Exegesis of Romans 4:15 (5:20; 6:14–15)
The Law in Romans, Part 2
For part 1, see here.
Paul’s cryptic comment about the law in Romans 4:15 will be the main focus of this article. Along the way, we will find that it’s strongly connected to Romans 5:20 and 6:14–15, as well as Paul’s similar argument in Galatians 3.
1. Context
Paul’s discussion of Abraham in Romans 4 is structured by three (clusters of) questions posed at the end of chapter 3, as brilliantly highlighted by Douglas Campbell (Deliverance of God, ch. 18):
4:15 therefore forms a literary unity with verses 13–16 and connects back to the question-and-answer of 3:31.
1.1 Romans 3:31
In my introductory article on Romans, I discussed the different ‘functions’ or ‘modes’ of the Torah in Romans:
- The Torah that commands observances (T1);
- The Torah that testified beforehand to Christ’s fidelity (T2);
- The Torah that oppressed and from which we have been delivered through Christ’s fidelity (T3), apart from works (T1);
- The Torah that is fulfilled by fidelity-active-through-love (T4)
At this point, Paul has only referenced the first two. In 3:27, he made the distinction between T1 and T2, referring to them as ‘the Torah of works’ and ‘the Torah of fidelity’. The latter excludes boasting, the former, within the Teacher’s merit-based system, does not. Then, in verses 28–30, Paul restates his view that deliverance has come to both Jews and pagans through Christ’s fidelity, apart from works, thus circumventing T1 and confirming T2.
This leads his opponent to ask the question: “Do we then overthrow (Gk: katargoumen) the Torah through this fidelity?” Paul’s answer is: “By no means! On the contrary, we uphold (histanomen) the Torah” (v. 31). Again, Paul’s meaning (as in 3:21, and Gal 4:21) is only intelligible if we make the distinction between different ‘Torahs’. The Teacher holds to a specific form of T1, namely the Torah in terms of observances that merit justification. For the Teacher, then, it seems like Paul’s ‘law-less’ gospel overthrows the Torah. What use are observances if they are not part of the equation of salvation? Doesn’t it lead to a libertinism à la “let’s do evil so that good may come”? (In other words, he cannot conceive of an ethics that is intrinsic rather than extrinsic, of doing good for the sake of itself; cf. below.)
What use are observances if they are not part of the equation of salvation?
Paul, however, holds to T2, and thus answers negatively: his gospel affirms the Torah, namely in terms of its promissory testimony. Christ fulfills God’s promises to the patriarchs and thus shows God’s truthfulness (Rom 15:8). As for the fate of T1, we read later in Romans that in principle for Paul, the observances are holy and righteous and good (7:12), but they are only ‘upheld’ post-Christ if they’re not an instance of running a race (for ‘righteousness’) that has already reached its telos (the Messiah) (cf. 9:30–10:4).
1.2. Romans 4:13–16
This question then launches his discussion of Abraham in Romans 4, who testifies to the truth of Paul’s gospel.¹ The question of the Torah being ‘upheld’ or ‘overthrown’ returns in 4:13–16, with the verb katargeo returning and the phrase einai bebaios being used instead of the verb histemi:
13 For the promise that he would inherit the world
did not come to Abraham or to his descendants
through the Torah, but through the deliverance of fidelity.
14 For if it is the adherents of the Torah who are to be the heirs,
fidelity is emptied (kekenotai) and the promise is made void (katergetai).
15 For the Torah brings wrath,
but where the Torah is not, neither is there transgression.
16 For this reason the promise depends on fidelity,
in order that it may rest on generosity,
so that it may be guaranteed (einai bebaian) to all his descendants,
not only to the adherents of the Torah
but also to those who share the fidelity of Abraham…
That Paul is not proposing a ‘Sonderweg’ in verse 16 becomes clear from its parallel in verse 11. Paul is merely indicating that, although Jews may very well observe the Torah post-Christ (see above), that is not the thing that delivers them; that is and can only be Christ’s fidelity, in which they now share through faith (deliverance is “through fidelity, for fidelity”).
If, Paul argues, Torah observance had been the God-intended road to the promised deliverance and inheritance, then (1) Christ’s fidelity would be meaningless and (2) God’s promise would be made void. These two inferences function on different levels:
- If the Torah was the intended road, and it would have worked, then “Christ would have died for nothing” (Gal 2:21); he could have simply started a Torah ministry like the Teacher’s without any intrinsic need for a violent death.
- If the Torah was the intended road, then God’s promise would have been void, because it doesn’t work; God wouldn’t have been able to deliver on his promise because the Torah does not and cannot give life (i.e. resurrect, deliver, save, etc.).
But of course, God’s promise is not void but has been upheld (and here we immediately see that Paul indeed understood ‘Torah’ in his answer of 3:31 in its promissory sense). God has shown himself faithful, namely through the work of Christ; the promise “depends on fidelity” and “rests on generosity” (v. 16; cf. 3:24; 4:4) — that is, God’s gift of his own Son (8:32) and Christ’s gift of himself, in obedience to God and utter, loving disregard of people’s merit. In this way, deliverance and inheritance are guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring — that is, all who share in the faith of Abraham and that of his seed, Christ (cf. Gal 3:29).
But why doesn’t the Torah work as the road to deliverance and inheritance? That is the question that Paul answers in verse 15, and that’s the rhetorical goal we must keep in mind throughout our exegesis. (Verse 15 is therefore not just a parenthesis or an aside; it provides an important argument, although it is very condensed.) As we will see, it hints at the third, more sinister ‘function’ of the Torah (see T3 above), which is here referenced for the first time in Romans.
2. Exegesis of Romans 4:15
Paul’s pithy statements in 4:15 correlate ‘law’/’Torah’ with both ‘wrath’ and ‘transgression’ (see table 2): “for the Torah produces wrath, but where there is no law, neither [is there] transgression.”
That is, “Torah → wrath” and “no law → no transgression”. These two are often taken together as “law/Torah → transgression → wrath” — i.e., law/Torah somehow leads to transgressions which then are the object of wrath.² However, it remains to be seen whether this synthesis is justified, and if so, how it is to be understood.
2.1. No Law, No Transgression
Let’s start with the second half of the verse. A ‘transgression’ (Gk: parabasis) implies a law or norm that is transgressed (cf. 2:23). In verse 15a, the law in view is clearly the Torah, and I would argue that, even though verse 15b could be taken as a generic principle about laws and transgressions, it in fact also has the most proximate law in mind, the Torah (and most certainly not any natural law³).
So then, 4:15b is talking about the Torah in positive relation to transgressions — that is, where the Torah was absent, so were transgressions, strongly implying that, where the Torah was present, so were transgressions (even though that would be inferentially invalid, i.e. the logical fallacy of ‘denying the antecedent’).
Commentators generally agree that this is not just a truism about actions only technically being transgressions if a law stipulates them as such. For one, that bears no argumentative value for Paul —that is, it does nothing to support his previous claim that, if those of the Torah are to be heirs, then the promise is made void (because it could not be fulfilled through the Torah) (for which, cf. Gal 3:17–18).
We get a better sense of what Paul’s talking about from a very similar argument in Galatians 3:19, in which we find a similar correlation of ‘Torah’ with ‘transgression’, though there stated in positive terms: “the Torah was added for the sake of [producing] transgressions.” This text is, in turn, paralleled by Romans 5:20: “The Torah sneaked in, so that trespass increased” and “sin increased” (see table 1).
The parallel between Galatians 3:19 and Romans 5:20 is strong: both highlight the parenthetical nature of the Torah’s arrival as well as its aggravating effect. In light of this, it is fair to say that Paul uses ‘transgressions’ in the Galatian text in a general sense, making it practically (though not technically) equivalent to ‘sins’/’trespasses’. That is to say, Paul’s point does not center on the technicality of transgressions implying a law and sins/trespasses not necessarily doing so, but on the deeds of the transgressions(/trespasses/sins) themselves. This gives us a precedent for a similar use of ‘transgression’ in Romans 4:15.
This then leads to an interesting parallel with 6:14–15, in which Paul ties being ‘under the Torah’ to Sin being your ‘master’ (kyreuo), while tying being ‘under the Gift’ to Sin not being your master. The parallel can be brought out as follows (table 2). (My reading of 6:14–15 will be substantiated in a future article on 7:1–6.)
There therefore seems to be a positive connection between being under the power of the Torah and being under the power of Sin. For now, this point suffices: the ‘Torah of works’ is positively, not negatively, related to transgression/sin/trespass/Sin, and is therefore part of the oppressive situation that ‘the Gift’ of deliverance addressed (cf. 5:20–21), instead of part of the (promised) solution.
2.2. The Torah Produces Wrath
Now, keeping this in mind, we can turn to the first half of the verse: “the Torah produces (katergadzetai; cf. ) wrath”.
The agent of ‘wrath’ might be human, in which case wrath, in terms of anger or violent emotion, would constitute the transgression. The verb katergadzo is regularly used in relation to (evil) human acts (1:27; 2:9; 7:8, 15, 17, 18, 20; 15:18), character traits (5:3), or states of being (7:13). This reading could be corroborated by the lists of sins in Romans 1 and 3 where sins like wrath are mentioned (“murder, strife”, 1:29; “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know”, 3:15–17).⁴ Whereas “love does no harm to a neighbour” and “therefore is the fulfilling of the law” (13:10), wrath often leads to behavior that harms a neighbour. If this interpretation is correct, then the verse would express a much more economical relation, namely “Torah → transgression=wrath”. Furthermore, this verse would perform its argumentative function well (i.e. show why the Torah could not work as the road to the promised deliverance/inheritance).
Whereas “love does no harm to a neighbour” and “therefore is the fulfilling of the law” (13:10), wrath often leads to behavior that harms a neighbour.
However much I would want this reading to work, the problem is that Paul nowhere else uses wrath in relation to human agents (though Rom 12:19 comes close, and Eph 4:31/Col 3:8 do if they are taken to be authentic). That is, Paul always seems to be talking about divine wrath. Moreover, it’s not clear why Paul would see ‘wrath’ as the transgression par excellence (and not more traditional sins like idolatry and sexual immorality), and how this would relate to the story of Abraham.
How, then, are we to understand this as a reference to God’s wrath? This case exemplifies an important dynamic in the interpretation of Romans (as well as Galatians, and perhaps Philippians) — the same term in a different system has a different meaning. Now, when I’m talking about ‘system’, all I mean to say is a reasonably coherent constellation of notions, in this case surrounding God and salvation. In Romans, two ‘systems’ of salvation are in play — call them ‘gospels’ (one true and one false, of course). Both use forensic language, such as ‘law’ and ‘justification’, but one in a retributive way and another in a nonretributive way.⁵ In Romans 1–4, Paul is at pains to refute the retributive gospel of his opponent, by drawing out its absurd implications, such as that Jews have no advantage at all (3:9) and that not a single human being will be justified (3:20), if, that is, the Torah-doers indeed are the ones who will be justified (2:13) (but they’re not; 4:5). Paul then engages this pseudo-gospel in Romans 4 at the exegetical level in relation to Abraham.
In the past, however, these texts have been misread as all reflecting in a straightforward manner Paul’s own gospel (even though many of its presuppositions enjoy no support from the rest of his corpus), and these presuppositions have then been carried over into the interpretation of 4:15. In order to remove them from the interpretive process, let us first take a closer look at them (see also here and here).
Retributive Justice
According to the Teacher, getting circumcised and observing the Torah will enable pagans to be righteous and thus to be evaluated as such on the day of judgment, subsequently receiving the deserved reward of immortality, and thus escaping the impending wrath of God on the lawless pagans (cf. 1:18; 2:5, 8, etc.). Indeed, this prospect of future wrath is arguably the main driver of present law observance (what Campbell elsewhere calls ‘extrinsic’ ethics⁶). It’s not for nothing that the Teacher’s rhetorical opening centers around God’s wrath (1:18); this is how he’s going to scare pagans into taking up Torah observance.This whole framework is clearly a species of retributive justice, although it has some special tweaks due to its salvation-historical setting. For example, normally speaking, transgressors are punished as soon as possible after the transgression, with the judge continually holding court sessions, but here there is only one judgment, at the end of time, which will therefore be an accumulative judgment — it will evaluate and retribute all people’s deeds leading up to the moment of judgment.
