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 The
righteousness of God "by faith of Jesus Christ" (Rom.
3:22 KJ) tells man how to be "rightwise" with God;
i.e., by trusting in Christ. But some, pushing their "saved
by His life" notions, interpret this as faith manifested by
Christ, and attach as an explanation, "his obedient
life." Historically, that concept comes from those who
reject any form of "human implementation" in man's
coming to God. (See pp. 4-5, this issue.)
"Of
Christ" (KJ) in Rom. 3:22; Gal. 2:16; 3:22) is genitive
case, and possession is an over-simplification of its
meaning. Under Objective Genitive, the monumental
"Grammar of the Greek N.T." by A.T. Robertson tells
us: "Here again we must appeal to the root-idea of the
genitive as the case of genus or kind. The resultant idea is due
to the context and one must not suppose that the Greek genitive
means all the different English prepositions used to translate
the resultant idea. Thus in Mk. 11:22... we rightly translate
'have faith in God’, though the genitive does not mean 'in’,
but only the God kind of faith. Cf. Rom. 3:22." Thus, in
the (literal) "faith of Christ" is the idea of kind or
genus, "Christ-faith"; but it is faith we
must have, NOT faith Christ had. The same idea is found in
"God-righteousness." NOT righteousness as an attribute
of God, but the genus or kind of righteousness we must have.
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Robertson's
Word Pictures on Rom. 3: 22 says, "Intermediate agency (dia)
is faith and objective genitive, 'in Jesus Christ’, not
subjective 'of Jesus Christ’, in spite of Haussleiter's
contention for that idea."
Marshall,
in his translation of Nestlé’s text, indicates the objective
nature of the genitive in Rom. 3: and gives afoot note on Gal.
2:16 saying: "Objective genitive, as is shown by the
intervening sentence-- see also 3:22,26). Cf. 'fear of
God'." Vincent's Word Studies says "A common form for
faith in Christ." Meyer's says, "The genitive contains
the object of faith in accordance with prevailing usage"
— and cites nine examples. Wuest's Word Studies, Expositor's,
Alford's, Rotherham's, and other Greek word studies agree.
McKnight (with apparent reference to genus of kind in the
genitive case) says it is "the faith which Christ
enjoined."
If
you read this far we are happy we gave this condensed study.
Perhaps only those who are pushing "imputed life of
Christ" would even strain at making this "his obedient
life," but our readers need to know they have a formidable
task to make that interpretation stick. It's amazing what
teachers of error will use for a text.
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