Produced by Colin Bell, Charlene Taylor and Chris Pinfield




Transcriber's Note.

Apparent typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent
hyphenation has been retained.

Small capitals have been rendered as full capitals, while italics are
indicated by _underscores_.

Bold font, in which the author's own translation of the Epistle has
been printed, is indicated by =equal signs=. These last signs also
extend over Greek or Hebrew that the author has inserted in the
translation, and markers for footnotes to it.

Sidenotes mark individual verses of the Epistle. These have been
inserted in the text before the start of each verse.

A list of the 'Expositor's Bible' series has been shifted to the end
of the book.




THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE

 EDITED BY THE REV.
 W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
 _Editor of "The Expositor," etc._




THE EPISTLE OF ST PAUL TO THE ROMANS

 BY
 HANDLEY C. G. MOULE, M.A.,
 PRINCIPAL OF RIDLEY HALL, CAMBRIDGE

 LONDON
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW

 MDCCCXCIV

 _Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._


 TO THE REV. ROBERT SINKER, D.D.,

 LIBRARIAN OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
 MY FRIEND OF THIRTY-TWO YEARS,
 TO WHOSE KINDNESS AND KNOWLEDGE
 I AM DEEPLY AND INCREASINGLY INDEBTED,
 THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

 H. C. G. M.


Hearing read, as I do continually, the Epistles of the blessed Paul
... I delight in the enjoyment of his spiritual trumpet, and my heart
leaps up, and my longings set me glowing, as I recognize the voice so
dear to me, and seem to image the speaker all but present to me, and
to see him in discourse. But I mourn and am distressed, because all do
not know this man as they should know him.... It is from hence our
myriad evils spring--from our ignorance of the Scriptures. Hence grows
this epidemic of our heresies; hence our neglected lives, hence our
unfruitful toil.

ST CHRYSOSTOM, _Preamble to Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans_.




PREFACE


He who attempts to expound the Epistle to the Romans, when his sacred
task is over, is little disposed to speak about his Commentary; he is
occupied rather with an ever deeper reverence and wonder over the Text
which he has been permitted to handle, a Text so full of a marvellous
man, above all so full of GOD.

But it seems needful to say a few words about the style of the running
Translation of the Epistle which will be found interwoven with this
Exposition.

The writer is aware that the translation is often rough and formless.
His apology is that it has been done with a view not to a connected
reading but to the explanation of details. A rough piece of rendering,
which would be a misrepresentation in a continuous version, because it
would be out of scale with the general style, seems to be another
matter when it only calls the reader's attention to a particular point
presented for study at the moment.

Again, he is aware that his rendering of the Greek article in many
passages (for example, where he has ventured to explain it by "_our_,"
 "_true_," etc.) is open to criticism. But he intends no more in such
places than a suggestion; and he is conscious, as he has said
sometimes at the place, that it is almost impossible to render the
article as he has done in these cases without a certain exaggeration,
which must be discounted by the reader.

The use of the article in Greek is one of the simplest and most
assured things in grammar, as to its main principles. But as regards
some details of the application of principle, there is nothing in
grammar which seems so easily to elude the line of law.

It is scarcely necessary to say that on questions of literary
criticism which in no respect, or at most remotely, concern
exposition, this Commentary says little or nothing. It is well known
to literary students of the Epistle that some phenomena in the text,
from the close of ch. xiv. onwards, have raised important and complex
questions. It has been asked whether the great Doxology (xvi. 25-27)
always stood where it now stands; whether it should stand at the close
of our ch. xiv.; whether its style and wording allow us to regard it
as contemporary with the Epistle as a whole, or whether they indicate
that it was written later in St Paul's course; whether our fifteenth
and sixteenth chapters, while Pauline, are not out of place in an
Epistle to Rome; in particular, whether the list of names in ch. xvi.
is compatible with a Roman destination.

These questions, with one exception, that which affects the list of
names, are not even touched upon in the present Exposition. The
expositor, personally convinced that the pages we know as the Epistle
to the Romans are not only all genuine but all intimately coherent,
has not felt himself called to discuss, in a devotional writing,
subjects more proper to the lecture-room and the study; and which
certainly would be out of place in the ministry of the pulpit.

Meantime, those who care to read a masterly _debate_ on the literary
problems in question may consult the recently published volume (1893),
_Biblical Studies_, by the late Bishop Lightfoot, of Durham. That
volume contains (pp. 287-374) three critical Essays (1869, 1871), two
by Bishop Lightfoot, one by the late Dr Hort, on _The Structure and
Destination of the Epistle to the Romans_. The two illustrious
friends,--Hort criticizing Lightfoot, Lightfoot replying to
Hort,--examine the phenomena of Rom. xv.-xvi. Lightfoot advocates the
theory that St Paul, some time after writing the Epistle, issued an
abridged edition for wider circulation, omitting the direction to
Rome, closing the document with our ch. xiv., and then (not before)
writing, as a finale, the great Doxology. Hort holds to the practical
entirety of the Epistle as we have it, and reasons at length for the
contemporaneousness of xvi. 25-27 with the rest.[1]

We may note here that both Hort and Lightfoot contend for _the
conciliatory_ aim of the Roman Epistle. They regard the great passage
about Israel (ix.-xi.) as in some sense the heart of the Epistle, and
the doctrinal passages preceding this as all more or less meant to
bear on the relations not only of the Law and the Gospel, but of the
Jew and the Gentile as members of the one Christian Church. There is
great value in this suggestion, explained and illustrated as it is in
the Essays in question. But the thought may easily be worked to
excess. It seems plain to the present writer that when the Epistle is
studied from within its deepest spiritual element, it shews us the
Apostle fully mindful of the largest aspects of the life and work of
the Church, but also, and yet more, occupied with the problem of the
relation of the believing sinner to God. The question of personal
salvation was never, by St Paul, forgotten in that of Christian
policy.

To return for a moment to this Exposition, or rather to its setting;
it may be doubted whether, in imagining the dictation of the Epistle
to be begun and completed by St Paul _within one day_ we have not
imagined "a hard thing." But at worst it is not an impossible thing,
if the Apostle's utterance was as sustained as his thought.

It remains only to express the hope that these pages may serve in some
degree to convey to their readers a new _Tolle, Lege_ for the divine
Text itself; if only by suggesting to them sometimes the words of St
Augustine, "_To Paul I appeal from all interpreters of his writings_."

 RIDLEY HALL, CAMBRIDGE,
 ALL SAINTS' DAY, 1893.

[1] See also Westcott and Hort's _N. T. in the Original Greek_,
vol. 2, Appendix, pp. 110-114 (ed. 1).




ERRATA.


Page 113, line 8, _for_ "circumcision" _read_ "uncircumcision."

Page 263, line 15, _for_ "אָמֵו" _read_ "אָמֵן."




Forasmuch as this Epistle is ... a light and way unto the whole
Scripture, I think it meet that every Christian man not only know it,
by rote and without the book, but also exercise himself therein
evermore continually, as with the daily bread of the soul. No man
verily can read it too oft, or study it too well; for the more it is
studied, the easier it is; the more it is chewed, the pleasanter it
is; and the more groundly it is searched, the preciouser things are
found in it, so great treasure of spiritual things lieth hid therein.

W. TYNDALE, after LUTHER.


Towards the close of one of my nights of suffering, at half-past four,
I asked my kind watcher ... to read me a chapter of the Word of God.
He proposed the eighth of the Epistle to the Romans. I assented, but
with the request that, to secure the connexion of ideas, he would go
back to the sixth, and even to the fifth. We read in succession the
four chapters, v., vi., vii., viii., and I thought no more of
sleep.... Then we read the ninth, and the remaining passages, to the
end, with an interest always equal and sustained; and then the first
four, that nothing might be lost. About two hours had passed.... I
cannot tell you how I was struck, in thus reading the Epistle as a
whole, with the seal of divinity, of truth, of holiness, of love, and
of power, which is impressed on every page, on every word. We felt, my
young friend and I, ... that we were listening to a voice from heaven.

A. MONOD, _Adieux_, § V., _Quelques Mots sur la Lecture de la Bible_.




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE
 CHAPTER I
 TIME, PLACE, AND OCCASION                                           1

 CHAPTER II
 THE WRITER AND HIS READERS                                         10
   ROMANS i. 1-7

 CHAPTER III
 GOOD REPORT OF THE ROMAN CHURCH: PAUL NOT ASHAMED
   OF THE GOSPEL                                                    23
   ROMANS i. 8-17

 CHAPTER IV
 NEED FOR THE GOSPEL: GOD'S ANGER AND MAN'S SIN                     38
   ROMANS i. 18-23

 CHAPTER V
 MAN GIVEN UP TO HIS OWN WAY: THE HEATHEN                           48
   ROMANS i. 24-32

 CHAPTER VI
 HUMAN GUILT UNIVERSAL: HE APPROACHES THE CONSCIENCE
   OF THE JEW                                                       56
   ROMANS ii. 1-16

 CHAPTER VII
 JEWISH RESPONSIBILITY AND GUILT                                    67
   ROMANS ii. 17-29

 CHAPTER VIII
 JEWISH CLAIMS: NO HOPE IN HUMAN MERIT                              78
   ROMANS iii. 1-20

 CHAPTER IX
 THE ONE WAY OF DIVINE ACCEPTANCE                                   90
   ROMANS iii. 21-31
     DETACHED NOTE                                                 100

 CHAPTER X
 ABRAHAM AND DAVID                                                 103
   ROMANS iv. 1-12
     DETACHED NOTE                                                 115

 CHAPTER XI
 ABRAHAM (ii.)                                                     117
   ROMANS iv. 13-25

 CHAPTER XII
 PEACE, LOVE, AND JOY FOR THE JUSTIFIED                            128
   ROMANS v. 1-11
     DETACHED NOTES                                                140

 CHAPTER XIII
 CHRIST AND ADAM                                                   143
   ROMANS v. 12-21

 CHAPTER XIV
 JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS                                        156
   ROMANS vi. 1-13

 CHAPTER XV
 JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HUMAN
   LIFE                                                            170
   ROMANS vi. 14--vii. 6

 CHAPTER XVI
 THE FUNCTION OF THE LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE                     187
   ROMANS vii. 7-25

 CHAPTER XVII
 THE JUSTIFIED: THEIR LIFE BY THE HOLY SPIRIT                      203
   ROMANS viii. 1-11

 CHAPTER XVIII
 HOLINESS BY THE SPIRIT, AND THE GLORIES THAT SHALL
   FOLLOW                                                          218
   ROMANS viii. 12-25

 CHAPTER XIX
 THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER IN THE SAINTS: THEIR PRESENT
   AND ETERNAL WELFARE IN THE LOVE OF GOD                          231
   ROMANS viii. 26-39

 CHAPTER XX
 THE SORROWFUL PROBLEM: JEWISH UNBELIEF; DIVINE
   SOVEREIGNTY                                                     244
   ROMANS ix. 1-33
     DETACHED NOTE                                                 261

 CHAPTER XXI
 JEWISH UNBELIEF AND GENTILE FAITH: PROPHECY                       264
   ROMANS x. 1-21

 CHAPTER XXII
 ISRAEL HOWEVER NOT FORSAKEN                                       282
   ROMANS xi. 1-10

 CHAPTER XXIII
 ISRAEL'S FALL OVERRULED, FOR THE WORLD'S BLESSING,
   AND FOR ISRAEL'S MERCY                                          294
   ROMANS xi. 11-24

 CHAPTER XXIV
 THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL DIRECTLY FORETOLD: ALL
   IS OF AND FOR GOD                                               307
   ROMANS xi. 25-36

 CHAPTER XXV
 CHRISTIAN CONDUCT THE ISSUE OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH                    321
   ROMANS xii. 1-8

 CHAPTER XXVI
 CHRISTIAN DUTY: DETAILS OF PERSONAL CONDUCT                       336
   ROMANS xii. 9-21

 CHAPTER XXVII
 CHRISTIAN DUTY; IN CIVIL LIFE AND OTHERWISE: LOVE                 348
   ROMANS xiii. 1-10

 CHAPTER XXVIII
 CHRISTIAN DUTY IN THE LIGHT OF THE LORD'S RETURN
   AND IN THE POWER OF HIS PRESENCE                                361
   ROMANS xiii. 11-14

 CHAPTER XXIX
 CHRISTIAN DUTY: MUTUAL TENDERNESS AND TOLERANCE:
   THE SACREDNESS OF EXAMPLE                                       374
   ROMANS xiv. 1-23

 CHAPTER XXX
 THE SAME SUBJECT: THE LORD'S EXAMPLE: HIS RELATION
   TO US ALL                                                       393
   ROMANS xv. 1-13

 CHAPTER XXXI
 ROMAN CHRISTIANITY: ST PAUL'S COMMISSION: HIS INTENDED
   ITINERARY: HE ASKS FOR PRAYER                                   408
   ROMANS xv. 14-33

 CHAPTER XXXII
 A COMMENDATION: GREETINGS: A WARNING: A DOXOLOGY                  421
   ROMANS xvi. 1-27




CHAPTER I

_TIME, PLACE, AND OCCASION_


It is the month of February, in the year of Christ 58.[2] In a room in
the house of Gaius, a wealthy Corinthian Christian, Paul the Apostle,
having at his side his amanuensis Tertius, addresses himself to write
to the converts of the mission at Rome.

The great world meanwhile is rolling on its way. It is the fourth year
of Nero; he is Consul the third time, with Valerius Messala for his
colleague; Poppæa has lately caught the unworthy Prince in the net of
her bad influence. Domitius Corbulo has just resumed the war with
Parthia, and prepares to penetrate the highlands of Armenia. Within a
few weeks, in the full spring, an Egyptian impostor is about to
inflame Jerusalem with his Messianic claim, to lead four thousand
fanatics into the desert, and to return to the city with a host of
thirty thousand men, only to be totally routed by the legionaries of
Felix. For himself, the Apostle is about to close his three months'
stay at Corinth; he has heard of plots against his life, and will in
prudence decline the more direct route from Cenchrea by sea, striking
northward for Philippi, and thence over the Ægæan to Troas. Jerusalem
he must visit, if possible before May is over, for he has by him the
Greek collections to deliver to the poor converts of Jerusalem. Then,
in the vista of his further movements, he sees Rome, and thinks with a
certain apprehension yet with longing hope about life and witness
there.

A Greek Christian woman is about to visit the City, Phœbe, a
ministrant of the mission at Cenchrea. He must commend her to the
Roman brethren; and a deliberate Letter to them is suggested by this
personal need.

His thoughts have long gravitated to the City of the World. Not many
months before, at Ephesus, when he had "purposed in the Spirit" to
visit Jerusalem, he had said, with an emphasis which his biographer
remembered, "I must also see Rome" (Acts xix. 21); "_I must_," in the
sense of a divine decree, which had written this journey down in the
plan of his life. He was assured too, by circumstantial and perhaps by
supernatural signs, that he had "now no more place in these parts"
(Rom. xv. 23)--that is, in the Eastern Roman world where hitherto all
his labour had been spent. The Lord who in former days had shut Paul
up to a track which led him through Asia Minor to the Ægæan, and
across the Ægæan to Europe (Acts xvi.), now prepared to guide him,
though by paths which His servant knew not, from Eastern Europe to
Western, and before all things to the City. Amongst these providential
preparations was a growing occupation of the Apostle's thought with
persons and interests in the Christian circle there. Here, as we have
seen, was Phœbe, about to take ship for Italy. Yonder, in the great
Capital, were now resident again the beloved and faithful Aquila and
Prisca, no longer excluded by the Claudian edict, and proving already,
we may fairly conclude, the central influence in the mission, whose
first days perhaps dated from the Pentecost itself, when Roman
"strangers" (Acts ii. 10) saw and heard the wonders and the message of
that hour. At Rome also lived other believers personally known to
Paul, drawn by unrecorded circumstances to the Centre of the world.
"His well-beloved" Epænetus was there; Mary, who had sometimes tried
hard to help him; Andronicus, and Junias, and Herodion, his relatives;
Amplias and Stachys, men very dear to him; Urbanus, who had worked for
Christ at his side; Rufus, no common Christian in his esteem, and
Rufus' mother, who had once watched over Paul with a mother's love.
All these rise before him as he thinks of Phœbe, and her arrival,
and the faces and the hands which at his appeal would welcome her in
the Lord, under the holy freemasonry of primeval Christian fellowship.

Besides, he has been hearing about the actual state of that
all-important mission. As "all roads led to Rome," so all roads led
from Rome, and there were Christian travellers everywhere (i. 8) who
could tell him how the Gospel fared among the metropolitan brethren.
As he heard of them, so he prayed for them, "without ceasing" (i. 9),
and made request too for himself, now definitely and urgently, that
his way might be opened to visit them at last.

To pray for others, if the prayer is prayer indeed, and based to some
extent on knowledge, is a sure way to deepen our interest in them, and
our sympathetic insight into their hearts and conditions. From the
human side, nothing more than these tidings and these prayers was
needed to draw from St Paul a written message to be placed in
Phœbe's care. From this same human side again, when he once
addressed himself to write, there were circumstances of thought and
action which would naturally give direction to his message.

He stood amidst circumstances most significant and suggestive in
matters of Christian _truth_. Quite recently his Judaist rivals had
invaded the congregations of Galatia, and had led the impulsive
converts there to quit what seemed their firm grasp on the truth of
Justification by Faith only. To St Paul this was no mere battle of
abstract definitions, nor again was it a matter of merely local
importance. The success of the alien teachers in Galatia shewed him
that the same specious mischiefs might win their way, more or less
quickly, anywhere. And what would such success mean? It would mean the
loss of the joy of the Lord, and the strength of that joy, in the
misguided Churches. Justification by Faith meant nothing less than
_Christ all in all_, literally all in all, for sinful man's pardon and
acceptance. It meant a profound simplicity of personal reliance
altogether upon Him before the fiery holiness of eternal Law. It meant
a look out and up, at once intense and unanxious, from alike the
virtues and the guilt of man, to the mighty merits of the Saviour. It
was precisely the foundation-fact of salvation, which secured that the
process should be, from its beginning, not humanitarian but divine. To
discredit _that_ was not merely to disturb the order of a missionary
community; it was to hurt the vitals of the Christian soul, tinging
with impure elements the mountain springs of the peace of God. Fresh
as he was now from combating this evil in Galatia, St Paul would be
sure to have it in his thoughts when he turned to Rome; for there it
was only too certain that his active adversaries would do their worst;
probably they were at work already.

Then, he had been just engaged also with the problems of Christian
_life_, in the mission at Corinth. There the main trouble was less of
creed than of conduct. In the Corinthian Epistles we find no great
traces of an energetic heretical propaganda, but rather a bias in the
converts towards a strange licence of temper and life. Perhaps this
was even accentuated by a popular logical assent to the truth of
Justification _taken alone_, isolated from other concurrent truths,
tempting the Corinthian to dream that he might "continue in sin that
grace might abound." If such were his state of spiritual thought, he
would encounter (by his own fault) a positive moral danger in the
supernatural "Gifts" which at Corinth about that time seem to have
appeared with quite abnormal power. An antinomian theory, in the
presence of such exaltations, would lead the man easily to the
conception that he was too free and too rich in the supernatural order
to be the servant of common duties, and even of common morals. Thus
the Apostle's soul would be full of the need of expounding to its
depths the vital harmony of the Lord's work _for_ the believer and the
Lord's work _in_ him; the co-ordination of a free acceptance with both
the precept and the possibility of holiness. He must shew once for all
how the justified are bound to be pure and humble, and how they can so
be, and what forms of practical dutifulness their life must take. He
must make it clear for ever that the Ransom which releases also
purchases; that the Lord's freeman is the Lord's property; that the
Death of the Cross, reckoned as the death of the justified sinner,
leads direct to his living union with the Risen One, including a union
of will with will; and that thus the Christian life, if true to
itself, _must_ be a life of loyalty to every obligation, every
relation, constituted in God's providence among men. The Christian who
is not attentive to others, even where their mere prejudices and
mistakes are in question, is a Christian out of character. So is the
Christian who is not a scrupulously loyal citizen, recognizing civil
order as the will of God. So is the Christian who in any respect
claims to live as he pleases, instead of as the bondservant of his
Redeemer should live.

Another question had been pressing the Apostle's mind, and that for
years, but recently with a special weight. It was the mystery of
Jewish unbelief. Who can estimate the pain and greatness of that
mystery in the mind of St Paul? His own conversion, while it taught
him patience with his old associates, must have filled him also with
some eager hopes for them. Every deep and self-evidencing
manifestation of God in a man's soul suggests to him naturally the
thought of the glorious things possible in the souls of others. Why
should not the leading Pharisee, now converted, be the signal, and the
means, of the conversion of the Sanhedrin, and of the people? But the
hard mystery of sin crossed such paths of expectation, and more and
more so as the years went on. Judaism outside the Church was stubborn,
and energetically hostile. And within the Church, sad and ominous
fact, it crept in underground, and sprung up in an embittered
opposition to the central truths. What did all this mean? Where would
it end? Had Israel sinned, collectively, beyond pardon and repentance?
Had God cast off His people? These troublers of Galatia, these fiery
rioters before the tribunal of Gallio at Corinth, did their conduct
mean that all was over for the race of Abraham? The question was agony
to Paul; and he sought his Lord's answer to it as a thing without
which he could not live. That answer was full in his soul when he
meditated his Letter to Rome, and thought of the Judaists there, and
also of the loving Jewish friends of his heart there who would read
his message when it came.

Thus we venture to describe the possible outward and inward conditions
under which the Epistle to the Romans was conceived and written. Well
do we recollect that our account is conjectural. But the Epistle in
its wonderful fulness, both of outline and of detail, gives to such
conjectures more than a shadow for basis. We do not forget again that
the Epistle, whatever the Writer saw around him or felt within him,
was, when produced, infinitely more than the resultant of Paul's mind
and life; it was, and is, an oracle of God, a Scripture, a revelation
of eternal facts and principles by which to live and die. As such we
approach it in this book; not to analyse only or explain, but to
submit and to believe; taking it as not only Pauline but Divine. But
then, it is not the less therefore Pauline. And this means that both
the thought and the circumstances of St Paul are to be traced and felt
in it as truly, and as naturally, as if we had before us the letter of
an Augustine, or a Luther, or a Pascal. He who chose the writers of
the Holy Scriptures, many men scattered over many ages, used them each
in his surroundings and in his character, yet so as to harmonize them
all in the Book which, while many, is one. He used them with the
sovereign skill of Deity. And that skilful use meant that He used
their whole being, which He had made, and their whole circumstances,
which He had ordered. They were indeed His amanuenses; nay, I fear not
to say they were His pens. But HE is such that He can manipulate as
His facile implement no mere piece of mechanism, which, however subtle
and powerful, is mechanism still, and can never truly cause anything;
HE can take a human personality, made in His own image, pregnant,
formative, causative, in all its living thought, sensibility, and
will, and can throw it freely upon its task of thinking and
expression--and behold, the product will be His; His matter, His
thought, His exposition, His Word, "living and abiding for ever."

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus we enter in spirit the Corinthian citizen's house, in the
sunshine of the early Greek spring, and find our way invisible and
unheard to where Tertius sits with his reed-pen and strips of papyrus,
and where Paul is prepared to give him, word by word, sentence by
sentence, this immortal message. Perhaps the corner of the room is
heaped with hair-cloth from Cilicia, and the implements of the
tent-maker. But the Apostle is now the guest of Gaius, a man whose
means enable him to be "the host of the whole Church"; so we may
rather think that for the time this manual toil is intermitted. Do we
seem to see the form and face of him who is about to dictate? The mist
of time is in our eyes; but we may credibly report that we find a
small and much emaciated frame, and a face remarkable for its arched
brows and wide forehead, and for the expressive mobility of the
lips.[3] We trace in looks, in manner and tone of utterance, and even
in unconscious attitude and action, tokens of a mind rich in every
faculty, a nature equally strong in energy and in sympathy, made both
to govern and to win, to will and to love. The man is great and
wonderful, a master soul, subtle, wise, and strong. Yet he draws us
with pathetic force to his heart, as one who asks and will repay
affection.

As we look on his face we think, with awe and gladness, that with
those same thought-tired eyes (and are they not also troubled with
disease?) he has literally seen, only twenty years ago, so he will
quietly assure us, the risen and glorified JESUS. His work during
those twenty years, his innumerable sufferings, above all, his spirit
of perfect mental and moral sanity, yet of supernatural peace and
love,--all make his assurance absolutely trustworthy. He is a
transfigured man since that sight of Jesus Christ, who now "dwells in
his heart by faith," and uses him as the vehicle of His will and work.
And now listen. The Lord is speaking through His servant. The scribe
is busy with his pen, as the message of Christ is uttered through the
soul and from the lips of Paul.

[2] See Lewin, _Fasti Sacri_, § 1854, etc.

[3] See Lewin, _Life and Epistles of St Paul_, ii. 411, for an
engraving of a fine medallion, shewing the heads of St Paul and St
Peter. "The medal is referred to the close of the first century or the
beginning of the second."




CHAPTER II

_THE WRITER AND HIS READERS_

ROMANS i. 1-7


[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Paul, 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 close (vi. 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" (Gal. ii. 20), it is the bright home-coming 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 authorized "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, bondservice. "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 Name" (Acts ix. 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" (xvi. 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
shew 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; [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] 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 i. 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,[4] "the whole East" heaved with expectations of a Judæan
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 multifold 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? [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] 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
xxiv. 25-27; John v. 39, 46; Acts iii. 21-25, x. 43, xxviii. 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 xii. 41 with Isa.
vi. 7). He is openly called God in His own presence on earth (John
xx. 28). But what is, if possible, even mere significant, because
deeper below the surface--He is regarded as the eternally satisfying
Object of man's trust and love (_e.g._ Phil. iii. 21, Eph. iii. 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" (Col.
ii. 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 (Matt. i. 1); so it almost closes (Rev. xxii. 6).
St Paul, in later years, recalls the Lord's human pedigree again
(2 Tim. ii. 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"
(Isa. liii. 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 Nature eternally _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 below,
ix. 5.

