Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
Chapter 2
THE WRITER AND HIS READERS
Romans 1:1-7PAUL, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. So the man opens his Lord’s message with his own name. We may, if we please, leave it and pass on, for to the letter writer of that day it was as much a matter of course to prefix the personal name to the letter as it is to us to append it. But then, as now, the name was not a mere word of routine; certainly not in the communications of a religious leader. It avowed responsibility; it put in evidence a person. In a letter of public destination it set the man in the light and glare of publicity, as truly as when he spoke in the Christian assembly, or on the Areopagus, or from the steps of the castle at Jerusalem. It tells us here, on the threshold, that the messages we are about to read are given to us as "truth through personality"; they come through the mental and spiritual being of this wonderful and most real man. If we read his character aright in his letters, we see in him a fineness and dignity of thought which would not make the publication of himself a light and easy thing. But his sensibilities, with all else he has, have been given to Christ (who never either slights or spoils such gifts, while He accepts them); and if it will the better win attention to the Lord that the servant should stand out conspicuously, to point to Him, it shall be done.
For he is indeed "Jesus Christ’s bondservant"; not His ally merely, or His subject, or His friend. Recently, writing to the Galatian converts, he has been vindicating the glorious liberty of the Christian, set free at once from "the curse of the law" and from the mastery of self. But there too, at the Galatians 6:17, he has dwelt on his own sacred bondage; "the brand of his Master, Jesus." The liberty of the Gospel is the silver side of the same shield whose side of gold is an unconditional vassalage to the liberating Lord. Our freedom is "in the Lord" alone; and to be "in the Lord," is to belong to Him as wholly as a healthy hand belongs, in its freedom, to the physical centre of life and will. To be a bondservant is terrible in the abstract. To be "Jesus Christ’s bondservant" is Paradise, in the concrete. Self-surrender, taken alone, is a plunge into a cold void. When it is surrender to "the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me," {Galatians 2:20} it is the bright homecoming of the soul to the seat and sphere of life and power.
This bondservant of His now before us, dictating, is called to be an Apostle. Such is his particular department of servitude in the "great house." It is a rare commission-to be a chosen witness of the Resurrection, a divinely authorised "bearer" of the holy Name, a first founder and guide of the universal Church, a legatus a latere of the Lord Himself. Yet the apostleship, to St. Paul, is but a species of the one genus, bond service. "To every man is his work," given by the one sovereign will. In a Roman household one slave would water the garden, another keep accounts, another in the library would do skilled literary work; yet all equally would be "not their own, but bought with a price." So in the Gospel, then, and now. All functions of Christians are alike expressions of the one will of Him who has purchased, and who "calls."
Meanwhile, this bondservant-apostle, because "under authority," carries authority. His Master has spoken to him, that he may speak. He writes to the Romans as man, as friend, but also as the "vessel of choice," to bear the Acts 9:15 of Jesus Christ.
Such is the sole essential work and purpose of his life. He is separated to the Gospel of God; isolated from all other ruling aims to this. In some respects he is the least isolated of men; he is in contact all round with human life. Yet he is "separated." In Christ, and for Christ, he lives apart from even the worthiest personal ambitions. Richer than ever, since he "was in Christ," {Romans 16:7} in all that makes man’s nature wealthy, in power to know, to will, to love, he uses all his riches always for "this one thing," to make men understand "the Gospel of God." Such isolation, behind a thousand contacts, is the Lord’s call for His true followers still.
"The Gospel": word almost too familiar now, till the thing is too little understood. What is it? In its native meaning, its eternally proper meaning, it is the divine "Good Tidings." It is the announcement of Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour of men, in whom God and man meet with joy. That announcement stands in living relation to a bright chain of precepts, and also to the sacred darkness of convictions and warnings; we shall see this amply illustrated in this Epistle. But neither precepts nor threatenings are properly the Gospel. The Gospel saves from sin, and enables for holy conduct. But in itself it is the pure, mere message of redeeming Love.
It is "the Gospel of God"; that is, as the neighbouring sentences show it, the gospel of the blessed Father. Its origin is in the Father’s love, the eternal hill whence runs the eternal stream of the work of the Son and the power of the Spirit. "God loved the world"; "The Father sent the Son."
The stream leads us up to the mount. "Hereby perceive we the love of God." In the Gospel, and in it alone, we have that certainty, "God is Love."
Now he dilates a little, in passing, on this dear theme, the Gospel of God. He whom it reveals as eternal Love was true to Himself in the preparation as in the event; He promised His Gospel beforehand through His prophets in (the) holy Scriptures. The sunrise of Christ was no abrupt, insulated phenomenon, unintelligible because out of relation. "Since the world began," {Luke 1:70} from the dawn of human history, predictive word and manifold preparing work had gone before. To think now only of the prediction, more or less articulate, and not of the preparation through general divine dealings with man-such had the prophecy been that, as the pagan histories tell us, "the whole East" heaved with expectations of a Judaean world rule about the time when, as a fact, Jesus came. He came, alike to disappoint every merely popular hope and to satisfy at once the concrete details and the spiritual significance of the long forecast. And He sent His messengers out to the world carrying as their text and their voucher that old and multi-fold literature which is yet one Book; those "holy writings" (our own Old Testament, from end to end,) which were to them nothing less than the voice of the Holy Spirit. They always put the Lord, in their preaching, in contact with that prediction.
In this, as in other things, His glorious Figure is unique. There is no other personage in human history, himself a moral miracle, heralded by a verifiable foreshadowing in a complex literature of previous centuries.
"The hope of Israel" was, and is, a thing sui generis. Other preparations for the Coming were, as it were, sidelong and altogether by means of nature. In the Holy Scriptures the supernatural led directly and in its own way to the supreme supernatural Event; the Sacred Way to the Sanctuary.
What was the burthen of the vast prophecy, with its converging elements? It was concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Whatever the prophets themselves knew, or did not know, of the inmost import of their records and utterances, the import was this. The Lord and the Apostles do not commit us to believe that the old seers ever had a full conscious foresight, or even that in all they "wrote of Him" they knew that it was of Him they wrote: though they had insights above nature, and knew it, as when David "in the Spirit called Him Lord," and Abraham "saw His day." But they do amply commit us to believe, if we are indeed their disciples, that the whole revelation through Israel did, in a way quite of its own kind, "concern the Son of God." See this in such leading places as Luke 24:25-27, John 5:39; John 5:46, Acts 3:21-25; Acts 10:43; Acts 28:23.
A Mahometan in Southern India, not long ago, was first drawn to faith in Jesus Christ by reading the genealogy with which St. Matthew begins his narrative. Such a procession, he thought, must lead up a mighty name; and he approached with reverence the story of the Nativity. That genealogy is, in a certain sense, the prophecies in compendium. Its avenue is the miniature of theirs. Let us sometimes go back, as it were, and approach the Lord again through the ranks of His holy foretellers, to get a new impression, of His majesty.
"Concerning His Son." Around that radiant word, full of light and heat, the cold mists of many speculations have rolled themselves, as man has tried to analyse a divine and boundless fact. For St. Paul, and for us, the fact is everything, for peace and life. This Jesus Christ is true Man; that is certain. He is also, if we trust His life and word, true Son of God. He is on the one hand personally distinct from Him whom He calls Father, and whom He loves, and who loves Him with infinite love. On the other hand He is so related to Him that He fully possesses His Nature, while He has that Nature wholly from Him. This is the teaching of Gospels and Epistles; this is the Catholic Faith. Jesus Christ is God, is Divine, truly and fully. He is implicitly called by the incommunicable Name. {compare John 12:41, Isaiah 6:7} He is openly called God in His own presence on earth. {John 20:28} But what is, if possible, even more significant, because deeper below the surface-He is regarded as the eternally satisfying Object of man’s trust and love. {e.g., Php 3:21, Ephesians 3:19} Yet Jesus Christ is always preached as related Son-wise to Another, so truly that the mutual love of the Two is freely adduced as type and motive for our love.
We can hardly make too much, in thought and. teaching, of this Divine Sonship, this filial Godhead. It is the very "Secret of God," {Colossians 2:2} both as a light to guide our reason to the foot of the Throne, and as a power upon the heart. "He that hath the Son hath the Father"; "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father"; "He hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His Love."
Who was born of the seed of David, according to the flesh. So the New Testament begins; {Matthew 1:1} so it almost closes. {Revelation 22:6} St. Paul, in later years, recalls the Lord’s human pedigree again: {2 Timothy 2:8} "Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, is risen from the dead." The old Apostle in that last passage, has entered the shadow of death; he feels with one hand for the rock of history, with the other for the pulse of eternal love. Here was the rock; the Lord of life was the Child of history, Son and Heir of a historical king, and then, as such, the Child of prophecy too. And this, against all surface appearances beforehand. The Davidic "ground" {Isaiah 53:2} had seemed to be dry as dust for generations, when the Root of endless life sprang up in it.
"He was born" of David’s seed. Literally, the Greek may be rendered, "He became, He came to be." Under either rendering we have the wonderful fact that He who in His higher eternity is, above time and including it, did in His other Nature, by the door of becoming, enter time, and thus indeed "fill all things." This He did, and thus He is, "according to the flesh." "Flesh" is, indeed, but a part of Manhood. But a part can represent the whole; and "flesh" is the part most antithetical to the Divine Nature, with which here Manhood is collocated and in a sense contrasted. So it is again Romans 9:5.
And now, of this blessed Son of David, we hear further:-who was designated to be Son of God; literally, "defined as Son of God," betokened to be such by "infallible proof." Never for an hour had he ceased to be, in fact, Son of God. To the man healed of birth-blindness He had said, {John 9:35} "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" But there was an hour when He became openly and so to speak officially what He always is naturally; somewhat as a born king is "made" king by coronation. Historical act then affirmed independent fact, and as it were gathered it into a point for use. This affirmation took place in power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, as a result of resurrection from the dead. "Sown in weakness," Jesus was indeed "raised in" majestic, tranquil "power." Without an effort He stepped from out of the depth of death, from under the load of sin. It was no flickering life, crucified but not quite killed, creeping back in a convalescence mis-called resurrection; it was the rising of the sun. That it was indeed daylight, and not day dream, was shown not only in His mastery of matter, but in the transfiguration of His followers. No moral change was ever at once more complete and more perfectly healthful than what His return wrought in that large and various group, when they learnt to Say, "We have seen the Lord." The man who wrote this Epistle had "seen Him last of all". {1 Corinthians 15:8} That was indeed a sight "in power," and working a transfiguration.
So was the Son of the Father affirmed to be what He is; so was He "made" to be, for us His Church, "the Son," in whom we are sons. And all this was, "according to the Spirit of holiness"; answerably to the foreshadowing and foretelling of that Holy Spirit who, in the prophets, "testified of the sufferings destined for the Christ, and of the glories that should follow." {1 Peter 1:11}
Now lastly, in the Greek of the sentence, as if pausing for a solemn entrance, comes in the whole blessed Name; even Jesus Christ our Lord. Word by word the Apostle dictates, and the scribe obeys. Jesus, the human Name; Christ, the mystic Title; our Lord, the term of royalty and loyalty which binds us to Him, and Him to us. Let those four words be ours forever. If everything else falls in ruins from the memory, let this remain, "the strength of our heart, and our portion forever."
Through whom, the Apostle’s voice goes on, we received grace and apostleship. The Son was the Channel "through" which the Father’s choice and call took effect. He "grasped" Paul, {Php 3:12} and joined him to Himself, and in Himself to the Father; and now through that Union the motions of the Eternal will move Paul. They move him, to give him "grace and apostleship"; that is, in effect, grace for apostleship, and apostleship as grace; the boon of the Lord’s presence in him for the work, and the Lord’s work as a spiritual boon. He often thus links the word "grace" with his great mission; for example, in Galatians 2:9, Ephesians 3:2; Ephesians 3:8, and perhaps Php 1:7. Alike the enabling peace and power for service, and then the service itself, are to the Christian a free, loving, beautifying gift.
Unto obedience of faith among all the Nations. This "obedience of faith" is in fact faith in its aspect as submission. What is faith? It is personal trust, personal self-entrustment to a person. It "gives up the case" to the Lord, as the one only possible Giver of pardon and of purity. It is "submission to the righteousness of God". {Romans 10:3} Blessed the man who so obeys, stretching out arms empty and submissive to receive, in the void between them, Jesus Christ.
"Among all the Nations," "all the Gentiles." The words read easily to us, and pass perhaps half unnoticed, as a phrase of routine. Not so to the ex-Pharisee who dictated them here. A few years before he would have held it highly "unlawful to keep company with, or come unto, one of another nation". {Acts 10:2; Acts 10:8} Now, in Christ, it is as if he had almost forgotten that it had been so. His whole heart, in Christ, is blent in personal love with hearts belonging to many nations; in spiritual affection he is ready for contact with all hearts. And now he, of all the Apostles, is the teacher who by life and word is to bring this glorious catholicity home forever to all believing souls, our own included. It is St. Paul preeminently who has taught man, as man, in Christ, to love man; who has made Hebrew, European, Hindoo, Chinese, Caffre, Esquimaux, actually one in the conscious brotherhood of eternal life.
For His Name’s sake; for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ revealed. The Name is the self-unfolded Person, known and understood. Paul had indeed come to know that Name, and to pass it on was now his very life. He existed only to win for it more insight, more adoration, more love. "The Name" deserved that great soul’s entire devotion. Does it not deserve our equally entire devotion now? Our lives shall who belong to Him, His personal property, their motto also, "For His Name’s sake."
Now he speaks direct of his Roman friends. Among whom, among these multifarious "Nations," you too are Jesus Christ’s called ones, men who belong to Him, because "called" by Him. And what is "called?" Compare the places where the word is used-or where its kindred words are used-in the Epistles, and you will find a certain holy specialty of meaning. "Invited" is no adequate paraphrase. The "called" man is the man who has been invited and has come; who has obeyed the eternal welcome; to whom the voice of the Lord has been effectual. See the word in the opening paragraphs of 1 Corinthians. There the Gospel is heard, externally by a host of indifferent or hostile hearts, who think it "folly," or "a stumbling block." But among them are those who hear, and understand, and believe indeed. To them "Christ is God’s power, and God’s wisdom." And they are "the called."
In the Gospels, the words "chosen" and "called" are in antithesis; the called are many, the chosen few; the external hearers are many, the hearers inwardly are few. In the Epistles a developed use shows the change indicated here, and it is consistently maintained.
To all who in Rome are God’s beloved ones. Wonderful collocation, wonderful possibility! "Beloved ones of God," as close to the eternal heart as it is possible to be, because "in the Beloved"; that is one side. "In Rome," in the capital of universal paganism, material power, iron empire, immeasurable worldliness, flagrant and indescribable sin; that is the other side. "I know where thou dwellest," said the glorified Saviour to much tried disciples at a later day; "even where Satan has his throne." {Revelation 2:13} That throne was conspicuously present in the Rome of Nero. Yet faith, hope, and love could breathe there, when the Lord "called." They could much more than breathe. This whole Epistle shows that a deep and developed faith, a glorious hope, and the mighty love of a holy life were matters of fact in men and women who every day of the year saw the world as it went by in forum and basilica, in Suburra and Velabrum, in slave chambers and in the halls of pleasure where they had to serve or to meet company. The atmosphere of heaven was carried down into that dark pool by the believing souls who were bidden to live there. They lived the heavenly life in Rome; as the creature of the air in our stagnant waters weaves and fills its silver diving bell, and works and thrives in peace far down.
Read some vivid picture of Roman life, and think of this. See it as it is shown by Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, Martial; or as modern hands, Becker’s or Farrar’s, have restored it from their materials. What a deadly air for the regenerate soul-deadly not only in its vice, but in its magnificence, and in its thought! But nothing is deadly to the Lord Jesus Christ. The soul’s regeneration means not only new ideas and likings, but an eternal Presence, the indwelling of the Life itself. That Life could live at Rome; and therefore "God’s beloved ones in Rome" could live there also, while it was His will they should be there. The argument comes a fortiori to ourselves.
(His) called holy ones; they were "called," in the sense we have seen, and now, by that effectual Voice, drawing them into Christ, they were constituted "holy ones," "saints." What does that word mean? Whatever its etymology may be, its usage gives us the thought of dedication to God, connection with Him, separation to His service, His will. The saints are those who belong to Him, His personal property, for His ends. Thus it is used habitually in the Scriptures for all Christians, supposed to be true to their name. Not an inner circle, but all, bear the title. It is not only a glorified aristocracy, but the believing commonalty; not the stars of the eternal sky, but the flowers sown by the Lord in the common field; even in such a tract of that field as "Caesar’s household" was. {Php 4:22}
Habitually therefore the Apostle gives the term "saints" to whole communities; as if baptism always gave, or sealed, saint-ship. In a sense it did, and does. But then, this was, and is, on the assumption of the concurrence of possession with title. The title left the individual still bound to "examine himself, whether he was in the faith". {2 Corinthians 13:5}
These happy residents at Rome are now greeted and blessed in their Father’s and Saviour’s Name; Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. "Grace"; what is it? Two ideas lie there together; favour and gratuity. The grace of God is His favouring will and work for us, and in us; gratuitous, utterly and to the end unearned. Put otherwise (and with the remembrance that: His great gifts are but modes of Himself, are in fact Himself in will and action), grace is God for us, grace is God in us, sovereign, willing, kind. "Peace"; what is it? The holy repose within, and so around, which comes of the man’s acceptance with God and abode in God; an "all is well" in the heart, and in the believer’s contact with circumstances, as he rests in his Father and his Redeemer. "Peace, perfect peace"; under the sense of demerit, and amidst the crush of duties, and on the crossing currents of human joy and sorrow, and in the mystery of death; because of the God of Peace, who has made peace for us through the Cross of His Son, and is peace in us, "by the Spirit which He hath given us."
