Study Desk

by whose favour I have received the office of an apostle to bring the Gentiles every where to the obedience of faith preached in his name:

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is celebrated through the whole world.

or indeed that we may have mutual consolation from the faith which is in common to you and to me.

There it is that divine justification is revealed to be wholly by faith: as it is written, " the just shall live by faith."

that divine justification, which by faith in Jesus Christ is extended to all, that believe; for there is no distinction:

whom God had ordained, thro' faith, to be the propitiatory victim by his blood, for the manifestation of his goodness, by patiently passing over their past transgressions: to manifest,

what reason then is there for boasting? it is excluded. what, by the ceremonial law? no: but by the law of faith.

for we conclude, that a man is justified by faith, without observing the legal rites.

since it is one God, who will justify both the Jews and the Gentiles, through faith.

do we then make the law useless by our doctrine of faith? by no means; on the contrary, it is we that observe the law.

whereas he that trusts in God to be made righteous, tho' he has not done such actions, shall find his faith accounted as righteousness.

Is this happiness then for the circumcised only, or for the uncircumcised also? for we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness.

and he received the sign of circumcision, as a seal of the justification by that faith, which the uncircumcised have: that he might be the father of all those who believe, tho' they are uncircumcised, that it might be accounted to them also for righteousness:

and the father of the circumcised, that is of those who are not barely circumcised, but who imitate that faith which our father Abraham had, being yet uncircumcised.

Besides, the promise that he should possess the world, was not made to Abraham, or to his posterity in consideration of the law, but with regard to the righteousness by faith.

for if they only who are of the law have right of possession, faith is made useless, and the promise becomes of no effect.

therefore the inheritance is of faith, that it might be meerly of favour, to the end the promise might be assured to all his posterity, not to that part only who have the law, but to that also who have the faith of Abraham, the father of us all, as it is written,

far from being weak in faith, unconcern'd at his own bodily decay, being then about an hundred years old, and at Sarah's incapacity of child-bearing,

he was not incredulously diffident of the divine promise; but was strong in faith, and did honour to God,

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ,