ACC ~ Romans 9 v30

RIGHTEOUSNESS IMPLANTED IN THE GENTILES WHO DID NOT PURSUE IT. ORIGEN: It is one thing to pursue righteousness and another to have it implanted within. A person who tries by much teaching and reading to obtain something is said to pursue it. … In this sense, the Gentiles, who did not have the tables of the law or the written Word, cannot be said to have pursued righteousness. Nevertheless, they had it in them because the natural law had taught it to them. Therefore, they were close to that righteousness which is of faith, that is, to Christ. COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS.

AMBROSIASTER: God is the true and lasting righteousness, if he is acknowledged. For what is more righteous that to know God the Father, from whom all things come, and Christ his Son, through whom all things come? Therefore the first part of righteousness is to acknowledge the Creator, and the next part is to keep what he commands. COMMENTARY ON PAUL’S EPISTLES.

CHRYSOSTOM: Paul means that the Gentiles did not go to particular trouble to acquire righteousness, in the way that the Jews did. HOMILIES ON ROMANS 16.

ALTERNATIVE READINGS ACCORDING TO VOICE. PELAGIUS: If this is spoken in the person of the apostle, Paul here once again imagines that the Jews might say: “If it is not true, as we say, that it does not depend on the one who wills or on the one who runs, why have the Gentiles found righteousness, which they never sought before, while Israel could not find it, although they have always sought it?” But if the whole of the above thought belongs to the objectors, the apostle is here replying and summarizing the issue by saying: “What shall I say to these objections which are presented to us except that the Gentiles believed as soon as they were called and that the Jews refused to believe?” Righteousness is by faith, and the Jews refused to believe. PELAGIUS’S COMMENTARY ON ROMANS.

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