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
Chapter 3
GOOD REPORT OF THE ROMAN CHURCH: PAUL NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL
Romans 1:8-17HE has blessed the Roman Christians in the name of the Lord. Now he hastens to tell them how he blesses God for them, and how full his heart is of them. The Gospel is warm all through with life and love; this great message of doctrine and precept is poured from a fountain full of personal affection.
Now first I thank my God, through Jesus Christ, about you all. It is his delight to give thanks for all the good he knows of in his brethren. Seven of his Epistles open with such thanksgivings, which at once convey the commendations which love rejoices to giver wherever possible, and trace all spiritual virtue straight to its Source, the Lord. Nor only here to "the Lord," but to "my God"; a phrase used, in the New Testament, only by St. Paul, except that one utterance of Eli, Eli, by his dying Saviour. It is the expression of an indescribable appropriation and reverent intimacy. The believer grudges his God to none; he rejoices with great joy over every soul that finds its wealth in Him. But at the centre of all joy and love is this-"my God"; "Christ Jesus my Lord"; "who loved me and gave Himself for me." Is it selfish? Nay, it is the language of a personality where Christ has dethroned self in His own favour, but in which therefore reigns now the highest happiness, the happiness which animates and maintains a self-forgetful love of all. And this holy intimacy, with its action in thanks and petition, is all the while "through Jesus Christ," the Mediator and Brother. The man knows God as "my God," and deals with Him as such, never out of that Beloved Son who is equally One with the believer and with the Father, no alien medium, but the living point of unity.
What moves his thanksgivings? Because your faith is spoken of, more literally, is carried as tidings, over the whole world. Go where he will, in Asia, in Macedonia, in Achaia, in Illyricum, he meets believing "strangers from Rome," with spiritual news from the. Capital, announcing, with a glad solemnity, that at the great Centre of this world the things eternal are proving their power, and that the Roman mission is remarkable for its strength and simplicity of "faith," its humble reliance on the Lord Jesus Christ, and loving allegiance to Him. Such news, wafted from point to point of that early Christendom, was frequent then; we see another beautiful example of it where he tells the Thessalonians {1 Thessalonians 1:8-10} how everywhere in his Greek tour he found the news of their conversion running in advance of him, to greet him at each arrival What special importance would such intelligence bear when it was good news from Rome!
Still in our day over the world of Missions similar tidings travel. Only a few years ago "the saints" of Indian Tinnevelly heard of the distress of their brethren of African Uganda, and sent with loving eagerness "to their necessity." But recently (1892) an English visitor to the Missions of Labrador found the disciples of the Moravian Brethren there full of the wonders of grace manifested in those same African believers.
This constant good tidings from the City makes him the more glad because of its correspondence with his incessant thought, prayer, and yearning over them.
For God is my record, my witness, of this; the God whom I serve, at once, so the Greek (λατρευω) implies, with adoration and obedience, in my spirit, in the Gospel of His Son. The "for" gives the connection we have just indicated; he rejoices to hear of their faith, for the Lord knows how much they are in his prayers. The divine Witness is the more instinctively appealed to, because these thoughts and prayers are for a mission Church, and the relations between St. Paul and his God are above all missionary relations. He "serves Him in the Gospel of His Son," the Gospel of the God who is known and believed in His Christ. He "serves Him in the Gospel"; that is, in the propagation of it. So he often means, where he speaks of "the Gospel"; take for example, ver. 1 above; Romans 15:16; Romans 15:19 below; Php 1:5; Php 1:12; Php 2:22. "He serves Him," in that great branch of ministry, "in his spirit," with his whole love, will, and mind, working in communion with his Lord. And now to this eternal Friend and Witness he appeals to seal his assurance of incessant intercessions for them; how without ceasing, as a habit constantly in action, I make mention of you, calling them up by name, specifying before the Father Rome, and Aquila, and Andronicus, and Junias, and Persis, and Mary, and the whole circle, personally known or not, in my prayers; literally, on occasion of my prayers; whenever he found himself at prayer, statedly or as it were casually remembering and beseeching.
The prayers of St. Paul are a study by themselves. See his own accounts of them, to the Corinthians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, the Thessalonians, and Philemon. Observe their topic; it is almost always the growth of grace in the saints, to their Master’s glory. Observe now still more their manner; the frequency, the diligence, the resolution which grapples, wrestles, with the difficulties of prayer, so that in Colossians 2:1, he calls his prayer simply "a great wrestling." Learn here how to deal with God for those for whom you work, shepherd of souls, messenger of the Word, Christian man or woman who in any way are called to help other hearts in Christ.
In this case his prayers have a very definite direction; he is requesting, if somehow, now at length, my way shall be opened, in the will of God, to come to you. It is a quite simple, quite natural petition. His inward harmony with the Lord’s will never excludes the formation and expression of such requests, with the reverent "if" of submissive reserve. The "indifference" of mystic pietism, which at least discourages articulate contingent petitions, is unknown to the Apostles; "in everything, with thanksgiving, they make their requests known unto God." And they find such expression harmonised, in a holy experience, with a profound rest "within this will," this "sweet beloved will of God." Little did he here foresee how his way would be opened; that it would lie through the tumult in the Temple, the prisons of Jerusalem and Caesarea, and the cyclone of the Adrian sea. He had in view a missionary journey to Spain, in which Rome was to be taken by the way.
"So God grants prayer, but in His love Makes ways and times His own."
His heart yearns for this Roman visit. We may almost render the Greek of the next clause, For I am homesick for a sight of you; he uses the word by which elsewhere he describes Philippian Epaphroditus’ longing to be back at Philippi, {Php 2:26} and again his own longing to see the son of his heart, Timotheus. {2 Timothy 1:4} Such is the Gospel, that its family affection throws the light of home on even unknown regions where dwell "the brethren." In this case the longing love however has a purpose most practical; that I may impart to you some spiritual gift of grace, with a view to your establishment. The word rendered "gift of grace" is used in some places {see especially 1 Corinthians 12:4; 1 Corinthians 12:9; 1 Corinthians 12:28; 1 Corinthians 12:30-31} with a certain special reference to the mysterious "Tongues," "Interpretations," and "Prophecies," given in the primeval Churches. And we gather from the Acts and the Epistles that these grants were not ordinarily made where an Apostle was not there to lay on his hands. But it is not likely that this is the import of this present passage. Elsewhere in the Epistle the word "charisma" is used with its largest and deepest reference; God’s gift of blessing in Christ. Here, then, so we take it, he means that he pines to convey to them, as his Lord’s messenger, some new development of spiritual light and joy; to expound "the Way" to them more perfectly; to open up to them such fuller and deeper insights into the riches of Christ that they, better using their possession of the Lord, might as it were gain new possessions in Him, and might stand more boldly on the glorious certainties they held. And this was to be done ministerially, not magisterially. For he goes on to say that the longed for visit would be his gain as well as theirs; that is, with a view to my concurrent encouragement among you, by our mutual faith, yours and mine together. Shall we call this a sentence of fine tact; beautifully conciliatory and endearing? Yes, but it is also perfectly sincere. True tact is only the skill of sympathetic love, not the less genuine in its thought because that thought seeks to please and win. He is glad to show himself as his disciples’ brotherly friend; but then he first is such, and enjoys the character, and has continually found and felt his own soul made glad and strong by the witness to the Lord which far less gifted believers bore, as he and they talked together. Does not every true teacher know this in his own experience? If we are not merely lecturers on Christianity but witnesses for Christ, we know what it is to hail with deep thanksgivings the "‘encouragement" we have had from the lips of those who perhaps believed long after we did, and have been far less advantaged outwardly than we have been. We have known and blessed the "encouragement" carried to us by little believing children, and young men in their first faith, and poor old people on their comfortless beds, ignorant in this world, illuminated in the Lord. "Mutual faith," the pregnant phrase of the Apostle, faith residing in each of both parties, and owned by each to the other, is a mighty power for Christian "encouragement" still.
But I would not have you ignorant, brethren. This is a characteristic term of expression with him. He delights in confidence and information, and not least about his own plans bearing on his friends. That often I purposed (or better, in our English idiom, have purposed) to come to you, (but I have been hindered up till now,) that I might have some fruits among you too, as actually among the other Nations. He cannot help giving more and yet more intimation of his loving gravitation towards them; nor yet of his gracious avarice for "fruit," result, harvest and vintage for Christ, in the way of helping on Romans, as well as Asiatics, and Macedonians, and Achaians, to live a fuller life in Him. This, we may infer from the whole Epistle, would be the chief kind of "fruit" in his view at Rome; but not this only. For we shall see him at once go on to anticipate an evangelistic work at Rome, a speaking of the Gospel message where there would be a temptation to be "ashamed" of it. Edification of believers may be his main aim. But conversion of pagan souls to God cannot possibly be dissociated from it.
In passing we see, with instruction, that St. Paul made many plans which came to nothing; he tells us this here without apology or misgiving. He claims accordingly no such practical omniscience, actual or possible, as would make his resolutions and forecasts infallible. Tacitly, at least, he wrote "If the Lord will," across them all, unless indeed there came a case where, as when he was guided out of Asia to Macedonia, {Acts 16:6-10} direct intimation was given him, abnormal, supernatural, quite ab extra, that such and not such was to be his path.
But now, he is not only "homesick" for Rome, with a yearning love; he feels his obligation to Rome, with a wakeful conscience. Alike to Greeks and to Barbarians, to wise men and to unthinking, I am in debt. Mankind is on his heart, in the sorts and differences of its culture. On the one hand were "the Greeks"; that is to say, in the then popular meaning of the word, the peoples possessed of what we now call "classical" civilisation, Greek and Roman; an inner circle of these were "the wise," the literati, the readers, writers, thinkers, in the curriculum of those literatures and philosophies. On the other hand were "the Barbarians," the tongues and tribes outside the Hellenic pale, Pisidian, Pamphylian, Galatian, Illyrian, and we know not who besides; and then, among them, or anywhere, "the unthinking," the numberless masses whom the educated would despise or forget as utterly untrained in the schools, unversed in the great topics of man and the world; the people of the field, the market, and the kitchen. To the Apostle, because to his Lord, all these were now impartially his claimants, his creditors: he "owed them" the Gospel which had been trusted to him for them. Naturally, his will might be repelled alike by the frown or smile of the Greek, and by the coarse earthliness of the Barbarian. But supernaturally, in Christ, he loved both, and scrupulously remembered his duty to both. Such is the true missionary spirit still, in whatever region, under whatever conditions. The Christian man, and the Christian Church delivered from the world is yet its debtor. "Woe is to him, to it, if that debt is not paid, if that Gospel is hidden in a napkin."
Thus he is ready, and more than ready, to pay his debt to Rome. So (to render literally) what relates to me is eager, to you too, to the men in Rome, to preach the Gospel. "What relates to me"; there is an emphasis on "me," as if to say that the hindrance, whatever it is, is not in him, but around him. The doors have been shut, but the man stands behind them, in act to pass in when he may.
His eagerness is no light-heartedness, no carelessness of when or where. This wonderful missionary is too sensitive to facts and ideas, too rich in imagination, not to feel the peculiar, nay the awful greatness, of a summons to Rome. He understands culture too well not to feel its possible obstacles. He has seen too much of both the real grandeur and the harsh force of the imperial power in its extension not to feel a genuine awe as he thinks of meeting that power at its gigantic Centre. There is that in him which fears Rome. But he is therefore the very man to go there, for he understands the magnitude of the occasion, and he will the more deeply retire upon his Lord for peace and power.
Thus with a pointed fitness he tells himself and his friends, just here, that he is "not ashamed of the Gospel." For I am not ashamed; I am ready even for Rome, for this terrible Rome. I have a message which, though Rome looks as if she must despise it, I know is not to be despised. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel; for it is God’s power to salvation, for everyone who believes, alike for Jew, (first,) and for Greek. For God’s righteousness is in it unveiled, from faith on to faith; as it stands written, But the just man on faith shall live.
These words give out the great theme of the Epistle. The Epistle, therefore, is infinitely the best commentary on them, as we follow out its argument and hear its message. Here it shall suffice us to note only a point or two, and so pass on.
First, we recollect that this Gospel, this Glad Tidings, is, in its essence, Jesus Christ. It is, supremely, "He, not it"; Person, not theory. Or rather, it is authentic and eternal theory in vital and eternal connection everywhere with a Person. As such it is truly "power," in a sense as profoundly natural as it is divine. It is power, not only in the cogency of perfect principle, but in the energy of an eternal Life, an almighty Will, an infinite Love.
Then we observe that this message of power, which is, in its burthen, the Christ of God, unfolds first, at its foundation, in its front, "the Righteousness of God"; not first His Love, but "His Righteousness." Seven times elsewhere in the Epistle comes this phrase; rich materials for ascertaining its meaning in the spiritual dialect of St. Paul. Out of these passages, Romans 3:26 gives us the key. There "the righteousness of God," seen as it were in action, ascertained by its effects, is that which secures "that He shall be just, and the Justifier of the man who belongs to faith in Jesus." It is that which makes Wonderfully possible the mighty paradox that the Holy One, eternally truthful, eternally rightful, infinitely "law abiding" in His jealousy for that Law which is in fact His Nature expressing itself in precept, nevertheless can and does say to man, in his guilt and forfeit, "I, thy Judge, lawfully acquit thee, lawfully accept thee, lawfully embrace thee." In such a context we need not fear to explain this great phrase, in this its first occurrence, to mean the Acceptance accorded by the Holy Judge to sinful man. Thus it stands practically equivalent to-God’s way of justifying the ungodly, His method for liberating His love while He magnifies His law. In effect, not as a translation but as an explanation, God’s Righteousness is God’s Justification.
Then again, We note the emphasis and the repetition here of the thought of faith. "To every one that believeth"; "From faith on to faith"; "The just man on faith shall live." Here, if anywhere, we shall find ample commentary in the Epistle: Only let us remember from the first that in the Roman Epistle, as everywhere in the New Testament, we shall see "faith" used in its natural and human sense; we shall find that it means personal reliance. Fides est fiducia, "Faith is trust," say the masters of Reformation theology. Refellitur inanis hoereticorum fiducia, "We refute the heretics’ empty ‘trust,"’ says the Council of Trent against them; but in vain. Faith is trust. It is in this sense that our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Gospels, invariably uses the word. For this is its human sense, its sense in the street and market; and the Lord, the Man of men, uses the dialect of His race. Faith, infinitely wonderful and mysterious from some points of view, is the simplest thing in the world from others. That sinners, conscious of their guilt, should be brought so to see their Judge’s heart: as to take His word of peace to mean what it says, is miracle. But they should trust His word, having seen His heart, is nature, illuminated and led by grace, but nature still. The "faith" of Jesus Christ and the Apostles is trust. It is not a faculty for mystical intuitions. It is our taking the Trustworthy at His word. It is the opening of a mendicant hand to receive the gold of Heaven; the opening of dying lips to receive the water of life. It is that which makes a void place for Jesus Christ to fill, that He may be man’s Merit, man’s Peace, and man’s Power.
Hence the overwhelming prominence of faith in the Gospel. It is the correlative of the overwhelming, the absolute, prominence of Jesus Christ. Christ is all. Faith is man’s acceptance of Him as such. "Justification by Faith" is not acceptance because faith is a valuable thing, a merit, a recommendation, a virtue. It is acceptance because of Jesus Christ, whom man, dropping all other hopes, receives. It is, let us repeat it, the sinner’s empty hand and parted lips: It has absolutely nothing to do with earning the gift of God, the water and the bread of God; it has all to do with taking it. This we shall see open out before us as we proceed.
So the Gospel "unveils God’s righteousness"; it draws the curtains from His glorious secret. And as each fold is lifted, the glad beholder looks on "from faith to faith." He finds. that this reliance is to be his part; first, last, midst, and without end. He takes Jesus Christ by faith; he holds Him by faith; he uses Him by faith; he lives, he dies, in Him by faith; that is to say, always by Him, by Him received, held, used.
Then lastly, we mark the quotation from the Prophet, who, for the Apostle, is the organ of the Holy Ghost. What Habakkuk wrote is, for Paul, what God says, God’s Word. The Prophet; as we refer to his brief pages, manifestly finds his occasion and his first significance in the then state of his country and his people. If we please, we may explain the words as patriot’s contribution to the politics of Jerusalem, and pass on. But if so, we pass on upon a road unknown to our Lord and His Apostles. To Him, to them, the prophecies had more in them than the Prophets knew; and Habakkuk’s appeal to Judah to retain the Lord Jehovah among them in all His peace and power, by trusting Him, is known by St. Paul to be for all time an oracle about the work of faith. So. he sees in it a message straight to the soul which asks how, if Christ is God’s Righteousness, shall I, a sinner, win Christ for me. "Wouldst thou indeed be just with God, right with Him as Judge, accepted by the Holy One? Take His Son in the empty arms of mere trust, and: He is thine for this need, and for all."
"I am not ashamed of the Gospel." So the Apostle affirms, as he looks toward Rome. What is it about this Gospel of God, and of His Son, which gives occasion for such a word? Why do we find, not here only, but elsewhere in the New Testament, this contemplated possibility that the Christian may be ashamed of his creed, and of His Lord? "Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, of him: shall the Son of Man be ashamed"; {Luke 9:26} "Be not thou ashamed of the testimony of our Lord"; "Nevertheless, I am not ashamed". {2 Timothy 1:8; 2 Timothy 1:12} This is paradoxical, as we come to think upon it. There is much about the purity of the Gospel which might occasion, and does too often occasion, an awe and dread of it, seemingly reasonable. There is much about its attendant mysteries which might seem to excuse an attitude, however mistaken, of reverent suspense. But what is there about this revelation of the heart of Eternal Love, this record of a Life equally divine and human, of a Death as majestic as it is infinitely pathetic, and then of a Resurrection out of death, to occasion shame? Why, in view of this, should man be shy to avow his faith, and to let it be known that this is all in all to him, his life, his peace, his strength, his surpassing interest and occupation?