[Sidenote: Ver. 4.] 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 ix. 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 day-light, 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 Cor. xv. 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 Pet. i. 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 for ever. If everything else falls in ruins from
the memory, let this remain, "the strength of our heart, and our
portion for ever."

[Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =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
(Phil. iii. 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 Gal. ii. 9, Eph. iii. 2, 8, and perhaps
Phil. i. 7. Alike the enabling peace and power for service, and then
the service itself, are to the Christian a free, loving, beatifying
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" (ch.
x. 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 easy 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 x. 28). 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 for ever to all believing souls,
our own included. It is St Paul pre-eminently 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 be
transfigured, in their measure, by taking for their motto also, "For
His Name's sake."

Now he speaks direct of his Roman friends. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =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 speciality 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 shews the
change indicated here, and it is consistently maintained.

[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =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" (Rev. ii. 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,[5] its usage gives us the thought of
dedication to God, connexion 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 "Cæsar's household" was (Phil. iv. 22).

Habitually therefore the Apostle gives the term "_saints_" to whole
communities; as if baptism always gave, or sealed, saintship. 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 Cor. xiii. 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."

[4] Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et constans opinio, esse in fatis
ut eo tempore (cir. A.D. 70) profecti Judæa rerum potirentur.--Suetonius,
_Vesp._, c. 4. Tacitus (_Hist._, v. 13) says the same, and that the
hope was based on the _antiqui sacerdotum libri_.

[5] The _linguistic root_ seems to point directly not to separation
(as often said) but to worship, reverence.




CHAPTER III

_GOOD REPORT OF THE ROMAN CHURCH: PAUL NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL_

ROMANS i. 8-17


He 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.

[Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =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 give, 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 Thess. i. 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." Only last year (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.

[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =For God is my record, my witness,[6]= of this;
the God =whom I serve,= at once, so the Greek (λατρεύω) implies,
with adoration and obedience, =in my spirit, in the Gospel of His
Son.= The "_for_" gives the connexion 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; xv. 16, 19 below; Phil. i. 5, 12; ii. 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 Col. ii. 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;
[Sidenote: Ver. 10.] 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 harmonized, 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 Cæsarea, 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, [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =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 (Phil.
ii. 26), and again his own longing to see the son of his heart,
Timotheus (2 Tim. i. 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_" (χάρισμα) is used in some places (see especially 1 Cor.
xii. 4, 9, 28, 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[7] 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; [Sidenote: Ver. 12.]
=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 shew 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.[8]

[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =But I would not have you ignorant, brethren.=
This is a characteristic term of expression with him.[9] 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 fruit 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 xvi. 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.
[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =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" civilization, 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.
[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =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_." [Sidenote: Ver. 16.]
=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;[10] for it is God's power to salvation, for every one who
believes, alike for Jew, (first,) and for Greek.= [Sidenote: Ver. 17.]
=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 connexion 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[11]; rich materials for ascertaining its meaning in the
spiritual dialect of St Paul. Out of these passages, iii. 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 hæreticorum fiducia_, "We refute the heretics' empty 'trust,'"
says the Council of Trent[12] 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 that 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.[13] 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 a 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 it in 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 ix. 26); "Be not thou ashamed of the
testimony of our Lord"; "Nevertheless, I am not ashamed" (2 Tim. i. 8,
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
xxiii. 11), imperial, overwhelming Rome. But then he looked again from
them to Jesus Christ, and the temptation was beneath his feet, and the
Gospel, everywhere, was upon his lips.

[6] The word "_record_" in this sense came into English from Old
French. (Skeat: _Etymological Dictionary_.)

[7] See verses 15, 16, 23, xi. 29. xii. 6 is the only passage which at
all looks the other way, and that passage implies that the Romans
_already_ possessed the wonder-working gifts.

[8] The word "_comfort_" in the English Version here, as commonly
elsewhere, represents παρακαλεῖν, παράκλησις, which commonly denote
not so much the consolation of grief as the encouragement which
banishes depression.

[9] xi. 25; 1 Cor. x. 1, xii. 1; 2 Cor. i. 8; 1 Thess. iv. 13.

[10] The words "_of Christ_" must be omitted from the text here.

[11] iii. 5, 21, 22, 23, 26; x. 3 twice.

[12] Session VI., ch. ix.

[13] See this admirably explained by Hooker, _Discourse of
Justification_, § 31.




CHAPTER IV

_NEED FOR THE GOSPEL: GOD'S ANGER AND MAN'S SIN_

ROMANS i. 18-23


We 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 Cæsar'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_."

[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =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 (Heb.
x. 31, xii. 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 xii. 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 for ever 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 neutralize 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 Thess. i. 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 connexion. 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."
[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =Because that which is known of 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 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.

[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =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."[14]

So man, being what he is and seeing what he sees, is "without excuse":
[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =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.= [Sidenote: Ver. 22.]
=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 xvii. 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 ultimate; 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 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 Him" (Jer. ix. 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.

[14] _Geology and the Deluge_, p. 46 (Glasgow, 1885).




CHAPTER V

_MAN GIVEN UP TO HIS OWN WAY: THE HEATHEN_

ROMANS i. 24-32


[Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =Wherefore 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" (Psal. xiv. 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" (Psal. lxxxi. 12); "God turned, and
gave them up to worship the host of heaven" (Acts vii. 42); "God gave
them up to passions of degradation"; "God gave them over to an
abandoned mind"; (below, verses 26, 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 for ever.

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: [Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =Seeing that they perverted the truth
of God,= the eternal fact of His glory and claim, =in their (τῷ)
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 for ever. 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 for ever 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 for ever.

As if animated by the word of benediction, he returns to denounce "the
abominable thing which God hateth" with still more terrible
explicitness. [Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =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, has been almost impossible since the Gospel was felt
in civilization. "Paganism," says Dr F. W. Farrar, in a powerful
passage,[15] with this paragraph of Romans in his view, "is protected
from complete exposure by the enormity of its own vices. To shew 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.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =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
(ἀπολαμβάνοντες) in themselves that recompense of their error which
was owed them.=

[Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =And as they did not approve of keeping God in
their moral knowledge,[16] God gave them up to an abandoned mind,= "_a
reprobate, God-rejected, mind_"; meeting their _disapprobation_ with
His just and fatal _reprobation_ (δοκιμάζειν, ἀδόκιμος). 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;
[Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =filled full of all unrighteousness, wickedness,
viciousness, greed; brimming with envy, murder, guile, ill-nature;
whisperers,= [Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =defamers, repulsive to God,
outragers, prideful, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to
parents,= [Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =senseless, faithless, loveless,
truceless, pitiless; people who (οἵτινες) morally aware of
(ἐπυγνόντες) 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 ἀλαζὼν, 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 shewn, 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 or 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 recognize 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 xviii. 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," some one 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.

[15] _Darkness and Dawn_, p. 112.

[16] So we venture here to render ἐπίγνωσις, a knowledge deeper than
that of merely logical conclusion.




CHAPTER VI

_HUMAN GUILT UNIVERSAL: HE APPROACHES THE CONSCIENCE OF THE JEW_

ROMANS ii. 1-16


We have appealed, for affirmation of St Paul's tremendous exposure of
human sin, to a solemn and deliberate self-scrutiny, asking the man
who doubts the justice of the picture to give up for the present any
instinctive wish to vindicate other men, while he thinks a little
while solely of himself. But another and opposite class of mistake has
to be reckoned with, and precluded; the tendency of man to a facile
condemnation of others, in favour of himself; "God, I thank Thee that
I am not as other men are" (Luke xviii. 11). It is now, as it was of
old, only too possible to read, or to hear, the most searching and
also the most sweeping condemnation of human sin, and to feel a sort
of fallacious moral sympathy with the sentence, a phantom as it were
of righteous indignation against the wrong and the doers of it, and
yet wholly to mistake the matter by thinking that the hearer is
righteous though the world is wicked. The man listens as if he were
allowed a seat beside the Judge's chair, as if he were an esteemed
assessor of the Court, and could listen with a grave yet untroubled
approbation to the discourse preliminary to the sentence. Ah, he is an
assessor of the accused; he is an accomplice of his fallen fellows; he
is a poor guilty man himself. Let him awake to himself, and to his
sin, in time.

With such a reader or hearer in view St Paul proceeds. We need not
suppose that he writes as if such states of mind were to be expected
in the Roman mission; though it was quite possible that this might be
the attitude of some who bore the Christian name at Rome. More
probably he speaks as it were in the presence of the Christians to
persons whom at any moment any of them might meet, and particularly to
that large element in religious life at Rome, the unconverted Jews.
True, they would not read the Epistle; but he could arm those who
would read it against their cavils and refusals, and show them how to
reach the conscience even of the Pharisee of the Dispersion. He could
show them how to seek his soul, by shaking him from his dream of
sympathy with the Judge who all the while was about to sentence _him_.

It is plain that throughout the passage now before us the Apostle has
the Jew in view. He does not name him for a long while. He says many
things which are as much for the Gentile sinner as for him. He dwells
upon the universality of guilt as indicated by the universality of
conscience; a passage of awful import for every human soul, quite
apart from its place in the argument here. But all the while he keeps
in view the case of the self-constituted _judge_ of other men, the man
who affects to be essentially better than they, to be, at least by
comparison with them, good friends with the law of God. And the
undertone of the whole passage is a warning to this man that his
brighter light will prove his greater ruin if he does not use it; nay,
that he has not used it, and that so it is his ruin already, the ruin
of his claim to judge, to stand exempt, to have nothing to do with the
criminal crowd at the bar.

All this points straight at the Jewish conscience, though the arrow is
levelled from a covert. If that conscience might but be reached! He
longs to reach it, first for the unbeliever's own sake, that he might
be led through the narrow pass of self-condemnation into the glorious
freedom of faith and love. But also it was of first importance that
the spiritual pride of the Jews should be conquered, or at least
exposed, for the sake of the mission-converts already won. The first
Christians, newly brought from paganism, must have regarded Jewish
opinion with great attention and deference. Not only were their
apostolic teachers Jews, and the Scriptures of the Prophets, to which
those teachers always pointed, Jewish; but the weary Roman world of
late years had been disposed to own with more and more distinctness
that if there were such a thing as a true voice from heaven to man it
was to be heard among that unattractive yet impressive race which was
seen everywhere, and yet refused to be "reckoned among the nations."
The Gospels and the Acts show us instances enough of educated Romans
drawn towards Israel and the covenant; and abundant parallels are
given us by the secular historians and satirists. The Jews, in the
words of Professor Gwatkin, were "the recognized non-conformists" of
the Roman world. At this very time the Emperor was the enamoured slave
of a brilliant woman who was known to be proselyted to the Jewish
creed. It was no slight trial to converts in their spiritual infancy
to meet everywhere the question why the sages of Jerusalem had slain
this Jewish Prophet, Jesus, and why everywhere the synagogues
denounced His name and His disciples. The true answer would be better
understood if the bigot himself could be brought to say, "God, be
merciful to me the sinner."

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Wherefore you are without excuse, O man, every
man who judges; when you judge the other party you pass judgment on
yourself; for you practise the same things, you who judge.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =For[17] we know=--this is a granted point between
us--=that God's judgment is truth-wise,= is a reality, in awful
earnest, =upon those who practise such things.= [Sidenote: Ver. 3.]
=Now is this your calculation, O man, you who judge those who practise
such things, and do them yourself, that you will escape God's
judgment?= Do you surmise that some by-way of privilege and indulgence
will be kept open for you? [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =Or do you despise the
wealth of His kindness, and of His forbearance and longsuffering=
--despise it, by mistaking it for mere indulgence, or indifference--
=knowing not that God's kind ways (τὸ χρηστὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ) lead you
to repentance?= [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =No, true to (κατὰ) your own
hardness, your own unrepentant heart, you are hoarding for yourself a
wrath= which will be felt =in the day of wrath,= the day =of
disclosure of the righteous judgment of God,= [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =who
will requite each individual according to his works.= What will be
that requital, and its law? [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =To those who, on the
line of (κατὰ) perseverance in good work, seek,= as their point of
gravitation, =glory, and honour, and immortality,= He will requite
=life eternal.= [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =But for those who side with
(τοῖς ἐκ) strife,= who take part with man, with self, with sin,
against the claims and grace of God, and, =while they disobey the
truth= of conscience, =obey unrighteousness,= yielding the will to
wrong, =there shall be wrath and fierce anger,= [Sidenote: Ver. 9.]
=trouble and bewilderment, inflicted on every soul of man,= man
=working out what is evil, alike Jew=--Jew =first--and Greek.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =But glory, and honour, and peace= shall be =for
every one who works what is good, alike for Jew=--Jew =first--and
Greek.= [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =For there is no favouritism in God's
court.=

Here he actually touches the Jew. He has named him twice, and in both
places recognizes that primacy which in the history of Redemption is
really his. It is the primacy of the race chosen to be the organ of
revelation and the birth-place of Incarnate God. It was given
sovereignty, "not according to the works," or to the numbers, of the
nation, but according to unknown conditions in the mind of God. It
carried with it genuine and splendid advantages. It even gave the
individual righteous Jew (so surely the language of ver. 10 implies) a
certain special welcome to his Master's "Well done, good and
faithful"; not to the disadvantage, in the least degree, of the
individual righteous "Greek," but just such as may be illustrated in a
circle of ardent and impartial friendship, where, in one instance or
another, kinship added to friendship makes attachment not more
intimate but more interesting. Yes, the Jew has indeed his priority,
his primacy, limited and qualified in many directions, but real and
permanent in its place; this Epistle (see ch. xi.) is the great
Charter of it in the Christian Scriptures. But whatever the place of
it is, it has no place whatever in the question of the sinfulness of
sin, unless indeed to make guilt deeper where light has been greater.
The Jew has a great historical position in the plan of God. He has
been accorded as it were an official nearness to God in the working
out of the world's redemption. But he is not one whit the less for
this a poor sinner, fallen and guilty. He is not one moment for this
to excuse, but all the more to condemn, himself. He is the last person
in the world to judge others. Wherever God has placed him in history,
he is to place himself, in repentance and faith, least and lowest at
the foot of Messiah's Cross.

What was and is true of the chosen Nation is now and for ever true, by
a deep moral parity, of all communities and of all persons who are in
any sense privileged, advantaged by circumstance. It is true, solemnly
and formidably true, of the Christian Church, and of the Christian
family, and of the Christian man. Later in this second chapter we
shall be led to some reflections on Church privilege. Let us reflect
here, if but in passing, on the fact that privilege of other kinds
must stand utterly aside when it is a question of man's sin. Have we
no temptation to forget this? Probably we are not of the mind of the
Frenchman of the old _régime_ who thought that "the Almighty would
hesitate before He condemned for ever a man of a marquis' condition."
But are we quite clear on the point that the Eternal Judge will admit
no influences from other sides? The member of so excellent, so useful,
a family, with many traces of the family character about him! The
relative of saints, the companion of the good! A mind so full of
practical energy, of literary grace and skill; so capable of deep and
subtle thought, of generous words, and even deeds; so charming, so
entertaining, so informing; the man of culture, the man of
genius;--shall none of these things weigh in the balance, and mingle
some benignant favouritism with the question, Has he done the will of
God? Nay, "_there is no favouritism in Gods court_!" No one is
acquitted there for his reputable connexions, or for his possession of
personal "talents" (awful word in the light of its first use!), given
him only that he might the better "occupy" for his Lord. These things
have nothing to do with that dread thing, the Law, which has
everything to do with the accusation and the award.

Before we pass to another section of the passage, let us not forget
the grave fact that here, in these opening pages of this great
Treatise on gratuitous Salvation, this Epistle which is about to
unfold to us the divine paradox of the Justification of the Ungodly,
we find this overwhelming emphasis laid upon "_perseverance in good
work_." True, we are not to allow even it to confuse the grand
simplicity of the Gospel, which is to be soon explained. We are not to
let ourselves think, for example, that ver. 7 depicts a man
deliberately aiming through a life of merit at a _quid pro quo_ at
length in heaven; so much glory, honour, and immortality for so living
as it would be sin not to live. St Paul does not write to contradict
the Parable of the Unprofitable Servant (Luke xvii.), any more than to
negative beforehand his own reasoning in the fourth chapter below. The
case he contemplates is one only to be realized where man has cast
himself, without one plea of merit, at the feet of mercy, and then
rises up to a walk and work of willing loyalty, covetous of the "Well
done, good and faithful," at its close, not because he is ambitious
for himself, but because he is devoted to his God, and to His will.
And St Paul knows, and in due time will tell us, that for the loyalty
that serves, as well as for the repentance that first submits, the man
has to thank mercy, and mercy only, first, midst, and last: "It is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that pitieth"
(ix. 16). But then, none the less, he does lay this emphasis, this
indescribable stress, upon the "perseverance in good work," as the
actual march of the pilgrim who travels heavenward. True to the genius
of Scripture, that is to the mind of its Inspirer in His utterances to
man, he isolates a main truth for the time, and leaves us alone with
it. Justification will come in order. But, that it may do precisely
this, that it may come in order and not out of it, he bids us first
consider right, wrong, judgment, and retribution, as if there were
nothing else in the moral universe. He leads us to the fact of the
permanence of the results of the soul's actions. He warns us that God
is eternally in earnest when He promises and when He threatens; that
He will see to it that time leaves its retributive impress for ever on
eternity.

The whole passage, read by a soul awake to itself, and to the holiness
of the Judge of men, will contribute from its every sentence something
to our conviction, our repentance, our dread of self, our persuasion
that somehow from the judgment we must fly to the Judge. But this is
not to be unfolded yet.

It was, I believe, a precept of John Wesley's to his evangelists, in
unfolding their message, to speak first in general of the love of God
to man; then, with all possible energy, and so as to search conscience
to its depths, to preach the law of holiness; and then, and not till
then, to uplift the glories of the Gospel of pardon, and of life.
Intentionally or not, his directions follow the lines of the Epistle
to the Romans.

But the Apostle has by no means done with the Jew, and his hopes of
heaven by pedigree and by creed. He recurs to the impartiality of
"_that day_," the coming final crisis of human history, ever present
to his soul. He dwells now almost wholly on the impartiality of _its
severity_, still bearing on the Pharisee's dream that somehow the Law
will be his friend, for Abraham's and Moses' sake.

[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =For all who sinned= (or, in English idiom, =all
who have sinned, all who shall have sinned=) =not law-wise, even so,
not law-wise, shall perish,= shall lose the soul; =and all who in= (or
let us paraphrase, =under=) =law have sinned, by law shall be judged,=
that is to say, practically, =condemned,= found guilty.
[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =For not law's hearers= are =just in God's
court;= nay, =law's doers shall be justified;= for "law" is never for
a moment satisfied with applause, with approbation; it demands always
and inexorably obedience. [Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =For whenever (the)
Nations,= Nations =not having law, by nature=--as distinct from
express precept--=do the things of the Law,= when they act on the
principles of it, observing in any measure the eternal difference of
right and wrong, =these men,= though =not having law, are to
themselves law;= [Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =shewing as they do
(οἵτινες)=--to one another, in moral intercourse--=the work of the
Law,= that which is, as a fact, its _result_ where it is heard, a
sense of the dread claims of right, =written in their hearts,= present
to the intuitions of their nature; =while their conscience,= their
sense of violated right, =bears concurrent witness,= each conscience
"concurring" with all; =and while, between each other,= in the
interchanges of thought and discourse, =their reasonings accuse, or it
may be defend,= their actions; now in conversation, now in treatise or
philosophic dialogue. And all this makes one vast phenomenon, pregnant
with lessons of accountability, and ominous of a judgment coming;
[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =in the day when God shall judge the secret
things of men,= even the secrets hid beneath the solemn robe of the
formalist, =according to my Gospel,[18] by means of Jesus Christ,= to
whom the Father "hath committed all judgment, as He is the Son of Man"
(John v. 27). So he closes another solemn cadence with the blessed
Name. It has its special weight and fitness here; it was the name
trampled by the Pharisee, yet the name of Him who was to judge him in
the great day.

The main import of the paragraph is plain. It is, to enforce the fact
of the accountability of the Jew and the Greek alike, from the point
of view of Law. The Jew, who is primarily in the Apostle's thought, is
reminded that his possession of _the_ Law, that is to say of the one
_specially revealed_ code not only of ritual but far more of
morals[19], is no recommendatory privilege, but a sacred responsibility.
The Gentile meanwhile is shewn, in passing but with gravest purpose,
to be by no means exempted from accountability simply for his lack of
a revealed preceptive code. He possesses, as man, that moral
consciousness without which the revealed code itself would be futile,
for it would correspond to nothing. Made in the image of God, he has
the mysterious sense which sees, feels, handles moral obligation. He
is aware of the fact of duty. Not living up to what he is thus aware
of, he is guilty.

Implicitly, all through the passage, human failure is taught side by
side with human responsibility. Such a clause as that of ver. 14,
"_when they do by nature the things of the law_," is certainly not to
be pressed, _in such a context as this_, to be an assertion that pagan
morality ever actually satisfies the holy tests of the eternal Judge.
Read in the whole connexion, it only asserts that the pagan acts as a
moral being; that he knows what it is to obey, and to resist, the
sense of duty. This is not to say, what we shall soon hear St Paul so
solemnly deny, that there exists anywhere a man whose correspondence
of life to moral law is such that his "mouth" needs _not_ to "be
stopped," and that he is _not_ to take his place as one of a "world
guilty before God."

Stern, solemn, merciful argument! Now from this side, now from that,
it approaches the conscience of man, made for God and fallen from God.
It strips the veil from his gross iniquities; it lets in the sun of
holiness upon his iniquities of the more religious type; it speaks in
his dull ears the words judgment, day, tribulation, wrath,
bewilderment, perishing. But it does all this that man, convicted, may
ask in earnest what he shall do with conscience and his Judge, and may
discover with joy that his Judge Himself has "found a ransom," and
stands Himself in act to set him free.

[17] Reading γὰρ.

[18] Here, perhaps, for once, the word εὐαγγέλιον is used in an
extended and "improper" sense, to denote the whole message _connected
with_ the Glad Tidings, and so now the warning of judgment to come,
which gives to the Glad Tidings its sacred urgency.

[19] Manifestly "_the_ Law" in this passage means not the ceremonial
law of Israel, but the revealed moral law given to Israel, above all
in the Decalogue. This appears from the language of ver. 15, which
would be meaningless if the reference were to special ordinances of
worship. The Gentiles could not "shew the work of" _that_ kind of "law
written in their hearts"; what they shewed was, as we have explained,
a "work" related to the revealed claims of God and man on the will and
life.




CHAPTER VII

_JEWISH RESPONSIBILITY AND GUILT_

ROMANS ii. 17-29


"_The Jew, first, and also the Greek_"; this has been the burthen of
the Apostle's thought thus far upon the whole. He has had the Jew for
some while in his chief thought, but he has recurred again and again
in passing to the Gentile. Now he faces the Pharisee explicitly and on
open ground, before he passes from this long exposure of human sin to
the revelation of the glorious Remedy.

[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =But if[20] you,= you emphatically, the reader or
hearer now in view, you who perhaps have excused yourself from
considering your own case by this last mention of the responsibility
of the non-Jewish world; =if you bear the name of Jew,= whether or no
you possess the corresponding spiritual reality; =and repose yourself
upon the Law,= as if the possession of that awful revelation of duty
was your protection, not your sentence; =and glory in God,= as if He
were your private property, the decoration of your national position,
whereas the knowledge of Him is given you in trust for the world;
[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =and know the Will,= His Will, _the_ Will supreme;
=and put the touchstone to things which differ,= like a casuist skilled
in moral problems; =schooled out of the Law,= under continuous training
(so the Greek present participle bids us explain) by principles and
precepts which the Law supplies;--[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =(if) you are
sure that you, yourself,= whoever else, =are a leader of blind men, a
light of those who are in the dark,= [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =an educator
of the thoughtless, a teacher of beginners, possessing, in the Law,
the outline,[21]= the system, =of real knowledge and truth,[22]= (the
outline indeed, but not the power and life related to it):--if this is
your estimate of your position and capacities, I turn it upon
yourself. Think, and answer--[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =You therefore, your
neighbour's teacher, do you not teach yourself? You, who proclaim,
Thou shalt not steal, do you steal?= [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =You, who
say, Thou shalt not commit adultery, do you commit it? You, who
abominate the idols,= affecting to loathe their very neighbourhood,
=do you plunder temples,= entering the polluted precincts readily
enough for purposes at least equally polluting? [Sidenote: Ver. 23.]
=You who glory in the Law,= as the palladium of your race, =do you, by
your violation of the Law, disgrace your[23] God?= [Sidenote: Ver. 24.]
="For the name of our God is, because of you, railed at among the
heathen," as it stands written,= in Ezekiel's message (xxxvi. 20) to
the ungodly Israel of the ancient Dispersion--a message true of the
Dispersion of the later day.

We need not overstrain the emphasis of the Apostle's stern invective.
Not every non-Christian Jew of the first century, certainly, was an
adulterer, a thief, a plunderer. When a few years later (Acts
xxviii. 17) St Paul gathered round him the Jews of Rome, and spent a
long day in discussing the prophecies with them, he appealed to them
with a noble frankness which in some sense evidently expected a
response in kind. But it is certain that the Jews of the Roman
Dispersion bore a poor general character for truth and honour. And
anywise St Paul knew well that there is a deeply natural connexion
between unhallowed religious bigotry and that innermost failure of
self-control which leaves man only too open to the worst temptations.
Whatever feeds gross personal pride promotes a swift and deadly decay
of moral fibre. Did this man pride himself on Abraham's blood, and his
own Rabbinic lore and skill, and scorn both the Gentile "sinner" and
the _'am-hââretz_, "the people of the land," the rank and file of his
own race? Then he was the very man to be led helpless by the Tempter.
As a fact, there are maxims of the later Rabbinism, which represent
beyond reasonable doubt the spirit if not the letter of the worst
watchwords of "the circumcision" of St Paul's time: "Circumcision is
equivalent to all the commandments of the Law"; "To live in Palestine
is equal to the Commandments"; "He that hath his abode in Palestine is
sure of life eternal."[24] The man who could even for an hour
entertain such a creed was ready (however deep below his consciousness
the readiness lay) for anything--under fitting circumstances of
temptation.

