Romans 3:27-28

3:27 Where, then, is boasting? ¹  It is excluded! By what principle? ²  Of works? No, but by the principle of faith! 3:28 For we consider that a person ³  is declared righteous by faith apart from the works of the law. ⁴ 

Romans 4:4-5

4:4 Now to the one who works, his pay is not credited due to grace but due to obligation. ⁵  4:5 But to the one who does not work, but believes in the one who declares the ungodly righteous, ⁶  his faith is credited as righteousness.

Romans 5:20-21

5:20 Now the law came in ⁷  so that the transgression ⁸  may increase, but where sin increased, grace multiplied all the more, 5:21 so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Deuteronomy 9:4-6

9:4 Do not think to yourself after the Lord your God has driven them out before you, “Because of my own righteousness the Lord has brought me here to possess this land.” It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out ahead of you. 9:5 It is not because of your righteousness, or even your inner uprightness, ⁹  that you have come here to possess their land. Instead, because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out ahead of you in order to confirm the promise he ¹⁰  made on oath to your ancestors, ¹¹  to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 9:6 Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn ¹²  people!

Deuteronomy 9:1

Theological Justification of the Conquest

9:1 Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there, people greater and stronger than you who live in large cities with extremely high fortifications. ¹³ 

Colossians 1:10

1:10 so that you may live ¹⁴  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ¹⁵  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God,

Galatians 2:21

2:21 I do not set aside ¹⁶  God’s grace, because if righteousness ¹⁷  could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing! ¹⁸ 

Galatians 5:4

5:4 You who are trying to be declared righteous ¹⁹  by the law have been alienated ²⁰  from Christ; you have fallen away from grace!

Ephesians 2:4-9

2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! ²¹  – 2:6 and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 2:7 to demonstrate in the coming ages ²²  the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward ²³  us in Christ Jesus. 2:8 For by grace you are saved ²⁴  through faith, ²⁵  and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; 2:9 it is not from ²⁶  works, so that no one can boast. ²⁷ 

Ephesians 2:2

2:2 in which ²⁸  you formerly lived ²⁹  according to this world’s present path, ³⁰  according to the ruler of the kingdom ³¹  of the air, the ruler of ³²  the spirit ³³  that is now energizing ³⁴  the sons of disobedience, ³⁵ 

Ephesians 1:9

1:9 He did this when he revealed ³⁶  to us the secret ³⁷  of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth ³⁸  in Christ, ³⁹ 

Titus 3:5

3:5 he saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit,

[3:27]  ¹ tn Although a number of interpreters understand the “boasting” here to refer to Jewish boasting, others (e.g. C. E. B. Cranfield, “‘The Works of the Law’ in the Epistle to the Romans,” JSNT 43 [1991]: 96) take the phrase to refer to all human boasting before God.

[3:27]  ² tn Grk “By what sort of law?”

[3:28]  ³ tn Here ἄνθρωπον (anqrwpon) is used in an indefinite and general sense (BDAG 81 s.v. ἄνθρωπος 4.a.γ).

[3:28]  ⁴ tn See the note on the phrase “works of the law” in Rom 3:20.

[4:4]  ⁵ tn Grk “not according to grace but according to obligation.”

[4:5]  ⁶ tn Or “who justifies the ungodly.”

[5:20]  ⁷ tn Grk “slipped in.”

[5:20]  ⁸ tn Or “trespass.”

[9:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “uprightness of your heart” (so NASB, NRSV). The Hebrew word צְדָקָה (tsÿdaqah, “righteousness”), though essentially synonymous here with יֹשֶׁר (yosher, “uprightness”), carries the idea of conformity to an objective standard. The term יֹשֶׁר has more to do with an inner, moral quality (cf. NAB, NIV “integrity”). Neither, however, was grounds for the Lord’s favor. As he states in both vv. 4-5, the main reason he allowed Israel to take this land was the sinfulness of the Canaanites who lived there (cf. Gen 15:16).

[9:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the Lord.” See note on “he” in 9:3.

