It has been hard to resist the urge to highlight every single jot and tittle of this commentary by Karl Barth on Romans so I have decided to periodically post collections of quotes.

“Paul, as a child of his age addressed his contemporaries”

“My whole energy of interpreting has been expended in an effort to see through and beyond history into the spirit of the Bible, which is the Eternal Spirit.”

“It is a communication which presumes faith in the living God, and which creates that which it presumes.”

“Grace is the incomprehensible fact that God is well pleased with a man, and that a man can rejoice in God. Only when grace is recognized as incomprehensible is it grace. Grace exists, therefore, only where the resurrection is reflected. Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf which separates God and man, and by exposing it, bridges it.”

“Anxiety concerning the victory of the Gospel – that is, Christian Apologetics – is meaningless, because the Gospel is the victory by which the world is overcome.”

“God does not need us, indeed if he were not God he would be ashamed of us.We, at any rate, cannot be ashamed of him.”

“No divinity which needs anything, any human propaganda, can be God.”

“Bound to the world as it is, we cannot here and now apprehend, we can only receive the Gospel.”

“If Christ be very God he must be unknown, for to be known directly is the characteristic mark of an idol.” – Kierkegaard

“The judgement under which we stand is a fact, quite apart from our attitude toward it.Indeed, it is the fact most characteristic of our life.”

“The kingdom of men is, without exception, never the kingdom of God.”

“The world possesses deep and penetrating insight. It refuses to admit your supposed superiority. It recognizes that you are flesh of its flesh, bone of its bone. Your corruption renders you unfit to work for God and to take the lead in advancing His cause. You act in precise contradiction to the profession which you have not unreasonably adopted for you undertake a mission without being sent. Where law is, the word expects a doing of the law; where impress of revelation is it expects actual revelation.”

“Human righteousness is, as we have seen, in itself an illusion; there is in this world no observable righteousness. There may, however be a righteousness before God, a righteousness that comes from Him.”

“Judgement is not annihilation; by it all things are established. Cleansing is not a process of emptying; it is an act of fulfillment. God has not forsaken men; but God is – true.”

“The oracles of God…are the incomprehensible signs of the incomprehensible truth that, though the world is incapable of redemption, yet there is a redemption for the world.”

“God never reveals Himself to no purpose. Where there is law even if it be nought but burnt out cinders, there is a word of the faithfulness of God.”

“The faithfulness of God may be obscured, but we cannot be rid of it; His gifts may evoke no gratitude, but they will not be withdrawn; His goodness will bring under judgement those who withstand it, but it is His goodness nonetheless.”

“The bearer of revelation himself lives of the recognition that God is declared to be God by his inadequacy.”

“The arrogance with which we set ourselves by the side of God, with the intention of doing something for Him, deprives us of the only possible ground of salvation, which is to cast ourselves upon His favour or disfavour.”