So it is now, very far beyond the limits of the Jewish Dispersion of
our time. Now as then, and for the Christian "outwardly" as for the
Jew "outwardly," there is no surer path to spiritual degeneracy than
spiritual pride. What are the watchwords which have succeeded to those
of the Rabbinists who encountered St Paul? Are they words, or
thoughts, of self-applause because of the historic orthodoxy of your
creed? Because of the Scriptural purity of your theory of salvation?
Because of the illustrious annals of your national Church, older than
the nation which it has so largely welded and developed? Because of
the patient courage, under contempt and exclusion, of the community
which some call your denomination, your sect, but which is to you
indeed your Church? Because of your loyalty to order? Because of your
loyalty to liberty? Take heed. The best, corrupted, becomes inevitably
the worst. In religion, there is only one altogether safe "glorying."
It is when the man can say from the soul, with open eyes, and
therefore with a deeply humbled heart, "God forbid that I should
glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world
is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal. vi. 14). All other
"glorying is not good." Be thankful for every genuine privilege. But
for Christ's sake, and for your own soul's sake, do not, even in the
inmost secret of your soul, "value _yourself_" upon them. It is
disease, it is disaster, to do so.

And shall not we of the Christian Dispersion take home also what
Ezekiel and St Paul say about the blasphemies, the miserable railings
at our God, caused by the sins of those who bear His Name? Who does
not know that, in every region of heathendom, the missionary's plea
for Christ is always best listened to where the pagan, or the
Mussulman, has _not_ before his eyes the Christianity of
"treaty-ports," and other places where European life is to be seen
lived without restraint? The stumbling-block may be the drunken
sailor, or the unchaste merchant, or civilian, or soldier, or
traveller. Or it may be just the man who, belonging to a race reputed
Christian, merely ignores the Christian's holy Book, and Day, and
House, and avoids all semblance of fellowship with his countrymen who
have come to live beside him that they may preach Christ where He is
not known. Or it may be the government, reputed Christian, which,
amidst all its noble benefits to the vast races it holds in sway,
allows them to know, to think, at least to suspect, that there are
cases where it cares more for revenue than for righteousness. In all
these cases the Christian Dispersion gives occasion for railing at the
Christian's God: and the reckoning will be a grave matter "in that
Day."

But shall the Christians of the Christendom at home stand exempt from
the charge? Ah let us who name the blessed Name with even the least
emphasis of faith and loyalty, dwelling amongst the masses who only
passively, so to speak, are Christian, who "profess nothing," though
they are, or are supposed to be, baptized--let us, amidst "the world"
which understands not a little of what we ought to be, and watches us
so keenly, and so legitimately--let us take home this message, sent
first to the old inconsistent Israel. Do we, professing godliness,
shew the mind of Christ in our secular intercourse? Do we, on the
whole, give the average "world" cause to expect that "a Christian," as
such, is a man to trust in business, in friendship? Is the conviction
quietly forced upon them that a Christian's temper, and tongue, are
not as other men's? That the Christian minister habitually lives high
above self-seeking? That the Christian tradesman faithfully remembers
his customers' just interests, and is true in all his dealings? That
the Christian servant, and the Christian master, are alike
exceptionally mindful of each other's rights, and facile about their
own? That the Christian's time, and his money, are to a remarkable
degree applied to the good of others, for Christ's sake? This is what
the members of the Christian Society, in the inner sense of the word
Christian, are expected to be in what we all understand by "the
world." If they are so, God be thanked. If they are not so--who shall
weigh the guilt? Who shall adequately estimate the dishonour so done
to the blessed Name? And "the Day" is coming.

But he has more to say about the position of the Jew. He would not
even seem to forget the greatness of the God-given privilege of
Israel; and he will use that privilege once more as a cry to
conscience.

[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =For circumcision indeed profits you, if you
carry law into practice;= in that case circumcision is for you God's
seal upon God's own promises to the true sons of Abraham's blood _and
faith_. Are you indeed a practiser of the holy Code whose summary and
essence is love to God and love to man? Can you look your Lord in the
face and say--not, "I have satisfied all Thy demands; pay me that Thou
owest," but, "Thou knowest that I love Thee, and therefore oh how I
love Thy law"? Then you are indeed a child of the covenant, through
His grace; and the seal of the covenant speaks to you the certainties
of its blessing. =But if you are a transgressor of law, your circumcision
is turned uncircumcision;= the divine seal is to you nothing, for you
are not the rightful holder of the deed of covenant which it seals.
[Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =If therefore the uncircumcision,= the Gentile
world, in some individual instance, =carefully keeps the ordinances of
the Law,= reverently remembers the love owed to God and to man, =shall
not his uncircumcision,= the uncircumcision of the man supposed, =be
counted as if circumcision?= Shall he not be treated as a lawful
recipient of covenant blessings even though _the seal_ upon the
document of promise is, not at all by his fault, missing?
[Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =And= thus =shall not this hereditary (ἐκ φύσεως)
uncircumcision,= this Gentile born and bred, =fulfilling the
law= of love and duty, =judge you, who by means of letter and
circumcision are--law's transgressor,= using as you practically do use
the terms, the letter, of the covenant, and the rite which is its
seal, as means to violate its inmost import, and claiming, in the
pride of privilege, blessings promised only to self-forgetting love?
[Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =For not the (Jew) in the visible= sphere =is a
Jew; nor is circumcision in the visible= sphere, =in the flesh,
circumcision.= [Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =No, but the Jew in the hidden=
sphere; =and circumcision of heart, in Spirit, not letter;=
circumcision in the sense of a work on the soul, wrought by God's
Spirit, not in that of a legal claim supposed to rest upon a routine
of prescribed observances. =His praise,= the praise of such a Jew, the
Jew in this hidden sense, thus circumcised in heart, =does not come
from men, but does come from God.= Men may, and very likely will, give
him anything but praise; they will not like him the better for his
deep divergence from their standard, and from their spirit. But the
Lord knows him, and loves him, and prepares for him His own welcome;
"Well done, good and faithful."

Here is a passage far-reaching, like the paragraphs which have gone
before it. Its immediate bearing needs only brief comment, certainly
brief explanation. We need do little more than wonder at the moral
miracle of words like these written by one who, a few years before,
was spending the whole energy of his mighty will upon the defence of
ultra-Judaism. The miracle resides not only in the vastness of the
man's change of view, but in the manner of it. It is not only that he
denounces Pharisaism, but he denounces it in a tone entirely free from
its spirit, which he might easily have carried into the opposite camp.
What he meets it with is the assertion of truths as pure and peaceable
as they are eternal; the truths of the supreme and ultimate importance
of the right attitude of man's heart towards God, and of the
inexorable connexion between such an attitude and a life of unselfish
love towards man. Here is one great instance of that large spiritual
phenomenon, the transfiguration of the first followers of the Lord
Jesus from what they had been to what under His risen power they
became. We see in them men whose convictions and hopes have undergone
an incalculable revolution; yet it is a revolution which disorders
nothing. Rather, it has taken fanaticism for ever out of their
thoughts and purposes. It has softened their whole souls towards man,
as well as drawn them into an unimagined intimacy with God. It has
taught them to live above the world; yet it has brought them into the
most practical and affectionate relations with every claim upon them
in the world around them. "Your life is hid with Christ in God";
"Honour all men"; "He that loveth not, knoweth not God."

But the significance of this particular passage is indeed
far-reaching, permanent, universal. As before, so here, the Apostle
warns us (not only the Jew of that distant day) against the fatal but
easy error of perverting privilege into pride, forgetting that every
gift of God is "a talent" with which the man is to trade for his Lord,
and for his Lord alone. But also, more explicitly here, he warns us
against that subtle tendency of man's heart to substitute, in
religion, the outward for the inward, the mechanical for the
spiritual, the symbol for the thing. Who can read this passage without
reflections on the privileges, and on the seals of membership, of the
Christian Church? Who may not take from it a warning not to put in the
wrong place the sacred gifts, as sacred as they can be, because
divine, of Order, and of Sacrament? Here is a great Hebrew doctor
dealing with that primary Sacrament of the Elder Church of which such
high and urgent things are said in the Hebrew Scriptures; a rite of
which even medieval theologians have asserted that it was the
Sacrament of the same grace as that which is the grace of Baptism
now.[25] But when he has to consider the case of one who has received
the physical ordinance apart from the right attitude of soul, he
speaks of the ordinance in terms which a hasty reader might think
slighting. He does not slight it. He says it "profits," and he is
going soon to say more to that purpose. For him it is nothing less
than God's own Seal on God's own Word, assuring the individual, as
with a literal touch divine, that all is true _for him_, as he claims
grace in humble faith. But then he contemplates the case of one who,
by no contempt but by force of circumstance, has never received the
holy seal, yet believes, and loves, and obeys. And he lays it down
that the Lord of the Covenant will honour that man's humble claim as
surely as if he brought the covenant-document ready sealed in his
hand. Not that even for him the seal, if it may be had, will be
nothing; it will assuredly be divine still, and will be sought as
God's own gift, His seal ex _post facto_. But the principle remains
that the ritual seal and the spiritual reality are separable; and that
the greater thing, the thing of absolute and ultimate necessity
between the soul and God, is the spiritual reality; and that where
that is present there God accepts.

It was the temptation of Israel of old to put Circumcision in the
place of faith, love, and holiness, instead of in its right place, as
the divine imperial seal upon the covenant of grace, the covenant to
be claimed and used by faith. It is the temptation of some Christians
now to put the sacred order of the Church, and particularly its divine
Sacraments, the holy Bath and the holy Meal, in the place of spiritual
regeneration, and spiritual communion, rather than in their right
place as divine imperial seals on the covenant which guarantees both
to faith. For us, as for our elder brethren, this paragraph of the
great argument is therefore altogether to the purpose. "Faith is
greater than water," says even Peter Lombard,[26] the _Magister_ of
the medieval Schools. So it is. And the thought is in perfect unison
with St Paul's principle of reasoning here. Let it be ours to
reverence, to prize, to use the ordinances of our Master, with a
devotion such as we might seem sure we should feel if we saw Him dip
His hand in the Font, or stretch it out to break the Bread, and hallow
it, and give it, at the Table. But let us be quite certain, for our
own souls' warning, that it is true all the while--in the sense of
this passage--that "he is not a Christian which is one outwardly,
neither is that Baptism, or Communion, which is outward; but he is a
Christian which is one inwardly, and Baptism and Communion are those
of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter."

Sacred indeed are the God-given externals of Christian order and
ordinance. But there are degrees of greatness in the world of sacred
things. And the moral work of God direct upon the soul of man is
greater than His sacramental work done through man's body.

[20] There is no practical doubt that εἰ δὲ not ἴde ("_Behold_")
is the right reading here.

[21] Μόρφωσις: we need not understand by this word a reference to
_mere formalism_. Μορφή on the contrary regularly means shape
expressive of underlying substance. And μόρφωσις means not shape
but shap_ing_. He means that the Pharisee really _has_, in the Law,
God's formed and formative model of knowledge and reality. Still,
2 Tim. iii. 5 justifies our also seeing here a side suggestion of the
possibility of dissociating even the divine model from the
corresponding "power."

[22] Τῦς γνώσεως, τῦς ἀληθείας:--the adjective "_real_" in our
rendering represents the Greek definite article, though with a slight
exaggeration.

[23] Τὸν Θεόν. We represent the definite article here by "_your_,"
and just below by "_our_"; not without hesitation, as it somewhat
exaggerates the definition.

[24] See A. M'Caul's _Old Paths_ (נתיבות עולם), p. 230, etc.

[25] So Bernard, _Sermo in Cœnâ_, c. 2.

[26] See _Sententiæ_, iv., iv., 3-7.




CHAPTER VIII

_JEWISH CLAIMS: NO HOPE IN HUMAN MERIT_

ROMANS iii. 1-20


As the Apostle dictates, there rises before his mind a figure often
seen by his eyes, the Rabbinic disputant. Keen, subtle, unscrupulous,
at once eagerly in earnest yet ready to use any argument for victory,
how often that adversary had crossed his path, in Syria, in Asia
Minor, in Macedonia, in Achaia! He is present now to his consciousness,
within the quiet house of Gaius; and his questions come thick and
fast, following on this urgent appeal to his, alas, almost
impenetrable conscience.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] "=What then is the advantage of the Jew? Or what
is the profit of circumcision?=" "=If some did not believe, what of
that? Will their faithlessness cancel God's good faith?=" "=But if our
righteousness sets off God's righteousness, would God be unjust,
bringing His wrath to bear?="

We group _the questions_ together thus, to make it the clearer that we
do enter here, at this opening of the third chapter, upon a brief
controversial dialogue; perhaps the almost verbatim record of many a
dialogue actually spoken. The Jew, pressed hard with moral proofs of
his responsibility, must often have turned thus upon his pursuer, or
rather have tried thus to escape from him in the subtleties of a false
appeal to the faithfulness of God.

And first he meets the Apostle's stern assertion that circumcision
without spiritual reality will not save. He asks, where then is the
advantage of Jewish descent? What is the profit, the good, of
circumcision? It is a mode of reply not unknown in discussions on
Christian ordinances; "What then is the good of belonging to a
historic Church at all? What do you give the divine Sacraments to do?"
The Apostle answers his questioner at once; [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =Much,
in every way; first, because they were entrusted with the Oracles of
God.= "_First_," as if there were more to say in detail. Something, at
least, of what is here left unsaid is said later, ix. 4, 5, where he
recounts the long roll of Israel's spiritual and historical
splendours; "the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the
law-giving, and the worship, and the promises, and the Fathers, and
the Christ." Was it nothing to be bound up with things like these, in
a bond made at once of blood-relationship, holy memories, and
magnificent hopes? Was it nothing to be exhorted to righteousness,
fidelity, and love by finding the individual life thus surrounded? But
here he places "first" of even these wonderful treasures this, that
Israel was "_entrusted with the Oracles of God_," the Utterances of
God, His unique Message to man "through His prophets, in the Holy
Scriptures." Yes, here was something which gave to the Jew an
"advantage" without which the others would either have had no
existence, or no significance. He was the trustee of Revelation. In
his care was lodged the Book by which man was to live and die; through
which he was to know immeasurably more about God and about himself
than he could learn from all other informants put together. He, his
people, his Church, were the "witness and keeper of Holy Writ." And
therefore to be born of Israel, and ritually entered into the covenant
of Israel, was to be born into the light of revelation, and committed
to the care of the witnesses and keepers of the light.

To insist upon this immense privilege is altogether to St Paul's
purpose here. For it is a privilege which evidently carries an awful
responsibility with it. What would be the guilt of the soul, and of
the Community, to whom those Oracles were--not given as property, but
_entrusted_--and who did not do the things they said?

Again the message passes on to the Israel of the Christian Church.
"What advantage hath the Christian? What profit is there of Baptism?"
"Much, in every way; first, because to the Church is entrusted the
light of revelation." To be born in it, to be baptized in it, is to be
born into the sunshine of revelation, and laid on the heart and care
of the Community which witnesses to the genuineness of its Oracles and
sees to their preservation and their spread. Great is the talent.
Great is the accountability.

But the Rabbinist goes on. [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For if some did not
believe,= what of that? =Will their faithlessness cancel God's good
faith?= These Oracles of God promise interminable glories to Israel,
to Israel as a community, a body. Shall not that promise hold good for
the whole mass, though some (bold euphemism for the faithless
multitudes!) have rejected the Promiser? Will not the unbelieving Jew,
after all, find his way to life eternal for his company's sake, for
his part and lot in the covenant community? "_Will God's faith_," His
good faith, His plighted word, be reduced to empty sounds by the bad
Israelite's sin? [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =Away with the thought,[27]= the
Apostle answers. Any thing is more possible than that God should lie.
=Nay (δὲ), let God prove true, and every man prove liar; as it
stands written= (Psal. li. 4), ="That Thou mightest be justified in
Thy words, and mightest overcome when Thou impleadest."[28]= He quotes
the Psalmist in that deep utterance of self-accusation, where he takes
part against himself, and finds himself guilty "without one plea,"
and, in the loyalty of the regenerate and now awakened soul, is
jealous to vindicate the justice of his _condemning_ God. The whole
Scripture contains no more impassioned, yet no more profound and
deliberate, utterance of the eternal truth that God is always in the
right or He would be no God at all; that it is better, and more
reasonable, to doubt anything than to doubt His righteousness,
whatever cloud surrounds it, and whatever lightning bursts the cloud.

But again the caviller, intent not on God's glory but on his own
position, takes up the word. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =But if our
unrighteousness exhibits, sets off, God's righteousness,= if our sin
gives occasion to grace to abound, if our guilt lets the generosity
of God's Way of Acceptance stand out the more wonderful by
contrast--=what shall we say? Would God be unjust, bringing His
(τὴν) wrath to bear= on us, when our pardon would illustrate His
free grace? Would He be unjust? Would He _not_ be unjust?

We struggle, in our paraphrase, to bring out the bearing, as it seems
to us, of a passage of almost equal grammatical difficulty and
argumentative subtlety. The Apostle seems to be "in a strait" between
the wish to represent the caviller's thought, and the dread of one
really irreverent word. He throws the man's last question into a form
which, grammatically, expects a "_no_" when the drift of the thought
would lead us up to a shocking "_yes_."[29] And then at once he passes
to his answer. =I speak as man,= man-wise; as if this question of
balanced rights and wrongs were one between man and man, not between
man and eternal God. Such talk, even for argument's sake, is
impossible for the regenerate soul except under urgent protest.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =Away with the thought= that He would _not_ be
righteous, in His punishment of any given sin. =Since how shall God
judge the world?= How, on such conditions, shall we repose on the
ultimate fact that He is the universal JUDGE? If He _could_ not,
righteously, punish a deliberate sin because pardon, under certain
conditions, illustrates His glory, then He could not punish any sin at
all. But He _is_ the Judge; He _does_ bring wrath to bear!

Now he takes up the caviller on his own ground, and goes all lengths
upon it, and then flies with abhorrence from it. [Sidenote: Ver. 7.]
=For if God's truth, in the matter of my lie, has abounded,= has come
more amply out, =to His glory, why am I too[30] called to judgment as
a sinner?= [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =And why not say, as the slander
against us goes, and as some assert that we do say, "Let us do the ill
that the good may come"?= So they assert of us. But =their doom is
just,=--the doom of those who would utter such a maxim, finding
shelter for a lie under the throne of God.

No doubt he speaks from a bitter and frequent experience when he takes
this particular case, and with a solemn irony claims exemption for
himself from the liar's sentence of death. It is plain that the charge
of untruth was, for some reason or another, often thrown at St Paul;
we see this in the marked urgency with which, from time to time, he
asserts his truthfulness; "The things which I say, behold, before God
I lie not" (Gal. i. 20); "I speak the truth in Christ and lie not"
(below, ix. 1). Perhaps the manifold sympathies of his heart gave
innocent occasion sometimes for the charge. The man who could be "all
things to all men" (1 Cor. ix. 22), taking with a genuine insight
their point of view, and saying things which shewed that he took it,
would be very likely to be set down by narrower minds as untruthful.
And the very boldness of his teaching might give further occasion,
equally innocent; as he asserted at different times, with equal
emphasis, opposite sides of truth. But these somewhat subtle excuses
for false witness against this great master of holy sincerity would
not be necessary where genuine malice was at work. No man is so
truthful that he cannot be charged with falsehood; and no charge is so
likely to injure even where it only feigns to strike. And of course
the mighty paradox of Justification lent itself easily to the
distortions, as well as to the contradictions, of sinners. "Let us do
evil that good may come" no doubt represented the report which
prejudice and bigotry would regularly carry away and spread after
every discourse, and every argument, about free Forgiveness. It is so
still: "If this is true, we may live as we like; if this is true, then
the worst sinner makes the best saint." Things like this have been
current sayings since Luther, since Whitefield, and till now. Later in
the Epistle we shall see the unwilling evidence which such distortions
bear to the nature of the maligned doctrine; but here the allusion is
too passing to bring this out.

"_Whose doom is just._" What a witness is this to the inalienable
truthfulness of the Gospel! This brief stern utterance absolutely
repudiates all apology for means by end; all seeking of even the good
of men by the way of saying the thing that is not. Deep and strong,
almost from the first, has been the temptation to the Christian man to
think otherwise, until we find whole systems of casuistry developed
whose aim seems to be to go as near the edge of untruthfulness as
possible, if not beyond it, in religion. But the New Testament sweeps
the entire idea of the pious fraud away, with this short thunder-peal,
"_Their doom is just_." It will hear of no holiness that leaves out
truthfulness; no word, no deed, no habit, that even with the purest
purpose belies the God of reality and veracity.

If we read aright Acts xxiv. 20, 21, with Acts xxiii. 6, we see St
Paul himself once, under urgent pressure of circumstances, betrayed
into an equivocation, and then, publicly and soon, expressing his
regret of conscience. "I am a Pharisee, and a Pharisee's son; about
the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." True,
true in fact, but not the whole truth, not the unreserved account of
his attitude towards the Pharisee. Therefore, a week later, he
confesses, does he not? that in this one thing there _was_ "evil in
him, while he stood before the council." Happy the Christian, happy
indeed the Christian public man, immersed in management and
discussion, whose memory is as clear about truth-telling, and whose
conscience is as sensitive!

[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =What then? are we superior?[31]= Say =not= so =at
all (μηδαμῶς).= Thus now he proceeds, taking the word finally from
his supposed antagonist. Who are the "_we_" and with whom are "we"
compared? The drift of the argument admits of two replies to this
question. "_We_" may be "_we Jews_"; as if Paul placed himself in
instinctive sympathy, by the side of the compatriot whose cavils he
has just combated, and gathered up here into a final assertion all he
has said before of the (at least) equal guilt of the Jew beside the
Greek. Or "_we_" may be "_we Christians_," taken for the moment as men
apart from Christ; it may be a repudiation of the thought that he has
been speaking from a pedestal, or from a tribunal. As if he said, "Do
not think that I, or my friends in Christ, would say to the world,
Jewish or Gentile, that we are holier than you. No; we speak not from
the bench, but from the bar. Apart from Him who is our peace and life,
we are 'in the same condemnation.' It is exactly because we are in it
that we turn and say to you, 'Do not ye fear God?'" On the whole, this
latter reference seems the truer to the thought and spirit of the
whole context.

=For we have already charged Jews and Greeks, all of them, with being
under sin; with being brought under sin,= as the Greek (ὑφ᾽
ἁμαρτίαν) bids us more exactly render, giving us the thought that
the race has fallen _from_ a good estate _into_ an evil; self-involved
in an awful superincumbent ruin. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =As it stands
written, that there is not even one man righteous; there is not a man
who understands, not a man who seeks his (τὸν) God. All have left
the road; they have turned worthless together. There is not a man who
does what is good, there is not, even so many as one. A grave set open
is their throat,= exhaling the stench of polluted words; =with their
tongues they have deceived; asps' venom is under their lips[32]; (men)
whose mouth is brimming with curse and bitterness. Swift are their
feet to shed blood; ruin and misery= for their victims =are in their
ways; and the way of peace they never knew. There is no such thing as
fear of God before their eyes.=

Here is a tesselation of Old Testament oracles. The fragments, hard
and dark, come from divers quarries; from the Psalms (v. 9, x. 7,
xiv. 1-3, xxxvi. 1, cxl. 3), from the Proverbs (i. 16), from Isaiah
(lix. 7). All in the first instance depict and denounce classes of
sins and sinners in Israelite society; and we may wonder at first
sight how their evidence convicts all men everywhere, and in all time,
of condemnable and fatal sin. But we need not only, in submission, own
that somehow it must be so, for "it stands written" here; we may see,
in part, how it is so. These special charges against certain sorts of
human lives stand in the same Book which levels the general charge
against _the human heart_ (Jerem. xvii. 9), that it is "deceitful
above all things, hopelessly diseased," and incapable of knowing all
its own corruption. The crudest surface phenomena of sin are thus
never isolated from the dire underlying epidemic of the race of man.
The actual evil of men shews the potential evil of man. The
tiger-strokes of open wickedness shew the tiger-nature, which is
always present, even where its possessor least suspects it.
Circumstances infinitely vary, and among them those internal
circumstances which we call special tastes and dispositions. But
everywhere amidst them all is the human heart, made upright in its
creation, self-wrecked into moral wrongness when it turned itself from
God. That it _is_ turned from Him, not to Him, appears when its
direction is tested by the collision between His claim and its will.
And in this aversion from the Holy One, who claims the whole heart,
there lies at least the potency of "all unrighteousness."

Long after this, as his glorious rest drew near, St Paul wrote again
of the human heart, to "his true son" Titus (iii. 3). He reminds him
of the wonder of that saving grace which he so fully unfolds in this
Epistle; how, "not according to our works," the "God who loveth man"
had saved Titus, and saved Paul. And what had he saved them from? From
a state in which they were "disobedient, deceived, the slaves of
divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, hating
one another." What, the loyal and laborious Titus, the chaste, the
upright, the unutterably earnest Paul? Is not the picture greatly,
lamentably exaggerated, a burst of religious rhetoric? Adolphe
Monod[33] tells us that he once thought it must be so; he felt himself
quite unable to submit to the awful witness. But years moved, and he
saw deeper into himself, seeing deeper into the holiness of God; and
the truthfulness of that passage grew upon him. Not that its
difficulties all vanished, but its truthfulness shone out; "and sure I
am," he said from his death-bed, "that when this veil of flesh shall
fall I shall recognize in that passage the truest portrait ever
painted of my own natural heart."