[9:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “fathers.”

[9:6]  ¹² tn Heb “stiff-necked” (so KJV, NAB, NIV).

[9:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “fortified to the heavens” (so NRSV); NLT “cities with walls that reach to the sky.” This is hyperbole.

[1:10]  ¹⁴ tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

[1:10]  ¹⁵ tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”

[2:21]  ¹⁶ tn Or “I do not declare invalid,” “I do not nullify.”

[2:21]  ¹⁷ tn Or “justification.”

[2:21]  ¹⁸ tn Or “without cause,” “for no purpose.”

[5:4]  ¹⁹ tn Or “trying to be justified.” The verb δικαιοῦσθε (dikaiousqe) has been translated as a conative present (see ExSyn 534).

[5:4]  ²⁰ tn Or “estranged”; BDAG 526 s.v. καταργέω 4 states, “Of those who aspire to righteousness through the law κ. ἀπὸ Χριστοῦ be estranged from Christ Gal 5:4.”

[2:5]  ²¹ tn Or “by grace you have been saved.” The perfect tense in Greek connotes both completed action (“you have been saved”) and continuing results (“you are saved”).

[2:7]  ²² tn Or possibly “to the Aeons who are about to come.”

[2:7]  ²³ tn Or “upon.”

[2:8]  ²⁴ tn See note on the same expression in v. 5.

[2:8]  ²⁵ tc The feminine article is found before πίστεως (pistews, “faith”) in the Byzantine text as well as in A Ψ 1881 pc. Perhaps for some scribes the article was intended to imply creedal fidelity as a necessary condition of salvation (“you are saved through the faith”), although elsewhere in the corpus Paulinum the phrase διὰ τῆς πίστεως (dia th" pistew") is used for the act of believing rather than the content of faith (cf. Rom 3:30, 31; Gal 3:14; Eph 3:17; Col 2:12). On the other side, strong representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts (א B D* F G P 0278 6 33 1739 al bo) lack the article. Hence, both text-critically and exegetically, the meaning of the text here is most likely “saved through faith” as opposed to “saved through the faith.” Regarding the textual problem, the lack of the article is the preferred reading.

[2:9]  ²⁶ tn Or “not as a result of.”

[2:9]  ²⁷ tn Grk “lest anyone should boast.”

[2:2]  ²⁸ sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

[2:2]  ²⁹ tn Grk “walked.”

[2:2]  ³⁰ tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

[2:2]  ³¹ tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

[2:2]  ³² tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

[2:2]  ³³ sn The ruler of the kingdom of the air is also the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience. Although several translations regard the ruler to be the same as the spirit, this is unlikely since the cases in Greek are different (ruler is accusative and spirit is genitive). To get around this, some have suggested that the genitive for spirit is a genitive of apposition. However, the semantics of the genitive of apposition are against such an interpretation (cf. ExSyn 100).

[2:2]  ³⁴ tn Grk “working in.”

[2:2]  ³⁵ sn Sons of disobedience is a Semitic idiom that means “people characterized by disobedience.” However, it also contains a subtle allusion to vv. 4-10: Some of those sons of disobedience have become sons of God.

[1:9]  ³⁶ tn Or “He did this by revealing”; Grk “making known, revealing.” Verse 9 begins with a participle dependent on “lavished” in v. 8; the adverbial participle could be understood as temporal (“when he revealed”), which would be contemporaneous to the action of the finite verb “lavished,” or as means (“by revealing”). The participle has been translated here with the temporal nuance to allow for means to also be a possible interpretation. If the translation focused instead upon means, the temporal nuance would be lost as the time frame for the action of the participle would become indistinct.

[1:9]  ³⁷ tn Or “mystery.” In the NT μυστήριον (musthrion) refers to a divine secret previously undisclosed.

[1:9]  ³⁸ tn Or “purposed,” “publicly displayed.” Cf. Rom 3:25.

[1:9]  ³⁹ tn Grk “in him”; the referent (Christ) has been specified in the translation for the sake of clarity.