Romans 9:30Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Therefore the Apostle used the strongest expressions. He did not say that they had righteousness, but that they "attained" it. The most extraordinary and strange thing was that the seeker did not receive, while the non-seeker received.

By the word "seeker" the Apostle seems to gratify the Jews, but afterward he delivers a decisive blow. Since he could give a strong solution, he was not afraid to make the objection more unpleasant.

Therefore he does not speak about faith and the righteousness that arises from it. Rather, he proves that the Jews were defeated before faith and condemned by their own laws.

You, O Jew, Paul says, did not find even legal righteousness, because you transgressed the law and became subject to the curse.

But the Gentiles, who entered not with the help of the law but by another path, found a righteousness greater than legal righteousness, namely the righteousness from faith.

The Apostle said the same above: "If Abraham was justified by works, he has a boast, but not before God" (Rom 4:2). He was proving that righteousness from faith is higher than righteousness from the law.

Therefore, I said above that there were two difficulties, but now there are three questions. The Gentiles found righteousness, found it without seeking it, and found a righteousness greater than the righteousness from the law.

Opposite questions arise concerning the Jews: Israel did not find righteousness, did not find it despite seeking it, and did not find even the lesser righteousness.

Yet the law had long since proved impossible for fallen human nature to fulfill in all its breadth. Thus, instead of finding their salvation and justification in Christ, the Hebrews only stumbled over Him as over a stone of stumbling.

This was according to the prophetic word of Isaiah: "Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; but whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame" (Rom 9:30-33).

He proved to be the stone that poured forth the water of life for all. “We preach Christ crucified,” says the Apostle Paul in another epistle, “to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness. But to those who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

According to Blessed Theophylact, “one stumbles when he gazes at something to the side and pays no attention to what lies under his feet. So also the Jews, gazing at the Law, stumbled over Christ, that is, they did not believe.”

Showing what the Jews were gazing at, the Most Reverend Theophan writes: “Why did the Jews, meaning the mass of the people, not attain to the law of righteousness? The Apostle answers: because they had only the works of the Law, while all the rest, the spirit and disposition required with them, was wrong and not in accord with the law of righteousness. This deficiency the Apostle gathered into the phrase, ‘because it was not of faith.’ ‘Without faith it is impossible to please God’ (Heb 11:6). This is the natural righteousness mentioned above. It is the spirit that must penetrate all works and give birth to all good dispositions, the virtues, which are realized in works. This was lacking in the people under discussion. Therefore they did not attain to the law of righteousness. But this was also lacking among the Gentiles. How then is it said that they attained it? They attained it because, when the preaching of the Gospel revealed to them the essence of the matter, they at once supplied what was lacking. The Jews also heard of this deficiency, but they were falsely convinced that they possessed it because they had works of the Law. They relied on the works of the Law. Thinking that nothing more would be required of them, they rested upon these works. Their spirit, however, was altogether different, a spirit of selfhood and love of the world. God was on their tongue, but He was not in their heart. Of course, not all Jews were like this. Among them there were many in whom the faith indicated by the Apostle was alive, the faith that constitutes the essence of the natural law of righteousness. They too performed all the works of the Law along with the others, but they did not rely on them. They did them not for their own sake, but for God’s sake, for His glory and for pleasing Him. Therefore, when they heard the preaching of the Gospel, they immediately received it, just as the Gentiles did. The only difference was that they, as Jews, met in it what they had awaited, while the Gentiles received what they had not awaited. The apostolic preaching was a test of who had the true spirit and who did not. It was revealed that the mass of the people were Israel and the seed of Abraham only by the appearance of works. Therefore they did not receive Him who came according to the promise to the fathers. They stumbled over Him. What was foretold has been fulfilled and is still being fulfilled” (Lk 2:34).

"The Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness." The Gentiles lived for their own pleasure. All their care was to arrange their earthly well-being.

They also remembered God, but only in passing. They knew about the life to come, yet it stood in the background for them. They did not despise righteousness, but they did not regard it as law.

They regarded it as a matter of propriety and advantage, and were not ashamed to trample it when it crossed their chief road toward earthly well-being.

They did not pursue and were not zealous to arrange their life righteously according to God's will by remembering God and being filled with His fear. Nor did they thereby prepare for themselves a blessed future.

All this is the righteousness of human life, indicated by God in the ordering of human nature. The Gentiles dimly carried in their minds the thought that it ought to be so.

Yet they had no time to occupy themselves with it strictly. The arrangement of an earthly, self-pleasing life absorbed all their attention and labors.

But when the apostolic preaching began to pass among them, then the righteousness of nature, driven back and suppressed, came forward. It stood before the eyes of the mind and conscience and rebuked those who had not heeded it.

They had nothing on which to lean in order to justify themselves, and the rebuke acted on them with full force. As a result they repented, cleaved to Christ the Lord by faith, received grace, and began to live righteously.

They made righteousness the chief aim of their life. Thus those who did not pursue righteousness attained righteousness, namely the righteousness which is from faith.

By righteousness here one must understand all the spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus: remission of sins, reception of grace, the good ordering of the heart by grace, and every virtue.

Through all these, the righteousness inscribed in human nature at creation, and trampled until then, was restored. "Know," says the Apostle, "that faith is the cause of blessings for the Gentiles.

For it vouchsafed righteousness by grace to those who had formerly gone astray, had no righteousness, and did not wish to seek it" (Blessed Theodoret).