More than one analysis of the phenomenon, which we all know to be fact, may be suggested. But for our part we believe that the true solution lies near the words sin, pardon, self-surrender. The Gospel reveals the eternal Love, but under conditions which remind man that he has done his worst to forfeit it. It tells him of a peace and strength sublime and heavenly; but it asks him, in order to receive them, to kneel down in the dust and take them, unmerited, for nothing. And it reminds them that he, thus delivered and endowed, is by the same act the property of his Deliverer; that not only the highest benefit of his nature is secured by his giving himself over to God, but the most inexorable obligation lies on him to do so. He is not his own, but bought with a price.
Such views of the actual relation between man and God, even when attended, as they are in the Gospel, with such indications of man’s true greatness as are found nowhere else, are deeply repellent to the soul that has not yet seen itself and God in the light of truth. And the human being who has got that sight, and has submitted himself indeed, yet, the moment he looks outside the blessed shrine of his own union with his Lord, is tempted to be reticent about a creed which he knows once repelled and angered him. Well did Paul remember his old hatred and contempt; and he felt the temptations of that memory, when he presented Christ either to the Pharisee or to the Stoic, and now particularly when he thought of "bearing witness of Him at Rome," {Acts 23:11} imperial, overwhelming Rome. But then he looked away from them to Jesus Christ, and the temptation was beneath his feet, and the Gospel, everywhere, was upon his lips.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Chapter 4
NEED FOR THE GOSPEL: GOD’S ANGER AND MAN’S SIN
Romans 1:18-23WE have as it were touched the heart of the Apostle as he weighs the prospect of his Roman visit, and feels, almost in one sensation, the tender and powerful attraction, the solemn duty, and the strange solicitation to shrink from the deliverance of his message. Now his lifted forehead, just lighted up by the radiant truth of Righteousness by Faith, is shadowed suddenly. He is not ashamed of the Gospel; he will speak it out, if need be, in the Caesar’s own presence, and in that of his brilliant and cynical court. For there is a pressing, an awful need that he should thus "despise the shame." The very conditions in human life which occasion an instinctive tendency to be reticent of the Gospel, are facts of dreadful urgency and peril. Man does not like to be exposed to himself, and to be summoned to the faith and surrender claimed by Christ. But man, whatever he likes or dislikes, is a sinner, exposed to the eyes of the All-Pure, and lying helpless, amidst all his dreams of pride, beneath the wrath of God. Such is the logic of this stern sequel to the affirmation, "I am not ashamed."
For God’s wrath is revealed, from heaven, upon all godlessness and unrighteousness of men who in unrighteousness hold down the truth. "God’s wrath is revealed"; Revealed in "the holy Scriptures," in every history, by every Prophet, by every Psalmist; this perhaps is the main bearing of his thought. But revealed also antecedently and concurrently in that mysterious, inalienable conscience, which is more truly part of man than his five senses. Conscience sees that there is an eternal difference between right and wrong, and feels in the dark the relation of that difference to a law, a Lawgiver, and a doom. Conscience is aware of a fiery light beyond the veil. Revelation meets its wistful gaze, lifts the veil, and affirms the fact of the wrath of God, and of His judgment coming.
Let us not shun that "revelation." It is not the Gospel. The Gospel, as we have seen, is in itself one pure warm light of life and love. But then it can never be fully understood until, sooner or later, we have seen something, and believed something, of the truth of the anger of the Holy One. From our idea of that anger let us utterly banish every thought of impatience, of haste, of what is arbitrary, of what is in the faintest degree unjust, inequitable. It is the anger of Him who never for a moment can be untrue to himself; and He is Love, and is Light. But He is also, so also says His Word, consuming Fire; {Hebrews 10:31; Hebrews 12:29} and it is "a fearful thing to fall into His hands." Nowhere and never is God not Love, as the Maker and Preserver of His creatures. But nowhere also and never is He not Fire, as the judicial Adversary of evil, the Antagonist of the will that chooses sin. Is there "nothing in God to fear"? "Yea," says His Son, {Luke 12:5} "I say unto you, fear Him."
At the present time there is a deep and almost ubiquitous tendency to ignore the revelation of the wrath of God. No doubt there have been times, and quarters, in the story of Christianity, when that revelation was thrown into disproportionate prominence, and men shrank from Christ (so Luther tells us he did in his youth) as from One who was nothing if not the inexorable Judge. They saw Him habitually as He is seen in the vast Fresco of the Sistine Chapel, a sort of Jupiter Tonans, casting His foes forever from His presence; a Being from whom, not to whom, the guilty soul must fly. But the reaction from such thoughts, at present upon us, has swung to an extreme indeed, until the tendency of the pulpit, and of the exposition, is to say practically that there is nothing in God to be afraid of; that the words hope and love are enough to neutralise the most awful murmurs of conscience, and to cancel the plainest warnings of the loving Lord Himself. Yet that Lord, as we ponder His words in all the four Gospels, so far from speaking such "peace" as this, seems to reserve it to Himself, rather than to His messengers, to utter the most formidable warnings. And the earliest literature which follows the New Testament shows that few of His sayings had sunk deeper into His disciples’ souls than those which told them of the two Ways and of the two Ends.
Let us go to Him, the all-benignant Friend and Teacher, to learn the true attitude of thought towards Him as "the Judge, Strong and patient," "but who will in no wise clear the guilty" by unsaying His precepts and putting by His threats. He assuredly will teach us, in this matter, no lessons of hard and narrow denunciation, nor encourage us to sit in judgment on the souls and minds of our brethren. But He will teach us to take deep and awful views for ourselves of both the pollution and also the guilt of sin. He will constrain us to carry those views all through our personal theology, and our personal anthropology too. He will make it both a duty and a possibility for us, in right measure, in right manner, tenderly, humbly, governed by His Word, to let others know what our convictions are about the Ways and the Ends. And thus, as well as otherwise, He will make His Gospel to be to us no mere luxury or ornament of thought and life, as it were a decorous gilding upon essential worldliness and the ways of self. He will unfold it as the soul’s refuge and its home. From Himself as Judge He will draw us in blessed flight to Himself as Propitiation and Peace. "From Thy wrath, and from everlasting condemnation, Good Lord-Thyself-deliver us."
This wrath, holy, passionless, yet awfully personal, "is revealed, from heaven." That is to say, it is revealed as coming from heaven, when the righteous Judge "shall be revealed from heaven, taking vengeance". {2 Thessalonians 1:7-8} In that pure upper world He sits whose wrath it is. From that stainless sky of His presence its white lightnings will fall, "upon all godlessness and unrighteousness of men," upon every kind of violation of conscience, whether done against God or man; upon "godlessness," which blasphemes, denies, or ignores the Creator; upon "unrighteousness," which wrests the claims whether of Creator or of creature. Awful opposites to the "two great Commandments of the Law"! The Law must be utterly vindicated upon them at last. Conscience must be eternally verified at last, against all the wretched suppressions of it that man has ever tried.
For the men in question "hold down the truth in unrighteousness." The rendering "hold down" is certified by both etymology and context; the only possible other rendering, "hold fast," is negatived by the connection. The thought given us is that man, fallen from the harmony with God in which Manhood was made, but still keeping manhood, and therefore conscience, is never naturally ignorant of the difference between right and wrong, never naturally, innocently, unaware that he is accountable. On the other hand he is never fully willing, of himself, to do all he knows of right, all he knows he ought, all the demand of the righteous law above him. "In unrighteousness," in a life which at best is not wholly and cordially with the will of God, "he holds down the truth," silences the haunting fact that there is a claim he will not meet, a will he ought to love, but to which he prefers his own. The majesty of eternal right, always intimating the majesty of an eternal Righteous One, he thrusts below his consciousness, or into a corner of it, and keeps it there, that he may follow his own way. More or less, it wrestles with him for its proper place. And its even half-understood efforts may, and often do, exercise a deterrent force upon the energies of his self-will. But they do not dislodge it; he would rather have his way. With a force sometimes deliberate, sometimes impulsive, sometimes habitual, "he holds down" the unwelcome monitor.
Deep is the moral responsibility incurred by such repression. For man has always, by the very state of the case, within him and around him, evidence for a personal righteous Power "with Whom he has to do." Because that which is known in God is manifest in them; for God manifested (or rather, perhaps, in our idiom, has manifested) it to them. "That which is known"; that is, practically, "that which is knowable, that which may be known." There is that about the Eternal which indeed neither is nor can be known, with the knowledge of mental comprehension. "Who can find out the Almighty unto perfection?" All thoughtful Christians are in this respect agnostics that they gaze on the bright Ocean of Deity, and know that they do not know it in its fathomless but radiant depths, nor can explore its expanse which has no shore. They rest before absolute mystery with a repose as simple (if possible more simple) as that with which they contemplate the most familiar and intelligible event. But this is not to know Him. It leaves man quite as free to be sure that He is, to be as certain that He is Personal, and is Holy, as man is certain of his own consciousness, and conscience.
That there is Personality behind phenomena, and that this great Personality is righteous, St. Paul here affirms to be "manifest," disclosed, visible, "in men." It is a fact present, however partially apprehended, in human consciousness. And more, this consciousness is itself part of the fact; indeed it is that part without which all others would be as nothing. To man without conscience-really, naturally, innocently without conscience-and without ideas of causation, the whole majesty of the Universe might be unfolded with a fulness beyond all our present experience; but it would say absolutely nothing of either Personality or Judgment. It is by the world within that we are able in the least degree to apprehend the world without. But having, naturally and inalienably, the world of personality and of conscience within us, we are beings to whom God can manifest, and has manifested the knowable about Himself, in His universe.
For His things unseen, ever since the creation of the universe, are full in (man’s) view, presented to (man’s) mind by His things made-His everlasting power and Godlikeness together-so as to leave them inexcusable. Since the ordered world was, and since man was, as its observer and also as its integral part, there has been present to man’s spirit-supposed true to its own creation-adequate testimony around him, taken along with that within him, to evince the reality of a supreme and persistent Will, intending order, and thus intimating Its own correspondence to conscience, and expressing Itself in "things made" of such manifold glory and wonder as to intimate the Maker’s majesty as well as righteousness. What is That, what is He, to whom the splendours of the day and the night, the wonders of the forest and the sea, bear witness? He is not only righteous Judge but King eternal. He is not only charged with my guidance; He has rights illimitable over me. I am wrong altogether if I am not in submissive harmony with Him; if I do not surrender, and adore.
Thus it has been, according to St. Paul, "ever since the creation of the universe" (and of man in it). And such everywhere is the Theism of Scripture. It maintains, or rather it states as certainty, that man’s knowledge of God began with his being as man. To see the Maker in His works is not, according to the Holy Scriptures, only the slow and difficult issue of a long evolution which led through far lower forms of thought, the fetish, the nature power, the tribal god, the national god, to the idea of a Supreme. Scripture presents man as made in the image of the Supreme, and capable from the first of a true however faint apprehension of Him. It assures us that man’s lower and distorted views of nature and of personal power behind it are degenerations, perversions, issues of a mysterious primeval dislocation of man from his harmony with God. The believer in the Holy Scriptures, in the sense in which our Lord and the Apostles believed in them, will receive this view of the primeval history of Theism as a true report of God’s account of it. Remembering that it concerns an otherwise unknown moment of human spiritual history, he will not be disturbed by alleged evidence against it from lower down the stream. Meanwhile he will note the fact that among the foremost students of Nature in our time there are those who affirm the rightness of such an attitude. It is not lightly that the Duke of Argyll writes words like these:-
"I doubt (to say the truth, I disbelieve) that we shall ever come to know by science anything more than we now know about the origin of man. I believe we shall always have to rest on that magnificent and sublime outline which has been given us by the great Prophet of the Jews."
So man, being what he is and seeing what he sees, is "without excuse": Because, knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor thank Him, but proved futile in their ways of thinking, and their unintelligent heart was darkened. Asserting themselves for wise they turned fools, and transmuted the glory of the immortal God in a semblance of the likeness of mortal man, and of things winged, quadruped, and reptile. Man placed by God in His universe, and himself made in God’s image, naturally and inevitably "knew God." Not necessarily in that inner sense of spiritual harmony and union which is {John 17:3} the life eternal; but in the sense of a perception of His being and His character adequate, at its faintest, to make a moral claim. But somehow-a somehow which has to do with a revolt of man’s will from God to self-that claim was, and is, disliked. Out of that dislike has sprung, in man’s spiritual history, a reserve towards God, a tendency to question His purpose, His character, His existence; or otherwise, to degrade the conception of Personality behind phenomena into forms from which the multifold monster of idolatry has sprung, as if phenomena were due to personalities no better and no greater than could be imaged by man or by beast, things of limit and of passion; at their greatest terrible, but not holy; not intimate; not One.
Man has spent on these unworthy "ways of thinking" a great deal of weak and dull reasoning and imbecile imagination, but also some of the rarest and most splendid of the riches of his mind, made in the image of God. But all this thinking, because conditioned by a wrong attitude of his being as a whole, has had "futile" issues, and has been in the truest sense "unintelligent," failing to see inferences aright and as a whole. It has been a struggle "in the dark"; yea, a descent from the light into moral and mental "folly."
Was it not so, is it not so still? If man is indeed made in the image of the living Creator, a moral personality, and placed in the midst of "the myriad world, His shadow," then whatever process of thought leads man away from Him has somewhere in it a fallacy unspeakable, and inexcusable. It must mean that something in him which should be awake is dormant; or, yet worse, that something in him which should be in faultless tune, as the Creator tempered it, is all unstrung; something that should be nobly free to love and to adore is being repressed, "held down." Then only does man fully think aright when he is aright. Then only is he aright when he, made by and for the Eternal Holy One, rests willingly in Him, and lives for Him. "The fear of the Lord is," in the strictest fact, "the beginning of wisdom"; for it is that attitude of man without which the creature cannot "answer the idea" of the Creator, and therefore cannot truly follow out the law of its own being.
"Let him that glorieth, glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth {Jeremiah 9:24} who necessarily and eternally transcends our cognition and comprehension, yet can be known, can be touched, clasped, adored, as personal, eternal, almighty, holy Love."
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Chapter 5
MAN GIVEN UP TO HIS OWN WAY: THE HEATHEN
Romans 1:24-32WHEREFORE God gave them up, in the desires of their hearts, to uncleanness, so as to dishonour their bodies among themselves.
There is a dark sequence in the logic of facts, between unworthy thoughts of God and the development of the basest forms of human wrong. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God:-they are corrupt and have done abominable works". {Psalm 14:1} And the folly which does not indeed deny God, but degrades His Idea, always gives its sure contribution to such corruption. It is so in the nature of the case. The individual atheist, or polytheist, may conceivably be a virtuous person, on the human standard; but if he is so it is not because of his creed. Let his creed become a real formative power in human society, and it will tend inevitably to moral disease and death. Is man indeed a moral personality, made in the image of a holy and almighty Maker? Then the vital air of his moral life must be fidelity, correspondence, to his God. Let man think of Him as less than All, and he will think of himself less worthily; not less proudly perhaps, but less worthily, because not in his true and wonderful relation to the Eternal Good. Wrong in himself will tend surely to seem less awful, and right less necessary and great. And nothing, literally nothing, from any region higher than himself-himself already lowered in his own thought from his true idea-can ever come in to supply the blank where God should be, but is not. Man may worship himself, or may despise himself, when he has ceased to "glorify God and thank Him"; but he cannot for one hour be what he was made to be, the son of God in the universe of God. To know God indeed is to be secured from self-worship, and to be taught self-reverence; and it is the only way to those two secrets in their pure fulness.
"God gave them up." So the Scripture says elsewhere. "So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lusts"; {Psalm 81:12} "God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven"; {Acts 7:42} "God gave them up to passions of degradation"; "God gave them over to an abandoned mind"; (Romans 1:26; Romans 1:28). It is a dire thought; but the inmost conscience, once awake, affirms the righteousness of the thing. From one point of view it is just the working out of a natural process, in which sin is at once exposed and punished by its proper results, without the slightest injection, so to speak, of any force beyond its own terrible gravitation towards the sinner’s misery. But from another point it is the personally allotted, and personally inflicted, retribution of Him who hates iniquity with the antagonism of infinite Personality. He has so constituted natural process that wrong gravitates to wretchedness; and He is in that process, and above it, always and forever.
So He "gave them up, in their desires of their hearts"; He left them there where they had placed themselves," in "the fatal region of self-will, self-indulgence; "unto uncleanness," described now with terrible explicitness in its full outcome, "to dishonour their bodies," the intended temples of the Creator’s presence, "among themselves," or "in themselves"; for the possible dishonour might be done either in a foul solitude, or in a fouler society and mutuality: Seeing that they perverted the truth of God, the eternal fact of His glory and claim, in their lie, so that it was travestied, misrepresented, lost, "in" the falsehood of polytheism and idols; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. He casts this strong Doxology into the thick air of false worship and foul life, as if to clear it with its holy reverberation. For he is writing no mere discussion, no lecture on the genesis and evolution of paganism. It is the story of a vast rebellion, told by one who, once himself a rebel, is now altogether and forever the absolute vassal of the King whom he has "seen in His beauty" and whom it is his joy to bless, and to claim blessing for Him from His whole world forever.
As if animated by the word of benediction, he returns to denounce "the abominable thing which God hateth" with still more terrible explicitness. For this reason, because of their preference of the worse to the infinite Good, God gave them up to passions of degradation; He handed them over, self-bound, to the helpless slavery of lust; to "passions," eloquent word, which indicates how the man who will have his own way is all the while a "sufferer," though by his own fault: the victim of a mastery which he has conjured from the deep of sin.
Shall we shun to read, to render, the words which follow? We will not comment and expound. May the presence of God in our hearts, hearts otherwise as vulnerable as those of the old pagan sinners, sweep from the springs of thought and will all horrible curiosity. But if it does so it will leave us the more able, in humility, in tears, in fear, to hear the facts of this stern indictment. It will bid us listen as those who are not sitting in judgment on paganism, but standing beside the accused and sentenced, to confess that we too share the fall, and stand, if we stand, by grace alone. Aye, and we shall remember that if an Apostle thus tore the rags from the spots of the Black Death of ancient morals, he would have been even less merciful, if possible, over the like symptoms lurking still in modern Christendom, and found sometimes upon its surface.