Robert Browning, in a poem of terrible moral interest and power,[34]
confesses that, amidst a thousand doubts and difficulties, his mind
was anchored to faith in Christianity by the fact of its doctrine of
Sin:

  "I still, to suppose it true, for my part
    See reasons and reasons; this, to begin;
  'Tis the faith that launched point blank her dart
    At the head of a lie; taught Original Sin,
  The Corruption of Man's Heart."

[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =Now we know that whatever things the Law says,
it speaks them to those in the Law,= those within its range, its
dominion; =that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may
prove guilty with regard to God.= "_The Law_"; that is to say, here,
the Old Testament Revelation. This not only contains the Mosaic and
Prophetic moral code, but has it for one grand pervading object, in
all its parts, to prepare man for Christ by exposing him to himself,
in his shame and need. It shews him in a thousand ways that "_he
cannot serve_ the Lord" (Josh. xxiv. 19), on purpose that in that same
Lord he may take refuge from both his guilt and his impotency. And
this it does for "_those in the Law_"; that is to say here, primarily,
for the Race, the Church, whom it surrounded with its light of holy
fire, and whom in this passage the Apostle has in his first thoughts.
Yet they, surely, are not alone upon his mind. We have seen already
how "the Law" is, after all, only the more full and direct enunciation
of "law"; so that the Gentile as well as the Jew has to do with the
light, and with the responsibility, of a knowledge of the will of God.
While the chain of stern quotations we have just handled lies heaviest
on Israel, it yet binds the world. It "shuts _every_ mouth." It drags
MAN in guilty before God.

"_That every mouth may be stopped._" Oh solemn silence, when at last
it comes! The harsh or muffled voices of self-defence, of
self-assertion, are hushed at length. The man, like one of old, when
he saw his _righteous_ self in the light of God, "_lays his hand on
his mouth_" (Job xl. 4). He leaves speech to God, and learns at last
to listen. What shall he hear? An eternal repudiation? An objurgation,
and then a final and exterminating anathema? No, something far other,
and better, and more wonderful. But there must first be silence on
man's part, if it is to be heard. "_Hear_--and your souls shall live."

So the great argument pauses, gathered up into an utterance which at
once concentrates what has gone before, and prepares us for a glorious
sequel. Shut thy mouth, O man, and listen now:

[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =Because by means of works of law there shall be
justified no flesh in His presence; for by means of law comes--moral
knowledge (ἐπύγνωσις) of sin.=

[27] Μὴ γένοιτο: literally, "_Be it not_"; "_May it not be_."
Perhaps nothing so well represents the _energy_ of the Greek as the
"_God forbid_" of the Authorized Version.

[28] Ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαι σε: we may render this (as in 1 Cor. vi. 1)
"_When Thou goest to law_." The Hebrew is, literally, "_When Thou
judgest_"; and the Septuagint Greek, used here by St Paul, probably
represents this, though by a slight paraphrase.

[29] Μὴ ἄδικος; where logically it would rather be οὐκ ἄδικος.--Just
above, we explain "God's righteousness" to mean, as commonly in the
Epistle, "God's way of acceptance," His reckoning His Righteousness to
the sinner.

[30] Κἀγώ: he speaks as claiming, on the caviller's principles,
equal indulgence for himself.

[31] Προεχόμεθα: "_Do we make excuse for ourselves?_" is a
rendering for which there are clearer precedents in the use of the
verb. But the context seems to us to advocate the above rendering,
which is quite possible grammatically.

[32] ὑπὸ τὰ χείλη: again the Greek (as in verse 9) gives the thought
of _motion to a position under_. The human "aspic" is depicted as
_bringing its venom up_ to its mouth, ready there for the stroke of
its fangs.

[33] _Adieux_, § 1.

[34] _Gold Hair, a Legend of Pornic._




CHAPTER IX

_THE ONE WAY OF DIVINE ACCEPTANCE_

ROMANS iii. 21-31


So then "there is silence" upon earth, that man may hear the "still,
small voice," "the sound of stillness" (1 Kings xix. 12),[35] from the
heavens. "The Law" has spoken, with its heart-shaking thunder. It has
driven in upon the soul of man, from many sides, that one fact--guilt;
the eternity of the claim of righteousness, the absoluteness of the
holy Will of God, and, in contrast, the failure of man, of the race,
to meet that claim and do that will. It has told man, in effect, that
he is "depraved,"[36] that is to say, morally distorted. He is
"totally depraved," that is, the distortion has affected his whole
being, so that he can supply on his own part no adequate recovering
power which shall restore him to harmony with God. And the Law has
nothing more to say to him, except that this condition is not only
deplorable, but guilty, accountable, condemnable; and that his own
conscience is the concurrent witness that it is so. He is a sinner. To
be a sinner is before all things to be a transgressor of law. It is
other things besides. It is to be morally diseased, and in need of
surgery and medicine. It is to be morally unhappy, and an object of
compassion. But first of all it is to be morally guilty, and in urgent
need of justification, of a reversal of sentence, of satisfactory
settlement with the offended--and eternal--Law of God.

That Law, having spoken its inexorable conditions, and having
announced the just sentence of death, stands stern and silent beside
the now silent offender. It has no commission to relieve his fears, to
allay his grief, to pay his debts. Its awful, merciful business is to
say "Thou shalt not sin," and "The wages of sin is death." It summons
conscience to attention, and tells it in its now hearing ear far more
than it had realized before of the horror and the doom of sin; and
then it leaves conscience to take up the message and alarm the whole
inner world with the certainty of guilt and judgment. So the man lies
speechless before the terribly reticent Law.

Is it a merely abstract picture? Or do our hearts, the writer's and
the reader's, bear any witness to its living truthfulness? God
knoweth, these things are no curiosities of the past. We are not
studying an interesting phase of early Christian thought. We are
reading a living record of the experiences of innumerable lives which
are lived on earth this day. There is such a thing indeed in our time,
at this hour, as conviction of sin. There is such a thing now as a
human soul, struck dumb amidst its apologies, its doubts, its denials,
by the speech and then the silence of the Law of God. There is such a
thing at this hour as a real man, strong and sound in thought, healthy
in every faculty, used to look facts of daily life in the face, yet
broken down in the indescribable conviction that he is a poor, guilty,
lost sinner, and that his overwhelming need is--not now, not just
now--the solution of problems of being, but the assurance that his sin
is forgiven. He must be justified, or he dies. The God of the Law must
somehow say He has no quarrel with him, or he dies a death which he
sees, as by an intuition peculiar to conviction of sin, to be in its
proper nature a death without hope, without end.

Is this "somehow" possible?

Listen, guilty and silent soul, to a sound which is audible now. In
the turmoil of either secular indifference or blind self-justification
you could not hear it; at best you heard a meaningless murmur. But
listen now; it is articulate, and it speaks to you. The earthquake,
the wind, the fire, have passed; and you are indeed awake. Now comes
"the sound of stillness" in its turn.

[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =But now, apart from Law, God's righteousness
stands displayed, attested by the Law and the Prophets; but
(δὲ)=--though attested by them, in the Scriptures which all along,
in word and in type, promise better things to come, and above
all a Blessed One to come--[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =(it is) God's
righteousness, through faith in Jesus Christ,= prepared =for all= and
bestowed upon all =who believe= in Him. =For there is no distinction;=
[Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory
of God,= [Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =being justified[37] gift-wise,=
gratuitously, =by His grace, through the redemption,= the
ransom-rescue, =which is in Christ Jesus.= Yes, it resides always in
Him, the Lord of saving Merit, and so is to be found in Him alone;
[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =whom God presented[38],= put forward, =as
Propitiation,[39] through faith in His blood,[40]= His blood of death,
of sacrifice, of the altar; =so as to demonstrate,= to explain, to
clear up, =His righteousness,= His way of acceptance and its method.
The Father "presented" the Son so as to shew that His grace meant no
real connivance, no indulgence without a lawful reason. He "presented"
Him =because of His passing-by of sins done before;= because the fact
_asked explanation_ that, while He proclaimed His Law, and had not yet
revealed His Gospel, He did nevertheless bear with sinners, reprieving
them, condoning them, in the forbearance of God, in the ages when He
was seen to "hold back"[41] His wrath, but did not yet disclose the
reason why. [Sidenote: Ver. 26.] It was =with a view,= he says again,
=to this demonstration (τὴν ἔνδειξιν) of His righteousness in the
present period,= the season, the καιρός, of the manifested Gospel;
=that He may be,= in our view, as well as in divine fact, at once
=just,= true to His eternal Law, =and Justifier of him who belongs to
(τὸν ἐκ) faith in Jesus.=

This is the voice from heaven, audible when the sinner's mouth is
shut, while his ears are opened by the touch of God. Without that
spiritual introduction to them, very likely they will seem either a
fact in the history of religious thought, interesting in the study of
development, but no more; or a series of assertions corresponding to
unreal needs, and in themselves full of disputable points. Read them
in the hour of conviction of sin; in other words, bring to them your
whole being, stirred from above to its moral depths, and you will not
take them either indifferently, or with opposition. As the key meets
the lock they will meet your exceeding need. Every sentence, every
link of reasoning, every affirmation of fact, will be precious to you
beyond all words. And you will never _fully_ understand them except in
such hours, or in the life which has such hours amongst its indelible
memories.

Listen over again, in this sacred silence, thus broken by "the
pleasant voice of the Mighty One."

"_But now_"; the happy "_now_" of present fact, of waking certainty.
It is no day-dream. Look, and see; touch, and feel. Turn the blessed
page again; γέγραπται, "_It stands written_." There is indeed a
"Righteousness of God," a settled way of mercy which is as holy as it
is benignant, an acceptance as good in eternal Law as in eternal Love.
It is "_attested by the Law and the Prophets_"; countless lines of
prediction and foreshadowing meet upon it, to negative for ever the
fear of illusion, of delusion. Here is no fortuitous concourse, but
the long-laid plan of God. Behold its procuring Cause, magnificent,
tender, divine, human, spiritual, historic. It is the beloved Son of
the Father; no antagonist power from a region alien to the blessed Law
and its Giver. The Law-Giver is the Christ-Giver; HE has "_set Him
forth_," HE has provided in Him an expiation which--does not persuade
Him to have mercy, for He is eternal Love already, but liberates His
love along the line of a wonderfully satisfied Holiness, and explains
that liberation (to the contrite) so as supremely to win their worship
and their love to the Father and the Son. Behold the Christ of God;
behold the blood of Christ. In the Gospel, He is everywhere, it is
everywhere; but what is your delight to find Him, and it, here upon
the threshold of your life of blessing? Looking upon the Crucified,
while you still "lay your hand upon your mouth," till it is removed
that you may bless His Name, you understand the joy with which, age
after age, men have spoken of a Death which is their life, of a Cross
which is their crown and glory. You are in no mood, here and now, to
disparage the doctrine of the Atoning Blood; to place it in the
background of your Christianity; to obscure the Cross behind even the
roofs of Bethlehem. You cannot now think well of any Gospel that does
not say, "_First of all_, Christ died for our sins, according to the
Scriptures" (1 Cor. xv. 3). You are a sinner, and you know it; "guilty
before God"; and for you as such the Propitiation governs your whole
view of man, of God, of life, of heaven. For you, however it may be
for others, "Redemption" cannot be named, or thought of, apart from
its first precious element, "remission of sins," justification of the
guilty. It is steeped in ideas of Propitiation; it is red and glorious
with the Redeemer's blood, without which it could not have been. The
all-blessed God, with all His attributes, His character, is by you
seen evermore as "_just, yet the Justifier of him that believeth in
Jesus_." He shines on you through the Word, and in your heart's
experience, in many another astonishing aspect. But all those others
are qualified for you by this, that He is the God of a holy
Justification; that He is the God who has accepted you, the guilty
one, in Christ. All your thoughts of Him are formed and followed out
at the foot of the Cross. Golgotha is the observatory from which you
count and watch the lights of the moving heaven of His Being, His
Truth, His Love.

How precious to you now are the words which once, perhaps, were worse
than insipid, "_Faith_," "_Justification_," "_the Righteousness of
God_"! In the discovery of your necessity, and of Christ as the
all-in-all to meet it, you see with little need of exposition the
place and power of _Faith_. It means, you see it now, simply your
reception of Christ. It is your contact with Him, your embrace of Him.
It is not virtue; it is absolutely remote from merit. But it is
necessary; as necessary as the hand that takes the alms, or as the
mouth that eats the unbought meal. The meaning of _Justification_ is
now to you no riddle of the schools. Like all the great words of
scriptural theology it carries with it in divine things the meaning it
bears in common things, only for a new and noble application; you see
this with joy, by the insight of awakened conscience. He who
"_justifies_" you does exactly what the word always imports. He does
not educate you, or inspire you, up to acceptability. He pronounces
you acceptable, satisfactory, at peace with Law. And this He does for
Another's sake; on account of the Merit of Another, who has so done
and suffered as to win an eternal welcome for Himself and everything
that is His, and therefore for all who are found in Him, and therefore
for you who have fled into Him, believing. So you receive with joy and
wonder "_the Righteousness of God_," His way to bid you, so deeply
guilty in yourself, welcome without fear to your Judge. You are
"righteous," that is to say, satisfactory to the inexorable Law. How?
Because you are transfigured into a moral perfectness such as could
constitute a claim? No, but because Jesus Christ died, and you,
receiving Him, are found in Him.

"_There is no difference._" Once, perhaps, you resented that word, if
you paused to note it. Now you take all its import home. Whatever
otherwise your "difference" may be from the most disgraceful and
notorious breakers of the Law of God, you know now that there is none
in _this_ respect--that you are as hopelessly, whether or not as
distantly, remote as they are from "_the glory of God_." His moral
"glory," the inexorable perfectness of His Character, with its
inherent demand that you must perfectly correspond to Him in order so
to be at peace with Him--you are indeed "_short of_" this. The harlot,
the liar, the murderer, are short of it; but so are you. Perhaps they
stand at the bottom of a mine, and you on the crest of an Alp; but you
are as little able to touch the stars as they. So you thankfully give
yourself up, side by side with them, if they will but come too, to be
_carried_ to the height of divine acceptance, by the gift of God,
"justified gift-wise by His grace."

[Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =Where then is our (ἡ) boasting? It is shut
out. By means of what law? Of works? No, but by means of faith's law,=
the institute, the ordinance, which lays it upon us not to deserve,
but to confide. And who can analyse or describe the joy and rest of
the soul from which at last is "_shut out_" the foul inflation of a
religious "_boast_"? We have praised ourselves, we have valued
ourselves, on one thing or another supposed to make us worthy of the
Eternal. We may perhaps have had some specious pretexts for doing so;
or we may have "boasted" (such boastings are not unknown) of nothing
better than being a little less ungodly, or a little more manly, than
some one else. But this is over now for ever, in principle; and we lay
its practice under our Redeemer's feet to be destroyed. And great is
the rest and gladness of sitting down at His feet, while the door is
shut and the key is turned upon our self-applause. There is no
holiness without that "exclusion"; and there is no happiness where
holiness is not.

[Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =For we reckon,[42]= we conclude, we gather up
our facts and reasons thus, =that man is justified[43] by faith, apart
from,= irrespective of, =works of law.= In other words, the meriting
cause lies wholly in Christ, and wholly outside the man's conduct. We
have seen, implicitly, in the passage above, verses 10-18, what is
meant here by "_works of Law_," or by "_works of the Law_." The
thought is not of ritual prescription, but of moral rule. The
law-breakers of verses 10-18 are men who commit violent deeds, and
speak foul words, and fail to do what is good. The law-keeper, by
consequence, is the man whose conduct in such respects is right,
negatively and positively. And the "_works of the law_" are such deeds
accordingly. So here "_we conclude_" that the justification of fallen
man takes place, as to the merit which procures it, irrespective of
his well-doing. It is respective only of Christ, as to merit; it has
to do only, as to personal reception, with the acceptance of the
meriting Christ, that is to say with faith in Him.

Then come, like a short "coda" following a full musical cadence, two
brief questions and their answers, spoken almost as if again a
Rabbinist were in discussion.

[Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =Is God the Jews' God only? Not of the Nations
too? Yes, of the Nations too;= [Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =assuming
(εἴπερ) that God is one,= the same Person in both cases; =who will
justify Circumcision on the principle of faith, and Uncircumcision by
means of faith.= He takes the fact, now ascertained, that faith, still
faith, that is to say Christ received, is the condition to
justification for all mankind; and he reasons back to the fact (so
amply "attested by the Law and the Prophets," from Genesis onwards)
that the true God is equally the God of all. Probably the deep
inference is suggested that the fence of privilege drawn for ages
round Israel was meant ultimately for the whole world's blessing, and
not to hold Israel in a selfish isolation.

[Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =We cancel Law, then, by this faith of ours (διὰ
τῆς πίστεως)?= We open the door, then, to moral licence? We abolish
code and precept, then, when we ask not for conduct, but for faith?
=Away with the thought; nay, we establish Law;= we go the very way to
give a new sacredness to its every command, and to disclose a new
power for the fulfilment of them all. But how this is, and is to be,
the later argument is to shew.


DETACHED NOTE TO ROMANS III.

It would be a deeply interesting work to collect and exhibit together
examples of the conveyance of great spiritual blessing, in memorable
lives, through the perusal of the Epistle to the Romans. Augustine's
final crisis (see below, on xiii. 14) would be one such example. As
specimens of what must be a multitude we quote two cases, in each of
which one verse in this third chapter of the Epistle proved the means
of the divine message in a life of historical interest.

Padre Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623), "Councillor and Theologian" to the
Venetian Republic, and historian of the Council of Trent, was one of
the many eminent men of his day who never broke with the Roman Church,
yet had genuine spiritual sympathies with the Reformation. The record
of his last hours is affecting and instructive, and shews him reposing
his hope with great simplicity on the divine message of this chapter,
though the report makes him quote it inexactly. "Night being come, and
want of spirits increasing upon him, he caused another reading of the
Passion written by Saint John. He spake of his own misery, and of the
trust and confidence which he had in the blood of Christ. He repeated
very often those words, _Quem proposuit Deus Mediatorem per fidem in
sanguine suo_, 'Whom God hath set forth to be a Mediator through faith
in His blood.' In which he seemed to receive an extreme consolation.
He repeated (though with much faintness) divers places of Saint Paul.
He protested that of his part he had nothing to present God with but
miseries and sins, yet nevertheless he desired to be drowned in the
abyss of the divine mercy; with so much submission on one side, and
yet so much cheerfulness on the other side, that he drew tears from
all that were present."[44]

It was through the third chapter of the Romans that heavenly light
first came to the terribly troubled soul of William Cowper, at St
Albans, in 1764. Some have said that Cowper's religion was to blame
for his melancholy. The case was far different. The first tremendous
attack occurred at a time when, by his own clear account, he was quite
without serious religion; it had nothing whatever to do with either
Christian doctrine or Christian practice. The recovery from it came
with his first sight, in Scripture, of the divine mercy in our Lord
Jesus Christ. His own account of this crisis is as follows:[45]

"But the happy period which was to afford me a clear opening of the
free mercy of God in Christ Jesus, was now arrived. I flung myself
into a chair near the window, and, seeing a Bible there, ventured once
more to apply to it for comfort and instruction. The first verse I saw
was the 25th of the 3rd of Romans; 'Whom God hath set forth to be a
propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness
for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of
God.'

"Immediately I received strength to believe it, and the full beams of
the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the
atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the
fulness and completeness of His justification. Unless the Almighty arm
had been under me, I think I should have died with gratitude and joy.
I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love
and wonder. But the work of the Holy Ghost is best described in His
own words; it is 'joy unspeakable and full of glory.'"

[35] 1 Kings xix. 12.

[36] _Depravatus_: twisted, wrenched from the straight line.

[37] Δικαιούμενοι: the present participle indicates rather the
_permanent principle_ of justification than its actual procedure,
which is, in each case, a divine sentence of acceptance, an act, an
event, single and apart. See on ch. v. 1.

[38] Ὃν προέθετο ὁ Θεός: it is possible to render, "_Whom God
designed_," in His eternal counsel of redemption. But the context just
below emphasizes the thought of "_declaration_," manifestation,
explanation of the hidden Treasure. This seems to decide for the other
rendering.

[39] Ἱλαστήριον: elsewhere in Scripture Greek this word means the
Mercy Seat, the golden lid of the Ark, above which the Shechinah shone
and on which the blood of atonement was sprinkled. Here is indeed a
manifest and noble type of Christ. But on the other hand the word
ἱλαστήριον gets that meaning only indirectly. Its native meaning is
rather "_a price of expiation_." And a somewhat sudden insertion here
of the imagery of the Mercy Seat seems unlikely, in the absence of all
other allusion to the High Priestly function of our Lord.

[40] We may punctuate, "_through faith, in His blood_"; as if to say
"He is Propitiation in (in virtue of) His blood; we get the benefit
through faith." But this rendering seems to us the less likely, as the
less simple. The construction, "_faith in_" πίστις ἐν τινί, is fully
verified by Mark i. 15; "believe _in_ the Gospel."

[41] Ἀνοχή: we think that the word here is a pregnant expression
for "_the time when God forebore_."

[42] Reading γὰρ not οὖν.

[43] Δικαιοῦσθαι: the present infinitive, as in ver. 25, puts
before us the permanence of the principle on which is based the
definite act.

[44] _The Life of Father Paul the Venetian, translated out of
Italian_: London, 1676.

[45] _Memoir of the Early Life of William Cowper, written by Himself_.




CHAPTER X

_ABRAHAM AND DAVID_

ROMANS iv. 1-12


The Jewish disputant is present still to the Apostle's thought. It
could not be otherwise in this argument. No question was more pressing
on the Jewish mind than that of Acceptance; thus far, truly, the
teaching and discipline of the Old Testament had not been in vain. And
St Paul had not only, in his Christian Apostleship, debated that
problem countless times with Rabbinic combatants; he had been himself
a Rabbi, and knew by experience alike the misgivings of the
Rabbinist's conscience, and the subterfuges of his reasoning.

So now there rises before him the great name of Abraham, as a familiar
watchword of the controversy of Acceptance. He has been contending for
an absolutely inclusive verdict of "_guilty_" against man, against
every man. He has been shutting with all his might the doors of
thought against human "_boasting_," against the least claim of man to
have merited his acceptance. Can he carry this principle into quite
impartial issues? Can he, a Jew in presence of Jews, apply it without
apology, without reserve, to "the Friend of God" himself? What will he
say to that majestic Example of man? His name itself sounds like a
claim to almost worship. As he moves across the scene of Genesis,
we--even we Gentiles--rise up as it were in reverent homage, honouring
this figure at once so real and so near to the ideal; marked by
innumerable lines of individuality, totally unlike the composed
picture of legend or poem, yet walking with God Himself in a personal
intercourse so habitual, so tranquil, so congenial. Is this a name to
becloud with the assertion that here, as everywhere, acceptance was
hopeless but for the clemency of God, "_gift-wise, without deeds of
law_"? Was not at least Abraham accepted because he was morally worthy
of acceptance? And if Abraham, then surely, in abstract possibility,
others also. There must be a group of men, small or large, there is at
least one man, who can "boast" of his peace with God.

On the other hand, if with Abraham it was not thus, then the inference
is easy to all other men. Who but he is called "the Friend" (2 Chron.
xx. 7, Isai. xli. 8)? Moses himself, the almost deified Lawgiver, is
but "the Servant," trusted, intimate, honoured in a sublime degree by
his eternal Master. But he is never called "the Friend." That peculiar
title seems to preclude altogether the question of a legal acceptance.
Who thinks of his friend as one whose relation to him needs to be good
in law at all? The friend stands as it were behind law, or above it,
in respect of his fellow. He holds a relation implying personal
sympathies, identity of interests, contact of thought and will, not an
anxious previous settlement of claims, and remission of liabilities.
If then the Friend of the Eternal Judge proves, nevertheless, to have
needed Justification, and to have received it by the channel not of
his personal worth but of the grace of God, there will be little
hesitation about other men's need, and the way by which alone other
men shall find it met.

In approaching this great example, for such it will prove to be, St
Paul is about to illustrate all the main points of his inspired
argument. By the way, by implication, he gives us the all-important
fact that even an Abraham, even "the Friend," did need justification
_somehow_. Such is the eternal Holy One that no man can walk by His
side and live, no, not in the path of inmost "friendship," without an
acceptance before His face as He is Judge. Then again, such is He,
that even an Abraham found this acceptance, as a matter of fact, not
by merit but by faith; not by presenting himself, but by renouncing
himself, and taking God for all; by pleading not, "I am worthy," but,
"Thou art faithful." It is to be shewn that Abraham's justification
was such that it gave him not the least ground for self-applause; it
was not in the least degree based on merit. It was "of grace, not of
debt." A promise of sovereign kindness, connected with the redemption
of himself, and of the world, was made to him. He was not morally
worthy of such a promise, if only because he was not morally perfect.
And he was, humanly speaking, physically incapable of it. But God
offered Himself freely to Abraham, in His promise; and Abraham opened
the empty arms of personal reliance to receive the unearned gift. Had
he stayed first to earn it he would have shut it out; he would have
closed his arms. Rightly renouncing himself, because seeing and
trusting his gracious God, the sight of whose holy glory annihilates
the idea of man's claims, he opened his arms, and the God of peace
filled the void. The man received his God's approval, because he
interposed nothing of his own to intercept it.

