hearts. We lift them up. Ah me!
I cannot, Lord, lift up my heart to Thee;
Stoop, lift it up, that where Thou art I too may be.
Give Me thy heart. I would not say Thee nay,
But have no power to keep or give away
My heart: stoop, Lord, and take it to Thyself to-day.
Stoop, Lord, as once before, now once anew;
Stoop, Lord, and hearken, hearken, Lord, and do,
And take my will, and take my heart, and take me too.3 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti.]
II
The Manner of our Justification
Being justified freely by His grace.
The statement brings us face to face with that word, Justification, which played so great a part in Reformation history, and which undoubtedly had so rich a content to minds like St. Pauls, but which has tended more and more to disappear out of our religious vocabulary. As for the word, that is a small affair; but it would argue a serious loss in spiritual sensitiveness if we could endure to exist as children of God on any other terms than those implied in the old phrasejustification.
i. Justification
1. Pauls doctrine of justification may be summed up in three propositions: (1) God reckons, or pronounces, or treats as righteous the ungodly who has no righteousness of his own to show (Rom 4:5). (2) It is his faith that is reckoned for righteousness; faith in Christ is accepted instead of personal merit gained by good works (Rom 4:5). (3) This faith has Christ as its object (Rom 3:22), especially the propitiation which is in His blood (Rom 3:25); but as such it results in a union with Christ so close that Christs experience of separation from sin and surrender to God is reproduced in the believer (Rom 6:1-11).
2. The use of the term justification in perpetual contrast with the term condemnation, settles the question that justification is a forensic or judicial term, carrying the notion which is in direct contrast with the notion of condemnation. They shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked (Deu 25:1). He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord (Pro 17:15). It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? (Rom 8:33). The last is St. Paul, who also declares that the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification (Rom 5:16). These terms are so clearly opposed that the meaning of the one may be determined by the other. Condemnation is a legal term expressive of a certain relation to law; it confers no personal or subjective depraving influence on the character of the condemned person. It simply declares that the law, or contract, has been violated, and formally decrees the subjection of the law-breaker to the penalties of the law, but exerts no corrupting influence on his personal character. Justification, then, can only do the same thing in the opposite direction; it determines a legal standing without exerting a personal subjective influence on the character of the justified person, making him personally holy. This personal improvement which will inevitably follow justification as one of its effects is due to sanctification; but it is not a part of justification itself. It is not allowable to confound cause and effect.
3. The doctrine has been denounced as legalistic and even immoral. What has to be carefully remembered is that Paul is not responsible for what a theological scholasticism or a popular evangelicalism may have made of his doctrine. God does not impute righteousness to the unrighteous, but He accepts instead of righteousness, instead of a perfect fulfilment of the whole law, faith. Faith is reckoned for righteousness. In forgiving, Gods intention is not to allow a man to feel comfortable and happy while indifferent to, and indolent in, goodness; but to give a man a fresh opportunity, a new ability to become holy and godly. Those whom God reckons righteous, He means also to make righteous; and the gradual process of sanctification can only begin with the initial act of justification. A man must be relieved of the burden of his guilt, he must be recalled from the estrangement of his sin, he must be allowed to escape from the haunting shadows of his doom, before he can with any confidence, courage, or constancy tread the upward path of goodness to God. The man who accepts Gods forgiveness in faith cannot mean to abuse it by continuance in sin, but must long for and welcome it as allowing him to make a fresh start on the new path of trustful, loyal, and devoted surrender to God. Paul, it is quite certain, knew of no saving faith that could claim justification but disown sanctification. To him faith was not only assent to what Christ had by His sacrifice done for mans salvation, but consent, constant and complete, to all that Christ by His Spirit might do in transforming character. He knew of no purpose of grace that stopped short at reckoning men righteous, and did not go on to making them righteous.1 [Note: A. E. Garvie.]
Your little child does the wrong thing or says the false thing. Then comes sorrow, let us hope, and the resolve to do better, and the old question, Am I good now? And you, sitting there half glad, half fearful, know that the fault is not conquered yet, that the consequence of that slip, that fall, remains, a scar if not a wound; but you recognize, too, that the aspiration is genuinely for the right, the face set towards victory. It is not righteousness achieved, but you count the faith, the attitude of soul, for righteousness. You say, Yes, you are good now. The declaration is of goodness unrealized as yet; but, nevertheless, actual to the heart of grace, in hope and resolve. And with the declaration the shadow vanishes, and that confidence is restored in which lies, perhaps, the childs chief hope of achieving the goodness.1 [Note: C. S. Horne.]