Terrible, indeed, is the prosaic coolness with which vices now called unnameable are named and narrated in classical literature; and we ask in vain for one of even the noblest of the pagan moralists who has spoken of such sins with anything like adequate horror. Such speech, and such silence, have been almost impossible since the Gospel was felt in civilisation. "Paganism," says Dr. F.W. Farrar, in a powerful passage, with this paragraph of Romans in his view, "is protected from complete exposure by the enormity of its own vices. To show the divine reformation wrought by Christianity it must suffice that once for all the Apostle of the Gentiles seized heathenism by the hair, and branded indelibly on her forehead the stigma of her shame." Yet the vices of the old time are not altogether an antiquarian’s wonder. Now as truly as then man is awfully accessible to the worst solicitations the moment he trusts himself away from God. And this needs indeed to be remembered in a stage of thought and of society whose cynicism, and whose materialism, show gloomy signs of likeness to those last days of the old degenerate world in which St. Paul looked round him, and spoke out the things he saw.
For their females perverted the natural use to the unnatural. So too the males, leaving the natural use of the female, burst out aflame in their craving towards one another, males in males working out their unseemliness-and duly getting in themselves that recompense of their error which was owed them.
And as they did not approve of keeping God in their moral knowledge, God gave them up to an abandoned mind, "a reprobate, God-rejected mind"; meeting their disapprobation with His just and fatal reprobation. That mind, taking the false premisses of the Tempter, and reasoning from them to establish the autocracy of self, led with terrible certainty and success through evil thinking to evil doing; to do the deeds which are not becoming, to expose the being made for God, in a naked and foul unseemliness, to its friends and its foes; filled full of all unrighteousness, wickedness, viciousness, greed; brimming with envy, murder, guile, ill nature; whisperers, defamers, repulsive to God, outragers, prideful, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, faithless, loveless, truceless, pitiless; people who morally aware of God’s ordinance, that they who practise such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but assent and consent with those who practise them.
Here is a terrible accusation of human life, and of the human heart; the more terrible because it is plainly meant to be, in a certain sense, inclusive, universal. We are not indeed compelled to think that the Apostle charges every human being with sins against nature, as if the whole earth were actually one vast City of the Plain. We need not take him to mean that every descendant of Adam is actually an undutiful child, or actually untrustworthy in a compact, or even actually a boaster, an άλαζν, a pretentious claimant of praise or credit which he knows he does not deserve. We may be sure that on the whole, in this lurid passage, charged less with condemnation than with "lamentation, and mourning, and woe," he is thinking mainly of the then state of heathen society in its worst developments. Yet we shall see, as the Epistle goes on, that all the while he is thinking not only of the sins of some men, but of the sin of man. He describes with this tremendous particularity the variegated symptoms of one disease-the corruption of man’s heart; a disease everywhere present, everywhere deadly; limited in its manifestations by many circumstances and conditions, outward or within the man, but in itself quite unlimited in its dreadful possibilities. What man is, as fallen, corrupted, gone from God, is shown, in the teaching of St. Paul, by what bad men are.
Do we rebel against the inference? Quite possibly we do. Almost for certain, at one time or another, we have done so. We look round us on one estimable life and another, which we cannot reasonably think of as regenerate, if we take the strict Scriptural tests of regeneration into account, yet which asks and wins our respect, our confidence, it may be even our admiration; and we say, openly and tacitly, consciously or unconsciously, that that life stands clear outside this first chapter of Romans. Well, be it so in our thoughts; and let nothing-no, nothing-make us otherwise than ready to recognise and honour right doing wherever we see it, alike in the saints of God and in those who deny His very Being. But just now let us withdraw from all such looks outward, and calmly and in a silent hour look in. Do we, do you, do I, stand outside this chapter? Are we definitely prepared to say that the heart which we carry in our breast, whatever our friend’s heart may be, is such that under no change of circumstances could it, being what it is, conceivably develop the forms of evil branded in this passage? Ah, who, that knows himself, does not know that there lies in him indefinitely more than he can know of possible evil? "Who can understand his errors?" Who has so encountered temptation in all its typical forms that he can say, with even approximate truth, that he knows his own strength, and his own weakness, exactly as they are?
It was not for nothing that the question was discussed of old, whether there was any man who would always be virtuous if he were given the ring of Gyges, and the power to be invisible to all eyes. Nor was it lightly, or as a piece of pious rhetoric, that the saintliest of the chiefs of our Reformation, seeing a murderer carried off to die, exclaimed that there went John Bradford but for the grace of God. It is just when a man is nearest God for himself that he sees what, but for God, he would be; what, taken apart from God, he is, potentially, if not in act. And it is in just such a mood that, reading this paragraph of the great Epistle, he will smite upon his breast, and say, "God, be merciful to me the sinner". {Luke 18:13}
So doing he will be meeting the very purpose of the Writer of this passage. St. Paul is full of the message of peace, holiness, and the Spirit. He is intent and eager to bring his reader into sight and possession of the fulness of the eternal mercy, revealed and secured in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Sacrifice and Life. But for this very purpose he labours first to expose man to himself; to awaken him to the fact that he is before everything else a sinner; to reverse the Tempter’s spell, and to let him see the fact of his guilt with open eyes.
"The Gospel," someone has said, "can never be proved except to a bad conscience." If "bad" means "awakened," the saying is profoundly true. With a conscience sound asleep we may discuss Christianity, whether to condemn it, or to applaud. We may see in it an elevating programme for the race. We may affirm, a thousand times, that from the creed that God became flesh there result boundless possibilities for Humanity. But the Gospel. "the power of God unto salvation," will hardly be seen in its own prevailing self-evidence, as it is presented in this wonderful Epistle, till the student is first and with all else a penitent. The man must know for himself something of sin as condemnable guilt, and something of self as a thing in helpless yet responsible bondage, before he can so see Christ given for us, and risen for us, and seated at the right hand of God for us, as to say, "There is now no condemnation; Who shall separate us from the love of God? I know whom I have believed."
To the full sight of Christ there needs a true sight of self, that is to say, of sin.
1. Paul, etc. (11) — With regard to the word Paul, as it is a subject of no such moment as ought to detain us, and as nothing can be said which has not been mentioned by other expounders, I should say nothing, were it not proper to satisfy some at small expense without being tedious to others; for the subject shall be despatched in a very few words.
They who think that the Apostle attained this name as a trophy for having brought Sergius, the proconsul, to the faith of Christ, are confuted by the testimony of Luke, who shows that he was so called before that time. (Act 13:7.) Nor does it seem probable to me, that it was given him when he was converted to Christ; though this idea so pleased [Augustine ], that he took occasion refinedly to philosophize on the subject; for he says, that from a proud Saul he was made a very little (parvulum (12)) disciple of Christ. More probable is the opinion of [Origen ], who thought that he had two names; for it is not unlikely to be true, that his name, Saul, derived from his kindred, was given him by his parents to indicate his religion and his descent; and that his other name, Paul, was added, to show his right to Roman citizenship; (13) they would not have this honor, then highly valued, to be otherwise than made evident; but they did not so much value it as to withhold a proof of his Israelitic descent. But he has commonly taken the name Paul in his Epistles, and it may be for the following reasons: because in the churches to which he wrote, it was more known and more common, more acceptable in the Roman empire, and less known among his own nation. It was indeed his duty to avoid the foolish suspicion and hatred under which the name of a Jew then labored among the Romans and in their provinces, and to abstain from inflaming the rage of his own countrymen, and to take care of himself.
A servant of Jesus Christ, etc. — He signalizes himself with these distinctions for the purpose of securing more authority to his doctrine; and this he seeks to secure by two things — first, by asserting his call to the Apostleship; (14) and secondly, by showing that his call was not unconnected with the Church of Rome: for it was of great importance that he should be deemed an Apostle through God’s call, and that he should be known as one destined for the Roman Church. He therefore says, that he was a servant of Christ, and called to the office of an Apostle, thereby intimating that he had not presumptuously intruded into that office. He then adds, that he was chosen, (selectum — selected, (15)) by which he more fully confirms the fact, that he was not one of the people, but a particular Apostle of the Lord. Consistently with this, he had before proceeded from what was general to what was particular, as the Apostleship was an especial service; for all who sustain the office of teaching are to be deemed Christ’s servants, but Apostles, in point of honor, far exceed all others. But the choosing for the gospel, etc., which he afterwards mentions, expresses the end as well as the use of the Apostleship; for he intended briefly to show for what purpose he was called to that function. By saying then that he was servant of Christ, he declared what he had in common with other teachers; by claiming to himself the title of an Apostle, he put himself before others; but as no authority is due to him who willfully intrudes himself, he reminds us, that he was appointed by God.
Then the meaning is, — that Paul was a servant of Christ, not any kind of servant, but an Apostle, and that by the call of God, and not by presumptuous intrusion: then follows a clearer explanation of the Apostolic office, — it was ordained for the preaching of the Gospel. For I cannot agree with those who refer this call of which he speaks to the eternal election of God; and who understand the separation, either that from his mother’s womb, which he mentions in Gal 1:15, or that which Luke refers to, when Paul was appointed for the Gentiles: but I consider that he simply glories in having God as the author of his call, lest any one should think that he had through his own rashness taken this honor to himself. (16)
We must here observe, that all are not fitted for the ministry of the word; for a special call is necessary: and even those who seem particularly fitted ought to take heed lest they thrust themselves in without a call. But as to the character of the Apostolic and of the Episcopal call, we shall consider it in another place. We must further observe, that the office of an Apostle is the preaching of the gospel. It hence appears what just objects of ridicule are those dumb dogs, who render themselves conspicuous only by their mitre and their crook, and boast themselves to be the successors of the Apostles!
The word, servant, imports nothing else but a minister, for it refers to what is official. (17) I mention this to remove the mistake of those who too much refine on this expression and think that there is here to be understood a contrast between the service of Moses and that of Christ.
(11) “The inscription of the Pauline Epistles,” says [Turrettin ], “is according to the manner of the ancients, both Greeks and Romans. They were wont to prefix their name; and to those to whom they wrote they added their good wishes.” We have an example in Act 23:26. — Ed.
(12) Thereby expressing the meaning of Paulus, which in Latin is little. “Paul,” says the quaint [Elnathan Parr ], “as signifies little, and indeed not unfitly, for he is reported to have been low in stature, and to have had a very small voice,” which is thought to have been objected to him in 2. o 10:10 — Ed.
(13) Most writers agree in this view, regarding Saul as his Hebrew name and Paul as his Roman name. — Ed.
(14) “A called Apostle — vocatus apostolus— κλητὸς απόστολος; ” our version is, “called to be an Apostle”. Most consider “called” here in the sense of chosen or elected, “a chosen Apostle.” Professor [Stuart ] observes, thatκλητὸς in the writings of Paul has always the meaning of efficient calling, and signifies not only the invited, but the effectually invited. He refers to 1. o 1:1; compared with Gal 1:15
He was an Apostle by a call, or as [Beza ] renders it, “by the call of God — ex Dei vocatione apostolus.” The meaning is the same as what he himself expresses it in Gal 1:1. [Turrettin ] renders it, “Apostolus vocatione divina — an Apostle by divine vocation.”
The difference between “a called Apostle” and “called to be an Apostle,” is this, that the first conveys the idea that he obeyed the call, and the other does not. — Ed.
(15)Αφωρισμένος separated, set apart; “segregatus,” Vulgate; “separatus, [Beza ]. “The Pharisees,” says [Leigh ], “were termedἀφωρισμένος we may English them Separatists: they separated themselves to the study of the law, in which respect they might be calledἀφωρισμένος εἰς τὸν νόμον, separated to the law. In allusion to this, saith [Drusius ], the Apostle is thought to have styled himself, Rom 1:1, ἀφωρισμένον εἰς ἐυαγγέλιον, separated unto the Gospel, when he was called from being a Pharisee to be a preacher of the Gospel.” Separated is the word adopted both by [Doddridge ] and [Macknight ], as well as by our own version. — Ed.
(16) Some combine the four separations. “Set apart in the eternal counsel of God, and from his mother’s womb, Gal 1:15, and by the special commandment of the Holy Ghost, Act 13:2, confirmed by constitution of the Church, Act 13:3; Gal 2:9.” — Parr. But the object here seems to have been that stated by [Calvin ] : nor is it just or prudent to connect any other idea with the word except that which the context requires; for to do so only tends to create confusion. — Ed.
(17) Moses, Joshua, David, Nehemiah, etc., where, in a similar sense, called servants; and also our Savior. They were officially servants. — Ed
2. Which he had before promised, etc. — As the suspicion of being new subtracts much from the authority of a doctrine, he confirms the faith of the gospel by antiquity; as though he said, “Christ came not on the earth unexpectedly, nor did he introduce a doctrine of a new kind and not heard of before, inasmuch as he, and his gospel too, had been promised and expected from the beginning of the world.” But as antiquity is often fabulous, he brings witnesses, and those approved, even the Prophets of God, that he might remove every suspicion. He in the third place adds, that their testimonies were duly recorded, that is, in the Holy Scriptures.
We may learn from this passage what the gospel is: he teaches us, not that it was promulgated by the Prophets but only promised. If then the Prophets promised the gospel, it follows, that it was revealed, when our Lord was at length manifested in the flesh. They are then mistaken who confound the promises with the gospel, since the gospel is properly the appointed preaching of Christ as manifested, in whom the promises themselves are exhibited. (18)
(18) The verb isπροεπηγγείλατο only here; it comes from επαγγέλλομαι, which [Schleusner ] says, means in the middle voice, to promise. “Which he had before promised.” is then the proper rendering, and not “Which he formerly published,” as proposed by Professor [Stuart ]. Both [Doddridge ] and [Macknight ] have retained our version, with which that of [Beza ] agrees. — Ed.
3. Concerning his own Son, etc. — This is a remarkable passage, by which we are taught that the whole gospel is included in Christ, so that if any removes one step from Christ, he withdraws himself from the gospel. For since he is the living and express image of the Father, it is no wonder, that he alone is set before us as one to whom our whole faith is to be directed and in whom it is to center. It is then a definition of the gospel, by which Paul expresses what is summarily comprehended in it. I have rendered the words which follow, Jesus Christ our Lord, in the same case; which seems to me to be most agreeable with the context. We hence learn, that he who has made a due proficiency in the knowledge of Christ, has acquired every thing which can be learned from the gospel; and, on the other hand, that they who seek to be wise without Christ, are not only foolish, but even completely insane.
Who was made, etc. — Two things must be found in Christ, in order that we may obtain salvation in him, even divinity and humanity. His divinity possesses power, righteousness, life, which by his humanity are conveyed to us. Hence the Apostle has expressly mentioned both in the Summary he gives of the gospel, that Christ was manifested in the flesh — and that in it he declared himself to be the Son of God. So John says; after having declared that the Word was made flesh, he adds, that in that flesh there was a glory as of the only-begotten Son of God. (Joh 1:14.) That he specially notices the descent and lineage of Christ from his ancestor David, is not superfluous; for by this he calls back our attention to the promise, that we may not doubt but that he is the very person who had been formerly promised. So well known was the promise made to David, that it appears to have been a common thing among the Jews to call the Messiah the Son of David. This then — that Christ did spring from David — was said for the purpose of confirming our faith.
He adds,according to the flesh; and he adds this, that we may understand that he had something more excellent than flesh, which he brought from heaven, and did not take from David, even that which he afterwards mentions, the glory of the divine nature. Paul does further by these words not only declare that Christ had real flesh, but he also clearly distinguishes his human from his divine nature; and thus he refutes the impious raving of Servetus, who assigned flesh to Christ, composed of three untreated elements.
4. Declared (19) the Son of God, etc.: or, if you prefer, determined (definitus); as though he had said, that the power, by which he was raised from the dead, was something like a decree by which he was proclaimed the Son of God, according to what is said in Psa 2:7, “I have this day begotten thee:” for this begetting refers to what was made known. Though some indeed find here three separate evidences of the divinity of Christ — “power,” understanding thereby miracles — then the testimony of the Spirit — and, lastly, the resurrection from the dead — I yet prefer to connect them together, and to reduce these three things to one, in this manner — that Christ was declared the Son of God by openly exercising a real celestial power, that is, the power of the Spirit, when he rose from the dead; but that this power is comprehended, when a conviction of it is imprinted on our hearts by the same Spirit. The language of the Apostle well agrees with this view; for he says that he was declared by power, because power, peculiar to God, shone forth in him, and uncontestably proved him to be God; and this was indeed made evident by his resurrection. Paul says the same thing in another place; having stated, that by death the weakness of the flesh appeared, he at the same time extols the power of the Spirit in his resurrection; (2. o 13:4) This glory, however, is not made known to us, until the same Spirit imprints a conviction of it on our hearts. And that Paul includes, together with the wonderful energy of the Spirit, which Christ manifested by rising from the dead, the testimony which all the faithful feel in their hearts, is even evident from this — that he expressly calls it the Spirit of Holiness; as though he had said, that the Spirit, as far as it sanctifies, confirms and ratifies that evidence of its power which it once exhibited. For the Scripture is wont often to ascribe such titles to the Spirit, as tend to illustrate our present subject. Thus He is called by our Lord the Spirit of Truth, on account of the effect which he mentions; (Joh 14:17)
Besides, a divine power is said to have shone forth in the resurrection of Christ for this reason — because he rose by his own power, as he had often testified:
“Destroy this temple, and in three days
I will raise it up again,” (Joh 2:19;)
“No man taketh it from me,” etc.; (Joh 10:18)
For he gained victory over death, (to which he yielded with regard to the weakness of the flesh,) not by aid sought from another, but by the celestial operation of his own Spirit.