From one point of view, the all-important view-point here, it mattered
not what Abraham's conduct had been. As a fact, he was already devout
when the incident of Gen. xv. occurred. But he was also actually a
sinner; _that_ is made quite plain by Gen. xii., the very chapter of
the Call. And potentially, according to Scripture, he was a great
sinner; for he was an instance of the human heart. But this, while it
constituted Abraham's urgent need of acceptance, was not in the least
a barrier to his acceptance, when he turned from himself, in the great
crisis of absolute faith, and accepted God in His promise.

The principle of the acceptance of "the Friend" was identically that
which underlies the acceptance of the most flagrant transgressor. As
St Paul will soon remind us, David in the guilt of his murderous
adultery, and Abraham in the grave walk of his worshipping obedience,
stand upon the same level here. Actually or potentially, each is a
great sinner. Each turns from himself, unworthy, to God in His
promise. And the promise is his, not because his hand is full of
merit, but because it is empty of himself.

It is true that Abraham's justification, unlike David's, is not
explicitly connected in the narrative with a moral crisis of his soul.
He is not depicted, in Gen. xv., as a conscious penitent, flying from
justice to the Judge. But is there not a deep suggestion that
something not unlike this did then pass over him, and through him?
That short assertion, that "he trusted the LORD, and He counted it to
him for righteousness," is an anomaly in the story, if it has not a
spiritual depth hidden in it. Why, just then and there, should we be
told this about his acceptance with God? Is it not because the
vastness of the promise had made the man see in contrast the absolute
failure of a corresponding merit in himself? Job (xlii. 1-6) was
brought to self-despairing penitence not by the fires of the Law but
by the glories of Creation. Was not Abraham brought to the same
consciousness, whatever form it may have taken in his character and
period, by the greater glories of the Promise? Surely it was there and
then that he learnt that secret of self-rejection in favour of God
which is the other side of all true faith, and which came out long
years afterwards, in its mighty issues of "work," when he laid Isaac
on the altar.[46]

It is true, again, that Abraham's faith, his justifying reliance, is
not connected in the narrative with any articulate expectation of an
atoning Sacrifice. But here first we dare to say, even at the risk of
that formidable charge, an antique and obsolete theory of the
Patriarchal creed, that probably Abraham knew much more about the
Coming One than a modern critique will commonly allow. "He rejoiced to
see My day; and he saw it, and was glad" (John viii. 56). And further,
the faith which justifies, though what it touches in fact is the
blessed Propitiation, or rather God in the Propitiation, does not
always imply an articulate knowledge of the whole "reason of the
hope." It assuredly implies a true submission to _all that the
believer knows_ of the revelation of that reason. But he may (by
circumstances) know very little of it, and yet be a believer. The
saint who prayed (Psal. cxliii. 2) "Enter not into judgment with Thy
servant, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified,"
cast himself upon a God who, being absolutely holy, yet can somehow,
just as He is, justify the sinner. Perhaps he knew much of the reason
of Atonement, as it lies in God's mind, and as it is explained, as it
is demonstrated, in the Cross. But perhaps he did not. What he did was
to cast himself up to the full light he had, "without one plea," upon
his Judge, as a man awfully conscious of his need, and trusting only
in a sovereign mercy, which _must_ also be a righteous, a
law-honouring mercy, because it is the mercy of the Righteous Lord.

Let us not be mistaken, meanwhile, as if such words meant that a
definite creed of the Atoning Work is not possible, or is not
precious. This Epistle will help us to such a creed, and so will
Galatians, and Hebrews, and Isaiah, and Leviticus, and the whole
Scripture. "Prophets and kings desired to see the things we see, and
did not see them" (Luke x. 24). But that is no reason why we should
not adore the mercy that has unveiled to us the Cross and the blessed
Lamb.

But it is time to come to the Apostle's words as they stand.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =What then shall we say that Abraham has
found=--"_has found_," the perfect tense of abiding and always
significant fact--"_has found_," in his great discovery of divine
peace--=our forefather, according to the flesh?= "_According to the
flesh_"; that is to say, (having regard to the prevailing moral use of
the word "_flesh_" in this Epistle,) "in respect of self," "in the
region of his own works and merits."[47] [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =For if
Abraham was justified as a result of works, he has a boast;= he has a
right to self-applause. Yes, such is the principle indicated here; if
man merits, man is entitled to self-applause. May we not say, in
passing, that the common instinctive sense of the moral discord of
self-applause, above all in spiritual things, is one among many
witnesses to the truth of our justification by faith only? But St Paul
goes on; =Ah, but not towards God;= not when even an Abraham looks HIM
in the face, and sees himself in that Light. As if to say, "If he
earned justification, he might have boasted rightly; but 'rightful
boasting,' when man sees God, is a thing unthinkable; therefore his
justification was given, not earned." [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For what
says the Scripture,= the passage, the great text (Gen. xv. 6)?
="Now Abraham believed[48] God, and it was reckoned to him as
righteousness."= [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =Now to the man who works, his
(ὁ) reward,= his earned requital,[49] =is not reckoned grace-wise,=
as a gift of generosity, =but debt-wise; it is to the man who does not
work, but believes, confides, in Him who justifies the ungodly one,
that "his faith is reckoned as righteousness."= "_The ungodly one_";
as if to bring out by an extreme case the glory of the wonderful
paradox. "_The ungodly_," the ἀσεβής, is undoubtedly a word intense
and dark; it means not the sinner only, but the open, defiant sinner.
Every human heart is _capable_ of such sinfulness, for "_the_ heart is
deceitful above all things." In this respect, as we have seen, in the
potential respect, even an Abraham is a great sinner. But there are
indeed "sinners and sinners," in the experiences of life; and St Paul
is ready now with a conspicuous example of the justification of one
who was truly, at one miserable period, by his own fault, "an ungodly
one."

"Thou hast given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme"
(2 Sam. xii. 14). He had done so indeed. The faithful photography of
the Scriptures shews us David, the chosen, the faithful, the man of
spiritual experiences, acting out his lustful look in adultery, and
half covering his adultery with the most base of constructive murders,
and then, for long months, refusing to repent. Yet was David
justified: "I have sinned against the Lord"; "The Lord also hath put
away thy sin." He turned from his awfully ruined self to God, and _at
once_ he received remission. Then, and to the last, he was chastised.
But then and there he was unreservedly justified, and with a
justification which made him sing a loud beatitude.

[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =Just as David too speaks his felicitation (τὸν
μακαρισμὸν) of the man= (and it was himself) =to whom God reckons
righteousness irrespective of works,= [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] ="Happy they
whose iniquities have been remitted, and whose sins have been
covered;= [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =happy the man to whom the Lord will not
reckon sin"= (Psal. xxxii. 1, 2). Wonderful words, in the context of
the experience out of which they spring! A human soul which has
greatly transgressed, and which knows it well, and knows too that to
the end it will suffer a sore discipline because of it, for example
and humiliation, nevertheless knows its pardon, and knows it as a
happiness indescribable. The iniquity has been "_lifted_"; the sin has
been "_covered_," has been struck out of the book of "_reckoning_,"
written by the Judge. The penitent will never forgive himself; in this
very Psalm he tears from his sin all the covering woven by his own
heart. But his God has given him remission, has reckoned him as one
who has not sinned, so far as access to Him and peace with Him are in
question. And so his song of shame and penitence begins with a
beatitude, and ends with a cry of joy.

We pause to note the exposition implied here of the phrase, "_to
reckon righteousness_." It is to treat the man as one whose account is
clear. "Happy the man to whom the Lord will not reckon sin." In the
phrase itself, "_to reckon_ righteousness," (as in its Latin
equivalent, "_to impute_ righteousness,") the question, _what clears
the account_, is not answered. Suppose the impossible case of a record
kept absolutely clear by the man's own sinless goodness; then the
"reckoned," the "imputed, righteousness" would mean the Law's
contentment with him on his own merits. But the context of human sin
fixes the actual reference to an "imputation" which means that the
awfully defective record is treated, for a divinely valid reason, as
if it were, what it is not, good. The man is at peace with his Judge,
though he has sinned, because the Judge has joined him to Himself, and
taken up his liability, and answered for it to His own Law. The man is
dealt with as righteous, being a sinner, for his glorious Redeemer's
sake. It is pardon, but more than pardon. It is no mere indulgent
dismissal; it is a welcome as of the worthy to the embrace of the Holy
One.

Such is the Justification of God. We shall need to remember it through
the whole course of the Epistle. To make Justification a mere synonym
for Pardon is always inadequate. Justification is the contemplation
and treatment of the penitent sinner, found in Christ, as righteous,
as satisfactory to the Law, not merely as one whom the Law lets go. Is
this a fiction? Not at all. It is vitally linked to two great
spiritual facts. One is, that the sinner's Friend has Himself dealt,
in the sinner's interests, with the Law, honouring its holy claim to
the uttermost under the human conditions which He freely undertook.
The other is that he has mysteriously, but really, joined the sinner
to Himself, in faith, by the Spirit; joined him to Himself as limb, as
branch, as bride. Christ and His disciples are _really_ One in the
order of spiritual life. And so the community between Him and them is
real, the community of their debt on the one side, of His merit on the
other.

Now again comes up the question, never far distant in St Paul's
thought, and in his life, what these facts of Justification have to do
with Gentile sinners. Here is David blessing God for his unmerited
acceptance, an acceptance by the way wholly unconnected with the
ritual of the altar. Here above all is Abraham, "justified in
consequence of faith." But David was a child of the covenant of
circumcision. And Abraham was the father of that covenant. Do not
their justifications speak only to those who stand, with them, inside
that charmed circle? Was not Abraham justified by faith _plus
circumcision_? Did not the faith act only because he was already one
of the privileged? [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =This felicitation therefore,=
this cry of "Happy are the freely justified," =is it upon the
circumcision, or upon the uncircumcision? For we say that to Abraham,=
with an emphasis[50] on "_Abraham_," =his faith was reckoned as
righteousness.= The question, he means, is legitimate, "_for_" Abraham
is not at first sight a case in point for the justification of the
outside world, the non-privileged races of man. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.]
But consider: =How then was it reckoned? To Abraham in circumcision or
in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision;=
fourteen years at least had to pass before the covenant rite came in.
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =And he received the sign of circumcision,= (with
a stress upon "_sign_," as if to say that the "_thing_," the reality
signed, was his already,) =as a seal on the righteousness of the faith
that was in his circumcision,= a seal on the acceptance which he
received, antecedent to all formal privilege, in that bare hand of
faith. And all this was so, and was recorded so, with a purpose of
far-reaching significance: =that he might be father,= exemplar,
representative, =of all who believe notwithstanding uncircumcision,[51]
that to them righteousness should be reckoned;= [Sidenote: Ver. 12.]
=and father of circumcision,= exemplar and representative within its
circle also, =for those who do not merely belong to circumcision, but
for those[52] who also step in the track of the uncircumcision-faith
of our father Abraham.=

So privilege had nothing to do with acceptance, except to countersign
the grant of a grace absolutely free. The Seal did nothing whatever to
make the Covenant. It only verified the fact, and guaranteed the _bona
fides_ of the Giver. As the Christian Sacraments are, so was the
Patriarchal Sacrament; it was "a sure testimony and effectual sign of
God's grace and good will."[53] But the grace and the good will come
not through the Sacrament as through a medium, but straight from God
to the man who took God at His word. "The means whereby he received,"
the mouth with which he fed upon the celestial food, "was faith."[54]
The rite came not between the man and his accepting Lord, but as it
were was present at the side to assure him with a physical concurrent
fact that all was true. "Nothing between" was the law of the great
transaction; nothing, not even a God-given ordinance; nothing but the
empty arms receiving the Lord Himself;--and empty arms indeed put
"nothing between."


DETACHED NOTE TO CHAPTER X

_The following is extracted from the Commentary on this Epistle in
"The Cambridge Bible"_ (p. 261).

"[What shall we say to] the verbal discrepancy between St Paul's
explicit teaching that 'a man is justified by faith _without works_,'
and St James' equally explicit teaching that '_by works_ a man is
justified, and _not by faith only_'? With only the New Testament
before us, it is hard not to assume that the one Apostle has in view
some distortion of the doctrine of _the other_. But the fact (see
Lightfoot's _Galatians_, detached note to ch. iii.) that Abraham's
faith was a staple Rabbinic text alters the case, by making it
perfectly possible that St James (writing to members of the Jewish
Dispersion) had not Apostolic but Rabbinic teaching in view. And the
line such teaching took is indicated by Jas. ii. 19, where an example
is given of the faith in question; and that example is concerned
wholly with the grand point of _strictly Jewish orthodoxy_--GOD IS
ONE.... The persons addressed [were thus those whose] idea of faith
was not _trustful acceptance_, a belief of the heart, but _orthodox
adherence_, a belief of the head. And St James [took] these persons
strictly on their own ground, and assumed, for his argument, their own
very faulty account of faith to be correct.

"He would thus be proving the point, equally dear to St Paul, that
mere theoretic orthodoxy, apart from effects on the will, is
valueless. He would not, in the remotest degree, be disputing the
Pauline doctrine that the guilty soul is put into a position of
acceptance with the FATHER only by vital connexion with the SON, and
that this connexion is effectuated, _absolutely and alone_, not by
personal merit, but by trustful acceptance of the Propitiation and its
all-sufficient vicarious merit. From such trustful acceptance 'works'
(in the profoundest sense) will inevitably follow; not as antecedents
but as consequents of justification. And thus ... 'it is faith alone
which justifies; but the faith which justifies can never be alone.'"

[46] On St James' use of that great incident, see detached note, p.
115.

[47] We see much reason, however, in the explanation which connects
κατὰ σάρκα with πατέρα (or προπάτορα) ἡμῶν: "_our father according to
the flesh_," our natural progenitor.

[48] In the Greek, ἐπίστευσε stands first in the clause, and is thus
emphatic.

[49] Not that μισθὸς always gives the thought of earning as a
right. It may mean merely "_result_, _issue_," however realized. See
_e.g._ 2 John 8. But the context here decides the reference.

[50] By the position of the name in the Greek sentence.

[51] Διὰ ἀκροβυστίας: as if _passing through_ its seeming obstacle.

[52] So the Greek precisely. But practically the words "_for those_"
may be omitted here.

[53] See Article xxv.

[54] See Article xxviii.




CHAPTER XI

_ABRAHAM_ (ii)

ROMANS iv. 13-25


Again we approach the name of Abraham, Friend of God, Father of the
Faithful. We have seen him justified by faith, personally accepted
because turning altogether to the sovereign Promiser. We see him now
in some of the glorious issues of that acceptance; "Heir of the
world," "Father of many nations." And here too all is of grace, all
comes through faith. Not works not merit, not ancestral and ritual
privilege, secured to Abraham the mighty Promise; it was his because
he, pleading absolutely nothing of personal worthiness, and supported
by no guarantees of ordinance "_believed God_."

We see him as he steps out from his tent under that glorious canopy,
that Syrian "night of stars." We look up with him to the mighty
depths, and receive their impression upon our eyes. Behold the
innumerable points and clouds of light! Who can count the half-visible
rays which make white the heavens, gleaming behind, beyond, the
thousands of more numerable luminaries? The lonely old man who stands
gazing there, perhaps side by side with his divine Friend manifested
in human form, is told to try to count. And then he hears the promise,
"So shall thy seed be."

It was then and there that he received justification by faith. It was
then and there also that, by faith, as a man uncovenanted, unworthy,
but called upon to take what God gave, he received the promise that he
should be "heir of the world."

It was an unequalled paradox--unless indeed we place beside it the
scene when, eighteen centuries later, in the same land, a descendant
of Abraham's, a Syrian Craftsman, speaking as a religious Leader to
His followers, told them (Matt. xiii. 37, 38) that the "field was the
world," and He the Master of the field.

"_Heir of the world_"! Did this mean, of the universe itself? Perhaps
it did, for CHRIST was to be the Claimant of the promise in due time;
and under His feet all things, literally all, are set already in
right, and shall be hereafter set in fact. But the more limited, and
probably in this place the fitter, reference is vast enough; a
reference to "the world" of earth, and of man upon it. In his "seed,"
that childless senior was to be King of Men, Monarch of the continents
and oceans. To him, in his seed, "the utmost parts of the earth" were
given "for his possession." Not his little clan only, encamped on the
dark fields around him, nor even the direct descendants only of his
body, however numerous, but "all nations," "all kindreds of the
earth," were "to call him blessed," and to be blessed in him, as their
patriarchal Chief, their Head in covenant with God. "We see not yet
all things" fulfilled of this astonishing grant and guarantee. We
shall not do so, till vast promised developments of the ways of God
have come to sight. But we do see already steps taken towards that
issue, steps long, majestic, never to be retraced. We see at this hour
in literally every region of the human world the messengers--an always
more numerous army--of the Name of "the Son of David, the Son of
Abraham." They are working everywhere; and everywhere, notwithstanding
innumerable difficulties, they are winning the world for the great
Heir of the Promise. Through paths they know not these missionaries
have gone out; paths hewn by the historical providence of God, and by
His eternal life in the Church, and in the soul. When "the world" has
seemed shut, by war, by policy, by habit, by geography, it has opened,
that they may enter; till we see Japan throwing back its castle-doors,
and inner Africa not only discovered but become a household word for
the sake of its missions, of its martyrdoms, of the resolve of its
native chiefs to abolish slavery even in its domestic form.[55]

No secular conscious programme has had to do with this. Causes
entirely beyond the reach of human combination have been, as a fact,
combined; the world has been opened to the Abrahamic message just as
the Church has been inspired anew to enter in, and has been awakened
to a deeper understanding of her glorious mission. For here too is the
finger of God; not only in the history of the world, but in the life
of the Church and of the Christian. For a long century now, in the
most living centres of Christendom, there has been waking and rising a
mighty revived consciousness of the glory of the Gospel of the Cross,
and of the Spirit; of the grace of Christ, and also of His claim. And
at this hour, after many a gloomy forecast of unbelieving and
apprehensive thought, there are more men and women ready to go to the
ends of the earth with the message of the Son of Abraham, than in all
time before.

Contrast these issues, even these--leaving out of sight the mighty
future--with the starry night when the wandering Friend of God was
asked to believe the incredible, and was justified by faith, and was
invested through faith with the world's crown. Is not God indeed in
the fulfilment? Was He not indeed in the promise? We are ourselves a
part of the fulfilment; we, one of the "many Nations" of whom the
great Solitary was then made "the Father." Let us bear our witness,
and set to our seal.

In doing so, we attest and illustrate the work, the ever blessed work,
of faith. That man's reliance, at that great midnight-hour, merited
nothing, but received everything. He took in the first place
acceptance with God, and then with it, as it were folded and embedded
in it, he took riches inexhaustible of privilege and blessing; above
all, the blessing of being made a blessing. So now, in view of that
hour of Promise, and of these ages of fulfilment, we see our own path
of peace in its divine simplicity. We read, as if written on the
heavens in stars, the words, "Justified by Faith." And we understand
already, what the Epistle will soon amply unfold to us, how for us, as
for Abraham, blessings untold of other orders lie treasured in the
grant of our acceptance. "Not for him only, but for us also,
believing."

Let us turn again to the text.

[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =For not through law came the promise to Abraham,
or to his seed, of his being the world's heir, but through faith's
righteousness;= through the acceptance received by uncovenanted,
unprivileged faith. [Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =For if those who belong to
law inherit= Abraham's promise, =faith is ipso facto void, and the
promise is ipso facto annulled.[56]= [Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =For wrath
is what the Law works out;= it is only[57] =where law is not that
transgression is not either.= As much as to say, that to suspend
eternal blessing, the blessing which in its nature can deal only with
ideal conditions, upon man's obedience to law, is to bar fatally the
hope of a fulfilment. Why? Not because the Law is not holy; not
because disobedience is not guilty; as if man were ever, for a moment,
mechanically compelled to disobey. But because as a fact man is a
fallen being, however he became so, and whatever is his guilt as such.
He is fallen, and has no true self-restoring power. If then he is to
be blessed, the work must begin in spite of himself. It must come from
without, it must come unearned, it must be of grace, through faith.
[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Therefore it is on= (literally, "_out of_")
=faith, in order to be grace-wise, to make secure the promise, to all
the seed, not only to that which belongs to the Law, but to that which
belongs to the faith of Abraham,= to the "seed" whose claim is no less
and no more than Abraham's faith; =who is father of all us,=
[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =as it stands written,= (Gen. xvii. 5), "=Father
of many Nations[58] have I appointed thee="--=in the sight of the God
whom he believed, who vivifies the dead, and calls,= addresses, deals
with, =things not-being as being.= "_In the sight of God_"; as if to
say, that it matters little what Abraham is for "us all" in the sight
of _man_, in the sight and estimate of the Pharisee. The Eternal
Justifier and Promiser dealt with Abraham, and in him with the world,
before the birth of that Law which the Pharisee has perverted into his
rampart of privilege and isolation. He took care that the mighty
transaction should take place not actually only, but significantly, in
the open field and beneath the boundless cope of stars. It was to
affect not one tribe, but all the nations. It was to secure blessings
which were not to be demanded by the privileged, but taken by the
needy. And so the great representative Believer was called to believe
before Law, before legal Sacrament, and under every personal
circumstance of humiliation and discouragement. [Sidenote: Ver. 18.]
=Who, past hope, on hope, believed;= stepping from the dead hope of
nature to the bare hope of the promise, =so that he became father of
many Nations; according to what stands spoken, "So shall thy seed
be."[59]= [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =And, because he failed not[60] in his
(τῇ) faith, he did not notice his own body, already turned to death,
near (που) a century old as he now was, and the death-state of the
womb of Sarah.= [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =No, on the promise of God--he
did not waver by his unbelief,[61] but received strength[62] by his
(τῇ) faith, giving glory to God,= the "glory" of dealing with Him as
being what He is, Almighty and All-true, [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =and
fully persuaded that what He has promised He is able actually to do.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =Wherefore actually (καὶ) it was reckoned to
him as righteousness.= Not because such a "giving to God the glory"
which is only His eternal due was morally meritorious, in the least
degree. If it were so, Abraham "would have whereof to glory." The
"_wherefore_" is concerned with the whole record, the whole
transaction. Here was a man who took the right way to receive
sovereign blessing. He interposed nothing between the Promiser and
himself. He treated the Promiser as what He is, all-sufficient and
all-faithful. He opened his empty hand in that persuasion, and so,
because the hand was empty, the blessing was laid upon its palm.

[Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =Now it was not written only on his account, that
it was reckoned to him,= [Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =but also on account of
us, to whom it is sure (μέλλει) to be reckoned,= in the fixed
intention of the divine Justifier, as each successive applicant comes
to receive; =believing as we do on the Raiser-up of Jesus our Lord
from the dead;= [Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =who was delivered up on account
of our transgressions, and was raised up on account of our
justification.=

Here the great argument moves to a pause, to the cadence of a glorious
rest. More and more, as we have pursued it, it has disengaged itself
from the obstructions of the opponent, and advanced with a larger
motion into a positive and rejoicing assertion of the joys and wealth
of the believing. We have left far behind the pertinacious cavils
which ask, now whether there is any hope for man outside legalism, now
whether within legalism there can be any danger even for deliberate
unholiness, and again whether the Gospel of gratuitous acceptance does
not cancel the law of duty. We have left the Pharisee for Abraham, and
have stood beside him to look and listen. He, in the simplicity of a
soul which has seen itself and seen the Lord, and so has not one word,
one thought, about personal privilege, claim, or even fitness,
receives a perfect acceptance in the hand of faith, and finds that the
acceptance carries with it a promise of unimaginable power and
blessing. And now from Abraham the Apostle turns to "_us_," "_us
all_," "_us also_." His thoughts are no longer upon adversaries and
objections, but on the company of the faithful, on those who are one
with Abraham, and with each other, in their happy willingness to come,
without a dream of merit, and take from God His mighty peace in the
name of Christ. He finds himself not in synagogue or in school,
disputing, but in the believing assembly, teaching, unfolding in peace
the wealth of grace. He speaks to congratulate, to adore.

Let us join him there in spirit, and sit down with Aquila and
Priscilla, with Nereus, and Nymphas, and Persis, and in our turn
remember that "it was written for us also." Quite surely, and with a
fulness of blessing which we can never find out in its perfection, to
us also "_faith is sure to be reckoned_, μέλλει λογίζεσθαι, _as
righteousness, believing as we do_, τοῖς πιστεύουσιν, _on the
Raiser-up of Jesus our Lord_, ours also, _from the dead_." To us, as
to them, the Father presents Himself as the Raiser-up of the Son. He
is known by us in that act. It gives us His own warrant for a
boundless trust in His character, His purposes, His unreserved
intention to accept the sinner who comes to His feet in the name of
His Crucified and Risen Son. He bids us--not forget that He is the
Judge, who cannot for a moment connive. But He bids us believe, He
bids us _see_, that He, being the Judge, and also the Law-Giver, has
dealt with His own Law, in a way that satisfies it, that satisfies
HIMSELF. He bids us thus understand that He now "is sure to" justify,
to accept, to find not guilty, to find righteous, satisfactory, the
sinner who believes. He comes to us, He, this eternal Father of our
Lord, to assure us, in the Resurrection, that He has sought, and has
"found, a Ransom"; that He has not been prevailed upon to have mercy,
a mercy behind which there may therefore lurk a gloomy reserve, but
has Himself "set forth" the beloved Propitiation, and then accepted
Him (not it, but Him) with the acceptance of not His word only but His
deed. He is the God of Peace. How do we know it? We thought He was the
God of the tribunal, and the doom. Yes; but He has "brought the great
Shepherd from the dead, in the blood of the everlasting Covenant"
(Heb. xiii. 20). Then, O eternal Father of our Lord, we will believe
Thee; we will believe in Thee; we will, we do, in the very letter of
the words Thou didst bid Thy messenger write down here, "_believe upon
Thee_," ἐπὶ τὸν Ἐγείραντα, as in a deep repose. Truly, in _this_
glorious respect, though Thou art consuming Fire, "there is nothing in
Thee to dread."

