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In our verse-by-verse word-by-word study of Romans we are at the last phrase of Rom 3:26;
Our expanded translation so far is "For the demonstration of his integrity at this present critical time (the Church Age): in order that he might be just, even when He.... "
We noted that God's justice justifies the person who believes in Jesus Christ. The participle is temporal and it should be translated "even when he declares righteous (or, justifies)." Next is the accusative masculine singular from definite article "o" (the one) used as the direct object.
The definite article is now used as a relative pronoun and hence, anyone or everyone Plus the prepositional phrase "ek" (from) plus the ablative of means from "pistis" (faith), plus the objective genitive so we have "from the source of faith in Jesus," meaning to have faith in or to believe in Jesus.
Expanded Translation Rom 3:26; "For the demonstration of his integrity at this present critical time (the Church Age): in order that he might be just, even when he justifies anyone (sinners) who has faith in Jesus."
The only way the unrighteous sinner can be pronounced righteous by God's justice is if they actually have God's righteousness. The only way to have God's righteousness is to believe in Jesus because believing in Jesus is the mechanism for salvation adjustment to God's justice.
Through grace mechanics of faith in Christ God's justice is free to provide God's perfect righteousness, the other half of God's integrity. Having imputed God's righteousness God's justice pronounces the believer righteous, the equivalent of justification.
This justification is vindication provided from God's integrity. This vindication is provided at the moment of faith in Jesus Christ. It includes imputation of God's righteousness and pronounces the fact that that God's righteousness has been imputed to the believer.
God's justice imputes divine righteousness to the believer and vindicates or pronounces the believer as being perfectly righteous and therefore qualified for further blessing from God.
Believers are righteous because they possess God's perfect righteousness, not because they have produced any righteousness on their own of any kind.
Therefore God has found a way to save sinners without compromising His perfect integrity. The foundation of all blessing from God including eternal salvation is the imputation of God's righteousness to the believer at the moment they believe in Jesus.
Righteousness demands righteousness, justice demands justice, holiness demands holiness, integrity demands integrity.
At the point of faith in Jesus Christ God's justice acts by providing His own righteousness and then declaring His own righteousness to be satisfactory for vindication.
Imputed righteousness from God's justice is the foundation on which the superstructure of blessings or advantages that God's justice provides. In other words, God's justice cannot bless mankind apart from the imputation of God's righteousness.
Imputed righteousness from God's justice must precede direct blessing from God's justice. At the point of faith in Jesus Christ God imputes to the believer His own righteousness not only for justification but also for all potential future blessing.
This means that God's imputed righteousness is not only absolutely necessary for immediate justification but it is also the predicate for all other blessings from God because God can only bless perfection that is compatible with His perfect integrity.
The imputation of God's righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ provides believers with the compatibility with God's essence that is the positional foundation for all blessings from God.
Rom 3:27 "Where is boasting then?" The interrogative adverb of place, "pou" (where), is used in rhetorical questions that expect a negative answer. It is generally translated "Where is."
This is a debater's rhetorical question. Then the inferential particle "oun" (then) that introduces an inference from the previous verse. Plus the predicate nominative from "kauchesis" (boasting) that means boasting. The definite article "o" (the) with "kauchesis" is used as a demonstrative pronoun. "Where then is the boasting?"
Boasting is an expression of arrogance where either a system of self-righteousness or a system of human works has intruded into God's plan. Boasting is arrogance plus self-righteousness plus the production of self-righteousness from human good. Boasting is also blasphemous in the context of God's perfect integrity.
God's righteousness and man's self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. There is no place in any of the adjustments to God's justice for man's self-righteousness, man's pleasing personality, or man's self-effacement.
Since boasting is an expression of arrogance, self-righteous human good, it is an indication of maladjustment to God's justice and/or ignorance regarding God's integrity and his grace policy.
Self-righteousness, then, is an arrogant fantasy, a rationalization of comparing one's abilities or strengths with someone else's weaknesses. Arrogant people are totally self-absorbed and self-absorbed people are incapable of having capacity for life or capacity for happiness.
Self-righteousness directed toward God is the blasphemous assumption that God's righteousness is not enough. Therefore self-righteousness tries to help God on the one hand, and on the other hand, when unable to help God because of sinfulness, seeks to justify unrighteousness as promoting and glorifying God's righteousness when compared to their sinfulness.
It is blasphemous to think that either human self-righteousness or unrighteousness can promote or assist God's perfect integrity in any way. God's integrity is perfect and it has always existed and does not need help from mankind.
Remember that God's righteousness is the expression of God's love for His own integrity. Since integrity demands integrity, perfect righteousness demands perfect equivalent righteousness.