(19) “Declaratus,” ὁρισθέντος. Some of the ancients, such as [Origen ], [Chrysostom ], [Cyril ], and others, have given to this verb the meaning of is “proved— δειχθέντος; ” demonstrated — ἀποφανθέντος; ” “exhibited —ἀποδειχθώντος; ”etc. But it is said that the word has not this meaning in the New Testament, and that it means, limited, determined, decreed, constituted. Besides here, it is found only in Luk 22:22; Act 2:23; Act 10:42; Act 11:29; Act 17:26; Heb 4:7. The word, determined, or constituted, if adopted here, would amount to the same thing, that is, that Christ was visibly determined or constituted the Son of God through the resurrection, or by that event. It was that which fixed, settled, determined, and manifestly exhibited him as the Son of God, clothed and adorned with his own power. Professor [Stuart ] has conjured a number of difficulties in connection with this verse, for which there seems to be no solid reason. The phrase, the Son of God, is so well known from the usage of Scripture, that there is no difficulty connected with it: the full phrase is the only-begotten Son. To say that Christ’s resurrection was no evidence of his divine nature, as Lazarus and others had been raised from the dead, appears indeed very strange. Did Lazarus rise through his own power? Did Lazarus rise again for our justification? Was his resurrection an attestation of any thing he had previously declared? The Revelation A. [Barnes ] very justly says, that the circumstances connected with Christ were those which rendered his resurrection a proof of his divinity.
Professor [Hodge ] gives what he conceives to be the import of the two verses in these words, “Jesus Christ was, as to his human nature, the Son of David; but he was clearly demonstrated to be, as to his divine nature, the Son of God, by the resurrection from the dead.” This view is taken by many, such as [Pareus ], [Beza ], [Turrettin ], etc. But the words, “according to the Spirit of Holiness” — κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης, are taken differently by others, as meaning the Holy Spirit. As the phrase is nowhere else found, it may be taken in either sense. That the divine nature of Christ is called Spirit, is evident. See 1. o 15:45; 2. o 3:17; Heb 9:14, 1. e 3:18 [Doddridge ], [Scott ], and [Chalmers ], consider The Holy Spirit to be intended. The last gives this paraphrase: — “Declared, or determinately marked out to be the Son of God and with power. The thing was demonstrated by an evidence, the exhibition of which required a putting forth of power, which Paul in another place represents as a very great and strenuous exertion, ‘According to the working of his mighty power when he raised him from the dead.’ — The Spirit of Holiness, or the Holy Spirit. It was through the operation of the Holy Spirit that the divine nature was infused into the human at the birth of Jesus Christ; and the very same agent, it is remarkable, was employed in the work of the resurrection. ‘Put to death in the flesh,’ says Peter, and ‘quickened by the Spirit.’ We have only to do with the facts of the case. He was demonstrated to be the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit having been put forth in raising him from the dead.” As to the genitive case after “resurrection,” see a similar instance in Act 17:32
The idea deduced by [Calvin ], that he is called here “the Spirit of Holiness,” on account of the holiness he works in us, seems not well-founded, though advanced by [Theodoret ] and [Augustine ]. — Ed.
5. Through whom we have received, etc. — Having completed his definition of the gospel, which he introduced for the recommendation of his office, he now returns to speak of his own call; and it was a great point that this should be proved to the Romans. By mentioning grace and apostleship apart, he adopts a form of speech, (20) which must be understood as meaning, gratuitous apostleship or the favor of the apostleship; by which he means, that it was wholly through divine favor, not through his own worthiness, that he had been chosen for so high an office. For though it has hardly any thing connected with it in the estimation of the world, except dangers, labors, hatred, and disgrace; yet before God and his saints, it possesses a dignity of no common or ordinary kind. It is therefore deservedly counted a favor. If you prefer to say, “I have received grace that I should be an Apostle,” the sense would be the same. (21)
The expression, on account of his name, is rendered by [Ambrose ], “in his name,” as though it meant, that the Apostle was appointed in the place of Christ to preach the gospel, according to that passage, “We are ambassadors for Christ,” etc. (2. o 5:20.) Their opinion, however, seems better, who take name for knowledge; for the gospel is preached for this end — that we may believe on the name of the Son of God. (1. o 3:23.) And Paul is said to have been a chosen vessel, to carry the name of Christ among the Gentiles. (Act 9:15.) On account then of his name, which means the same, as though he had said, that I might make known what Christ is. (22)
For the obedience of faith, etc. — That is, we have received a command to preach the gospel among all nations, and this gospel they obey by faith. By stating the design of his calling, he again reminds the Romans of his office, as though he said, “It is indeed my duty to discharge the office committed to me, which is to preach the word; and it is your duty to hear the word and willingly to obey it; you will otherwise make void the vocation which the Lord has bestowed on me.”
We hence learn, that they perversely resist the authority of God and upset the whole of what he has ordained, who irreverently and contemptuously reject the preaching of the gospel; the design of which is to constrain us to obey God. We must also notice here what faith is; the name of obedience is given to it, and for this reason — because the Lord calls us by his gospel; we respond to his call by faith; as on the other hand, the chief act of disobedience to God is unbelief, I prefer rendering the sentence, “For the obedience of faith,” rather than, “In order that they may obey the faith;” for the last is not strictly correct, except taken figuratively, though it be found once in the Act 6:7. Faith is properly that by which we obey the gospel. (23)
Among all nations, etc. It was not enough for him to have been appointed an Apostle, except his ministry had reference to some who were to be taught: hence he adds, that his apostleship extended to all nations. He afterwards calls himself more distinctly the Apostle of the Romans, when he says, that they were included in the number of the nations, to whom he had been given as a minister. And further, the Apostles had in common the command to preach the gospel to all the world; and they were not, as pastors and bishops, set over certain churches. But Paul, in addition to the general undertaking of the apostolic function, was constituted, by a special appointment, to be a minister to proclaim the gospel among the Gentiles. It is no objection to this, that he was forbidden to pass through Macedonia and to preach the word in Mysia: for this was done, not that there were limits prescribed to him, but that he was for a time to go elsewhere; for the harvest was not as yet ripe there.
Ye are the called of Jesus Christ, etc. He assigns a reason more nearly connected with them — because the Lord had already exhibited in them an evidence by which he had manifested that he had called them to a participation of the gospel. It hence followed, that if they wished their own calling to remain sure, they were not to reject the ministry of Paul, who had been chosen by the same election of God. I therefore take this clause, “the called of Jesus Christ,” as explanatory, as though the particle “even” were inserted; for he means, that they were by calling made partakers of Christ. For they who shall be heirs of eternal life, are chosen by the celestial Father to be children in Christ; and when chosen, they are committed to his care and protection as their shepherd. (24)
(20) “Hypellage,” a figure in grammar, by which a noun or an adjective is put in a form or in a case different from that in which it ought grammatically to be. — Ed.
(21) If this view be taken, the best mode would be to renderκαι, even “favor, even the apostleship.” But, as [Wolfius ] says, “both words would perhaps be better rendered separately, and “grace” or favor be referred to the conversion of the Apostle himself, and “apostleship” to his office. See 1. i 1:12, and Act 9:15, Act 13:2; Act 22:21. — Ed
(22) He has taken this clause before that which follows, contrary to the order of the text, because he viewed it as connected with the receiving of the apostleship.
“Pro nomine ipsius ,” — ὑπὲρ τοῦ ὀνὸματος αὐτοῦ; “ad nominis ejus gloriam — to the glory of his name,” [Turrettin ]; “for the purpose of magnifying his name,” [Chalmers ] [Hodge ] observes, “Paul was an apostle that all nations might be obedient, to the honor of Jesus Christ, that is, so that his name may be known.” Some, as [Tholuck ], connect the words with “obedience to the faith,” as they render the phrase, and, in this sense, “that obedience might be rendered to the faith among all nations for the sake of his name.” But it is better to connect the words with the receiving of the apostleship: it was received for two purposes — that there might be the obedience of faith, and that the name of Christ might be magnified. — Ed.
(23) It might be rendered, “that there might be the obedience of faith,” or, “in order to produce,” or, “Promote the obedience of faith.” The obedience is faith. The command is, “believe,” and the obedience must correspond with it. To obey the faith, as in Act 6:7, is a different form of expression: the article is prefixed there, it is the faith, meaning the gospel. — See 2. h 1:8. Professor [Stuart ] and [Haldane ], agree in this view. The latter refers to Rom 10:3, where the Israelites are charged for not submitting to God’s righteousness; and, in Rom 10:16, it is said, that they had not all obeyed the gospel, “for Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report?” Then to believe the gospel is in an especial manner to obey it. — Ed.
(24) “The called of Jesus Christ,” i.e., the called who belong to Christ. Κλητὸς means, not only those to whom the external call of the gospel has been addressed, but those who have been also internally called.” — [Stuart ]. The same author renders the wordsκλητοῖς ἁγίοις, in the next verse, “chosen saints,” or, “saints effectually called.” — Ed.
7. To all of you who are at Rome, etc. By this happy arrangement he sets forth what there is in us worthy of commendation; he says, that first the Lord through his own kindness made us the objects of his favor and love; and then that he has called us; and thirdly, that he has called us to holiness: but this high honor only then exists, when we are not wanting to our call.
Here a rich truth presents itself to us, to which I shall briefly refer, and leave it to be meditated upon by each individual: Paul does by no means ascribe the praise of our salvation to ourselves, but derives it altogether from the fountain of God’s free and paternal love towards us; for he makes this the first thing — God loves us: and what is the cause of his love, except his own goodness alone? On this depends our calling, by which in his own time he seals his adoption to those whom he had before freely chosen. We also learn from this passage that none rightly connect themselves with the number of the faithful, except they feel assured that the Lord is gracious, however unworthy and wretched sinners they may be, and except they be stimulated by his goodness and aspire to holiness, for he hath not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness. (1. h 4:7.) As the Greek can be rendered in the second person, I see no reason for any change.
Grace to you and peace, etc. Nothing is more desirable than to have God propitious to us, and this is signified by grace; and then to have prosperity and success in all things flowing from him, and this is intimated by peace; for however things may seem to smile on us, if God be angry, even blessing itself is turned to a curse. The very foundation then of our felicity is the favor of God, by which we enjoy true and solid prosperity, and by which also our salvation is promoted even when we are in adversities. (25) And then as he prays to God for peace, we must understand, that whatever good comes to us, it is the fruit of divine benevolence. Nor must we omit to notice, that he prays at the same time to the Lord Jesus Christ for these blessings. Worthily indeed is this honor rendered to him, who is not only the administrator and dispenser of his Father’s bounty to us, but also works all things in connection with him. It was, however, the special object of the Apostle to show, that through him all God’s blessings come to us. (26)
There are those who prefer to regard the word peace as signifying quietness of conscience; and that this meaning belongs to it sometimes, I do not deny: but since it is certain that the Apostle wished to give us here a summary of God’s blessings, the former meaning, which is adduced by Bucer, is much the most suitable. Anxiously wishing then to the godly what makes up real happiness, he betakes himself, as he did before, to the very fountain itself, even the favor of God, which not only alone brings to us eternal felicity but is also the source of all blessings in this life.
(25) “The ancient Greeks and Romans,” says [Turrettin ], “wished to those to whom they wrote, in the inscription of their epistles, health, joy, happiness; but Paul prays for far higher blessings even the favor of God, the fountain of all good things, and peace, in which the Hebrews included all blessings.” — Ed.
(26) “From God our Father, — if God, then able; if our Father, then willing to enrich us with his gifts: and from our Lord Jesus Christ, — from our Lord, who has purchased them for us; from Jesus, for without these we cannot be saved; from Christ, for he is anointed with grace and peace, Joh 1:16.” — [Parr ]
8. I first (28) indeed, etc. Here the beginning commences, altogether adapted to the occasion, as he seasonably prepares them for receiving instruction by reasons connected with himself as well as with them. What he states respecting them is, the celebrity of their faith; for he intimates that they being honored with the public approbation of the churches, could not reject an Apostle of the Lord, without disappointing the good opinion entertained of them by all; and such a thing would have been extremely uncourteous and in a manner bordering on perfidy. As then this testimony justly induced the Apostle, by affording him an assurance of their obedience, to undertake, according to his office, to teach and instruct the Romans; so it held them bound not to despise his authority. With regard to himself, he disposes them to a teachable spirit by testifying his love towards them: and there is nothing more effectual in gaining credit to an adviser, than the impression that he is cordially anxious to consult our wellbeing.
The first thing worthy of remark is, that he so commends their faith, (29) that he implies that it had been received from God. We are here taught that faith is God’s gift; for thanksgiving is an acknowledgment of a benefit. He who gives thanks to God for faith, confesses that it comes from him. And since we find that the Apostle ever begins his congratulations with thanksgiving, let us know that we are hereby reminded, that all our blessings are God’s free gifts. It is also needful to become accustomed to such forms of speaking, that we may be led more fully to rouse ourselves in the duty of acknowledging God as the giver of all our blessings, and to stir up others to join us in the same acknowledgment. If it be right to do this in little things, how much more with regard to faith; Which is neither a small nor an indiscriminate (promiscua ) gift of God. We have here besides an example, that thanks ought to be given through Christ, according to the Apostle’s command in Heb 13:15; inasmuch as in his name we seek and obtain mercy from the Father. — I observe in the last place, that he calls him his God. This is the faithful’s special privilege, and on them alone God bestows this honor. There is indeed implied in this a mutual relationship, which is expressed in this promise,
“I will be to them a God;
they shall be to me a people.” (Jer 30:22.)
I prefer at the same time to confine this to the character which Paul sustained, as an attestation of his obedience to the end in the work of preaching the gospel. So Hezekiah called God the God of Isaiah, when he desired him to give him the testimony of a true and faithful Prophet. (Isa 37:4.) So also he is called in an especial manner the God of Daniel. (Dan 6:20.)
Through the whole world. The eulogy of faithful men was to Paul equal to that of the whole world, with regard to the faith of the Romans; for the unbelieving, who deemed it detestable, could not have given an impartial or a correct testimony respecting it. We then understood that it was by the mouths of the faithful that the faith of the Romans was proclaimed through the whole world; and that they were alone able to judge rightly of it, and to pronounce a correct opinion. That this small and despised handful of men were unknown as to their character to the ungodly, even at Rome, was a circumstance he regarded as nothing; for Paul made no account of their judgment.
(28) “It does not mean here the first in point of importance, but first in the order of time.” — [Stuart ]. The same author thinks that men here has its correspondingδε in Rom 1:13, Οὐ θέλω δέ ὑμᾶς, etc., — Ed
(29) “Faith is put here for the whole religion, and means the same as your piety. Faith is one of the principal things of religion, one of its first requirements, and hence it signifies religion itself.” — [Barnes ]. It is indeed the principal thing, the very basis of religion. Heb 11:6. — Ed.
9. For God is my witness, etc. He proves his love by its effects; for had he not greatly loved them, he would not have so anxiously commended them to the Lord, and especially he would not have so ardently desired to promote their welfare by his own labors. His anxiety then and his ardent desire were certain evidences of his love; for had they not sprung from it, they would never have existed. And as he knew it to be necessary for establishing confidence in his preaching, that the Romans should be fully persuaded of his sincerity, he added an oath — a needful remedy, whenever a declaration, which ought to be received as true and indubitable vacillates through uncertainty. For since an oath is nothing else but an appeal to God as to the truth of what we declare, most foolish is it to deny that the Apostle used here an oath. He did not notwithstanding transgress the prohibition of Christ.
It hence appears that it was not Christ’s design (as the superstitious Anabaptists dream) to abolish oaths altogether, but on the contrary to call attention to the due observance of the law; and the law, allowing an oath, only condemns perjury and needless swearing. If then we would use an oath aright, let us imitate the seriousness and the reverent manner exhibited by the Apostles; and that you may understand what it is, know that God is so called as a witness, that he is also appealed to as an avenger, in case we deceive; which Paul expresses elsewhere in these words,
“God is a witness to my soul.” (2. o 1:23.) (30)
Whom I serve with my spirit, etc. It is usual with profane men, who trifle with God, to pretend his name, no less boldly than presumptuously; but the Apostle here speaks of his own piety, in order to gain credit; and those, in whom the fear of God and reverence for his name prevail, will dread to swear falsely. At the same time, he sets his own spirit in opposition to the outward mask of religion; for as many falsely pretend to be the worshippers of God, and outwardly appear to be so, he testifies that he, from the heart served, God. (31) It may be also that he alluded to the ancient ceremonies, in which alone the Jews thought the worship of God consisted. He then intimates, that though he retained not observance of these, he was yet a sincere worshipper of God, according to what he says in Phi 3:3,
“We are the true circumcision, who in spirit serve God,
and glory not in the flesh.”
He then glories that he served God with sincere devotion of heart, which is true religion and approved worship.
But it was expedient, as I have said, in order that his oath might attain more credit, that Paul should declare his piety towards God; for perjury is a sport to the ungodly, while the pious dread it more than a thousand deaths; inasmuch as it cannot be, but that where there is a real fear of God, there must be also a reverence for his name. It is then the same thing, as though Paul had said, that he knew how much sacredness and sincerity belonged to an oath, and that he did not rashly appeal to God as a witness, as the profane are wont to do. And thus, by his own example, he teaches us, that whenever we swear, we ought to give such evidence of piety, that the name of God, which we use in our declarations, may retain its sacredness. And further, he gives a proof, even by his own ministry, that he worshipped not God feignedly; for it was the fullest evidence, that he was a man devoted to God’s glory, when he denied himself, and hesitated not to undergo all the hardships of reproach, poverty, and hatred, and even the peril of death, in advancing the kingdom of God. (32)
Some take this clause, as though Paul intended to recommend that worship which he said he rendered to God, on this account, — because it corresponded with what the gospel prescribes. It is indeed certain that spiritual worship is enjoined on us in the gospel; but the former interpretation is far the most suitable, — that he devoted his service to God in preaching the gospel. He, however, makes at the same time a difference between himself and hypocrites, who have something else in view rather than to serve God; for ambition, or some such thing, influences most men; and it is far from being the case, that all engage cordially and faithfully in this office. The meaning is, that Paul performed sincerely the office of teaching; for what he says of his own devotion he applies to this subject.