"_Who was delivered up because of our transgressions._" So dealt the
Father with the Son, who gave Himself. "It pleased the Lord to bruise
Him"; "He spared not His own Son." "_Because of our transgressions_";
to meet the fact that we had gone astray. What, was that fact thus to
be met? Was our self-will, our pride, our falsehood, our impurity, our
indifference to God, our resistance to God, to be thus met? Was it to
be met at all, and not rather left utterly alone to its own horrible
issues? Was it eternally necessary that, if met, it must be met thus,
by nothing less than the delivering up of Jesus our Lord? It was even
so. Assuredly if a milder expedient would have met our guilt, the
FATHER would not have "delivered up" the SON. The Cross was nothing if
not an absolute _sine quâ non_. There is that in sin, and in
God, which made it eternally necessary that--if man was to be
justified--the Son of God must not only live but die, and not only die
but die thus, delivered up, given over to be done to death, as those
who do great sin are done.

Deep in the heart of the divine doctrine of Atonement lies this
element of it, the "_because of our transgressions_"; the exigency of
Golgotha, due to our sins. The remission, the acquittal, the
acceptance, was not a matter for the verbal _fiat_ of divine
autocracy. It was a matter not between God and creation, which to Him
is "a little thing," but between God and His Law, that is to say,
Himself, as He is eternal Judge. And this, to the Eternal, is _not_ a
little thing. So the solution called for no little thing, but for the
Atoning Death, for the laying by the Father on the Son of the
iniquities of us all, that we might open our arms and receive from the
Father the merits of the Son.

"_And was raised up because of our justification_;" because our
acceptance had been won, by His deliverance up. Such is the simplest
explanation of the grammar, and of the import. The Lord's Resurrection
appears as, so to speak, the mighty sequel, and also the demonstration,
warrant, proclamation, of His acceptance as the Propitiation, and
therefore of our acceptance in Him. For indeed it _was_ our
justification, when He paid our penalty. True, the acceptance does not
accrue to the individual till he believes, and so receives. The gift
is not put into the hand till it is open, and empty. But the gift has
been bought ready for the recipient long before he kneels to receive
it. It was his, in provision, from the moment of the purchase; and the
glorious Purchaser came up from the depths where He had gone down to
buy, holding aloft in His sacred hands the golden Gift, ours because
His for us.

A little while before he wrote to Rome, St Paul had written to
Corinth, and the same truth was in his soul then, though it came out
only passingly, while with infinite impressiveness. "If Christ is not
risen, idle is your faith; you are yet in your sins" (1 Cor. xv. 17).
That is to say, so the context irrefragably shews, you are yet in the
guilt of your sins; you are still unjustified. "In your sins" cannot
possibly there refer to the moral condition of the converts; for as a
matter of fact, which no doctrine could negative, the Corinthians
_were_ "changed men." "In your sins" refers therefore to guilt, to
law, to acceptance. And it bids them look to the Atonement as the
objective _sine quâ non_ for that, and to the Resurrection as the one
possible, and the only necessary, warrant to faith that the Atonement
had secured its end.

"_Who was delivered up; who was raised up._" When? About twenty-five
years before Paul sat dictating this sentence in the house of Gaius.
There were at that moment about three hundred known living people, at
least (1 Cor. xv. 6), who had seen the Risen One with open eyes, and
heard Him with conscious ears. From one point of view, all was
eternal, spiritual, invisible. From another point of view our
salvation was as concrete, as historical, as much a thing of place and
date, as the battle of Actium, or the death of Socrates. And what was
done, remains done.

  "Can length of years on God Himself exact,
  And make that fiction which was once a fact?"

[55] In Uganda, 1893.

[56] We attempt thus to represent the perfects, κεκένωται, κατήργηται.

[57] Read οὗ δὲ not οὗ γάρ.

[58] It is impossible to convey in English the point of the word
ἔθνη here, with its faint reference to the _Gentiles_ (in the sense
common in later Judaism), spiritually "naturalized" among Abraham's
descendants.

[59] Observe the characteristically _fragmentary_ quotation, which
assumes the reader's knowledge of the context--the context of the
stars. Compare Heb. vi. 14, which similarly quotes Gen. xxii. 16, 17.

[60] Μὴ ἀσθενήσας:--we attempt to convey the thought, given by the
aorist, that he _then and there_ was "not weak."

[61] We render this clause as literally as possible. It is as if he
would have written "On the promise of God _he relied_," but changed
the expression to one more ample and more forcible. "_His_ unbelief":
τῇ ἀπιστίᾳ. Not that Abraham _had_ unbelief actually, but he had it
potentially; he _might have_ disbelieved. In that sense unbelief was
"_his_."

[62] Ἐνεδυναμώθη: the thought is of strength summoned _at a crisis_.




CHAPTER XII

_PEACE, LOVE, AND JOY FOR THE JUSTIFIED_

ROMANS v. 1-11


We reached a pause in the Apostle's thought with the close of the last
paragraph. We may reverently imagine, as in spirit we listen to his
dictation, that a pause comes also in his work; that he is silent, and
Tertius puts down the pen, and they spend their hearts awhile on
worshipping recollection and realization. The Lord delivered up; His
people justified; the Lord risen again, alive for evermore--here was
matter for love, joy, and wonder.

But the Letter must proceed, and the argument has its fullest and most
wonderful developments yet to come. It has now already expounded the
tremendous _need_ of justifying mercy, for every soul of man. It has
shewn how _faith_, always and only, is the way to appropriate that
mercy--the way of God's will, and manifestly also in its own nature
the way of deepest fitness. We have been allowed to see faith in
illustrative action, in Abraham, who by faith, absolutely, without the
least advantage of traditional privilege, received justification, with
the vast concurrent blessings which it carried. Lastly we have heard
St Paul dictate to Tertius, for the Romans and for us, those
summarizing words (iv. 25) in which we now have God's own certificate
of the triumphant efficacy of that Atoning Work, which sustains the
Promise in order that the Promise may sustain us believing.

We are now to approach the glorious theme of the Life of the
Justified. This is to be seen not only as a state whose basis is the
reconciliation of the Law, and whose gate and walls are the covenant
Promise. It is to appear as a state warmed with eternal Love;
irradiated with the prospect of glory. In it the man, knit up with
Christ his Head, his Bridegroom, his all, yields himself with joy to
the God who has received him. In the living power of the heavenly
Spirit, who perpetually delivers him from himself, he obeys, prays,
works, and suffers, in a liberty which is only not yet that of heaven,
and in which he is maintained to the end by Him who has planned his
full personal salvation from eternity to eternity.

It has been the temptation of Christians sometimes to regard the truth
and exposition of Justification as if there were a certain hardness
and as it were dryness about it; as if it were a topic rather for the
schools than for life. If excuses have ever been given for such a
view, they must come from other quarters than the Epistle to the
Romans. Christian teachers, of many periods, may have discussed
Justification as coldly as if they were writing a law-book. Or again
they may have examined it as if it were a truth terminating in itself,
the Omega as well as the Alpha of salvation; and then it has been
misrepresented, of course. For the Apostle certainly does not discuss
it drily; he lays deep indeed the foundations of Law and Atonement,
but he does it in the manner of a man who is not drawing the plan of a
refuge, but calling his reader from the tempest into what is not only
a refuge but a home. And again he does not discuss it in isolation. He
spends his fullest, largest, and most loving expositions on its
intense and vital connexion with concurrent truths. He is about now to
take us, through a noble vestibule, into the sanctuary of the life of
the accepted, the life of union, of surrender, of the Holy Ghost.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Justified therefore on terms of faith,[63] we
have peace[64] towards our (τὸν) God,= we possess in regard of Him
the "quietness and assurance" of acceptance, =through our Lord Jesus
Christ,= thus delivered up, and raised up, for us; [Sidenote: Ver. 2.]
=through whom we have actually (καὶ) found[65] our (τὴν) introduction,=
our free admission, =by our (τῇ) faith, into this grace,= this
unearned acceptance for Another's sake, =in which we stand,= instead
of falling ruined, sentenced, at the tribunal. =And we exult,= not
with the sinful "boasting"[66] of the legalist, =but in hope=
(literally, "_on hope_," ἐπ' ἐλπίδι, as _reposing on_ the promised
prospect) =of the glory of our (τοῦ) God,= the light of the heavenly
vision and fruition of our Justifier, and the splendour of an eternal
service of Him in that fruition. [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =Nor only so, but
we exult too in our tribulations,= with a better fortitude than the
Stoic's artificial serenity, =knowing that the tribulation works out,
develops, patient persistency,[67]= as it occasions proof after proof
of the power of God in our weakness, and thus generates _the habit_ of
reliance; =and then (δὲ) the patient persistency= develops =proof,=
brings out in experience, as a proved fact, that through Christ we are
not what we were; =and then the proof= develops =hope,= solid and
definite expectation of continuing grace and final glory, and, in
particular, of the Lord's Return; =and the hope does not shame,= does
not disappoint; it is a hope sure and steadfast, for it is the hope of
those who now know that they are objects of eternal Love; =because the
love of our (τοῦ) God has been poured out in our hearts;= His love to
us has been as it were diffused through our consciousness, poured out
in a glad experience as rain from the cloud, as floods from the rising
spring,[68] =through the Holy Spirit that was given to us.=

Here first is mentioned explicitly, in the Apostle's argument, (we do
not reckon ch. i. 4 as in the argument,) the blessed Spirit, the Lord
the Holy Ghost. Hitherto the occasion for the mention has hardly
arisen. The considerations have been mainly upon the personal guilt of
the sinner, and the objective fact of the Atonement, and the exercise
of faith, of trust in God, as a genuine personal act of man. With a
definite purpose, we may reverently think, the discussion of faith has
been kept thus far clear of the thought of anything lying behind
faith, of any "grace" _giving_ faith. For whether or no faith is the
gift of God, it is most certainly the act of man; none should assert
this more decidedly than those who hold (as we do) that Eph. ii. 8[69]
_does_ teach that where saving faith is, it is there because God has
"given" it. But how does He "give" it? Not, surely, by implanting a
new faculty, but by so opening the soul to God in Christ that the
divine magnet effectually draws the man to a willing repose upon such
a God. But the man does this, as an act, himself. He trusts God as
genuinely, as personally, as much with his own faculty of trust, as he
trusts a man whom he sees to be quite trustworthy and precisely fit to
meet an imperative need. Thus it is often the work of the evangelist
and the teacher to insist upon the _duty_ rather than the _grace_ of
faith; to bid men rather thank God for faith _when they have believed_
than wait for the sense of an afflatus before believing. And is this
not what St Paul does here? At this point of his argument, _and not
before_, he reminds the believer that his possession of peace, of
happiness, of hope, has been attained and realized not, ultimately, of
himself but through the working of the Eternal Spirit. The insight
into mercy, into a propitiation provided by divine love, and so into
the holy secret of the divine love itself, has been given him by the
Holy Ghost, who has taken of the things of Christ, and shewn them to
him, and secretly handled his "heart" so that the fact of the love of
God is a part of experience at last. The man has been told of his
great need, and of the sure and open refuge, and has stepped through
its peaceful gate in the act of trusting the message and the will of
God. Now he is asked to look round, to look back, and bless the hand
which, when he was outside in the naked field of death, opened his
eyes to see, and guided his will to choose.

What a retrospect it is! Let us trace it from the first words of this
paragraph again. First, here is the _sure fact_ of our acceptance, and
the reason of it, and the method. "_Therefore_"; let not that word be
forgotten. Our Justification is no arbitrary matter, whose
causelessness suggests an illusion, or a precarious peace.
"_Therefore_"; it rests upon an antecedent, in the logical chain of
divine facts. We have read that antecedent, ch. iv. 25; "Jesus our
Lord was given up because of our transgressions, and was raised up
because of our justification." We assented to that fact; we have
accepted Him, only and altogether, in this work of His. _Therefore_ we
are justified, δικαιωθέντες,[70] placed by an act of divine Love,
working in the line of divine Law, among those whom the Judge accepts,
that He may embrace them as Father. Then, in this possession of the
"peace" of our acceptance, thus _led in_ (προσαγωγή), through the
gate of the promise, with the footstep of faith, we find inside our
Refuge far more than merely safety. We look up from within the blessed
walls, sprinkled with atoning blood, and we see above them the hope of
glory, invisible outside. And we turn to our present life within them
(for all our life is to be lived within that broad sanctuary now), and
we find resources provided there for a present as well as a
prospective joy. We address ourselves to the discipline of the place;
for it _has_ its discipline; the refuge is home, but it is also
school; and we find, when we begin to try it, that the discipline is
full of joy. It brings out into a joyful consciousness the power we
now have, in Him who has accepted us, in Him who is our Acceptance, to
suffer and to serve in love. Our life has become a life not of peace
only but of the hope which animates peace, and makes it flow "as a
river." From hour to hour we enjoy the never-disappointing hope of
"grace for grace," new grace for the next new need; and beyond it, and
above it, the certainties of the hope of glory. To drop our metaphor
of the sanctuary for that of the pilgrimage, we find ourselves upon a
pathway, steep and rocky, but always mounting into purer air, and so
as to shew us nobler prospects; and at the summit--the pathway will be
continued, and transfigured, into the golden street of the City; the
same track, but within the gate of heaven.

Into all this the Holy Ghost has led us. He has been at the heart of
the whole internal process. He made the thunder of the Law articulate
to our conscience. He gave us faith by manifesting Christ. And, in
Christ, He has "poured out in our hearts the love of God."

For now the Apostle takes up that word, "_the Love of God_," and holds
it to our sight, and we see in its pure glory no vague abstraction,
but the face, and the work, of Jesus Christ. Such is the context into
which we now advance. He is reasoning on; "_For_ Christ, when we still
were weak." He has set justification before us in its majestic
lawfulness. But he has now to expand its mighty love, of which the
Holy Ghost has made us conscious in our hearts. We are to see in the
Atonement not only a guarantee that we have a valid title to a just
acceptance. We are to see in it the love of the Father and the Son, so
that not our security only but our bliss may be full.

[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =For Christ, we still being weak,= (gentle
euphemism for our utter impotence, our guilty inability to meet the
sinless claim of the Law of God,) =in season,= in the fulness of time,
when the ages of precept and of failure had done their work, and man
had learnt something to purpose of the lesson of self-despair, =for
the ungodly--died.= "_For the ungodly_," ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν, "_concerning
them_," "with reference to them," that is to say, in this context of
saving mercy, "in their interests, for their rescue,[71] as their
propitiation." "_The ungodly_," or, more literally still, without the
article, "_ungodly ones_"; a designation general and inclusive for
those for whom He died. Above (iv. 5) we saw the word used with a
certain limitation, as of the worst among the sinful. But here,
surely, with a solemn paradox, it covers the whole field of the Fall.
The ungodly here are not the flagrant and disreputable only; they are
all who are not in harmony with God; the potential as well as the
actual doers of grievous sin. For them "_Christ died_"; not "lived,"
let us remember, but "died." It was a question not of example, nor of
suasion, nor even of utterances of divine compassion. It was a
question of law and guilt; and it was to be met only by the
death-sentence and the death-fact; such death as HE died of whom, a
little while before, this same Correspondent had written to the
converts of Galatia (iii. 13); "Christ bought us out from the curse of
the Law, when He became a curse for us." All the untold emphasis of
the sentence, and of the thought, lies here upon those last words,
upon each and all of them, "_for ungodly ones--He died_," ὑπὲρ
ἀσεβῶν--ἀπέθανε. The sequel shews this to us; he proceeds:
[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =For scarcely,= with difficulty, and in rare
instances, =for a just man will one die;= "_scarcely_," he will not
say "_never_," =for for the good man,= the man answering in some
measure the ideal of gracious and not only of legal goodness,[72]
=perhaps someone actually ventures to die.= [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =But
God commends,= as by a glorious contrast (συνίστησι), =His love,=
"_His_" as above all current human love, "_His own love_," τὴν
Ἑαυτοῦ, =towards us, because while we were still sinners,= and as
such repulsive to the Holy One, =Christ for us did die.=

We are not to read this passage as if it were a statistical assertion
as to the facts of human love and its possible sacrifices. The moral
argument will not be affected if we are able, as we shall be, to
adduce cases where unregenerate man has given even his life to save
the life of one, or of many, to whom he is not emotionally or
naturally attracted. All that is necessary to St Paul's tender plea
for the love of God is the certain fact that the cases of death even
on behalf of one who _morally deserves_ a great sacrifice are
relatively very, very few. The thought of merit is the ruling
thought in the connexion. He labours to bring out the sovereign
Lovingkindness, which went even to the length and depth of death, by
reminding us that, whatever moved it, it was not moved, even in the
lowest imaginable degree, by any merit, no, nor by any "congruity," in
us. And yet we were sought, and saved. He who planned the salvation,
and provided it, was the eternal Lawgiver and Judge. He who loved us
is Himself eternal Right, to whom all our wrong is unutterably
repellent. What then is He as Love, who, being also Right, stays not
till He has given His Son to the death of the Atonement?

So we have indeed a warrant to "believe the love of God" (1 John
iv. 16). Yes, to believe it. We look within us, and it is incredible.
If we have really seen ourselves, we have seen ground for a sorrowful
conviction that He who is eternal Right must view us with aversion.
But if we have really seen Christ, we have seen ground for--not
feeling at all, it may be, at this moment, but--believing that God is
Love, and loves us. What is it to believe Him? It is to take Him at
His word; to act altogether not upon our internal consciousness but
upon His warrant. We look at the Cross, or rather, we look at the
crucified Lord Jesus in His Resurrection; we read at His feet these
words of His Apostle; and we go away to take God at His assurance that
we, unlovely, are beloved.

"My child," said a dying French saint, as she gave a last embrace to
her daughter, "I have loved you because of what you are; my heavenly
Father, to whom I go, has loved me _malgré moi_."

And how does the divine reasoning now advance? "From glory to glory";
from acceptance by the Holy One, who is Love, to present and endless
preservation in His Beloved One. [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =Therefore much
more, justified now in His blood,= as it were "_in_" its laver of
ablution, or again "_within_" its circle of sprinkling as it marks the
precincts of our inviolable sanctuary, =we shall be kept safe through
Him,= who now lives to administer the blessings of His death, =from
the wrath,= the wrath of God, in its present imminence over the head
of the unreconciled, and in its final fall "in that day."
[Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =For if, being enemies,= with no initial love to
Him who is Love, nay, when we were hostile to His claims, and as such
subject to the hostility of His Law, =we were reconciled to our (τῷ)
God[73] through the death of His Son,= (God coming to judicial peace
with us, and we brought to submissive peace with Him,) =much more,
being reconciled, we shall be kept safe in His life,= in the life of
the Risen One who now lives for us, and in us, and we in Him.
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =Nor only so, but= we shall be kept =exulting too
in our (τοῦ) God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we
have received[74] this (τὴν) reconciliation.=

Here, by anticipation, he indicates already the mighty issues of the
act of Justification, in our life of Union with the Lord who died for
us, and lived again. In the sixth chapter this will be more fully
unfolded; but he cannot altogether reserve it so long. As he has
advanced from the law-aspect of our acceptance to its love-aspect, so
now with this latter he gives us at once the life-aspect, our
vital incorporation with our Redeemer, our part and lot in His
resurrection-life. Nowhere in this whole Epistle is that subject
expounded so fully as in the later Epistles, Colossians and Ephesians;
the Inspirer led His servant all over that region then, in his Roman
prison, but not now. But He had brought him into the region from the
first, and we see it here present to his thought, though not in the
foreground of his discourse. "_Kept safe in His life_"; not "_by_" His
life, but "_in_" His life. We are livingly knit to Him the Living One.
From one point of view we are accused men, at the bar, wonderfully
transformed, by the Judge's provision, into welcomed and honoured
friends of the Law and the Lawgiver. From another point of view we are
dead men, in the grave, wonderfully vivified, and put into a spiritual
connexion with the mighty life of our Lifegiving Redeemer. The aspects
are perfectly distinct. They belong to different orders of thought.
Yet they are in the closest and most genuine relation. The Justifying
Sacrifice procures the possibility of our regeneration into the Life
of Christ. Our union by faith with the Lord who died and lives brings
us into actual part and lot in His justifying merits. And our part and
lot in those merits, our "acceptance in the Beloved," assures us again
of the permanence of the mighty Love which will maintain us in our
part and lot "in His life." This is the view of the matter which is
before us here.

Thus the Apostle meets our need on every side. He shews us the holy
Law satisfied for us. He shews us the eternal Love liberated upon us.
He shews us the Lord's own Life clasped around us, imparted to us;
"our life is hid in God with Christ, who is our Life" (Col. iii. 3,
4). Shall we not "exult in God through Him"?

And now we are to learn something of that great Covenant-Headship, in
which we and He are one.


DETACHED NOTES TO CHAPTER XII

I

Εἰρήνην ἔχομεν, "_We have peace_": Εἰρήνην ἔχωμεν, "_Let us have
peace_." Which did St Paul write? On the whole, after long thought
upon the evidence, we decide for the former reading. The documentary
witness is strong for the latter. For those who place the great Uncial
manuscripts in the place of practical decision, ἔχωμεν has a clear
verdict in its favour. But the other class of copies, the Cursive,
later on the whole than the Uncials, but probably often representing
correction rather than corruption, are greatly in favour of ἔχομεν.
The evidence of ancient Versions, and of quotations by early Christian
writers, inclines on the whole for ἔχωμεν. But in the study of a
reading the argument and context of course claim attention; for most
surely the original reading, whatever it was, was _pertinent_. Now
here the question of _pertinence_ seems to us to lead to a decided
verdict for ἔχομεν. The Apostle is engaged here altogether with
assertion, instruction; exhortation is to come later. Through this
whole paragraph he does nothing but assert facts and principles. Is it
to be believed that he begins it with a _disjointed_ exhortation?

In _itself_ the exhortation would bear a meaning perfectly
intelligible. "_Let us have peace_" would mean "_Let us enjoy peace_."
So ἔχωμεν χάριν, Heb. xii. 28, means, practically, "_Let us use
grace_." Neither exhortation would mean that we _do not yet possess_,
in respect of the Lord's gift, "peace" and "grace" respectively. But,
we repeat it, the context here seems decisive against the presence
_here_ of any exhortation. We want, logically, assertion.

The interchange of ω and ο in manuscripts is, as a fact, frequent.

See the case carefully considered, and decided for ἔχομεν, in Dr
Scrivener's _Introduction to the Criticism of the N. T._, p. 625.


II

Καταλλάσσειν, Καταλλαγή. It is sometimes held that these words
denote "reconciliation" in the sense of man's laying aside his
distrust, reluctance, resistance towards God, not of God's laying
aside His holy displeasure against man; and that for this latter idea,
that of persuading an offended superior to grant peace, we should need
the words διαλλάσσεσθαι (which we have Matt. v. 24, and in the Lxx.
in _e.g._ 1 Sam. xxix. 4, where the English has, "Wherewith should he
reconcile himself to his master?") and διαλλαγὴ (which does not
occur in the N. T.). But καταλλαγὴ (and its verb) is as a fact used
in the Greek of the Apocrypha in connexions where the thought is just
that of the clemency of a king, induced to pardon. See _e.g._ 2 Macc.
v. 20, where the English Version reads, "the great Lord _being
reconciled_ (ἐν τῇ καταλλαγῇ τοῦ μεγάλου Δεσπότου) [the temple] was
set up." So 2 Macc. i. 5, where we have the prayer (English Version),
"God be _at one_ with you," καταλλαγείη ὑμῖν. Thus no elaborate
distinction can safely be drawn between the two sets of compounds. And
there is no place in the N. T. where the meaning, _conciliation of an
offended party_, would not well suit καταλλάσσεσθαι, etc. The
present passage (Rom. v. 10, 11) would be practically meaningless
otherwise. The whole thought is of the divine mercy, providing a way
for accepting grace. To "_receive_ τὴν καταλλαγὴν" is a phrase
which, by its very form as well as its connexion, points to the
thought not of reluctance overcome but mercy found.

The word "_atonement_" (A.V., ver. 11) needs remark. It seems certain
that its derivation is "at-one-ment" (See Skeat, _Etymol. Dict._,
s.v.), though an etymological connexion with _ver-söhnen_, (Dutch,
_ver-zoenen_) has been maintained (see Hofmeyr, _The Blessed Life_, p.
25). But as Trench remarks, (_Synonyms of the N. T._, s.v.
καταλλαγὴ,) the usage of English has now long attached the idea of
_propitiation_ (ἱλασμὸς) to the word "_atonement_"; which should
therefore be avoided as a rendering for καταλλαγή.

[63] Ἐκ πίστως: "_out of faith_." The phrase has often met us in
the Greek before. It calls for various renderings in various contexts;
that given above seems best to paraphrase it here.

[64] See detached note, p. 140, for an account of the various reading
here, ἔχωμεν εἰρήνην, "_Let us_ have peace."

[65] Ἐσχήκαμεν: "_we have had_," "_we have got_."

[66] Καυχᾶσθαι, καύχησις: see above ii. 23, iii. 27, iv. 2.

[67] Ὑπομονὴ is more than "_patience_." By usage it implies "patience
_in action_"; "_perseverance_."

[68] It is quite possible, of course, to explain ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ,
grammatically, to mean "_our love to God_." And some, more mystically,
explain it of God's faculty of love conveyed to us that we, with it,
may love Him. But the following context, especially ver. 8, is clearly
against such expositions. Verses 6-11 are in fact an explanation of
the thought of ver. 5.

[69] The writer ventures to refer to his Commentary on Ephesians in
_The Cambridge Bible_.

[70] Observe the aorist form of the participle.