If one thing is clear about Paul’s meaning in 4:15 is that he is arguing the very opposite: the Torah provides no escape from wrath, but instead “produces” wrath! So, Paul might be adopting the retributive sense of the term ‘wrath’ in order to score a rhetorical point against his opponent: assuming his system, and seeing that the Torah stands in positive relation to transgression (see above), his Torah-gospel in fact leads to the opposite of what it promises — not salvation, but wrath!
However, Paul does not seem to refer here to future wrath, but to wrath in the period between the giving of the Torah and the coming of Christ (for this temporal scope, cf. Gal 3:23 etc.). What, then, could such ‘wrath’ mean within Paul’s own, nonretributive framework?
Nonretributive Justice
For Paul, Jesus did not die for righteous and good persons (5:7). Instead, Jesus shows God’s love for the ungodly when they were powerless (5:6), sinners (5:8), and God’s very enemies (5:10); through his death God has reconciled them to himself (5:10–11) and brought about deliverance and life for all people (5:15–19). Yes, God delivers the ungodly (4:5)! Where sin and death abounds, God’s gift of deliverance and life abounds much more (5:20). Whereas Sin pays its slaves the ‘wages’ of death, God freely bestows on them deliverance and life through Jesus Christ (6:23; cf. 5:21). In Jesus’ flesh God condemned Sin (8:3). He then raised Jesus to his right hand as ruler over the cosmos, which means Sin and Death no longer have the power to condemn, imprison, and destroy humanity (8:34; cf. 5:16, 18). There is no more condemnation, but freedom and life, not just for ‘us’, but for all humans (again, 5:15–19).This liberation mission of God through Christ and his Spirit is summed up by Paul in the phrase “the righteous act of God” (dikaiosyne theou). It’s an exercise of divine justice, but clearly not of the retributive sort I referred to above (ergo, nonretributive). The context that we should keep in mind is not a courtroom in which God the judge impartially (and mercilessly) retributes to each person what they deserve on the basis of their record of law observance. Rather, the context of this kind of ‘justice’ and ‘judgment’ is a (cosmic) battlefield, in which God’s people have been invaded, imprisoned, and oppressed by an array of evil powers, and in which God has now sent his own ‘troops’, Christ and the pneuma, to destroy those powers, liberate his people, and bring about his good purposes for them.⁷ In sum, the question is not: “who deserves what?”, but, “who’s benevolent and who’s malevolent?”, and then, “who’s stronger than whom?”
So, whatever we say about wrath from this point on must line up with this core truth: God loves sinners and delivers the ungodly. In other words, we must be talking about a wrath that is ultimately gracious for humanity. Moreover, it is situated within a cosmic battlefield in which Sin and Death are God’s primary enemies (cf. 5:12–21; 8:2, etc.).
Very basically, then, what Paul is saying is that, not only did the Torah not provide an escape from divine retributive wrath and a way to the promised inheritance through righteous behaviour (as the Teacher would have it), but it actually created a situation involving human transgressions that elicited divine wrath (that was ultimately expressed in God’s deliverance from Sin through Christ).
Sin was the object of God’s wrath: God “condemned” Sin in the body of Christ (8:3)
We do not need to say more than that at this point, although we can point out that this ‘wrath’ evidently was not directed at the slaves of Sin and Death, but at those powers themselves, since Jesus died for the former and in doing so disarmed the latter. Perhaps the best evidence for this nonretributive reading, with Sin being the object of God’s wrath, is Romans 8:3, where God is said to have “condemned” Sin in the body of Christ, so that Sin can no longer condemn humanity (8:1–2).⁸ Where sin abounded, generosity abounded all the more, destroying Sin, liberating the sinner— a gracious wrath indeed.
This does not mean, of course, that the Torah, in making sin abound and thus ultimately leading to generosity abounding much more, was a good thing for doing so. Paul addresses a very similar issue in 6:1 and further. The Torah, in its sin-increasing mode, was a thing that we needed to be freed from and have been freed through Christ (cf. 7:1–6), in order for us to reach the promised inheritance.