God demands integrity for blessing. This integrity includes God's imputed righteousness at salvation and maximum compatibility with God from the filling of the Spirit and Bible doctrine resident in the soul at spiritual maturity.
Adjustment to God's justice in every situation is critical because it is the key to understanding our grace relationship with God. God provides all that His integrity demands from the human race on the basis of grace.
At salvation He primes the pump by imputing His own perfect righteousness on the basis of faith and He follows up with doctrine plus a system of grace perception so that doctrine can be transferred into the believer's thinking. Therefore, boasting is excluded.
"It is excluded" from aorist passive indicative from the verb "ekkleio" (excluded) that means to shut off, to exclude, or to shut out. The aorist tense is a dramatic aorist that is used to state a present reality with the certitude of a past event.
The idiom in the aorist tense is a device that is used to emphasize a fact or a truth of doctrine regarded as so fixed in its certainty as to be axiomatic. Therefore the aorist is used to describe an actual occurrence.
We do not translate this aorist as we usually translate the aorist tense with a past tense in the English, but we translate it as "It is excluded" In the present tense. The passive voice: boasting receives the action of the verb: to be shut out or excluded. The indicative mood is declarative for a statement of dogmatic reality.
Principles that come from God's integrity excluding the boasting of man include the fact that God's integrity has always existed in an immutable state of absolute and total perfection.
God's integrity is immutable so there is nothing that man can add or subtract from it. God's integrity is immutable so there nothing man can do or fail to do to cancel it.
This means that there is nothing man can say or think or do that can compromise God's integrity. Man's self-righteous human good does not glorify God. In fact God's integrity condemns man's self-righteous human good.
There will never be a point in either angelic or human history where God's integrity is compromised or advanced from angelic or human personality, self-righteousness, or system of works.
No creature can establish, promote or enhance God's righteousness. No creature can add anything to God's integrity so boasting is always excluded.
We have seen that the working part of God's integrity is His justice. God's justice gets all the credit and does all the work. God's justice condemned our sins when Christ was bearing them on the cross and this is the basis of our eternal salvation. God accomplished it all. John 19:30;
Rom 3:27; God's justice provides blessing for the mature believer. This is the basis for blessing in time and reward in eternity. This blessing comes from maximum doctrine resident in the soul. And how did it get there? GRACE Apparatus for Spiritual Perception.
Therefore no one can establish God's righteousness and no one can add anything to God's justice. This is the fundamental principle of grace. God can therefore add something to our integrity, but we cannot add or subtract anything from God's integrity.
"By what kind of law?" "dia" (by) plus the interrogative pronoun "poios" (what kind). Notice that "poios" is used in a direct question, and also there is the genitive singular of the noun "nomos" (law) "dia" plus the genitive, "dia poiou nomou."
Nomos here means a rule or principle that governs one's action. It doesn't refer to the Mosaic law here. "By what kind of law?" or "By what kind of principle?" The question is: What principle excludes boasting, arrogance, and self-righteousness.
"of works?" the subjective genitive plural from "ergon" (works). It should be translated into the English as in view of "poios", "that principle of works?" The principle of human works is incompatible with God's integrity as well as God's grace.
There are no works involved in adjusting to God's justice. "No but by law of faith" - the word "no" should be "not" is the negative "ouchi" (not), a strengthened form of "ouk" (no) or a strong negative to answer a question, followed by an adversative conjunction, "alla" (but), to set up a positive after a negative; to set up a contrast between the negative followed by the positive.
Then "dia" (thorough) plus the genitive of "nomos" (law) is used again for a principle "Absolutely not: by the principle" Then the descriptive genitive of "pistis" (faith), "of faith."
Expanded Translation Rom 3:27; "Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what principle? That of works? Absolutely not: but by the principle of faith."
The law or principle of faith is how the human race enters into a relationship with God's integrity on the basis of grace. The first blessing of God's justice is God's imputed righteousness imputed that results in justification.
The mechanism or the how for this is faith, faith in Jesus Christ. Faith must have an object because faith by itself has no inherent power. The object of faith for salvation is Jesus Christ because salvation adjustment to God's justice is accomplished by believing in the Lord Jesus.
All of the believing in the world secures nothing but condemnation from God's integrity but the tiniest fragment of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ secures eternal salvation.
There is no merit in having faith the merit is in the object of faith. Believing in Jesus Christ provides eternal life.
Therefore faith is not something we do under the principle of works it is channel whereby we appropriate what God has done for us on the basis of grace through Jesus Christ. Eph 2:7-9;