When Robert Browning sings
Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do,
it may have a perilous sound. But by and by we discover that it is a profoundly true interpretation of life. It is the will outreaching towards a perfection unattained, and, perhaps, even unattainable here. It is the exaltation of the inward life; the motion of the soul towards the highest that it knows and sees. This faith counts as righteousness in the sight of God.
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God.
He counted what we would fain be, but were not, unto us for righteousness. There is a book of which some of us are fond which describes the resolution of an old, old maid to adventure to Central Africa to preach to the heathen. Of course, the thing was impossible; and, of course, at last, with many tears, she discovered that she would never go. In human reckoning I suppose the will, the faith, the consecration of spirit, count for nothing. Certainly she did not go. There was no actual achievement of the heroism proposed. But I believe, with Browning, that this was her exaltation; and all she could never be she was worth to God; and that the willed deed was reckoned in His sight as a deed done. This is the point at which even the law of God is transcended by His free, matchless grace.
See the kingI would help him but cannot, the wishes fall through.
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor to enrich,
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I wouldknowing which,
I know that my service is perfect.2 [Note: Browning, Saul.]
4. Justification is not simply pardon, and it is not sanctification.
(1) It is not Pardon. There is something more than forgiveness here. Your little child who has done wrong pleads with you, Am I good now? Yes, you say; but the shadow has not passed from your face. And the child knows that all is not right. Am I good now? Yes. Then why dont you smile? Exactly. You must get back to the old footing. Say what you like, even the sweetest tones of forgiveness do not always remove the impression of a shadow across the face of God. The old familiarity and confidence are gone. Whatever be the precise theological content of justification we all know what we mean, what we feel we wantthe cloud off the sun, the doubt off the heart, the uneasy apprehension dispelled. We want to be at home again, and walk once more as children of the light. That is justification.1 [Note: C. S. Horne.]
It is unquestionably true that the real salvation of a breaker of the Divine law involves not merely an escape from the penalty of the law, but a title to its reward. He needs something that will carry not only deliverance from danger, but a security for happiness.2 [Note: C. R. Vaughan.]
(2) It is not Sanctification. The different relations to it on our part are (a) that righteousness apprehended and appropriated to ourselves by faith, in all its completeness; upon which God accepts and treats us as actually possessing it; this is what is meant by our justification, or our status of present peace and fellowship with God; and (b) that righteousness, which is Jesus Christ Himself, through the constant association and participation of faith with Him, gradually but actually imparting Himself to us so as to become to us not only a righteousness in which we believe, but one which at least we begin to possess; this is what in process or progress we call our sanctification, and when it is completed it will be our glory or glorification.
ii. Gratis and Gracious
Being justified freely (as a gift, gratis) by his grace. The sinner is justified as an act of Gods free grace. The act itself is the act of God in His judicial capacity, and includes in it the blotting out, the forgiving of all original and actual transgression. All is blotted out. There is not one sin left unremitted. There is a complete obliterating of all evidence of guilt against the sinner. And this act is done freely, graciously.
1. It is free on the part of God in the eternal purpose of it. For He might justly have left men to perish under the guilt of sin.
2. It is free in the means He used to effect it, in the sending of His Son. He was the free gift of His eternally free love. Nothing could have induced Him to this but His own free grace. He so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
3. It is free in the laying of the punishment of our sins upon Him. It pleased the Father to bruise Him, to put Him to grief. This could only be an act of grace. Hence, herein is the love of God manifested, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. This was the greatest, the highest proof God could give of His love and grace. Here He went to the utmost in lovingwhen for our sakes He laid the punishment of sin upon His own dear Son.
4. It is free in the covenant engagement with Christ for us. Christ stood for us, in our place and room. That was arranged in covenant. Nothing but free electing grace could account for this. According to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour. This is all of free grace, and only of free grace. It was according to free grace that He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
5. It is free also in the offer of all this to us in the Gospel. It is offered without money and without price. Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. Nothing can be freer or more cordial than this invitation. The poorest is welcome. All are such; the feast is prepared for the poor. But the most bankrupt sinner finds himself within the folds of this invitation.