But we hence gather a profitable doctrine; for it ought to add no little encouragement to the ministers of the gospel, when they hear that, in preaching the gospel, they render an acceptable and a valuable service to God. What, indeed, is there to prevent them from regarding it an excellent service, when they know that their labor is pleasing to God, and is approved by him? Moreover, he calls itthe gospel of the Son of God; for Christ is in it made known, who has been appointed by the Father for this end, — that he, being glorified, should also glorify the Father.
That continually, etc. He still further sets forth the ardor of his love by his very constancy in praying for them. It was, indeed, a strong evidence, when he poured forth no prayers to the Lord without making mention of them. That the meaning may be clearer, I render παντοτε, “always;” as though it was said, “In all my prayers,” or, “whenever I address God in prayer, I join a mention of you.” (33) Now he speaks not of every kind of calling on God, but of those prayers to which the saints, being at liberty, and laying aside all cares, apply their whole attention to the work; for he might have often expressed suddenly this or that wish, when the Romans did not come into his mind; but whenever he had previously intended, and, as it were, prepared himself to offer up prayers to God, among others he remembered them. He then speaks peculiarly of those prayers, for which the saints deliberately prepare themselves; as we find to have been the case with our Lord himself, who, for this purpose, sought retirement. He at the same time intimates how frequently, or rather, how unceasingly he was engaged in such prayers, since he says that he prayed continually.
(30) The passage in Mat 5:33, has been often wholly misunderstood. That oaths in common conversation are alone prohibited, is quite evident from what the passage itself contains. In solemn oaths there was no swearing by “heaven,” or by “God’s throne,” or by “the earth,” or by “Jerusalem,” or by “the head.” such forms were only used in conversation, as similar ones are still used: and these kinds of swearing are alone condemned by our Savior. — Ed.
(31) “Sincerè et verè — sincerely and truly,” [Wolfius ], “not merely externally, but cordially,” [Hodge ].
(32)ἐν τῶ εὐαγγελίω τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ “by the preaching of the gospel, etc.” [Stuart ]. “In predicando evangelio — in preaching the gospel,” [Beza ]. “I serve God, not in teaching legal rites, but a much more celestial doctrine,” [Grotius ]
(33) The order of the words, as arranged by [Calvin ], is better than that of our version; he connects “always in my prayers,” or, “in all my prayers,” with “requesting.” The simpler rendering would be as follows: —
9. My witness indeed is God, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that I unceasingly make mention of you, always requesting in my prayers,
10. That by some means now at length I may, through the will of God, have a free course to come to you.
“In the gospel,” may either mean “according to the gospel,” or, “in preaching the gospel.” [Hodge ] prefers the first. The particleει clearly means “that” in this connection. That it is used in this sense in the New Testament there can be no doubt; see Act 26:8; Heb 7:15
10. Requesting, if by any means, etc. As it is not probable that we from the heart study his benefit, whom we are not ready to assist by our labors, he now adds, after having said that he was anxious for their welfare, that he showed by another proof his love to them, as before God, even by requesting that he might be able to advance their interest. That you may, therefore, perceive the full meaning, read the words as though the word also were inserted, requesting also, if by any means, etc. By saying, A prosperous journey by the will of God he shows, not only that he looked to the Lord’s favor for success in his journey, but that he deemed his journey prosperous, if it was approved by the Lord. According to this model ought all our wishes to be formed.
11. For I greatly desire to see you He might, indeed, while absent, have confirmed their faith by his doctrine; but as advice is better taken from one present, he had a desire to be with them. But he explains what his object was, and shows that he wished to undertake the toil of a journey, not for his own, but for their advantage. — Spiritual gifts (34) he calls those which he possessed, being either those of doctrine, or of exhortation, or of prophesy which he knew had come to him through God’s favor. He has here strikingly pointed out the use of gifts by the word, imparting: for different gifts are distributed to each individual, that all may in kindness mutually assist one another, and transfer to others what each one possesses. See Rom 12:3
To confirm you, etc. He modifies what he had said of imparting, lest he should seem to regard them such as were yet to be instructed in the first elements of religion, as though they were not hitherto rightly taught in Christ. He then says, that he wished so to lend his aid to them, that they who had for the most part made a proficiency, might be further assisted: for a confirmation is what we all want, until Christ be fully formed in us. (Eph 4:13.)
(34) The words, τι χάρισμα πνευματικὸν, some spiritual gift, or benefit, seem to be of general import. Some, such as [Chalmers ] and [Haldane ], have supposed that a miraculous power is intended, which the Apostles alone conveyed, such as the power of speaking with tongues: but most Commentators agree in the view here given. The phrase is not found in any other place: χάρισμα, in the plural number, is used to designate miraculous powers. 1. o 12:9; andτὰ πνευματικά mean the same, 1. o 14:1. But here, no doubt, the expression includes any gift or benefit, whether miraculous or ordinary, which the Apostle might have been made the means of conveying. — Ed.
12. Being not satisfied with this modest statement, he qualifies it, and shows, that he did not so occupy the place of a teacher, but that he wished to learn also from them; as though he said, “I desire so to confirm you according to the measure of grace conferred on me, that your example may also add courage (alacritatem — alacrity) to my faith, and that we may thus mutually benefit one another.”
See to what degree of modesty his pious heart submitted itself, so that he disdained not to seek confirmation from unexperienced beginners: nor did he speak dissemblingly, for there is no one so void of gifts in the Church of Christ, who is not able to contribute something to our benefit: but we are hindered by our envy and by our pride from gathering such fruit from one another. Such is our high-mindedness, such is the inebriety produced by vain reputation, that despising and disregarding others, every one thinks that he possesses what is abundantly sufficient for himself. I prefer to read with Bucer, exhortation (exhortationem — encouragement) rather than consolatim ; for it agrees better with the former part. (35)
(35) The verb isσυμπαρακληθὢναι, which [Grotius ] connects withεπιποθῶ in the preceding verse; and adds, “He softens what he had said, by showing, that he would not only bring some joy to them, but they also to him.” “Ut percipiam consolationem — that I may receive consolation,” [Piscator ] ; — “Ut unà recreemur — that we may be together refreshed,” [Castelio ]. “Ad communem exhortationem percipiendam — in order to receive common exhortation,” [Beza ]; “Ut gaudium et voluptatem ex vobis precipiam — that I may receive joy and pleasure from you;” vel, “Ut mutuo solatio invicem nos erigamus atque firmemus — that by mutual comfort we may console and strengthen one another,” [Schleusner ]
The verb with the prefix, συμ, is only found here; but the verbπαρακαλέω frequently occurs, and its common meaning is, to beseech, to exhort to encourage, and by these means to comfort.
With regard to this passage, Professor [Stuart ] says, “I have rendered the word, comfort, only because I cannot find any English word which will convey the full sense of the original.”
“The word rendered to comfort, ” says Professor [Hodge ], “means to invite, to exhort, to instruct, to console, etc. Which of these senses is to be preferred here, it is not easy to decide. Most probably the Apostle intended to use the word in a wide sense, as expressing the idea, that he might be excited, encouraged, and comforted by his intercourse with his Christian brethren.” — The two verses may be thus rendered: —
11. For I desire much to see you, that I may impart to you spiritual
12. benefit, so that you may be strengthened: this also is what I desire, to be encouraged together with you, through the faith which is in both, even in you and in me.
[Grotius ] observes, “ἐν ἀλλήλοις impropriè dixit pro in utrisque, in me et vobis. Dixit sic et Demosthenes, τα πρὸς ἀλλήλοις — Ed
13. I would not that you should be ignorant. What he has hitherto testified — that he continually requested of the Lord that he might visit them, might have appeared a vain thing, and could not have obtained credit, had he neglected to seize the occasion when offered: he therefore says, that the effort had not been wanting, but the opportunity; for he had been prevented from executing a purpose often formed.
We hence learn that the Lord frequently upsets the purposes of his saints, in order to humble them, and by such humiliation to teach them to regard his Providence, that they may rely on it; though the saints, who design nothing without the Lord’s will, cannot be said, strictly speaking, to be driven away from their purposes. It is indeed the presumption of impiety to pass by God, and without him to determine on things to come, as though they were in our own power; and this is what James sharply reprehends in Jas 4:13.
But he says that he was hindered: you must take this in no other sense, but that the Lord employed him in more urgent concerns, which he could not have neglected without loss to the Church. Thus the hinderances of the godly and of the unbelieving differ: the latter perceive only that they are hindered, when they are restrained by the strong hand of the Lord, so as not to be able to move; but the former are satisfied with an hinderance that arises from some approved reason; nor do they allow themselves to attempt any thing beyond their duty, or contrary to edification.
That I might obtain some fruit, etc. He no doubt speaks of that fruit, for the gathering of which the Lord sent his Apostles,
“I have chosen you, that ye may go and bring forth fruit,
and that your fruit may remain.” (Joh 15:16.)
Though he gathered it not for himself, but for the Lord, he yet calls it his own; for the godly have nothing more as their own than the work of promoting the glory of the Lord, with which is connected all their happiness. And he records what had happened to him with respect to other nations, that the Romans might entertain hope, that his coming to them would not be unprofitable, which so many nations had found to have been attended with so much benefit.
14. I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, etc. Those whom he means by the Greeks and the Barbarians, he afterwards explains by adding, both to the wise and to the foolish; which words Erasmus has not rendered amiss by “learned and unlearned,” (eruditos et rudes ,) but I prefer to retain the very words of Paul. He then takes an argument from his own office, and intimates that it ought not to be ascribed to his arrogance, that he thought himself in a manner capable of teaching the Romans, however much they excelled in learning and wisdom and in the knowledge of things, inasmuch as it had pleased the Lord to make him a debtor even to the wise. (36)
Two things are to be here considered — that the gospel is by a heavenly mandate destined and offered to the wise, in order that the Lord may subject to himself all the wisdom of this world, and make all variety of talents, and every kind of science, and the loftiness of all arts, to give way to the simplicity of his doctrine; and what is more, they are to be reduced to the same rank with the unlearned, and to be made so meek, as to be able to bear those to be their fellow-disciples under their master, Christ, whom they would not have deigned before to take as their scholars; and then that the unlearned are by no means to be driven away from this school, nor are they to flee away from it through groundless fear; for if Paul was indebted to them, being a faithful debtor, he had doubtless discharged what he owed; and thus they will find here what they will be capable of enjoying. All teachers have also a rule here which they are to follow, and that is, modestly and kindly to accommodate themselves to the capacities of the ignorant and unlearned. Hence it will be, that they will be able, with more evenness of mind, to bear with many absurdities and almost innumerable things that may disgust them, by which they might otherwise be overcome. They are, however, to remember, that they are not so indebted to the foolish, as that they are to cherish their folly by immoderate indulgence.
(36) [Chalmers ] paraphrases the text thus — “I am bound, or I am under obligation, laid upon me by the duties of my office, to preach both to Greeks and Barbarians, both to the wise and the unwise.”
In modern phraseology, the words may be rendered, “Both to the civilized and to the uncivilized, both to the learned and to the unlearned, am I a debtor.” The two last terms are not exactly parallel to the two first, as many unlearned were among the Greeks, or the civilized, as well as among the Barbarians. — Ed.
15. I am therefore ready, (37) etc. He concludes what he had before said of his desire — that as he knew it to be his duty to spread the gospel among them, in order to gather fruit for the Lord, he was anxious to fulfill God’s calling, as far as he was allowed to do so by the Lord.
(37)τὸ κατ ἐμὲ πρόθυμον, literally, “As to me there is readiness;” or, according to [Stuart ] “There is a readiness so far as it respects me.” But, “I am ready,” or “I am prepared,” conveys the meaning sufficiently, without the other words, “As much as in me is.” By saying that he was prepared, he intimates that the event depended on another, even on God. — Ed.
16. I am not indeed ashamed, etc. This is an anticipation of an objection; for he declares beforehand, that he cared not for the taunts of the ungodly; and he thus provides a way for himself, by which he proceeds to pronounce an eulogy on the value of the gospel, that it might not appear contemptible to the Romans. He indeed intimates that it was contemptible in the eyes of the world; and he does this by saying, that he was not ashamed of it. And thus he prepares them for bearing the reproach of the cross of Christ, lest they should esteem the gospel of less value by finding it exposed to the scoffs and reproaches of the ungodly; and, on the other hand, he shows how valuable it was to the faithful. If, in the first place, the power of God ought to be extolled by us, that power shines forth in the gospel; if, again, the goodness of God deserves to be sought and loved by us, the gospel is a display of his goodness. It ought then to be reverenced and honored, since veneration is due to God’s power; and as it avails to our salvation, it ought to be loved by us.
But observe how much Paul ascribes to the ministry of the word, when he testifies that God thereby puts forth his power to save; for he speaks not here of any secret revelation, but of vocal preaching. It hence follows, that those as it were willfully despise the power of God, and drive away from them his delivering hand, who withdraw themselves from the hearing of the word.
At the same time, as he works not effectually in all, but only where the Spirit, the inward Teacher, illuminates the heart, he subjoins, To every one who believeth. The gospel is indeed offered to all for their salvation, but the power of it appears not everywhere: and that it is the savor of death to the ungodly, does not proceed from what it is, but from their own wickedness. By setting forth but one Salvation he cuts off every other trust. When men withdraw themselves from this one salvation, they find in the gospel a sure proof of their own ruin. Since then the gospel invites all to partake of salvation without any difference, it is rightly called the doctrine of salvation: for Christ is there offered, whose peculiar office is to save that which was lost; and those who refuse to be saved by him, shall find him a Judge. But everywhere in Scripture the word salvation is simply set in opposition to the word destruction: and hence we must observe, when it is mentioned, what the subject of the discourse is. Since then the gospel delivers from ruin and the curse of endless death, its salvation is eternal life. (38)
First to the Jew and then to the Greek. Under the word Greek, he includes all the Gentiles, as it is evident from the comparison that is made; for the two clauses comprehend all mankind. And it is probable that he chose especially this nation to designate other nations, because, in the first place, it was admitted, next to the Jews, into a participation of the gospel covenant; and, secondly, because the Greeks, on account of their vicinity, and the celebrity of their language, were more known to the Jews. It is then a mode of speaking, a part being taken for the whole, by which he connects the Gentiles universally with the Jews, as participators of the gospel: nor does he thrust the Jews from their own eminence and dignity, since they were the first partakers of God’s promise and calling. He then reserves for them their prerogative; but he immediately joins the Gentiles, though in the second place, as being partakers with them.
(38) Onthe power of God, [Pareus ] observes, that the abstract, after the Hebrew manner, is put for the concrete. Power means the instrument of God’s power; that is, the gospel is an instrument rendered efficacious by divine power to convey salvation to believers: or, as [Stuart ] says, “It is powerful through the energy which he imparts, and so it is called his power.” [Chalmers ] gives this paraphrase, “It is that, which however judged and despised as a weak instrument by the men of this world — it is that, to which he, by his own power, gives effect for the recovery of that life which all men had forfeited and lost by sin.”
“The gospel is a divine act, which continues to operate through all ages of the world, and that not in the first place outwardly, but inwardly, in the depths of the soul, and for eternal purposes.” — [Dr. Olshausen ]
17. For (39) the righteousness of God, etc. This is an explanation and a confirmation of the preceding clause — that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. For if we seek salvation, that is, life with God, righteousness must be first sought, by which being reconciled to him, we may, through him being propitious to us, obtain that life which consists only in his favor; for, in order to be loved by God, we must first become righteous, since he regards unrighteousness with hatred. He therefore intimates, that we cannot obtain salvation otherwise than from the gospel, since nowhere else does God reveal to us his righteousness, which alone delivers us from perdition. Now this righteousness, which is the groundwork of our salvation, is revealed in the gospel: hence the gospel is said to be the power of God unto salvation. Thus he reasons from the cause to the effect.
Notice further, how extraordinary and valuable a treasure does God bestow on us through the gospel, even the communication of his own righteousness. I take the righteousness of God to mean, that which is approved before his tribunal; (40) as that, on the contrary, is usually called the righteousness of men, which is by men counted and supposed to be righteousness, though it be only vapor. Paul, however, I doubt not, alludes to the many prophecies in which the Spirit makes known everywhere the righteousness of God in the future kingdom of Christ.
Some explain it as the righteousness which is freely given us by God: and I indeed confess that the words will bear this sense; for God justifies us by the gospel, and thus saves us: yet the former view seems to me more suitable, though it is not what I make much of. Of greater moment is what some think, that this righteousness does not only consist in the free remission of sins, but also, in part, includes the grace of regeneration. But I consider, that we are restored to life because God freely reconciles us to himself, as we shall hereafter show in its proper place.
But instead of the expression he used before, “to every one who believeth,” he says now, from faith; for righteousness is offered by the gospel, and is received by faith. And he adds, to faith: for as our faith makes progress, and as it advances in knowledge, so the righteousness of God increases in us at the same time, and the possession of it is in a manner confirmed. When at first we taste the gospel, we indeed see God’s smiling countenance turned towards us, but at a distance: the more the knowledge of true religion grows in us, by coming as it were nearer, we behold God’s favor more clearly and more familiarly. What some think, that there is here an implied comparison between the Old and New Testament, is more refined than well-founded; for Paul does not here compare the Fathers who lived under the law with us, but points out the daily progress that is made by every one of the faithful.
