Romans 3:8Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Thus the Apostle easily exposed the Greeks, because their life was very corrupt. The life of the Jews, though it appeared to be in complete neglect, nevertheless gave them greater grounds for their defense: the law, circumcision, the fact that God spoke with them, and that they were teachers of all men. Therefore the Apostle deprived them of such a defense and even proved that precisely because of it they are subject to punishment. With this he concludes his discourse here. If those who do these things are not punished, he says, then one must admit the blasphemous proposition: “Let us do evil that good may come.” But if this too is impious. And if those who speak this way are subject to punishment, as Paul declared by saying, “their judgment is just,” then it is entirely clear that sinners are punished. Moreover, if those who speak this way deserve punishment, then much more do those who do such things. If they deserve punishment, they deserve it as having sinned. For it is not a man who punishes, so that someone might suspect his sentence, but God, Who does all things justly.

If they are punished justly, then those who mocked us spoke unjustly in what they said. God has done and does everything so that our life may shine in all things and be perfected everywhere. Therefore let us not give ourselves over to negligence. Then we shall also be able to turn the Gentiles away from error. If we philosophize in words, but behave shamefully in deeds, with what eyes shall we look at them? With what mouth shall we speak about doctrines? Then the Gentile will say to each of us: “You have not fulfilled the lesser thing. How can you be worthy to teach others the greater? You yourself have not yet learned that love of gain is evil. How can you philosophize about heavenly things? You know that this is evil. Your guilt is greater because you sin even while knowing.”

But why should I speak of the Gentile? When our life is corrupt, our own laws do not even permit us to use such freedom. It is said: “But to the sinner God said, ‘Why do you declare My statutes?’” (Ps 50:16). When the Jews were led into captivity and the Persians insistently asked them to sing their sacred songs, they answered: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Ps 137:4). If it was not permitted to sing the word of God in a barbarian land, much less is it permitted in a barbarian soul, for a cruel soul is barbarian. If the law commands silence to those who were in captivity and became slaves of men in a foreign land, it is far more just to close the mouths of slaves of sin and of those living an alien life.

Although the Jews then had instruments, as it is said, “On the willows in its midst we hung up our instruments” (Ps 137:2), nevertheless they could not sing. So also for us, although we have mouth and tongue, these instruments of speech, it is not permitted to use freedom of speech while we serve sin, the cruelest of all barbarians. Tell me, what will you say to the Gentile, once you yourself plunder and practice greed? You will say, “Depart from idolatry, know God, do not strive after silver and gold.” But will he not laugh and answer: first teach this to yourself? It is not the same thing to practice idolatry as a Gentile and to commit the same sin as a Christian.

How shall we be able to turn others away from idolatry when we ourselves have not withdrawn from it? We are nearer to ourselves than to our neighbor. When we cannot persuade ourselves, how shall we persuade others? He who does not govern his own house well will not care for the Church either. How can he correct others who does not know how to govern his own soul? Do not tell me that you do not worship a golden idol. Show me that you do not do what gold commands. There are various forms of idolatry. One man regards mammon as his master. Another recognizes the belly as god. A third recognizes the coarsest passion as god.

But you say that you do not sacrifice oxen to them as the Gentiles do. True. Yet instead, and this is much worse, you slaughter your own soul to them as a sacrifice. You do not bend the knee before them and worship them. Yet with very great submission you do everything commanded you by the belly, by gold, and by the ruling passion. The Greeks are abominable precisely because they deified the passions, naming desire Aphrodite, rage Ares, and drunkenness Dionysus. If you do not make carved images of idols as the Gentiles do, still you submit to the same passions with greater zeal. You make the members of Christ members of a harlot, and defile yourself with other iniquities.

Therefore I beseech you to flee idolatry, for Paul calls covetousness idolatry, and to understand the whole gravity of this vice. Flee covetousness not only in money, but in every vicious inclination: in clothing, in the table, and in everything else. For because of disobedience to the Lord’s laws, we shall undergo a far harsher punishment, as it is said: “The servant who knew his master’s will and did not do it will be beaten with many stripes” (Lk 12:47). Therefore, so that we may escape this punishment and become useful to others and to ourselves, let us strive for virtue and remove every vice from the soul. In this way we shall attain the future good things. May we all be granted to receive them by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with Whom to the Father and the Holy Spirit belong glory, honor, and dominion, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

But in truth this is not so. The speech of the Gentiles is the speech of those who always speak falsehood. “Their judgment is righteous,” that is, they will be punished justly.

Therefore, by sinning I do not become the cause of God's justification, because I am condemned as a sinner. For if I sinned to the glory of God, I would not be condemned.

They commanded those who approached the all-holy preaching not to lose heart, because forgiveness of former sins is given by God. We, stopping our interpretation here and giving rest to the mind, glorify Him who gave man a mouth.