6. It is free, finally, in the actual pardon of them that believe. They have nothing, absolutely nothing, on the ground of which they can ask for this pardon. They must come absolutely bankrupt, poor and needy, that they may obtain this unspeakable privilege from God. They have made no satisfaction for former transgression. They have no penal or expiatory suffering to merit it. They can have no expectation of future recompense. Whether, then, we consider the pardoner or the pardoned, justification is equally freeon the part of God who justifies, and on the part of the sinner who is justified. They are justified freely by His grace.1 [Note: M. Macaskill.]
Rest over me in love, O piercd One!
Smile on me sadly through my mist of sin,
Smile on me sweetly from Thy crown of thorns.
As the dawn looketh on the great dark hills,
As the hills dawn-touchd on the great dark sea,
Dawn on my hearts great darkness, Prince of Peace!
III
The Means of our Justification
Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
1. Redemption. The word redemption or ransom is easily understood; it means the buying back, the paying something for another. When a man had incurred a debt, and, in accordance with ancient law, had been imprisoned or sold as a slave in consequence of that debt, the payment of the debt by another constituted his redemption from slavery, his ransom from bondage. All mankind was in that condition before God, and we are in that condition; burdened with the ten thousand talents of debt which we cannot pay; in bondage to sin and Satan; sold under sin, tied and bound with the chain of our sins; our very lives justly forfeited to the majesty of violated law. And from this condition Christ delivered us. As far as the effects to us are concerned, we might say that He purchased us from this slavery, that He bought us by the price of His life and death; redeemed us with His precious blood. And the figure chiefly used is not that He pays the debt, but that He cancels it; forgives it, freely and unpaid; blots it out, tears it up, nails its no longer valid fragments to His cross.
The Authorized Version does not keep the same English equivalent for the same Greek word, and the words, reconciliation, atonement, propitiation, and redemption, seem to be used almost indiscriminately in it. But in the Greek they are always kept distinct. We have here the word redemption, and the Greek word is . In chap. Rom 3:25 the word we have is propitiation, and the Greek word is . And we have in chap. Rom 5:11 the word , translated wrongly in the text as atonement, but rightly in the margin as reconciliation. Now, it is most important to keep these three things separate, because they are the work of different offices of our Lord Jesus Christ. Redemption is the work of the king. Propitiation is the work of the priest. And reconciliation describes the work of the prophet. And if we want an all-round view of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, we must combine the three, and then we have Christs workthe work of the Anointed Prophet, the work of the Anointed Priest, and the work of the Anointed King.1 [Note: E. A. Stuart.]
It is simply impossible to get rid of the conception of a ransom from the New Testament. Christian piety should surely be as willing to consider gratefully all our redemption cost as to recognize confidently all our redemption won. We need not press the metaphor of redemption to yield a theory of the atonement; but the idea of Christs death as a ransom expresses the necessity of that death as the condition of mans salvation, as required not only by the moral order of the world, but also by the holy will of God, which that moral order expresses.2 [Note: A. E. Garvie.]
Alas! my Lord is going,
Oh my woe!
It will be mine undoing;
If He go,
Ill run and overtake Him;
If He stay,
Ill cry aloud and make Him
Look this way.
O stay, my Lord, my Love, tis I;
Comfort me quickly, or I die.
Cheer up thy drooping spirits;
I am here.
Mine all-sufficient merits
Shall appear
Before the throne of glory
In thy stead:
Ill put into thy story
What I did.
Lift up thine eyes, sad soul, and see
Thy Saviour here. Lo, I am He.
Alas! shall I present
My sinfulness
To Thee? Thou wilt resent
The loathsomeness.
Be not afraid, Ill take
Thy sins on Me,
And all My favour make
To shine on thee.
Lord, what Thoult have me, Thou must make me.
As I have made thee now, I take thee.1 [Note: Christopher Harvey.]