Now we see that 4:15 makes perfect sense within verses 13–16 (for which, see above). If the promise of deliverance and inheritance was to be reached through the Torah, then God’s promise would be made void, because the Torah did not bring people any closer to the promised inheritance, but enslaved them all the more in figurative Egypt, under the rule of Sin. However, through Christ’s fidelity the promise has been fulfilled (4:13, 16a), as a gift, now shared through his pneuma, both with those who observe the Torah and those who don’t (4:16b), like the Romans.
Jesus ‘Saving’ Us From Wrath?
What, then, about Paul’s references elsewhere to a future divine wrath, such as in 5:9 where Paul talks about Jesus who “will save us from wrath”?
It does not make much sense to talk of a divine agent who carries out the divine retributive judgment (2:16) ‘saving’ us from that same retributive judgment. Wrath, if deserved, must be carried out (within a retributive system); otherwise, the whole thing would be a miscarriage of justice! So, if it doesn’t make sense in (the Teacher’s) retributive terms, what then is going on here?
First off, Paul’s rhetorical goal is reassurance: if Jesus died for you while you were at your worst, you don’t have to worry about his future judgment! Since Jesus showed God’s immense love for you by dying for you while you were still sinner and thus delivering you and reconciling you to God, you won’t have to be afraid at all of whatever might happen at the end of time. He who gave up his Son for us will give us all things (8:32) — except wrath, I might add. So don’t be afraid of whatever the Teacher is telling you — you’re saved, and you will be safe.⁹
Judgment of your secrets through Christ (2:16) comes to mean a very different thing if you have a fundamentally secure relationship with Christ — that is, one of unconditional love.
In Campbell’s terms,¹⁰ whatever ‘judgment’ by Christ is coming your way will not be like a job interview — in or out. You’ve already been ‘hired’ by Christ, and he didn’t even look at your resume (phew!). Rather, it will be like a job evaluation of people’s work ‘in Christ’, with different ‘bonuses’ for different people (cf. 14:10–12; 2 Cor 5:10). Judgment of your secrets through Christ (2:16) comes to mean a very different thing if you have a fundamentally secure relationship with Christ — that is, one of unconditional love. We will be saved through the “life” (5:10) of the one who died for us¹¹ — the resurrected Lord is the crucified Jesus.¹² Accordingly, “each will receive their praise from God” (1 Cor 4:5; cf. Rom 2:29).
Secondly, Paul might be reconfiguring the common Jewish notion of eschatological ‘wrath’ within his own framework.¹³ It seems hard to deny that Paul believed in some form of ‘coming wrath’ from God (cf. 1 Thes 1:10; 5:10). However, again, this should not be understood in terms of a judge impartially measuring out and distributing what each person deserves, but in terms of a king going out to destroy and/or subdue his enemies and free his people (see above). Paul’s point, then, is that you don’t need to be afraid of that coming ‘judgment’ anymore because you’re no longer an enemy! In fact, if you read on in chapter 5 (and chapter 11 for that matter), it becomes clear that no human is God’s enemy; as Paul would say elsewhere, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19). The rest of Romans 5–8 shows who God’s enemies do include, namely Sin and Death, and the Torah in its mode or function as instrument of Sin and Death, as well as angels, principalities, and powers (8:38).
This nonretributive reading is confirmed point-by-point by 1 Corinthians 15, in which we read that (1) all humanity will be resurrected in Christ (v. 20-23), (2) all enemies of Christ will ultimately be subdued, namely every ruler, authority, and power (vv. 24–25) and (3) Death is the final (and perhaps greatest) enemy (vv. 26, 54–55), in its alliance with Sin and the Torah (!) (v. 56). “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 57; cf. Rom 7:24–25).
Endnotes
1. Paul exploits the fact that God’s promise of offspring and cosmic rulership was generously and de facto given before any commandments, in relation to Abraham’s trust, even though it was fulfilled only many years laters, after the giving of commandments (like circumcision) and Abraham’s years of virtuous fidelity; see here.