As it is written, etc. By the authority of the Prophet Habakkuk he proves the righteousness of faith; for he, predicting the overthrow of the proud, adds this — that the life of the righteous consists in faith. Now we live not before God, except through righteousness: it then follows, that our righteousness is obtained by faith; and the verb being future, designates the real perpetuity of that life of which he speaks; as though he had said, — that it would not be momentary, but continue forever. For even the ungodly swell with the false notion of having life; but when they say, “Peace and safety,” a sudden destruction comes upon them, (1. h 5:3.) It is therefore a shadow, which endures only for a moment. Faith alone is that which secures the perpetuity of life; and whence is this, except that it leads us to God, and makes our life to depend on him? For Paul would not have aptly quoted this testimony had not the meaning of the Prophet been, that we then only stand, when by faith we recumb on God: and he has not certainly ascribed life to the faith of the godly, but in as far as they, having renounced the arrogance of the world, resign themselves to the protection of God alone. (41)
He does not indeed professedly handle this subject; and hence he makes no mention of gratuitous justification: but it is sufficiently evident from the nature of faith, that this testimony is rightly applied to the present subject. Besides, we necessarily gather from his reasoning, that there is a mutual connection between faith and the gospel: for as the just is said to live by faith, he concludes that this life is received by the gospel.
We have now the principal point or the main hinge of the first part of this Epistle, — that we are justified by faith through the mercy of God alone. We have not this, indeed as yet distinctly expressed by Paul; but from his own words it will hereafter be made very clear — that the righteousness, which is grounded on faith, depends entirely on the mercy of God.
(39) “The causative, γὰρ, indicates a connection with the preceding, that the gospel is the power of God: the reason is, because by the gospel is revealed the righteousness of God, that is, made known by it is a way of righteousness and of obtaining life before God, which neither the law, nor philosophy, nor any other doctrine, was able to show.” — [Pareus ]
(40) “The righteousness of God,” δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, has been the occasion of much toil to critics, but without reason: the very context is sufficient to show its meaning, it being what the gospel reveals, and what the gospel reveals is abundantly known from other passages. Whether we saw, it is the righteousness which is approved of God, as [Calvin ] says, or provided by God, or contrived by God, or imputed by God, the meaning does not materially differ, and indeed all these things, as it is evident from Scripture, are true respecting it.
There is more difficulty connected with the following words, ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν. The view which [Calvin ] gives was adopted by some of the Fathers, such as [Theophylact ] and [Clemens Alexandrinus ]; and it is that of [Melancthon ], [Beza ], [Scaliger ], [Locke ], and many others. From [Poole ] we find that [Chrysostom ] gave this exposition, “From the obscure and inchoate faith of the Old Testament to the clear and full faith of the New;” and that [Ambrose ] ’s exposition was the following, “From the faith or fidelity of God who promises to the faith of him who believes.” But in all these views there is not that which comports with the context, nor the construction very intelligible-”revealed from faith,” What can it mean? To render the passage intelligibly, ἐκ πίστεως must be connected with δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, as suggested by [Hammond ], and followed by [Doddridge ] and [Macknight ]. Then it would be, “The righteousness of God by faith or, which is by faith:” this is revealed in the gospel “to faith,” that is, in order that it may be believed; which is often the force ofεἰς before a noun; as, εἰς τὴν ἀνομίαν — in order to do wickedness; or, εἰς ἁγιασμόν in order to practice holiness, Rom 6:19 [Chalmers ], [Stuart ], [Barnes ], and [Haldane ] take this view. The verse may be thus rendered, —
For the righteousness of God by faith is in it revealed in order to be believed, as it is written, “The just shall by faith live.” The same truth is conveyed in Rom 3:22; and similar phraseology is found in Phi 3:9.
[Barnes ] seems fully to express the import of the passage in these words, “God’s plan of justifying men is revealed in the gospel, which plan is by faith, and the benefits of which plan shall be extended to all that have faith or that believe.” — Ed.
(41) Here is an instance in which Paul quotes the Old Testament, [Hab 2:4 ] neither exactly from the Hebrew nor the Septuagint. The Hebrew is “the just, — by his faith shall he live,” וצדיק באמונתו היה : and the Septuagint, turns “his” into “my,” ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως μοῦ ζήσεται — “The just shall by my faith live,” — “by my faith,” that is, according to the tenor of the passage, “by faith in me.” The passage is quoted by him twice besides, in Gal 3:11, and in Heb 10:38, but exactly in the same words, without the pronoun “his” or “my.” His object in this, as in some similar instances, was to state the general truth contained in the passage, and not to give a strictly verbal quotation. — Ed.
18. For (42) revealed, etc. He reasons now by stating things of a contrary nature, and proves that there is no righteousness except what is conferred, or comes through the gospel; for he shows that without this all men are condemned: by it alone there is salvation to be found. And he brings, as the first proof of condemnation, the fact, — that though the structure of the world, and the most beautiful arrangement of the elements, ought to have induced man to glorify God, yet no one discharged his proper duty: it hence appears that all were guilty of sacrilege, and of wicked and abominable ingratitude.
To some it seems that this is a main subject, and that Paul forms his discourse for the purpose of enforcing repentance; but I think that the discussion of the subject begins here, and that the principal point is stated in a former proposition; for Paul’s object was to teach us where salvation is to be found. He has already declared that we cannot obtain it except through the gospel: but as the flesh will not willingly humble itself so far as to assign the praise of salvation to the grace of God alone, Paul shows that the whole world is deserving of eternal death. It hence follows, that life is to be recovered in some other way, since we are all lost in ourselves. But the words, being well considered, will help us much to understand the meaning of the passage.
Some make a difference between impiety and unrighteousness, and think, that by the former word is meant the profanation of God’s worship, and by the latter, injustice towards men; but as the Apostle immediately refers this unrighteousness to the neglect of true religion, we shall explain both as referring to the same thing. (43) And then,all the impiety of men is to be taken, by a figure in language, as meaning “the impiety of all men,” or, the impiety of which all men are guilty. But by these two words one thing is designated, and that is, ingratitude towards God; for we thereby offend in two ways: it is said to be ἀσέβεια, impiety, as it is a dishonoring of God; it is ἀδικία, unrighteousness, because man, by transferring to himself what belongs to God, unjustly deprives God of his glory. The word wrath, according to the usage of Scripture, speaking after the manner of men, means the vengeance of God; for God, in punishing, has, according to our notion, the appearance of one in wrath. It imports, therefore, no such emotion in God, but only has a reference to the perception and feeling of the sinner who is punished. Then he says that it isrevealed from heaven; though the expression,from heaven, is taken by some in the sense of an adjective, as though he had said “the wrath of the celestial God;” yet I think it more emphatical, when taken as having this import, “Wheresoever a man may look around him, he will find no salvation; for the wrath of God is poured out on the whole world, to the full extent of heaven.”
The truth of God means, the true knowledge of God; and to hold in that, is to suppress or to obscure it: hence they are charged as guilty of robbery. — What we renderunjustly, is given literally by Paul, in unrighteousness, which means the same thing in Hebrew: but we have regard to perspicuity. (44)
(42) The connection here is not deemed very clear. [Stuart ] thinks that this verse is connected, as the former one, with Rom 1:16. and that it includes a reason why the Apostle was not ashamed of the gospel: and [Macknight ] seems to have been of the same opinion, for he rendersγαρ, besides. In this case the revelation of wrath from heaven is that which is made by the gospel. This certainly gives a meaning to the words, “from heaven” which is hardly done by any other views. That the gospel reveals “wrath,” as well as righteousness to be obtained by faith, is what is undeniable. Salvation to the believer, and condemnation to the unbeliever, is its sum and substance. The objection made by [Haldane ] is of no force, — that the Apostle subsequently shows the sins of mankind as committed against the light of nature, and not against the gospel; for he seems to have brought forward the evidence from the light of nature, in order to confirm the evidence from the light of revelation. The expression is, “Revealed is the wrath of God,” and not has been. See Act 17:30
This is the view taken by [Turrettin ]; and [Pareus ] says, “There is nothing to prevent us from referring the revelation of wrath, as well as the revelation of righteousness, to the gospel” — Ed.
(43) It is true that the immediate subject is the neglect of religion; but then injustice towards men is afterwards introduced, and most critics take it in this sense. — Ed.
(44) This clause, τῶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐν ἀδικία κατεχόντων is differently rendered, “Veritatem injuste detinentes — unjustly detaining the truth,” [Turrettin ] ; “Who stifle the truth in unrighteousness,” [Chalmers ] ; “Who hinder the truth by unrighteousness,” [Stuart ]; “Who wickedly oppose the truth,” [Hodge ] ; “Who confine the truth by unrighteousness,” [Macknight ]
“They rushed headlong,” says [Pareus ], “into impiety against God and into injustice against one another, not through ignorance, but knowingly, not through weakness, but willfully and maliciously: and this the Apostle expresses by a striking metaphor, taken from tyrants, who, against right and justice, by open violence, oppress the innocent, bind them in chains, and detain them in prison.”
The sense given by [Schleusner ] and some others, “Qui cum veri Dei cognitione pravitatem vitæ conjungunt — who connect with a knowledge of the true God a wicked life,” seems not to comport with the context.
“The truth” means that respecting the being and power of God afterwards specified. — Ed.
19. Inasmuch as what may be known of God, etc. He thus designates what it behoves us to know of God; and he means all that appertains to the setting forth of the glory of the Lord, or, which is the same thing, whatever ought to move and excite us to glorify God. And by this expression he intimates, that God in his greatness can by no means be fully comprehended by us, and that there are certain limits within which men ought to confine themselves, inasmuch as God accommodates to our small capacities what he testifies of himself. Insane then are all they who seek to know of themselves what God is: for the Spirit, the teacher of perfect wisdom, does not in vain invite our attention to what may be known, τὸ γνωστὸν; and by what means this is known, he immediately explains. And he said, in them rather than to them, for the sake of greater emphasis: for though the Apostle adopts everywhere Hebrew phrases, and ב, beth, is often redundant in that language, yet he seems here to have intended to indicate a manifestation, by which they might be so closely pressed, that they could not evade; for every one of us undoubtedly finds it to be engraven on his own heart, (45) By saying, that God has made it manifest, he means, that man was created to be a spectator of this formed world, and that eyes were given him, that he might, by looking on so beautiful a picture, be led up to the Author himself.
(45) Some takeἐν αὐτοῖς, to mean among them, i.e., as [Stuart ] says, “in the midst of them, or before their eyes,” that is, in the visible world; though many refer it with [Calvin ], to the moral sense, and that the expression is the same with “written in their hearts,” in Rom 2:15. — Ed.
20. Since his invisible things, (46) etc. God is in himself invisible; but as his majesty shines forth in his works and in his creatures everywhere, men ought in these to acknowledge him, for they clearly set forth their Maker: and for this reason the Apostle in his Epistle to the Hebrews says, that this world is a mirror, or the representation of invisible things. He does not mention all the particulars which may be thought to belong to God; but he states, that we can arrive at the knowledge of his eternal power and divinity; (47) for he who is the framer of all things, must necessarily be without beginning and from himself. When we arrive at this point, the divinity becomes known to us, which cannot exist except accompanied with all the attributes of a God, since they are all included under that idea.
So that they are inexcusable. It hence clearly appears what the consequence is of having this evidence — that men cannot allege any thing before God’s tribunal for the purpose of showing that they are not justly condemned. Yet let this difference be remembered, that the manifestation of God, by which he makes his glory known in his creation, is, with regard to the light itself, sufficiently clear; but that on account of our blindness, it is not found to be sufficient. We are not however so blind, that we can plead our ignorance as an excuse for our perverseness. We conceive that there is a Deity; and then we conclude, that whoever he may be, he ought to be worshipped: but our reason here fails, because it cannot ascertain who or what sort of being God is. Hence the Apostle in Heb 11:3, ascribes to faith the light by which man can gain real knowledge from the work of creation, and not without reason; for we are prevented by our blindness, so that we reach not to the end in view; we yet see so far, that we cannot pretend any excuse. Both these things are strikingly set forth by Paul in Act 14:16, when he says, that the Lord in past times left the nations in their ignorance, and yet that he left them not without witness (amarturon ,) since he gave them rain and fertility from heaven. But this knowledge of God, which avails only to take away excuse, differs greatly from that which brings salvation, which Christ mentions in Joh 17:3, and in which we are to glory, as Jeremiah teaches us, Jer 9:24
(46) There is a passage quoted by [Wolfius ] from [Aristotle ] in his book [De Mundo ], which remarkably coincides with a part of this verse— “πάσὟ θνητὣ φύσει γενομενος ἀθεώρητος ἀπ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων θεορεῖται ὁ θεός — God, unseen by any mortal nature, is to be seen by the works themselves.” — Ed.
(47) Divinitas , θείοτης, here only, and not θεότης as in Col 1:9 [Elsner ] and others make a difference between these two words and say, that the former means the divinity or majesty of God, and the latter his nature or being. There seems to be the idea of goodness conveyed in the word, θείοτης: for in the following verse there are two things laid to the charge of the Gentiles which bear a reference to the two things said here — they did not glorify him as God, and they were not thankful. He made himself known by power as God, and by the beneficent exercise of that power, he had laid a claim to the gratitude of his creatures. See Act 14:15; and Act 17:25
[Venema ], in his note on this passage, shows, that goodness was regarded by many of the heathens as the primary attribute of Deity. Among the Greeks, goodness — τὸ ἀγαθὸν, was the expression by which the Supreme Being was distinguished. And it appears evident from the context that the Apostle included this idea especially in the wordθείοτης. — Ed
21. For when they knew God, etc. He plainly testifies here, that God has presented to the minds of all the means of knowing him, having so manifested himself by his works, that they must necessarily see what of themselves they seek not to know — that there is some God; for the world does not by chance exist, nor could it have proceeded from itself. But we must ever bear in mind the degree of knowledge in which they continued; and this appears from what follows.
They glorified him not as God. No idea can be formed of God without including his eternity, power, wisdom, goodness, truth, righteousness, and mercy. His eternity appears evident, because he is the maker of all things — his power, because he holds all things in his hand and continues their existence — his wisdom, because he has arranged things in such an exquisite order — his goodness, for there is no other cause than himself, why he created all things, and no other reason, why he should be induced to preserve them — his justice, because in his government he punishes the guilty and defends the innocent — his mercy, because he bears with so much forbearance the perversity of men — and his truth, because he is unchangeable. He then who has a right notion of God ought to give him the praise due to his eternity, wisdom, goodness, and justice. Since men have not recognized these attributes in God, but have dreamt of him as though he were an empty phantom, they are justly said to have impiously robbed him of his own glory. Nor is it without reason that he adds, that they were not thankful, (48) for there is no one who is not indebted to him for numberless benefits: yea, even on this account alone, because he has been pleased to reveal himself to us, he has abundantly made us indebted to him. But they became vain, (49) etc.; that is, having forsaken the truth of God, they turned to the vanity of their own reason, all the acuteness of which is fading and passes away like vapor. And thus their foolish mind, being involved in darkness, could understand nothing aright but was carried away headlong, in various ways, into errors and delusions. Their unrighteousness was this — they quickly choked by their own depravity the seed of right knowledge, before it grew up to ripeness.
(48) The conjunctive, ἤ, is for ουτε, says [Piscator ] : but it is a Hebraism, for ו is sometimes used in Hebrew without the negative, which belongs to a former clause. — Ed.
(49) The original words are, ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν, “Vani facti sunt in ratiocinationibus suis — they became vain in their reasonings” [Pareus ], [Beza ] , [Turrettin ] , and [Doddridge ] ; “They became foolish by their own reasonings,” [Macknight ]
“Whatever the right reason within,” says [Pareus ], “or the frame of the world without, might have suggested respecting God, they indulged in pleasing speculations, specious reasonings, and in subtle and frivolous conclusions; some denied the existence of a God, as Epicurus and Democritus — others doubted, as Protagoras and Diagoras — others affirmed the existence of many gods, and these, as the Platonics, maintained that they are not corporeal, while the Greeks and Romans held them to be so, who worshipped dead men, impious, cruel, impure, and wicked. There were also the Egyptians, who worshipped as gods, brute animals, oxen, geese, birds, crocodiles, yea, what grew in their gardens, garlic’s and onions. A very few, such as Plato and Aristotle, acknowledged one Supreme Being; but even these deprived him of his providence. These, and the like, were the monstrous opinions which the Gentiles deduced from their reasonings. They became vain, foolish, senseless.”
“And darkened became their foolish heart,” — ἡ ἀσύνετος αὐτῶν καρδία; “Corinthians eorum intelligentia carens — their heart void of understanding;” “their unintelligent heart,” [Doddridge ]. Perhaps “undiscerning heart” would be the most suitable. See Mat 15:16. Heart, after the manner of the Hebrews, is to be taken here for the whole soul, especially the mind. — Ed.
22. While they were thinking, etc. It is commonly inferred from this passage, that Paul alludes here to those philosophers, who assumed to themselves in a peculiar manner the reputation of wisdom; and it is thought that the design of his discourse is to show, that when the superiority of the great is brought down to nothing, the common people would have no reason to suppose that they had any thing worthy of being commended: but they seem to me to have been guided by too slender a reason; for it was not peculiar to the philosophers to suppose themselves wise in the knowledge of God, but it was equally common to all nations, and to all ranks of men. There were indeed none who sought not to form some ideas of the majesty of God, and to make him such a God as they could conceive him to be according to their own reason. This presumption I hold is not learned in the schools, but is innate, and comes with us, so to speak, from the womb. It is indeed evident, that it is an evil which has prevailed in all ages — that men have allowed themselves every liberty in coining superstitions. The arrogance then which is condemned here is this — that men sought to be of themselves wise, and to draw God down to a level with their own low condition, when they ought humbly to have given him his own glory. For Paul holds this principle, that none, except through their own fault, are unacquainted with the worship due to God; as though he said, “As they have proudly exalted themselves, they have become infatuated through the righteous judgment of God.” There is an obvious reason, which contravenes the interpretation which I reject; for the error of forming an image of God did not originate with the philosophers; but they, by their consent, approved of it as received from others. (50)
(50) [Calvin ] is peculiar in his exposition of this verse. Most critics agree in thinking that those referred to here were those reputed learned among all nations, as [Beza ] says, “Such as the Druids of the Gauls, the soothsayers of the Tuscans, the philosophers of the Greeks, the priests of the Egyptians, the magi of the Persians, the gymnosophists of the Indians, and the Rabbins of the Jews.” He considers that the Apostle refers especially to such as these, though he speaks of all men as appearing to themselves very wise in their insane devices as to the worship of God. The wiser they thought themselves, the more foolish they became. See Jer 8:8; 1. o 1:19.