2. The Redemption is in Christ Jesus. How has He accomplished it? Take the steps in order.
(1) Man, having broken the Divine law, is under condemnation. The Most High appears before us as the moral governor of men, presenting to them His law, with the simple requirement, Obey. Obey and you shall liveMoses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth these things shall live by them. Disobey, and you shall dieThe soul that sinneth, it shall die. But man has transgressed the law, and thus incurred the penalty.
(2) The claims of the law have been fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ. He assumed mans nature, was made under the law, and fulfilled all righteousness. I do always those things which please the Father was the utterance of His own consciousness; I find no fault in Him was the verdict of His foe; Who did no sin, Jesus Christ the Righteous, was the witness of those who knew Him best; This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased was the declaration of God. In the life of Jesus, the law found its fulfilling and complete embodiment. But though our Lord thus fulfilled the laws claim, He suffered its penalty as though He were guilty. His death was not the necessary end of the human life which He assumed. He was wounded for transgression, He was bruised for iniquity, chastisement was upon Him, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin. He was made a curse, for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree, He cried that He was forsaken of God. Christ fulfilled the law perfectly, and yet suffered as though He had broken it wholly.
(3) Christs twofold nature made His fulfilment of the law imputable. He was Man. The law imposed on man must be fulfilled by man; it is not angelic holiness, nor heavenly holiness which is required, but human holiness. The righteousness of the Man, Christ Jesus, was of this kind, wrought out under the same limitations and conditions, and only with the same power as those under which the law was at first laid upon Adam, and by which Adam might have stood. But the Word who was made flesh was God. Thus He was under no obligation to the law, He owed it nothing on His own account. Had He been simply man, all His righteousness would have been necessary for His own justification, but He was God, everlastingly and infinitely holy, in and of Himself, and if as such He stooped to obey the law, and work out a human righteousness, He needed not that for Himself, He was righteous already, it was a righteousness extra and to spare, and the very righteousness man needs. And so of the Penalty which He paid. Since He was man, that penalty was inflicted on mans nature, but since He kept the law, no penalty was due from Him; like His righteousness, it was something extra and to spare. But He was also God, which gives His sufferings an infinite value, and makes them constitute a price paid, a curse endured for transgression, as great as God is great. Here, then, we see in Christ a perfect obedience to the law, and the laws penalty completely endured, and both by human nature, and the point isChrist does not need them for Himself, He has them both to spare.
(4) God declares that He imputes the fulfilment of the laws claims by Christ to those who accept Him as their representative. That is to say, these things which Christ has to spare are handed over to such, and regarded by God as on their behalf. That is the act of Justification by faith, the acceptance of Christ as our representative, His righteousness reckoned to us, our penalty paid in Him, God declaring that He accepts this Substitution in the case of all those who thus trust His Son. Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.1 [Note: C. New]
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lackd anything.
A guest, I answerd, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling, did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth, Lord, but I have marrd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat.
So I did sit and eat.2 [Note: Christopher Harvey.]
Justification
Literature
Bennie (J. N.), The Eternal Life, 50.
Campbell (R. J.), City Temple Sermons, 13.
Farrar (F. W.), Truths to Live By, 215, 260.
Griffith-Jones (E.), Faith and Verification, 110.
Horne (C. S.), The Souls Awakening, 205.
Kuyper (A.), The Work of the Holy Spirit, 354, 372.
Macaskill (M.), A Highland Pulpit, 73.
New (C.), Sermons, 23.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, viii. 233.
Stuart (E. A.), Children of God, 79.
Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 21.
Vaughan (C. R.), Sermons, 175.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), vii. No. 673.
Williams (T. R.), The Evangel of the New Theology, 69.
Winterbotham (R.), Sermons, 110.
Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 184 (Morse); xxxi. 147 (Lewis); xlvii. 241 (Gore).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
all have: Rom 3:9, Rom 3:19, Rom 1:28-32, Rom 2:1-16, Rom 11:32, Ecc 7:20, Gal 3:22, 1Jo 1:8-10
come: Heb 4:1
of: Rom 5:2, 1Th 2:12, 2Th 2:14, 1Pe 4:13, 1Pe 5:1, 1Pe 5:10
Reciprocal: Gen 8:21 – the imagination Lev 12:7 – make Psa 14:3 – all gone Isa 2:9 – the mean Dan 9:20 – confessing Mat 3:14 – I have Luk 7:41 – the other Act 17:30 – the times Rom 2:13 – but the Rom 3:10 – none Rom 3:25 – remission Rom 5:12 – all Eph 2:3 – even Eph 2:13 – are 2Ti 1:18 – mercy
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
:23
Rom 3:23. See the comments covering verses 9-12.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Rom 3:23. For all sinned; this is the historical fact, they became sinners. For this reason there is no distinction. Have sinned, is not altogether objectionable, since it implies a relation to what precedes.