2. See e.g. Jewett, Romans, 327: “That law ‘produces’ (κατεργάζεται) wrath effectively covers the minor premise that is missing in this enthymeme: first comes the law, then the transgression, then the response of divine wrath.”
3. 2:14–15 produces problems for the conventional interpreter who does think that this text reflects Paul’s own notion of natural law, because then it makes no sense for Paul to speak in 4:15 of “where there is no law”! A world created with natural, universally accessible law knows no such place. However, I’m following Campbell’s reading of this text in which Paul draws out some awkward implications from his opponent’s system to produce a scandalous role reversal (pagans judging Jews) and ultimately absurdity. If we don’t have to view natural law as a Pauline notion, it does make sense to talk of a ‘lawless’ period in history, namely in the time between Adam and Israel, and Paul takes this up in 5:12–14 (see the subsequent article in this series).
4. For a reading of Romans that highlights the theme of peace, see Michael Gorman, Romans: A Theological and Pastoral Commentary.
5. Cf. De Boer, Galatians, 186, who talks about the dikaio-word group as having a basic forensic sense, but Paul imbuing them with nonforensic meaning as he articulates his own theology. Note also his distinction between ‘forensic’ and ‘cosmological’ apocalyptic eschatology in his essay “Paul and Jewish Apocalyptic Eschatology”. I like the language of retributive and nonretributive justice, because it highlights that both frameworks are about justice, but in radically different terms. If God as judge sets the oppressed free and grants his enemies amnesty, regardless of merit, then that is a form of justice, even if it is not retributive. (It could even be said to take place within a courtroom, albeit a martial one, and thus be called ‘forensic’.)
6. See his Pauline Dogmatics, ch. 15.
7. For the apocalyptic ‘battlefield’ language of Paul, cf. Martyn, Galatians. There’s a lot of it in Romans: besides overt power language, such as Lord, Messiah, ‘under the power of’ (hypo; 6:14–15; 7:14), to reign (basileuo, 5:14, 17, 21; 6:12), to rule (kyrieuo, 6:9, 14; 7:1), to obey (6:12, 16–17), to submit (8:7, 20), and weak (5:6, 8:3), there is also directly military language, such as enemy (5:10), hostile (8:7), military base of operations (amorphe; 7:8, 11), wage war, make prisoners of war (7:23), kill (7:4; 8:13, 36), rescue (7:24), peace (5:1; 8:6), reconciliation (5:10–11), and to ‘superconquer’ (hypernikao, 8:37), among others. Then there is also the persistent slavery metaphor, as well as broader life and death language, for which references seem superfluous, and which are both closely related to battlefield language.
8. Cf. the parallel between ‘condemnation’ and the rule of Death in Romans 5:15–18; the contrast between condemnation outside of Christ and liberation from Sin and Death in Christ in 8:1–2 (see also 8:33–34), and the general parallels between ‘condemnation’ and death in 2 Cor 3; all of this will be further substantiated in a future article on Rom 7–8 in this same series.
9. Cf. Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self, 37: “In 1 Thessalonians, Paul’s basic idea was that Christ-believers would be saved from God’s wrath in the sense that no matter what would happen to the world at large, they would at least be raised (whether already dead or alive) to be forever together with the Lord in the air.”
10. See Pauline Dogmatics, 421.
11. Assuming that the “saved” of verse 10 refers to the same thing as the “saved” of verse 9, and thus to the final judgment, “his life” would refer to his state as resurrected Lord (and life-giving pneuma; 1 Cor 15:45) in which he will return for the final consummation of things.
12. I think a similar phrasing goes back to Michael Gorman, who got it from Ernst Käsemann, if I recall correctly.
13. Such an approach could also be applied to terms like ‘destruction’, which is not necessarily retributive, but would change meaning when framed by the liberative and merciful work of Christ and the Spirit as described in Romans 5–8. This approach to Paul is preferable to me over making him basically incoherent about some of the most consequential things, or explaining such incoherence through arguing for a development in his thinking about the same. Paul’s argument in Romans 5 for universal deliverance and life stands rock solid and receives much more elaboration than notions like destruction ever do, so it would be wise to take the former and not the latter as a start for Paul’s thought.
