Because they were ignorant of God’s righteousness and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.
For they being ignorant of God's righteousness,.... Either of the righteousness of God revealed in the Gospel, which is no other than the righteousness of Christ, and which they knew nothing of, the whole Gospel being a sealed book, and wholly hidden from them; or of the righteousness of God required in the law, they imagining that only an external conformity to the commands of...
That is, the Jews being ignorant of God's way of justification by faith in Christ discovered in the gospel, and relying upon and trusting to their own works, their obedience to the ceremonial and moral law, to justify and save them, they have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God; that is, to the way and method which the wisdom of God has discovered...
Verse 3. For they being ignorant. The ignorance of the Jews was voluntary, and therefore criminal. The apostle does not affirm that they could not have known what the plan of God was; for he says, () that they had full opportunity of knowing. An attentive study of their own Scriptures would have led them to the true knowledge of the Messiah and his righteousness. See . Comp. , etc.