John Calvin Commentary Romans 3:8

"and why not (as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say), Let us do evil, that good may come? whose condemnation is just." — Romans 3:8 (ASV)

And not, etc. This is an elliptical sentence, in which a word is to be understood. It will be complete if you read it this way—"and why is it not rather said (as we are reproached, etc.) that we are to do evil, that good things may come?" But the Apostle does not deign to answer the slander, which, however, we can check with the most solid reason.

The pretense, indeed, is this: "If God is glorified by our iniquity, and if nothing can be done by man in this life more befitting than to promote the glory of God, then let us sin to advance his glory!" Now the answer to this is evident: "Evil cannot of itself produce anything but evil; and that God’s glory, when illustrated through our sin, is not the work of man, but the work of God, who, as a wonderful worker, knows how to overcome our wickedness and convert it to another end, so that it turns contrary to what we intend, for the promotion of his own glory." God has prescribed to us the way He wishes to be glorified by us: namely, by true piety, which consists in obedience to His word.

He who leaps over this boundary does not strive to honor God, but to dishonor Him. That it turns out otherwise must be ascribed to the Providence of God, and not to the wickedness of man; for it is not due to human wickedness that the majesty of God is not injured or, indeed, wholly overthrown.

(As we are reproached,) etc. Since Paul speaks so reverently of the secret judgments of God, it is a wonder that his enemies should have fallen into such wantonness as to calumniate him. But there has never been so much reverence and seriousness displayed by God’s servants as to be sufficient to check impure and virulent tongues.

It is not then a new thing that adversaries today level so many false accusations and make our doctrine odious—a doctrine which we ourselves know to be the pure gospel of Christ, and all the angels, as well as the faithful, are our witnesses. Nothing can be imagined more monstrous than what we read here was charged against Paul, so that his preaching might be made hateful to the inexperienced.

Let us then bear this evil when the ungodly abuse the truth which we preach by their calumnies. Nor let us cease, on this account, constantly to defend the genuine confession of it, since it has sufficient power to crush and dissipate their falsehoods. Let us, at the same time, according to the Apostle’s example, oppose, as much as we can, all malicious subtleties (technis — crafts, wiles), so that the base and the abandoned may not, without some check, speak evil of our Creator.

Whose judgment is just. Some take this in an active sense, as signifying that Paul agrees with them to the extent that what they objected to was absurd, so that the doctrine of the gospel might not be thought to be connected with such paradoxes.

But I prefer the passive meaning. For it would not have been suitable simply to express approval of such wickedness, which, on the contrary, deserved to be severely condemned; and this is what Paul seems to me to have done.

And their perverseness was to be condemned on two accounts: first, because this impiety had gained the assent of their minds; and secondly, because, in traducing the gospel, they dared to draw their calumny from it.