[71] Ὑπὲρ is literally "_over_," and in itself imports simply
"_concern with_"; as when we say that a man is busy "over" an
important matter; as it were stooping over it, attending to it. Its
special references depend altogether upon context and usage. _In
itself_ it neither teaches nor denies the doctrine of a vicarious and
substitutionary work; ἀητὶ is the preposition which guarantees as
true that great aspect of the Lord's death. But ὑπὲρ of course
amply allows for such an _application_ of its meaning, where the
context suggests the idea.

[72] We incline more than formerly, though still with some doubt, to
see a rising climax here, as indicated in the paraphrase, from
δίκαιος to ὁ ἀγαθός.

[73] On the meaning of καταλλαγή see detached note, p. 141.

[74] Ἐλάβομεν: but the English perfect best represents the idea.




CHAPTER XIII

_CHRIST AND ADAM_

ROMANS v. 12-21


We approach a paragraph of the Epistle pregnant with mystery. It leads
us back to Primal Man, to the Adam of the first brief pages of the
Scripture record, to his encounter with the suggestion to follow
himself rather than his Maker, to his sin, and then to the results of
that sin in his race. We shall find those results given in terms which
certainly we should not have devised _a priori_. We shall find the
Apostle teaching, or rather stating, for he writes as to those who
know, that mankind inherits from primal Man, tried and fallen, not
only taint but guilt, not only moral hurt but legal fault.

This is "a thing heard in the darkness." It has been said that Holy
Scripture "is not a sun, but a lamp." The words may be grievously
misused, by undue emphasis on the negative clause; but they convey a
sure truth, used aright. Nowhere does the divine Book undertake to
tell us all about everything it contains. It undertakes to tell us
truth, and to tell it from God. It undertakes to give us pure light,
yea, "to bring life and immortality out into the light," (2 Tim.
i. 10). But it reminds us that we know "in part," and that even
prophecy, even the inspired message, is "in part" (1 Cor. xiii. 9). It
illuminates immensely much, but it leaves yet more to be seen
hereafter. It does not yet kindle the whole firmament and the whole
landscape like an oriental sun. It sheds its glory upon our Guide, and
upon our path.

A passage like this calls for such recollections. It tells us, with
the voice of the Apostle's Lord, great facts about our own race, and
its relations to its primeval Head, such that every individual man has
a profound moral and also judicial _nexus_ with the first Man. It does
not tell us how those inscrutable but solid facts fit into the whole
plan of God's creative wisdom and moral government. The lamp shines
_there_, upon the edges of a deep ravine beside the road; it does not
shine sunlike over the whole mountain-land.

As with other mysteries which will meet us later, so with this; we
approach it as those who "know in part," and who know that the
apostolic Prophet, by no defect of inspiration, but by the limits of
the case, "prophesies in part." Thus with awful reverence, with godly
fear, and free from the wish to explain away, yet without anxiety lest
God should be proved unrighteous, we listen as Paul dictates, and
receive his witness about our fall and our guilt in that mysterious
"First Father."

We remember also another fact of this case. This paragraph deals only
incidentally with Adam; its main theme is Christ. Adam is the
illustration; Christ is the subject. We are to be shewn in Adam, by
contrast, some of "the unsearchable riches of Christ." So that our
main attention is called not to the brief outline of the mystery of
the Fall, but to the assertions of the related splendour of the
Redemption.

St Paul is drawing again to a close, a cadence. He is about to
conclude his exposition of the Way of Acceptance, and to pass to its
junction with the Way of Holiness. And he shews us here last, in the
matter of Justification, this fragment from "the bottoms of the
mountains"--the union of the justified with their redeeming Lord as
race with Head; the _nexus_ in that respect between them and Him which
makes His "righteous act" of such infinite value to them. In the
previous paragraph, as we have seen, he has gravitated toward the
deeper regions of the blessed subject; he has indicated our connexion
with the Lord's Life as well as with His Merit. Now, recurring to the
thought of the Merit, he still tends to the depths of truth, and
Christ our Righteousness is lifted before our eyes from those pure
depths as not the Propitiation only, but the Propitiation who is also
our Covenant-Head, our Second Adam, holding His mighty merits for a
new race, bound up with Himself in the bond of a real unity.

He "prophesies in part," meanwhile, even in respect of this element of
his message. As we saw just above, the fullest explanations of our
union with the Lord Christ _in His life_ were reserved by St Paul's
Master for other Letters than this. In the present passage we have
not, what probably we should have had if the Epistle had been written
five years later, a definite statement of the connexion between our
Union with Christ in His covenant and our Union with Him in His life;
a connexion deep, necessary, significant. It is not quite absent from
this passage, if we read verses 17, 18, aright; but it is not
prominent. The main thought is of merit, righteousness, acceptance; of
covenant, of law. As we have said, this paragraph is the climax of the
Epistle to the Romans as to its doctrine of our peace with God through
the merits of His Son. It is enough for the purpose of that subject
that it should indicate, and only indicate, the doctrine that His Son
is also our Life, our indwelling Cause and Spring of purity and power.

Recollecting thus the scope and the connexion of the passage, let us
listen to its wording.

[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =On this account,= on account of the aspects of
our justification and reconciliation "through our Lord Jesus Christ"
which he has just presented, it is[75] =just as through one man sin
entered into the world,= the world of man, =and, through sin, death,
and so to all men death travelled,= διῆλθε, penetrated, pervaded,
=inasmuch as all sinned;= the Race sinning in its Head, the Nature in
its representative Bearer. The facts of human life and death shew that
sin _did_ thus pervade the race, as to liability, and as to penalty:
[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =For until law came sin was in the world;= it was
present all along, in the ages previous to the great Legislation. =But
sin is not imputed,= is not put down as debt for penalty, =where law
does not exist,= where in no sense is there statute to be obeyed or
broken, whether that statute takes articulate expression or not.[76]
[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =But death became king (ἐβασίλευσεν), from Adam
down to Moses, even over those who did not sin on the model of the
transgression of Adam--who is= (in the present tense of the plan of
God) =pattern of the Coming One.=

He argues from the fact of death, and from its universality, which
implies a universality of liability, of guilt. According to the
Scriptures, death is essentially _penal_ in the case of man, who was
created not to die but to live. How that purpose would have been
fulfilled if "the image of God" had not sinned against Him, we do not
know. We need not think that the fulfilment would have violated any
natural process; higher processes might have governed the case, in
perfect harmony with the surroundings of terrestrial life, till
perhaps that life was transfigured, as by a necessary development,
into the celestial and immortal. But however, the record _does_
connect, for man, the fact of death with the fact of sin, offence,
transgression. And the fact of death is universal, and so has been
from the first. And thus it includes generations most remote from the
knowledge of a revealed _code_. And it includes individuals most
incapable of a conscious act of transgression such as Adam's was; it
includes the heathen, and the infant, and the imbecile. Therefore
wherever there is human nature, since Adam fell, there is sin, in its
form of guilt. And therefore, in some sense which perhaps only the
supreme Theologian Himself fully knows, but which we can follow a
little way, all men offended in the First Man--so favourably
conditioned, so gently tested. The guilt contracted by him is
possessed also by them. And thus is he "the pattern of the Coming
One."

For now the glorious Coming One, the Seed of the Woman, the blessed
Lord of the Promise, rises on the view, in His likeness and in His
contrast. Writing to Corinth from Macedonia, about a year before, St
Paul had called him (1 Cor. xv. 45, 47) "the Second Adam," "the Second
Man"; and had drawn in outline the parallel he here elaborates. "In
Adam all die; even so in Christ all shall be made alive." It was a
thought which he had learned in Judaism,[77] but which his Master had
affirmed to him in Christianity; and noble indeed and far-reaching is
its use of it in this exposition of the sinner's hope.

[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =But not as the transgression, so the gracious
gift (χάρισμα). For if, by the transgression of the one, the many,=
the many affected by it, =died, much rather did the grace of God.= His
benignant action, =and the gift,= the grant of our acceptance, =in the
grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ,= ("_in_ His grace," because
_involved in_ His benignant action, in His redeeming work) =abound
unto the many= whom it, whom He, affected.

We observe here some of the phrases in detail. "_The One_"; "_the One
Man_":--"_the_ one," in each case, is related to "_the_ many"
involved, in bane or in blessing respectively. "The One _Man_":--so
the Second Adam is designated, not the First. As to the First, "it
goes unsaid" that he is man. As to the Second, it is infinitely
wonderful, and of eternal import, that He, as truly, as completely, is
one with us, is Man of men. "_Much rather did_ the grace, and the
gift, _abound_":--the thought given here is that while the dread
sequel of the Fall was solemnly _permitted_, as good in law, the
sequel of the divine counter-work was gladly _sped_ by the Lord's
willing love, and was carried to a glorious overflow, to an altogether
unmerited effect, in the present and eternal blessing of the
justified. "_The many_," twice mentioned in this verse, are the whole
company which, in each case, stands related to the respective
Representative. It is the whole race in the case of the Fall; it is
the "many brethren" of the Second Adam in the case of the
Reconciliation. The question is not of numerical comparison between
the two, but of the numerousness of each host in relation to the
oneness of its covenant Head. What the numerousness of the "many
brethren" will be we know--and we do not know; for it will be "a great
multitude, which no one can number." But that is not in the question
here. The emphasis, the "_much rather_," the "_abundance_," lies not
on the compared numbers, but on the amplitude of the blessing which
overflows upon "the many" from the justifying work of the One.

He proceeds, developing the thought. From the act of each
Representative, from Adam's Fall and Christ's Atonement, there issued
results of dominion, of royalty. But what was the contrast of the
cases! In the Fall, the sin of the One brought upon "the many"
judgment, sentence, and the reign of death over them. In the
Atonement, the righteousness of the One brought upon "the many" an
"abundance," an overflow, a generous largeness and love of acceptance,
and the power of life eternal, and a prerogative of royal rule over
sin and death; the emancipated captives treading upon their tyrants'
necks. We follow out the Apostle's wording:

[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =And not as through the one who sinned,= who
fell, =so is the gift;= our acceptance in our Second Head does not
follow the law of mere and strict retribution which appears in our
fall in our first Head. =(For,= he adds in emphatic parenthesis, =the
judgment= did issue, =from one= transgression,[78] =in condemnation,=
in sentence of death; =but the gracious gift= issued, =from many
transgressions,=--not indeed as if earned by them, as if caused by
them, but as _occasioned_ by them; for this wonderful process of mercy
found in our sins, as well as in our Fall, a _reason_ for the
Cross--=in a deed of justification.)[79]= [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =For if
in one transgression,[80]= "_in_" it, as the effect is involved in its
cause, =death came to reign (ἐβασίλευσε) through the one=
offender,[81] =much rather those who are receiving,= in their
successive cases and generations, =that (τὴν) abundance of the
grace= just spoken of (ver. 15: χάρις, ἐπερίσσευσε), =and of the
free gift of righteousness,= of acceptance, =shall, in life,= life
eternal, begun now, to end never, =reign= over their former tyrants
=through the One,= their glorious One, =Jesus Christ.=

And now he sums up the whole in one comprehensive inference and
affirmation. "_The One_," "_the many_"; "_the One_," "_the all_"; the
whole mercy for the all due to the one work of the One;--such is the
ground-thought all along. It is illustrated by "_the one_" and "_the
many_" of the Fall, but still so as to throw the real weight of every
word not upon the Fall but upon the Acceptance. Here, as throughout
this paragraph, we should greatly mistake if we thought that the
illustration and the object illustrated were to be pressed, detail by
detail, into one mould. To cite an instance to the contrary, we are
certainly not to take him to mean that because Adam's "_many_" are not
only fallen in him, but actually guilty, therefore Christ's "_many_"
are not only accepted in Him, but actually and personally meritorious
of acceptance. The whole Epistle negatives that thought. Nor again are
we to think, as we ponder ver. 18, that because "_the condemnation_"
was "_to all men_" in the sense of their being not only condemnable
but actually condemned, therefore "_the justification of life_" was
"_to all men_" in the sense that all mankind are actually justified.
Here again the whole Epistle, and the whole message of St Paul about
our acceptance, are on the other side. The provision is for the
_genus_, for man; but the possession is for men--who believe.[82] No;
these great details in the parallel need our reverent caution, lest we
think peace where there is, and can be, none. The force of the
parallel lies in the broader and deeper factors of the two matters. It
lies in the mysterious phenomenon of covenant headship, as affecting
both our Fall and our Acceptance; in the power upon the many, in each
case, of the deed of the One; and then in the magnificent fulness and
positiveness of result in the case of our salvation. In our Fall, sin
merely _worked itself out_ into doom and death. In our Acceptance, the
Judge's award is positively crowned and as it were loaded with gifts
and treasures. It brings with it, in ways not described here, but
amply shewn in other Scriptures, a living union with a Head who is our
life, and in whom we possess already the powers of heavenly being in
their essence. It brings with it not only the approval of the Law, but
accession to a throne. The justified sinner is a king already, in his
Head, over the power of sin, over the fear of death. And he is on his
way to a royalty in the eternal future which shall make him great
indeed, great in his Lord.

The absolute dependence of our justification upon the Atoning Act of
our Head, and the relation of our Head to us accordingly as our Centre
and our Root of blessing, this is the main message of the passage we
are tracing. The mystery of our congenital guilt is there, though it
is only incidentally there. And after all what is that mystery? It is
assuredly a fact. The statement of this paragraph, that the many were
"constituted sinners by the disobedience of the one," what is it? It
is the Scripture expression, and in some guarded sense the Scripture
explanation, of a consciousness deep as the awakened soul of man; that
I, a member of this homogeneous race, made in God's image, not only
have sinned, but have been a sinful being from my first personal
beginning; and that I ought not to be so, and ought never to have been
so. It is my calamity, but it is also my accusation. This I cannot
explain; but this I know. And to know this, with a knowledge that is
not merely speculative but moral, is to be "shut up unto Christ," in a
self-despair which can go nowhere else than to Him for acceptance, for
peace, for holiness, for power.

Let us translate, as they stand, the closing sentences before us:

[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =Accordingly therefore, as through one
transgression= there came a result =to all men, to condemnation,= to
sentence of death, =so through one deed of righteousness[83] there
came a result to all men,= (to "_all_" in the sense we have indicated,
so that whoever of mankind receives the acceptance owes it always and
wholly to the Act of Christ,) =to justification of life,= to an
acceptance which not only bids the guilty "not die," but opens to the
accepted the secret, in Him who is their Sacrifice, of powers which
live in Him for them as He is their Life. [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =For
as, by the disobedience of the one man, the many,= the many of that
case, =were constituted sinners,= constituted guilty of the fall of
their nature from God, so that their being sinful is not only their
calamity but their sin, =so too by the obedience of the One,= "not
according to their works," that is, to their conduct, past, present,
or to come, but "_by the obedience of the One_," =the many,= His "many
brethren," His Father's children through faith in Him, =shall be,= as
each comes to Him in all time, and then by the final open proclamation
of eternity, =constituted righteous,= qualified for the acceptance of
the holy Judge.

       *       *       *       *       *

Before he closes this page of his message, and turns the next, he has
as it were a parenthetic word to say, indicating a theme to be
discussed more largely later. It is the function of the Law, the moral
place of the preceptive _Fiat_, in view of this wonderful Acceptance
of the guilty. He has suggested the question already, iii. 31; he will
treat some aspects of it more fully later. But it is urgent here to
enquire at least this, Was Law a mere anomaly, impossible to put into
relation with justifying grace? Might it have been as well out of the
way, never heard of in the human world? No, God forbid. One deep
purpose of acceptance was to glorify the Law, making the preceptive
Will of God as dear to the justified as it is terrible to the guilty.
But now, besides this, it has a function antecedent as well as
consequent to justification. Applied as positive precept to the human
will in the Fall, what does it do? It does not create sinfulness; God
forbid. Not God's will but the creature's will did that. But it
occasions sin's declaration of war. It brings out the latent rebellion
of the will. It forces the disease to the surface--merciful force, for
it shews the sick man his danger, and it gives point to his
Physician's words of warning and of hope. It reveals to the criminal
his guilt; as it is sometimes found that information of a statutory
human penalty awakens a malefactor's conscience in the midst of a
half-unconscious course of crime. And so it brings out to the opening
eyes of the soul the wonder of the remedy in Christ. He sees the Law;
he sees himself; and now at last it becomes a profound reality to him
to see the Cross. He believes, adores, and loves. The merit of his
Lord covers his demerit, as the waters the sea. And he passes from the
dread but salutary view of "the reign" of sin over him, in a death he
cannot fathom, to submit to "the reign" of grace, in life, in death,
for ever.

[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =Now law came sideways in;= law in its largest
sense, as it affects the fallen, but with a special reference,
doubtless, to its articulation at Sinai. It came in "_sideways_," as
to its relation to our acceptance; as a thing which should
_indirectly_ promote it, by not causing but occasioning the blessing;
=that the transgression might abound,= that sin, that sins, in the
most inclusive sense, might develop the latent evil, and as it were
expose it to the work of grace. =But where the sin multiplied,= in the
place, the region, of fallen humanity, =there did superabound the
grace;= with that mighty overflow of the bright ocean of love which we
have watched already. [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =That just as our (ἡ)
sin came to reign in our (τῷ) death,= our penal death, =so too might
the grace come to reign,= having its glorious way against our foes and
over us, =through righteousness,= through the justifying work, =to
life eternal,= which here we have, and which hereafter will receive us
into itself, =through Jesus Christ our Lord.=

       *       *       *       *       *

"The last words of Mr Honest were, _Grace reigns_. So he left the
world." Let us walk with the same watchword through the world, till we
too, crossing that Jordan, lean with a final simplicity of faith upon
"the obedience of the One."

[75] It will be seen that we assume, between διὰ τοῦτο and ὥσπερ,
some such implied thought as "_the case stands_." We think it may be
thus grammatically; and that even if a less simple explanation of the
_construction_ is adopted, such an insertion gives the import of the
whole passage aright.

[76] It will be seen that the rapid steps of thought lead, in this one
verse, from one meaning of the word "_law_" to another. He means that
there was sin before the Code of the Decalogue, but not therefore
before God had, in some degree, expressed His royal will, and man had
broken it.

[77] See Schöttgen, _Horæ Hebraicæ_, on 1 Cor. xv. 45. He quotes from
the Rabbis: "As the First Adam was one, was first, אחד, in sin, so
Messiah shall be the last, האחרן, for the utter taking away of
sins."

[78] So we interpret ἑνὸς, in the light of the πολλὰ παραπτώματα
just below.

[79] Δικαίωμα: the form of the word indicates not a process, or a
principle, but an act. Apparently, by context, it may mean either a
moral act of righteousness (see Rev. xix. 8, and perhaps below, ver.
18), or a legal "act and deed" of acceptance. The parallel with
κατάκριμα pleads here for the latter.

[80] We adopt the reading ἐν ἑνί. The other, τῷ τοῦ ἑνός,
amounts to the same import, but without the pregnant force of the word
"_in_."

[81] We supply this word, and not "_transgression_," because of the
parallel just below, "_the One, Jesus Christ_."

[82] As to the universality of _the offer_, it is interesting and
important to find Calvin thus writing, on ver. 18:--Communem omnium
gratiam fecit, quia omnibus exposita est, non quod ad omnes extendatur
re ipsa. Nam etsi passus est Christus pro peccatis totius mundi, atque
omnibus indifferenter Dei benignitate offertur, non tamen omnes
apprehendunt. "The Lord," thus says the great French expositor,
"suffered for the sins of the whole world," and "is offered
impartially to all in the kindness of God."

[83] Δικαίωμα: see note above, p. 150. It seems to us almost equally
possible to explain this word here (as in our translation) of the
Lord's Atoning Act, satisfying the Law for us, and of the Accepting
"Act and Deed" of the Father, declaring Him accepted, and us in Him.




CHAPTER XIV

_JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS_

ROMANS vi. 1-13


In a certain sense, St Paul has done now with the exposition of
Justification. He has brought us on, from his denunciation of human
sin, and his detection of the futility of mere privilege, to
propitiation, to faith, to acceptance, to love, joy, and hope, and
finally to our mysterious but real connexion in all this blessing with
Him who won our peace. From this point onwards we shall find many
mentions of our acceptance, and of its Cause; we shall come to some
memorable mentions very soon. But we shall not hear the holy subject
itself any more treated and expounded. It will underlie the following
discussions everywhere; it will as it were surround them, as with a
sanctuary wall. But we shall now think less directly of the
foundations than of the superstructure, for which the foundation was
laid. We shall be less occupied with the fortifications of our holy
city than with the resources they contain, and with the life which is
to be lived, on those resources, within the walls.

Everything will cohere. But the transition will be marked, and will
call for our deepest, and let us add, our most reverent and
supplicating thought.

"We need not, then, be holy, if such is your programme of acceptance."
Such was the objection, bewildered or deliberate, which St Paul heard
in his soul at this pause in his dictation; he had doubtless often
heard it with his ears. Here was a wonderful provision for the free
and full acceptance of "the ungodly" by the eternal Judge. It was
explained and stated so as to leave no room for human virtue as a
commendatory merit. Faith itself was no commendatory virtue. It was
not "a work," but the antithesis to "works." Its power was not in
itself but in its Object. It was itself only the void which received
"the obedience of the One" as the sole meriting cause of peace with
God. Then--may we not live on in sin, and yet be in His favour now,
and in His heaven hereafter?

Let us recollect, as we pass on, one important lesson of these
recorded objections to the great first message of St Paul. They tell
us, incidentally, how explicit and unreserved his delivery of the
message had been, and how Justification by Faith, by faith only, meant
what was said, when it was said by him. Christian thinkers, of more
schools than one, and at many periods, have hesitated not a little
over that point. The medieval theologian mingled his thoughts of
Justification with those of Regeneration, and taught our acceptance
accordingly on lines impossible to lay true along those of St Paul. In
later days, the meaning of faith has been sometimes beclouded, till it
has seemed, through the haze, to be only an indistinct summary-word
for Christian consistency, for exemplary conduct, for good works. Now
supposing either of these lines of teaching, or anything like them, to
be the message of St Paul, "his Gospel," as he preached it; one result
may be reasonably inferred--that we should not have had Rom. vi. 1
worded as it is. Whatever objections were encountered by a Gospel of
acceptance expounded on such lines, (and no doubt it would have
encountered many, if it called sinful men to holiness,) it would not
have encountered this objection, that it seemed to allow men to be
unholy. What such a Gospel would seem to do would be to accentuate in
all its parts the urgency of obedience in order to acceptance; the
vital importance on the one hand of an internal change in our nature
(through sacramental operation, according to many); and then on the
other hand the practice of Christian virtues, with the hope, in
consequence, of acceptance, more or less complete, in heaven. Whether
the objector, the enquirer, was dull, or whether he was subtle, it
could not have occurred to him to say, "You are preaching a Gospel of
licence; I may, if you are right, live as I please, only drawing a
little deeper on the fund of gratuitous acceptance as I go on." But
just this was the _animus_, and such were very nearly the words, of
those who either hated St Paul's message as unorthodox, or wanted an
excuse for the sin they loved, and found it in quotations from St
Paul. Then St Paul must have meant by faith what faith ought to mean,
simple trust. And he must have meant by justification without works,
what those words ought to mean, acceptance irrespective of our
recommendatory conduct. Such a Gospel was no doubt liable to be
mistaken and misrepresented, and in just the way we are now observing.
But it was also, and it is so still, the only Gospel which is the
power of God unto salvation--to the fully awakened conscience, to the
soul that sees itself, and asks for God indeed.

This undesigned witness to the meaning of the Pauline doctrine of
Justification by Faith only will appear still more strongly when we
come to the Apostle's answer to his questioners. He meets them not at
all by modifications of his assertions. He has not a word to say about
additional and corrective conditions precedent to our peace with God.
He makes no impossible hint that Justification means the making of us
good, or that Faith is a "short title" for Christian practice. No;
there is no reason for such assertions either in the nature of words,
or in the whole cast of the argument through which he has led us. What
does he do? He takes this great truth of our acceptance in Christ our
Merit, and puts it unreserved, unrelieved, unspoiled, in contact with
other truth, of coordinate, nay, of superior greatness, for it is the
truth to which Justification leads us, as way to end. He places our
acceptance through Christ Atoning in organic connexion with our life
in Christ Risen. He indicates, as a truth evident to the conscience,
that as the thought of our share in the Lord's Merit is inseparable
from union with the meriting Person, so the thought of this union is
inseparable from that of a spiritual harmony, a common life, in which
the accepted sinner finds both a direction and a power in his Head.
Justification has indeed set him free from the condemning claim of
sin, from guilt. He is as if _he_ had died the Death of sacrifice,
oblation, and satisfaction; as if _he_ had passed through the _Lama
Sabachthani_, and had "poured out _his_ soul" for sin. So he is "dead
to sin," in the sense in which his Lord and Representative "died to"
it; the atoning death has killed sin's claim on him for judgment. As
having so died, in Christ, he is "justified from sin." But then,
because he thus died "in Christ," he is "in Christ" still, in respect
also of resurrection. He is justified, not that he may go away, but
that in His Justifier he may live, with the powers of that holy and
eternal life with which the Justifier rose again.

The two truths are concentrated as it were into one, by their equal
relation to the same Person, the Lord. The previous argument has made
us intensely conscious that Justification, while a definite
transaction in law, is not a mere transaction; it lives and glows with
the truth of connexion with a Person. That Person is the Bearer for us
of all Merit. But He is also, and equally, the Bearer for us of new
Life; in which the sharers of His Merit share, for they are in Him. So
that, while the Way of Justification can be isolated for study, as it
has been in this Epistle, the justified man cannot be isolated from
Christ, who is his life. And thus he can never _ultimately_ be
considered apart from his possession, in Christ, of a new possibility,
a new power, a new and glorious call to living holiness.

