2:12 For the
hearers of the law are not just before God, but the doers of the law shall be
justified.
For the hearers. Ambrose: does not the law alone save?
No, because it does not make people just. [94] Justice comes not from hearing, but
the doers of the law, which surely is through grace. but the
doers of the law, i.e., all those that believe in Christ, whom the law
promised, and such belief only happens through grace, shall be justified,
i.e., they shall be accounted just; or they shall be made just by God so that
they may be doers. It is not that those who were doers before shall be
justified later; for we could say in a similar vein that the doers of the law
shall be human in the sense that they are already human by creation itself.
Thus those who were not doers before shall be justified, even the Gentiles, and
so he continues: [95]
hearers of the law
are not just—i.e., not just
from hearing the law
before God—even if they are considered just before people
doers of the law—i.e., grace justifies them so that they may
fulfill the law, because they are not doers of the law in order to be justified
but are justified in order to be doers of the law
shall be justified—shall be considered just. The doers shall be
justified, even Gentiles, as is explained in the next verse. (The Glossa
Ordinaria on Romans [trans. Michael Scott Woodard; TEAMS Commentary Series;
Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University, 2011], 39)
Notes
for the Above:
[94] See Peter Lombard, In
Epistolam ad Romanos, PL 191, col. 1344 C. See Ambrosiaster, In
Epistolam ad Romanos, PL 17, col. 83A.
[95] Augustine, De spiritu et
littera, ed. C. F. Vrba and J. Zycha, CESL 60, cap. 26, par. 44, p. 198,
line 30; par. 45, p. 199, line 23.