He made both the deaf and the mute. Let us pray that we may learn the meaning of the apostolic teaching. For He who said this will surely grant it: “Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you” (Mt 7:7).

To Him, with the Father and the all-holy Spirit, belong majesty and glory, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

He calls down the righteous judgment of God upon those who assert such a thing and attribute such teaching to the Apostle. The accusation against the Apostle could have arisen from a false explanation of his words: “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Rom 5:20).

The Apostle had probably used these words more than once in his oral teaching.

For every sinner, whether Jew or Gentile, would reason thus: “If the faithfulness of God is exalted by my unfaithfulness to the glory of God, why am I still judged as a sinner?” (Rom 3:7).

One might even go further: “And why not do evil that good may come, as some slander us and say that we teach? Their judgment is righteous!” (Rom 3:8-9). The Apostle cries out indignantly against all such reasonings.

The Apostle refutes the absurd thought of the unbelievers by bringing it to its most evident absurdity. “In that case,” he says, “we would have to do evil that good may come. Some think that we teach this, and for such obvious slander they will incur divine punishment.”

This slander was brought against the Apostle. It was also brought against all Christians in general because of their teaching on God's superabounding grace toward sinners.

For this reason the Novatian schismatics later appeared, falsely teaching that those who had betrayed Christ should not be received into the Church at all. Later came the Pelagians and other false teachers.

They understood the participation of faith and grace in justification and salvation in different ways, and came to various wrong conclusions about the whole of life. Some began to attach too much importance to works, namely Catholics, while others almost rejected their value, namely Protestants.

Meanwhile, although the Apostle Paul spoke of the justifying power of faith and grace, and even expressed it thus, “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (5:20), this had to be understood historically.

It means that the greatest grace of God appeared only when human sins had reached the greatest depth and multitude. In that time, or while in that state, men could receive salvation in no other way than through faith by grace.

For no one had so many good works that he could be justified by them before God. Having received justification in Christ, believers must necessarily live in holiness and in a manner pleasing to God.

Otherwise they will lose all the fruits of justification (6:1-3). Only open enemies of Christian preaching and evil slanderers could say that the Christian teaching on justification by grace contains encouragement to evil deeds.

Such slanderers could be unbelieving Hebrews, and also the supposed guardians of the integrity of Greco-Roman pagan life. Having refuted them victoriously, the Apostle shows that it is the unbelievers themselves who remain in evil, beginning with the Hebrews.

If it were otherwise, and if God’s drawing good from our evil served to justify us, then it would not only destroy the punishable malice of evil, but make it worthy of reward. Then it would follow: do more evil, so that more good may come. This is an outrageous absurdity, which arouses revulsion as soon as it is uttered. This is my teaching; this is what I inculcate and insist upon. I teach this, and not as some say about me, claiming that I say: “Let us do evil that good may come.” This is obvious blasphemy against me and slander. My enemies have invented it in order to spread prejudice against me, and to close men’s hearing to the truth of God that I preach before they hear anything from me.

If in this truth of God lies the salvation of men, and if preaching it to all everywhere is the unchanging will of God, then those who spread such false rumors about me resist God’s good purposes. They cut off the paths of good for the salvation of men. That is, they are fighters against God and haters of mankind. Upon such men the judgment of God is truly righteous.

This slander was raised against Saint Paul by his enemies, who, we must suppose, were from among the Jews. Saint Paul taught that no prior merit is required for admission into the Kingdom of Christ. However righteous someone may be, it is not his righteousness that brings him into this Kingdom, but faith. Conversely, however sinful someone may be, it is not sin that closes the entrance into this Kingdom to him, but his failure to believe. All this is the work of God’s grace. Thus it happens that “where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (cf. Rom 5:20).

Yet in teaching this, the Apostle had in view only entrance into the Kingdom of grace. From those who had entered it, he required the most perfect holiness. He even called them nothing other than saints, showing that being in the Kingdom of Christ and being sinful are incompatible and unthinkable. “What then? Shall we continue in sin,” after receiving grace, or entering the Kingdom of Christ by faith? “Let it not be” (cf. Rom 6:1). So the Apostle taught, and so it was carried out in deed. All were received into the Kingdom of Christ without distinction. But from those who had entered it, perfect holiness was required. Whoever did not show it and fell into sins was cast out.

But the enemies of Saint Paul confused these two points, which are entirely distinct. They charged him with blasphemy, as though he taught in general: “Let us do evil that good may come.” He recalled this now. From your subtle speech follows more directly the very proposition that you force upon me. But if by your own judgment it is absurd, then abandon also that speculation, that God is unrighteous if He brings wrath upon those who by their unrighteousness reveal His righteousness in glory.