“This is the greatest unhappiness of man, not only not to feel his malady, but to extract matter of pride from what ought to be his shame. What they deemed to be their wisdom was truly their folly.” — [Haldane ].
It is a just remark of [Hodge ], “That the higher the advancement of the nations in refinement and philosophy, the greater, as a general rule, the degradation and folly of their systems of religion.” As a proof he mentions the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, as compared with the aborigines of America. — Ed.
23. And changed, etc. Having feigned such a God as they could comprehend according to their carnal reason, they were very far from acknowledging the true God: but devised a fictitious and a new god, or rather a phantom. And what he says is, that they changed the glory of God; for as though one substituted a strange child, so they departed from the true God. Nor are they to be excused for this pretense, that they believe that God dwells in heaven, and that they count not the wood to be God, but his image; for it is a high indignity to God, to form so gross an idea of his majesty as to dare to make an image of him. But from the wickedness of such a presumption none were exempt, neither priests, nor statesmen, nor philosophers, of whom the most sound-minded, even Plato himself, sought to find out some likeness of God.
The madness then here noticed, is, that all attempted to make for themselves an image of God; which was a certain proof that their notions of God were gross and absurd. And, first, they befouled the majesty of God by forming him in the likeness of a corruptible man: for I prefer this rendering to that of mortal man, which is adopted by [Erasmus ] ; for Paul sets not the immortality of God in opposition to the mortality of man, but that glory, which is subject to no defects, to the most wretched condition of man. And then, being not satisfied with so great a crime, they descended even to beasts and to those of the most filthy kind; by which their stupidity appeared still more evident. You may see an account of these abominations in Lactantius, in [Eusebius ] , and in [Augustine ] in his book on the city of God.
24. God therefore gave them up, etc. As impiety is a hidden evil, lest they should still find an evasion, he shows, by a more palpable demonstration, that, they cannot escape, but must be held fast by a just condemnation, since such fruits have followed this impiety as cannot be viewed otherwise than manifest evidences of the Lord’s wrath. As the Lord’s wrath is always just, it follows, that what has exposed them to condemnation, must have preceded it. By these evidences then he now proves the apostasy and defection of men: for the Lord indeed does so punish those, who alienate themselves from his goodness, that he casts them headlong into various courses which lead to perdition and ruin. And by comparing the vices, of which they were guilty, with the impiety, of which he had before accused them, he shows that they suffered punishment through the just judgment of God: for since nothing is dearer to us than our own honor, it is extreme blindness, when we fear not to bring disgrace on ourselves; and it is the most suitable punishment for a reproach done to the Divine Majesty. This is the very thing which he treats of to the end of the chapter; but he handles it in various ways, for the subject required ample illustration.
What then, in short, he proves to us is this, — that the ingratitude of men to God is incapable of being excused; for it is manifest, by unequivocal evidences, that the wrath of God rages against them: they would have never rolled themselves in lusts so filthy, after the manner of beasts, had not the majesty of God been provoked and incensed against them. Since, then, the worst abominations abounded everywhere, he concludes that there existed among them evidences of divine vengeance. Now, as this never rages without reason, or unjustly, but ever keeps within the limits of what is right, he intimates that it hence appears that perdition, not less certain than just, impended over all.
As to the manner in which God gives up or delivers men to wickedness, it is by no means necessary in this place to discuss a question so intricate, (longam — tedious.) It is indeed certain, that he not only permits men to fall into sin, by allowing them to do so, and by conniving at them; but that he also, by his equitable judgment, so arranges things, that they are led and carried into such madness by their own lusts, as well as by the devil. He therefore adopts the word, give up, according to the constant usage of Scripture; which word they forcibly wrest, who think that we are led into sin only by the permission of God: for as Satan is the minister of God’s wrath, and as it were the executioner, so he is armed against us, not through the connivance, but by the command of his judge. God, however, is not on this account cruel, nor are we innocent, inasmuch as Paul plainly shows, that we are not delivered up into his power, except when we deserve such a punishment. Only we must make this exception, that the cause of sin is not from God, the roots of which ever abide in the sinner himself; for this must be true,
“Thine is perdition, O Israel; in me only is thy help.”
(Hos 13:9) (51)
By connecting the desires or lusts of man’s heart with uncleanness, he indirectly intimates what sort of progeny our heart generates, when left to itself. The expression, among themselves, is not without its force; for it significantly expresses how deep and indelible are the marks of infamy imprinted on our bodies.
(51) On this subject [Augustine ], as quoted by [Poole ], uses a stronger language than which we find here: — Tradidit non solum per patientiam et permissionem, sed per potentiam et quasi actionem; non faciendo voluntates malas, sed eis jam malis utendo ut voluerit; multa et intra ipsos et exrtra ipsos operando, a quibus illi occasionem capiunt gravius peccandi; largiendo illis admonitiones, flagella, beneficia, etc., quibus quoque eos scivit Deus ad suam perniciem abusuros — “He delivered them up, not only by sufferance and permission, but by power, and as it were by an efficient operation; not by making evil their wills, but by using them, being already evil, as he pleased; by working many things both within and without them, from which they take occasion to sin more grievously, by giving them warnings, scourges, benefits, etc., which God knew they would abuse to their own destruction.” — This is an awful view of God’s proceedings towards those who willfully resist the truth, but no doubt a true one. Let all who have the opportunity of knowing the truth tremble at the thought of making light of it.
The prepositionἐν before desires or lusts, is used after the Hebrew manner, in the sense of to or into; for ב beth, means in, and to, and also by or through; and such is the import ofἐν as frequently used by the Apostle. It is so used in the preceding verse— ἐν ὁμοιώματι — into the likeness, etc. Then the verse would be, as Calvin in sense renders it, —
God also on this account delivered them up to the lusts of their own hearts to work uncleanness, that they might dishonor their bodies among themselves.
The import ofεἰς ἀκαθαρσίαν, in order to uncleanness, is no doubt, to work uncleanness; the Apostle frequently uses this kind of expression. [Stuart ] labors here unnecessarily to show, that God gave them up, being in their lusts, etc., taking the clause as a description of those who were given up; but the plainest meaning is that which Calvin gives. — Ed.
25. Who changed, etc. He repeats what he had said before, though in different words, in order to fix it deeper in our minds. When the truth of God is turned to a lie, his glory is obliterated. It is then but just, that they should be besprinkled with every kind of infamy, who strive to take away from God his honor, and also to reproach his name. —
And worshipped, etc. That I might include two words in one, I have given this rendering. He points out especially the sin of idolatry; for religious honor cannot be given to a creature, without taking it away, in a disgraceful and sacrilegious manner, from God: and vain is the excuse that images are worshipped on God’s account, since God acknowledges no such worship, nor regards it as acceptable; and the true God is not then worshipped at all, but a fictitious God, whom the flesh has devised for itself. (52) What is added, Who is blessed for ever, I explain as having been said for the purpose of exposing idolaters to greater reproach, and in this way, “He is one whom they ought alone to have honored and worshipped, and from whom it was not right to take away any thing, no, not even the least.”
(52) The words, “the truth of God,” and “falsehood,” or, a lie, are Hebraistic in their meaning, signifying “the true God,” and “an idol.” The word, which means a lie, is often in Hebrew applied to any thing made to be worshipped. See Isa 44:17, compared with Isa 44:20 [Stuart ] renders the sentence, “Who exchanged the true God for a false one.” [Wolfius ] objects to this view, and says, “I prefer to takeἀλήθειαν τοῦ θεοῦ, for the truth made known by God to the Gentiles, of which see Rom 1:18, and the following verses: they changed this into alie, i.e. , into those insane and absurd notions, into which they were led by theirδιαλογισμοῖς — reasonings, Rom 1:21.” The expression— παρὰ τὸν κτίσαντα has been rendered by [Erasmus ] , “above the creator,” by [Luther ] , “rather than the Creator;” by [Beza ], “to the neglect of the Creator — præterito conditore;” and by [Grotius ], “in the place of the Creator.” The two last are more consonant with the general tenor of the context; for the persons here spoken of, according to the description given them, did not worship God at all; παρὰ is evidently used in the sense of exclusion and oppositionπαρὰ τὸν νόμον — contrary to the law, Act 18:13; παρὰ φύσιν — contrary to nature, Rom 1:26. See Gal 1:8 — Ed.
26. God therefore gave them up, etc. After having introduced as it were an intervening clause, he returns to what he had before stated respecting the judgment of God: and he brings, as the first example, the dreadful crime of unnatural lust; and it hence appears that they not only abandoned themselves to beastly lusts, but became degraded beyond the beasts, since they reversed the whole order of nature. He then enumerates a long catalogue of vices which had existed in all ages, and then prevailed everywhere without any restraint.
It is not to the purpose to say, that every one was not laden with so great a mass of vices; for in arraigning the common baseness of men, it is proof enough if all to a man are constrained to acknowledge some faults. So then we must consider, that Paul here records those abominations which had been common in all ages, and were at that time especially prevalent everywhere; for it is marvelous how common then was that filthiness which even brute beasts abhor; and some of these vices were even popular. And he recites a catalogue of vices, in some of which the whole race of man were involved; for though all were not murderers, or thieves, or adulterers, yet there were none who were not found polluted by some vice or another. He calls those disgraceful passions, which are shameful even in the estimation of men, and redound to the dishonoring of God.
27. Such a reward for their error as was meet. They indeed deserved to be blinded, so as to forget themselves, and not to see any thing befitting them, who, through their own malignity, closed their eyes against the light offered them by God, that they might not behold his glory: in short, they who were not ashamed to extinguish, as much as they could, the glory of God, which alone gives us light, deserved to become blind at noonday.
28. And as they chose not, etc. There is an evident comparison to be observed in these words, by which is strikingly set forth the just relation between sin and punishment. As they chose not to continue in the knowledge of God, which alone guides our minds to true wisdom, the Lord gave them a perverted mind, which can choose nothing that is right. (53) And by saying, that they chose not, (non probasse - approved not,) it is the same as though he had said, that they pursued not after the knowledge of God with the attention they ought to have done, but, on the contrary, turned away their thoughts resignedly from God. He then intimates, that they, making a depraved choice, preferred their own vanities to the true God; and thus the error, by which they were deceived, was voluntary.
To do those things which were not meet As he had hitherto referred only to one instance of abomination, which prevailed indeed among many, but was not common to all, he begins here to enumerate vices from which none could be found free: for though every vice, as it has been said, did not appear in each individual, yet all were guilty of some vices, so that every one might separately be accused of manifest depravity. As he calls them in the first instance not meet, understand him as saying, that they were inconsistent with every decision of reason, and alien to the duties of men: for he mentions it as an evidence of a perverted mind, that men addicted themselves, without any reflection, to those vices, which common sense ought to have led them to renounce.
But it is labor in vain so to connect these vices, as to make them dependent one on another, since this was not Paul’s design; but he set them down as they occurred to his mind. What each of them signifies, we shall very briefly explain.
(53) There is a correspondence between the wordsοὐκ ἐδοκίμασαν — they did not approve, or think worthy, andἀδόκιμον — unapproved, or worthless, which is connected withνοῦν, mind. The verb means to try or prove a thing, as metal by fire, then todistinguish between what is genuine or otherwise, and also to approve of what is good and valuable. To approve or think fit or worthy seems to be the meaning here. Derived from this verb isἀδόκιμος, which is applied to unapproved or adulterated money, — to men unsound, not able to bear the test, not genuine as Christians, 2. o 13:5, — to the earth that is unfit to produce fruits, Heb 6:8. The nearest alliteration that can perhaps be presented is the following, “And as they did not deem it worth while to acknowledge God, God delivered them up to a worthless mind,” that is, a mind unfit to discern between right and wrong. [Beza ] gives this meaning, “Mentem omnis judicii expertem — a mind void of all judgment.” [Locke ] ’s “unsearching mind,” and [Macknight ] ’s “unapproving mind,” and [Doddridge ] ’s “undiscerning mind,” do not exactly convey the right idea, though the last comes nearest to it. It is an unattesting mind, not capable of bringing things to the test— δοκίμιον not able to distinguish between things of the most obvious nature.
“To acknowledge God” is literally “to have God in recognitionτὸν θεὸν ἔχειν ἐν ἐπιγνώσει. ” [Venema ] says, that this is a purely Greek idiom, and adduces passages from [Herodotus ] and [Xenophon ] ; from the first, the following phrase, ἐν αλογίῃ ἔχειν — to have in contempt, i.e., to contemn or despise. — Ed.
29. Understand by unrighteousness, the violation of justice among men, by not rendering to each his due. I have rendered πονηρίαν, according to the opinion of Ammonium, wickedness; for he teaches us that πονηρον, the wicked, is δραστίκον κακου, the doer of evil. The word (nequitia ) then means practiced wickedness, or licentiousness in doing mischief: but maliciousness (malitia ) is that depravity and obliquity of mind which leads us to do harm to our neighbour. (54) For the word πορνείαν, which Paul uses, I have put lust, (libidinem .) I do not, however, object, if one prefers to render it fornication; but he means the inward passion as well as the outward act. (55) The words avarice, envy, and murder, have nothing doubtful in their meaning. Under the word strife, (contentione ,) (56) he includes quarrels, fightings, and seditions. We have rendered κακοηθείαν, perversity, (perversitatem ;) (57) which is a notorious and uncommon wickedness; that is, when a man, covered over, as it were, with hardness, has become hardened in a corrupt course of life by custom and evil habit.
(54) The two words areπονηρία and κακία [Doddridge ] renders them “mischief and malignity.” [Pareus ] says thatκακία is vice, opposed to τη αρετη — virtue. — Ed.
(55)“Πορνεία has an extended sense, comprehending all illicit intercourse, whether fornication, adultery, incest, or any other venus illicita .” — [Stuart ]
(56) Improperly rendered “debate” in our version— ἔριδος, “strife”, by [Macknight ] , and “contention,” by [Doddridge ]. — Ed.
(57) In our versions “malignity;” by [Macknight ] , “bad disposition;” and by [Doddridge ], “inveteracy of evil habits.” [Schleusner ] thinks that it means here “malevolence.” — Ed.
30. The word θεοστυγεῖς, means, no doubt, haters of God; for there is no reason to take it in a passive sense, (hated of God,) since Paul here proves men to be guilty by manifest vices. Those, then, are designated, who hate God, whose justice they seem to resist by doing wrong. Whisperers (susurrones ) and slanderers (obtrectatores ) (58) are to be thus distinguished; the former, by secret accusations, break off the friendships of good men, inflame their minds with anger, defame the innocent, and sow discords; and the latter through an innate malignity, spare the reputation of no one, and, as though they were instigated by the fury of evilspeaking, they revile the deserving as well as the undeserving We have translated ὑβριστὰς, villanous, (maleficos ;) for the Latin authors are wont to call notable injuries villanies, such as plunders, thefts, burnings, and sorceries; and these where the vices which Paul meant to point out here. (59) I have rendered the word ὑπερήφανους, used by Paul, insolent, (contumeliosos ;) for this is the meaning of the Greek word: and the reason for the word is this, — because such being raised, as it were, on high, look down on those who are, as it were, below them with contempt, and they cannot bear to look on their equals. Haughty are they who swell with the empty wind of overweeningness. Unsociable (60) are those who, by their iniquities, unloose the bands of society, or those in whom there is no sincerity or constancy of faith, who may be called truce-breakers.
(58)Καταλάλους, literally gainsayers, or those who speak against others, — defamers, calumniators; rendered “revilers,” by [Macknight ]. — Ed.
(59) The three words, ὑβιστὰς ὑπερηφάνους, and ἀλαζόνας seem to designate three properties of a proud spirit — disdainful or insolent, haughty and vainglorious. Theὑβρισται are those who treat others petulantly, contumeliously, or insultingly “Insolent,” as given by [Macknight ], is the most suitable word. Theὑπερηφάνος is one who sets himself to view above others, the high and elevated, who exhibits himself as superior to others. Theαλαζων is the boaster, who assumes more than what belongs to him, or promises more than what he can perform. These three forms of pride are often seen in the world. — Ed.
(60) Unsociabiles — ἀσυνθετους. “Faithless,” perhaps, would be the most suitable word. “Who adhere not to compacts,” is the explanation of [Hesychius ]
To preserve the same negative according to what is done in Greek, we may render Rom 1:31. as follows: —
31. Without the feelings of humanity are they who have put off the first affections of nature towards their own relations. As he mentions the want of mercy as an evidence of human nature being depraved, [Augustine ], in arguing against the Stoics, concludes, that mercy is a Christian virtue.
32. Who, knowing the judgement (61) of God, etc. Though this passage is variously explained, yet the following appears to me the correctest interpretation, — that men left nothing undone for the purpose of giving unbridled liberty to their sinful propensities; for having taken away all distinction between good and evil, they approved in themselves and in others those things which they knew displeased God, and would be condemned by his righteous judgment. For it is the summit of all evils, when the sinner is so void of shame, that he is pleased with his own vices, and will not bear them to be reproved, and also cherishes them in others by his consent and approbation. This desperate wickedness is thus described in Scripture:
“They boast when they do evil,” (Pro 2:14.)
“She has spread out her feet,
and gloried in her wickedness,” (Eze 16:25.)
For he who is ashamed is as yet healable; but when such an impudence is contracted through a sinful habit, that vices, and not virtues, please us, and are approved, there is no more any hope of reformation. Such, then, is the interpretation I give; for I see that the Apostle meant here to condemn something more grievous and more wicked than the very doing of vices: what that is I know not, except we refer to that which is the summit of all wickedness, — that is, when wretched men, having cast away all shame, undertake the patronage of vices in opposition to the righteousness of God.
(61) [Calvin ] has “justitiam “ here, though “judicium “ is given in the text. — Ed.