Fall short. As the result of their having become sinners.
Glory of God. This is variously explained as, glory before God, glory like God (in His image, showing His glory), glory from God. The last is preferable; His approval is meant (although it is true this glory from Him alone can stand before Him), since the next verse closely joins the thought of justification. Civilization, refinement, intelligence, and external morality, have not made these words less universal in their application.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Vv. 23. This absence of difference in the mode of justification rests on the equality of all in respect of the fact of sin. In the aorist , have committed sin, no account is taken of the question whether they have done so once or a hundred times. Once suffices to deprive us of the title of righteous, and thereby of the glory of God., and in consequence.
The verb , to lack, expresses in general the idea of a deficit, which consists either in remaining below the normal level, or in being behind others. Paul therefore means that they all want more or less a normal state, which he calls the glory of God. By this term some have understood the favorable opinion which God has of the just man, His approbation or favor (Grot. Turret. Fritzsche). This meaning is far from natural; Joh 12:43 does not suffice to justify it. Others understand by this expression: glory in God’s sight, that which we should possess if we were righteous (Mel. Calv. Philippi). This meaning is not much more natural than that which appears sometimes in Luther: the act of glorying in God; or than that of OEcumenius and Chalmers: the destination of every man to glorify God. There are really only two senses possible. The first is that of the many commentators who understand the glory of God as the future and eternal glory (Beza, Morison, Reuss, etc.). But in this case we must give to the verb a very forced meaning: to lack the necessary qualifications for obtaining this glory. The second meaning, and the only one which we think admissible, is this the divine splendor which shines forth from God Himself, and which He communicates to all that live in union with Him (see Hofmann, Meyer). This meaning includes that of Rckert and Olshausen, who understand it too specially, no doubt, to mean the original image of God in man. The complement , of God, is at once a gen. possess. and a gen. auctor. God can communicate this glory, because He possesses it Himself, and it belongs to His nature. He had communicated a ray of it to man when He created him pure and happy; it was intended to shine more and more brightly in him as he rose from innocence to holiness. By sinning, man lost both what he had received of it and what he was yet to obtain. A dispossessed king, the crown has fallen from his head.
The consequence of this state of things is indicated, in close connection with the context, in Rom 3:24.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
23. For all sinned and came short of the glory of God. All have sinned (E. V.) is a wrong translation, involving personality and condemning the infants. The Greek is the imperfect tense, only implying that all sinned seminally, which is true. There was but one creation, i. e., Adam; Eve being no exception, but an evolution from Adams rib. Hence when Adam sinned, the race sinned, and all fell together, all being in Adam seminally. Hence all the infants sinned seminally and received a corrupt nature, though they did not sin personally. Consequently they did not personally fall under condemnation. All infants are born depraved, i. e., with a sinful nature, though not actual sinners, but Christians by the redemption of Christ. They should be converted before they forfeit infantile justification by actual transgression, and then sanctified before they backslide. Fall short is in the present tense, stating a sad, though universally observable fact, resulting from the fall. This falling short of the glory of God appertains to all till this mortal shall put on immortality.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 23
The glory of God; the approbation of God.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the {t} glory of God;
(t) By the “glory of God” is meant that mark which we all aim for, that is, everlasting life, which consists in our being made partakers of the glory of God.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
All must come to God by faith in Jesus Christ because all have sinned and fallen short of (i.e., lack) God’s glory (cf. Mar 10:21). The glory of God refers to the outward manifestation of what God is. It includes especially the majesty of His powerful person and the sublimity of His supremely elevated position. [Note: Mickelsen, p. 1192; Harrison, p. 41.] Sin separates people from fellowship with a holy God. We lack both the character of God and the fellowship of God because of sin.