But that no man is justified by the Law in the sight of God, it is evident ( ὅτι δὲ ἐν νόμῳ οὐδεὶς δικαιοῦται παρὰ τῷ θεῷ); but that in the Law no man is justified with God, is evident.
To "be justified" means to be brought out of a state of guiltiness and cursedness into a state of acceptance. The apostle, assuming that every one is guilty and under a curse, now shows that the Law offers no means of justification.
"But." The apostle is meeting the notion that, though one who is of works of the Law is evermore threatened with a curse ready to light down upon him, and though the curse has been, as it cannot but have been, actually incurred, yet, by setting himself afresh to the endeavour and thenceforward continuing steadfast in all things written in the Law, he may thus win pardon and righteousness with God.
To obviate this conception, without stopping to insist upon the fact that through indwelling sin no man possibly can continue in all the things written in the Law, he puts the notion aside by stating that this is not the method of justification which Scripture recognizes.
This he shows by adducing that cardinal aphorism of Habakkuk, by which, as it should seem, the apostle was wont to substantiate the doctrine of justification by faith (comp. Romans 1:17; Hebrews 10:38).
The way in which the passage is here introduced, almost as an obiter dictum, and as if not needing a formal indication of its coming out of Scripture, suggests the feeling that the passage, as taken in the sense in which the apostle reads it, was one already familiar to his readers, no doubt through his own former teaching.
When in the Acts (Acts 13:39-41) we read that in the synagogue at the Pisidian Antioch, in close connection with the statement that through believing in Christ a man is justified, he cited another passage of Habakkuk (Habakkuk 1:5), denouncing unbelieving despisers, we cannot doubt that he had made good his statement about justification by alleging this same probative text.
"In the Law;" that is, as being it. the sphere and domain of the Law. Compare the use of the same preposition: Romans 2:12, "As many as have sinned under [Greek, 'in'] the Law;" Romans 3:19, "It saith to them that are under [Greek, 'in'] the Law."
An exactly parallel construction is found in Acts 13:39, "From all things from which ye could not by [Greek, 'in'] the Law be justified." They could not as being in the Law find therein any means of gaining acceptance.
"Is justified with God;" comes to be accounted righteous with him. "With God;" not merely outwardly, Levitically, in the judgment of a Levitical priest—but inwardly and in reality, in God's estimation.
The preposition "with" ( παρά) is used similarly in Romans 2:13, "For not the hearers of the Law are righteous with God;" 1 Corinthians 2:1-16:19, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."
It is God himself that justifies the sinner (Romans 3:30; Romans 4:5); but the apostle does not write "is justified by God," because he is confronting the notion so natural to man, and above all, to the Judaizing legalist, that a man is to make himself righteous by doings—ceremonial or moral—of his own.
For, The just shall live by faith ( ὁ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται); the righteous by faith shall live. The apostle is not weaving the prophet's words into his own sentence simply as aptly expressing his own thought, but is citing them probatively as words of Scripture; as if he had said, "As Scripture saith, The righteous," etc.
The same is the case with the words introduced in the next verse out of Leviticus; so Romans 9:7. In Romans 15:3 and 1 Corinthians 2:9 the apostle inserts, "according as it is written," as in parenthesis, before adding the words of Scripture in such a way as to form a continuation of his own sentence.
"The righteous by faith shall live;" that is, the righteous man shall draw his life from his faith. It is generally agreed upon by Hebrew scholars that in the original passage (Habakkuk 2:4) the words, "by his faith" (or possibly, adopting another reading of the Hebrew text, "by my faith," that is, by faith in me) belong to "shall live," rather than to "the righteous" (see on this point Delitzsch on Hebrews 10:38, and Canon Cook on Habakkuk 2:4, in 'Speaker's Commentary').
And that St. Paul so understood it is made probable by the contrasted citation of" shall live in them "in the next verse. With this conjunction of the words, the passage suits the apostle's purpose perfect]y; for if it is by or from his faith that the righteous man lives, then it is by or from his faith that he gets to be accepted by God as righteous.
The "faith" spoken of is shown by the context in Habakkuk to mean such reliance upon God as is of a steadfast character, and not a mere fleeting or occasional acceptance of God's promises as true. This is plainly the view of the passage which is taken by the Pauline writer of the Hebrews in Hebrews 10:38.