In the simplest and most practical terms the Apostle sets it before us
that our justification is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.
We are accepted that we may be possessed, and possessed after the
manner not of a mechanical "article," but of an organic limb.[84] We
have "received the reconciliation" that we may now walk, not away from
God, as if released from a prison, but with God, as His children in
His Son. Because we are justified, we are to be holy, separated from
sin, separated to God; not as a mere indication that our faith is
real, and that therefore we are legally safe, but because we were
justified for this very purpose, that we might be holy. To return to a
simile we have employed already, the grapes upon a vine are not merely
a living token that the tree is a vine, and is alive; they are the
product for which the vine exists. It is a thing not to be thought of
that the sinner should accept justification--and live to himself. It
is a moral contradiction of the very deepest kind, and cannot be
entertained without betraying an initial error in the man's whole
spiritual creed.

And further, there is not only this profound connexion of purpose
between acceptance and holiness. There is a connexion of endowment and
capacity. Justification has done for the justified a twofold work,
both limbs of which are all important for the man who asks, _How can_
I walk and please God? First, it has decisively broken the claim of
sin upon him as guilt. He stands clear of that exhausting and
enfeebling load. The pilgrim's burthen has fallen from his back, at
the foot of the Lord's Cross, into the Lord's Grave. He _has_ peace
with God, not in emotion, but in covenant, through our Lord Jesus
Christ. He has an unreserved "introduction" into a Father's loving and
welcoming presence, every day and hour, in the Merit of his Head. But
then also Justification has been to him as it were the signal of his
union with Christ in new life; this we have noted already. Not only
therefore does it give him, as indeed it does, an eternal occasion for
a gratitude which, as he feels it, "makes duty joy, and labour rest."
It gives him _a new power_ with which to live the grateful life; a
power residing not in Justification itself, but in what it opens up.
It is the gate through which he passes to the fountain; it is the wall
which ramparts the fountain, the roof which shields him as he drinks.
The fountain is his justifying Lord's exalted Life, His risen Life,
poured into the man's being by the Spirit who makes Head and member
one. And it is as justified that he has access to the fountain, and
drinks as deep as he will of its life, its power, its purity. In the
contemporary passage, 1 Cor. vi. 17, St Paul had already written (in a
connexion unspeakably practical), "He that is joined unto the Lord is
one spirit." It is a sentence which might stand as a heading to the
passage we now come to render.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =What shall we say then? Shall we cling to
(ἐπιμενοῦμεν, ἐπιμένωμεν) the sin that the grace may multiply,= the
grace of the acceptance of the guilty? [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =Away with
the thought! We, the very men who[85] died to that (τῇ) sin,=--when
our Representative, in whom we have believed, died for us to it, died
to meet and break its claim--=how shall we any longer live,= have
congenial being and action, =in it,= as in an air we like to breathe?
It is a moral impossibility that the man _so_ freed from this thing's
tyrannic claim to slay him should wish for anything else than
severance from it in _all_ respects. Or [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =do you
not know that we all, when baptized[86] into Jesus Christ,= when the
sacred water sealed to us our faith-received contact with Him and
interest in Him, =were baptized into His Death,= baptized as coming
into union with Him as, above all, the Crucified, the Atoning? Do you
forget that your covenant-Head, of whose covenant of peace your
baptism was the divine physical token, is nothing to you if not your
Saviour _who died_, and who died because of this very sin with which
your thought now parleys; died because only _so_ could He break its legal
bond upon you, in order to break its moral bond? [Sidenote: Ver. 4.]
=We were entombed therefore with Him by means of our (τοῦ) baptism,=
as it symbolized and sealed the work of faith, into =His (τὸν)
Death;= it certified our interest in that vicarious death, even to its
climax in the grave which, as it were, swallowed up the Victim; =that
just as Christ rose from the dead by means of the glory of the
Father,= as that death issued for Him in a new and endless life, not
by accident, but because the Character of God, the splendour (δόξα)
of His love, truth, and power, secured the issue, =so we too should
begin to walk (πετιπατήσωμεν) in newness of life,= should step forth
in a power altogether new, in our union still with Him. All possible
emphasis lies upon those words, "_newness of life_." They bring out
what has been indicated already (v. 17, 18), the truth that the Lord
has won us not only remission of a death-penalty, not only even an
extension of existence under happier circumstances, and in a more
grateful and hopeful spirit--but a new and wonderful life-power. The
sinner has fled to the Crucified, that he may not die. He is now not
only amnestied but accepted. He is not only accepted but incorporated
into his Lord, as one with Him in interest. He is not only
incorporated as to interest, but, because His Lord, being Crucified,
is also Risen, he is incorporated into Him as Life. The Last Adam,
like the First, transmits not only legal but vital effects to His
member. In Christ the man has, in a sense as perfectly practical as it
is inscrutable, new life, new power, as the Holy Ghost applies to his
inmost being the presence and virtues of his Head. "In Him he lives,
by Him he moves."

To men innumerable the discovery of this ancient truth, or the fuller
apprehension of it, has been indeed like a beginning of new life. They
have been long and painfully aware, perhaps, that their strife with
evil was a serious failure on the whole, and their deliverance from
its power lamentably partial. And they could not always command as
they would the emotional energies of gratitude, the warm consciousness
of affection. Then it was seen, or seen more fully, that the
Scriptures set forth this great mystery, this powerful fact; our union
with our Head, by the Spirit, for life, for victory and deliverance,
for dominion over sin, for willing service. And the hands are lifted
up, and the knees confirmed, as the man uses the now open
secret--Christ in him, and he in Christ--for the real walk of life.
But let us listen to St Paul again.

[Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For if we became vitally connected (σύμφυτοι),=
He with us and we with Him, =by the likeness of His Death,= by the
baptismal plunge, symbol and seal of our faith-union with the Buried
Sacrifice, =why (ἀλλὰ), we shall be= vitally connected with Him by
the likeness =also of His Resurrection,= by the baptismal emergence,
symbol and seal of our faith-union with the Risen Lord, and so with
His risen power.[87] [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =This knowing, that our old
man,= our old state, as out of Christ and under Adam's headship, under
guilt and in moral bondage, =was crucified with= Christ, was as it
were nailed to His atoning Cross, where He represented us. In other
words, He on the Cross, our Head and Sacrifice, so dealt with our
fallen state for us, =that the body of sin,= this our body viewed as
sin's stronghold, medium, vehicle, =might be cancelled,= might be in
abeyance, put down, deposed, so as to be no more the fatal door to
admit temptation to a powerless soul within.

"_Cancelled_" is a strong word. Let us lay hold upon its strength, and
remember that it gives us not a dream, but a fact, to be found true in
Christ. Let us not turn its fact into fallacy, by forgetting that,
whatever "_cancel_" means, it does not mean that grace lifts us out of
the body; that we are no longer to "_keep under the body, and bring it
into subjection_," in the name of Jesus. Alas for us, if any promise,
any truth, is allowed to "cancel" the call to watch and pray, and to
think that in no sense is there still a foe within. But all the rather
let us grasp, and use, the glorious positive in its place and time,
which is everywhere and every day. Let us recollect, let us confess
our faith, that thus it is with us, through Him who loved us. He died
for us for this very end, that our "_body of sin_" might be
wonderfully "_in abeyance_," as to the power of temptation upon the
soul. Yes, as St Paul proceeds, =that henceforth we should not do
bondservice to sin;= that from now onwards, from our acceptance in
Him, from our realization of our union with Him, we should say to
temptation a "_no_" that carries with it the power of the inward
presence of the Risen Lord. Yes, for He has won that power for us in
our Justification through His Death. He died for us, and we in Him, as
to sin's claim, as to our guilt; and He thus died, as we have seen, on
purpose that we might be not only legally accepted, but vitally united
to Him. Such is the connexion of the following clause, strangely
rendered in the English Version, and often therefore misapplied, but
whose literal wording is, [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =For he who died,= he
who has died, =has been justified from his (τῆς) sin;= stands
justified from it, stands free from its guilt. The thought is of the
atoning Death, in which the believer is interested as if it were his
own. And the implied thought is that, as that death is "fact
accomplished," as "our old man" _was_ so effectually "crucified with
Christ," therefore we may, we must, claim the spiritual freedom and
power in the Risen One which the Slain One secured for us when He bore
our guilt.

This possession is also a glorious prospect, for it is permanent with
the eternity of His Life. It not only is, but shall be.
[Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =Now if we died with Christ, we believe,= we rest
upon His word and work for it, =that we shall also live with Him,[88]=
that we shall share not only now but for all the future the powers of
His risen life. For HE lives for ever--and we are in Him!
[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =Knowing that Christ, risen from the dead, no
longer dies,= no death is in His future now; =death over Him has no more
dominion,= its _claim_ on Him is for ever gone. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.]
=For as to His dying (ὃ ἀπέθανε), it was as to our (τῇ) sin He
died;= it was to deal with our sin's claim; and He has dealt with it
indeed, so that His death is "_once_," ἐφάπαξ, once for ever; =but
as to His living (ὃ ζῇ), it is as to God He lives;= it is in
relation to His Father's acceptance, it is as welcomed to His Father's
throne for us, as the Slain One Risen. [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =Even so
must you too reckon yourselves,= with the sure "_calculation_" that
His work for you, His life for you, is infinitely valid, =to be dead
indeed to your (τῇ) sin,= dead in His atoning death, dead to the
guilt exhausted by that death, =but living to your (τῷ) God, in
Christ Jesus;[89]= welcomed by your eternal Father, in your union with
His Son, and in that union filled with a new and blessed life from
your Head, to be spent in the Father's smile, on the Father's service.

Let us too, like the Apostle and the Roman Christians, "_reckon_" this
wonderful reckoning; counting upon these bright mysteries as upon
imperishable facts. All is bound up not with the tides or waves of our
emotions, but with the living rock of our union with our Lord. "_In
Christ Jesus_":--that great phrase, here first explicitly used in the
connexion, includes all else in its embrace. Union with the slain and
risen Christ, in faith, by the Spirit--here is our inexhaustible
secret, for peace with God, for life to God, now and in the eternal
day.

[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =Therefore do not let sin reign[90] in your
mortal body,= mortal, because not yet fully emancipated, though your
Lord has "cancelled" for you its character as "the body of sin," the
seat and vehicle of conquering temptation. Do not let sin reign there,
=so that you should obey the lusts of it,[91]= of the body. Observe
the implied instruction. The body, "_cancelled_" as "the body of sin,"
still has its "_lusts_," its desires; or rather desires are still
occasioned by it to the man, desires which potentially, if not
actually, are desires away from God. And the man, justified through
the Lord's death and united to the Lord's life, is not therefore to
mistake a _laissez-faire_ for faith. He is to _use_ his divine
possessions, with a real energy of will. It is _for him_, in a sense
most practical, to see that his wealth is put to use, that his
wonderful freedom is realized in act and habit. "_Cancelled_" does not
mean annihilated. The body exists, and sin exists, and "_desires_"
exist. It is for you, O man in Christ, to say to the enemy, defeated
yet present, "Thou shalt not reign; I veto thee in the name of my
King."

[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =And do not present[92] your limbs,= your bodies
in the detail of their faculties, =as implements (ὅπλα) of
unrighteousness, to sin,= to sin regarded as the holder and employer
of the implements. =But present[93] yourselves,= your whole being,
centre and circle, =to God, as men living after death,= in His Son's
risen life, =and your limbs,= hand, foot, and head, with all their
faculties, =as implements of righteousness for God.=

       *       *       *       *       *

"O blissful self-surrender!" The idea of it, sometimes cloudy,
sometimes radiant, has floated before the human soul in every age of
history. The spiritual fact that the creature, as such, can never find
its true centre in itself, but only in the Creator, has expressed
itself in many various forms of aspiration and endeavour, now nearly
touching the glorious truth of the matter, now wandering into cravings
after a blank loss of personality, or however an eternal _coma_ of
absorption into an Infinite practically impersonal; or again,
affecting a submission which terminates in itself, an _islam_, a
self-surrender into whose void no blessing falls from the God who
receives it. Far different is the "self-presentation" of the Gospel.
It is done in the fulness of personal consciousness and choice. It is
done with revealed reasons of infinite truth and beauty to warrant its
rightness. And it is a placing of the surrendered self into Hands
which will both foster its true development as only its Maker can, as
He fills it with His presence, and will use it, in the bliss of an
eternal serviceableness, for His beloved will.

[84] Not that the imagery of the limb appears here, explicitly. But it
does appear below, xii. 5, and in the contemporary passage 1 Cor.
vi. 15; and more fully in the Epistles of the First Captivity.

[85] Οἵτινες: the paraphrase is perhaps a slight exaggeration of
the force of the pronoun.

[86] Ὅσοι ἐβαπτίσθημεν: we give a paraphrase, not a translation,
to shew the meaning practically.

[87] We thus paraphrase a difficult sentence. It seems to us that the
ὁμοίωμα τοῦ θανάτου Αὐτοῦ must refer to the baptismal rite. If so,
our paraphrase as a whole will be justified.--As to the "_plunge_" and
"_emergence_," we would only say, without entering further on an
agitated question, that it seems to us clear that baptism was at
first, _theoretically_, an entire immersion, but that, also
primevally, the theory was allowed to be modified in practice; _the
pouring_ of water in such cases _representing_ the ideal immersion. As
early as "_the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_," cent. i. (ch. vii.),
there are signs of this.

[88] More literally, perhaps, "_shall also come to life with Him_." If
we read this aright, it points to the prospect _future at the moment
of the atoning Death_, when, ideally, we died. It does not therefore
mean, practically, _that we do not live with Him now_, as we certainly
do (see just below, ver. 11). But it is as if to say, "we believe that
our share in His risen Life _surely follows_, now and always, our
share in His atoning Death."

[89] The words τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν are to be omitted from the text.

[90] Μὲ βασιλευέτω: possibly the present imperative may imply, "do
not _go on letting_ it reign."

[91] Omit αὐτῃ ἐν from the text.

[92] Παριστάνετε: we may perhaps explain this present imperative
also to mean "do not _go on so doing_."

[93] Παραστήσατε: the aorist certainly implies a critical resolve, a
_decision_ of surrender.




CHAPTER XV

_JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS: ILLUSTRATIONS FROM HUMAN LIFE_

ROMANS vi. 14--vii. 6


At the point we have now reached, the Apostle's thought pauses for a
moment, to resume.[94] He has brought us to self-surrender. We have
seen the sacred obligations of our divine and wonderful liberty. We
have had the miserable question, "_Shall we cling to sin?_" answered
by an explanation of the rightness and the bliss of giving over our
accepted persons, in the fullest liberty of will, to God, in Christ.
Now he pauses, to illustrate and enforce. And two human relations
present themselves for the purpose; the one to shew the absoluteness
of the surrender, the other its living results. The first is Slavery,
the second is Wedlock.

[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =For sin shall not have dominion over you;= sin
shall not put in its claim upon you, the claim which the Lord has met
in your Justification; =for you are not brought[95] under law, but
under grace.= The whole previous argument explains this sentence. He
refers to our acceptance. He goes back to the justification of the
guilty, "without the deeds of law," by the act of free grace; and
briefly restates it thus, that he may take up afresh the position that
this glorious liberation means not licence but divine order. Sin shall
be no more your tyrant-creditor, holding up the broken law in evidence
that it has right to lead you off to a pestilential prison, and to
death. Your dying Saviour has met your creditor in full for you, and
in Him you have entire discharge in that eternal court where the
terrible plea once stood against you. Your dealings as debtors are now
not with the enemy who cried for your death, but with the Friend who
has bought you out of his power.

[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =What then? are we to sin, because we are not=
brought =under law, but under grace?= Shall our life be a life of
licence, because we are thus wonderfully free? The question assuredly
is one which, like that of ver. 1, and like those suggested in iii. 8,
31, had often been asked of St Paul, by the bitter opponent, or by the
false follower. And again it illustrates and defines, by the direction
of its error, the line of truth from which it flew off. It helps to do
what we remarked above,[96] to assure us that when St Paul taught
"Justification by faith, without deeds of law," he meant what he said,
without reserve; he taught that great side of truth wholly, and
without a compromise. He called the sinner, "just as he was, and
waiting not to rid his soul of one dark blot," to receive at once, and
without fee, the acceptance of God for Another's blessed sake. Bitter
must have been the moral pain of seeing, from the first, this holy
freedom distorted into an unhallowed leave to sin.[97] But he will not
meet it by an impatient compromise, or untimely confusion. It shall be
answered by a fresh collocation; the liberty shall be seen in its
relation to the Liberator; and behold, the perfect freedom is a
perfect service, willing but absolute, a slavery joyfully accepted,
with open eyes and open heart, and then lived out as the most real of
obligations by a being who has entirely seen that he is not his own.

=Away with the thought.= [Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Do you not know that
the party to whom you present,= surrender, =yourselves bondservants,=
slaves, =so as to obey= him,--=bondservants you are,= not the less for
the freewill of the surrender, =of the party whom you obey;= no longer
merely contractors with him, who may bargain, or retire, but his
bondservants out and out; =whether of sin, to death, or of obedience,
to righteousness?= (As if their _assent_ (ὑπακοὴ) to Christ, their
_Amen_ to His terms of peace, acceptance, righteousness, were
personified; they were now the bondsmen of this their own act and
deed, which had put them, as it were, into Christ's hands for all
things.) [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =Now (δὲ) thanks be to our (τῷ) God,
that you were bondmen of sin,= in legal claim, and under moral sway;
yes, every one of you was this, whatever forms the bondage took upon
its surface; =but you obeyed from the heart the mould of teaching to
which you were handed over.[98]= They had been sin's slaves. Verbally,
not really, he "_thanks God_" for that fact of the past. Really, not
verbally, he "_thanks God_" for the pastness of the fact, and for the
bright contrast to it in the regenerated present. They had now been
"_handed over_," by their Lord's transaction about them, to another
ownership, and they had accepted the transfer, "_from the heart_." It
was done by Another for them, but they had said their humble, thankful
_fiat_ as He did it. And what was the new ownership thus accepted? We
shall find soon (ver. 22), as we might expect, that it is the mastery
of God. But the bold, vivid introductory imagery has already called it
(ver. 16) the slavery of "_Obedience_." Just below (vers. 19, 20) it
is the slavery of "_Righteousness_," that is, if we read the word
aright in its whole context, of "the Righteousness of God," His
acceptance of the sinner as His own in Christ. And here, in a phrase
most unlikely of all, whose personification strikes life into the most
abstract aspects of the message of the grace of God, the believer is
one who has been transferred to the possession of "_a mould of
Teaching_." The apostolic Doctrine, the mighty Message, the living
Creed of life, the Teaching of the acceptance of the guilty for the
sake of Him who was their Sacrifice, and is now their Peace and
Life--this truth has, as it were, grasped them as its vassals, to form
them, to mould them, for its issues. It is indeed their "_tenet_." It
_holds them_; a thought far different from what is too often meant
when we say of a doctrine that "we _hold it_." Justification by their
Lord's merit, union with their Lord's life; this was a doctrine,
reasoned, ordered, verified. But it was a doctrine warm and tenacious
with the love of the Father and of the Son. And it had laid hold of
them with a mastery which swayed thought, affection, and will; ruling
their whole view of self and of God. [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =Now
(δὲ), liberated from your (τῆς) sin, you were enslaved to the
Righteousness= of God.[99] Here is the point of the argument. It is a
point of steel, for all is fact; but the steel is steeped in love, and
carries life and joy into the heart it penetrates. They are not for
one moment their own. Their acceptance has magnificently emancipated
them from their tyrant-enemy. But it has absolutely bound them to
their Friend and King. Their glad consent to be accepted has carried
with it a consent to belong. And if that consent was at the moment
rather implied than explicit, virtual rather than articulately
conscious, they have now only to understand their blessed slavery
better to give the more joyful thanksgivings to Him who has thus
claimed them altogether as His own.

The Apostle's aim in this whole passage is to awaken them, with the
strong, tender touch of his holy reasoning, to articulate their
position to themselves. They have trusted Christ, and are in Him.
Then, they have entrusted themselves altogether to Him. Then, they
have, in effect, surrendered. They have consented to be His property.
They are the bondservants, they are the slaves,[100] of His Truth,
that is, of Him robed and revealed in His Truth, and shining through
it on them in the glory at once of His grace and of His claim. Nothing
less than such an obligation is the fact for them. Let them feel, let
them weigh, and then let them embrace, the chain which after all will
only prove their pledge of rest and freedom.

What St Paul thus did for our elder brethren at Rome, let him do for
us of this later time. For us, who read this page, all the facts are
true in Christ to-day. To-day let us define and affirm their issues to
ourselves, and recollect our holy bondage, and realize it, and live it
out with joy.

Now he follows up the thought. Conscious of the superficial
repulsiveness of the metaphor--quite as repulsive in itself to the
Pharisee as to the Englishman--he as it were apologizes for it; not
the less carefully, in his noble considerateness, because so many of
his first readers were actually slaves. He does not _lightly_ go for
his picture of our Master's hold of us to the market of Corinth, or of
Rome, where men and women were sold and bought to belong as absolutely
to their buyers as cattle, or as furniture. Yet he _does_ go there, to
shake slow perceptions into consciousness, and bring the will face to
face with the claim of God. So he proceeds: [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =I
speak humanly,= I use the terms of this utterly _not-divine_ bond of
man to man, to illustrate man's glorious bond to God, =because of the
weakness of your flesh,= because your yet imperfect state enfeebles
your spiritual perception, and demands a harsh paradox to direct and
fix it. =For=--here is what he means by "_humanly_"--=just as you
surrendered your limbs,[101]= your functions and faculties in human
life, =slaves to your (τῇ) impurity and to your (τῇ) lawlessness,
unto that (τὴν) lawlessness,= so that the bad principle did indeed
come out in bad practice, =so now,= with as little reserve of liberty,
=surrender your limbs slaves to righteousness,= to God's Righteousness,
to your justifying God, =unto sanctification=--so that the surrender
shall come out in your Master's sovereign separation of His purchased
property from sin.

He has appealed to the moral reason of the regenerate soul. Now he
speaks straight to the will. You are, with infinite rightfulness, the
bondmen of your God. You see your deed of purchase; it is the other
side of your warrant of emancipation. Take it, and write your own
unworthy names with joy upon it, consenting and assenting to your
Owner's perfect rights. And then live out your life, keeping the
autograph of your own surrender before your eyes. Live, suffer,
conquer, labour, serve, as men who have themselves walked to their
Master's door, and presented the ear to the awl which pins it to the
doorway, each in his turn saying, "I will not go out free."[102]

To such an act of the soul the Apostle calls these saints, whether
they had done the like before or no. They were to sum up the perpetual
fact, then and there, into a definite and critical act (παραστήσατε,
aorist) of thankful will. And he calls us to do the same to-day. By
the grace of God, it shall be done. With eyes open, and fixed upon the
face of the Master who claims us, and with hands placed helpless and
willing within His hands, we will, we do, present ourselves
bondservants to Him; for discipline, for servitude, for all His will.

[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =For when you were slaves of your (τῆς) sin,
you were freemen as to righteousness,= God's Righteousness (τῇ
δικαιοσύνῃ). It had nothing to do with you, whether to give you peace
or to receive your tribute of love and loyalty in reply. Practically,
Christ was not your Atonement, and so not your Master; you stood, in a
dismal independence, outside His claims. To you, your lips were your
own; your time was your own; your will was your own. You belonged to
self; that is to say, you were the slaves of your sin. Will you go
back? Will the word "freedom" (he plays with it, as it were, to prove
them) make you wish yourselves back where you were before you had
endorsed by faith your purchase by the blood of Christ? Nay, for what
was that "freedom," seen in its results, its results upon yourselves?
[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =What fruit, therefore,= (the "_therefore_" of
the logic of facts,) =used you to have then,= in those old days, =from
things over which you are ashamed now?= Ashamed indeed; =for the end,=
the issue, as the fruit is the tree's "end," =the end of those things
is--death;= perdition of all true life, here and hereafter too.
[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =But now,= in the blessed actual state of your
case, as by faith you have entered into Christ, into His work and into
His life, =now liberated from sin and enslaved to God, you have your
fruit,= you possess indeed, at last, the true issues of being for
which you were made, all contributing =to sanctification,= to that
separation to God's will in practice which is the development of your
separation to that will in critical fact, when you met your Redeemer
in self-renouncing faith. Yes, this fruit you have indeed; =and as its
end,= as that for which it is produced, to which it always and for
ever tends, you have =life eternal.= [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =For the pay
of sin,= sin's military stipend (ὀψώνια), punctually given to the
being which has joined its war against the will of God, =is death; but
the free gift of God is life eternal, in Jesus Christ our Lord.=

       *       *       *       *       *

"Is life worth living?" Yes, infinitely well worth, for the living man
who has surrendered to "the Lord that bought him." Outside that
ennobling captivity, that invigorating while most genuine bondservice,
the life of man is at best complicated and tired with a bewildered
quest, and gives results at best abortive, matched with the ideal
purposes of such a being. We "present ourselves to God," for His ends,
as implements, vassals, willing bondmen; and lo, our own end is
attained. Our life has settled, after its long friction, into gear.
Our root, after hopeless explorations in the dust, has struck at last
the stratum where the immortal water makes all things live, and grow,
and put forth fruit for heaven. The heart, once dissipated between
itself and the world, is now "united" to the will, to the love, of
God; and understands itself, and the world, as never before; and is
able to deny self and to serve others in a new and surprising freedom.
The man, made willing to be nothing but the tool and bondman of God,
"_has his fruit_" at last; bears the true product of his now
re-created being, pleasant to the Master's eye, and fostered by His
air and sun. And this "_fruit_" issues, as acts issue in habit, in the
glad experience of a life really sanctified, really separated in ever
deeper inward reality, to a holy will. And the "_end_" of the whole
glad possession, is "_life eternal_."

Those great words here signify, surely, the coming bliss of the sons
of the resurrection, when at last in their whole perfected being they
will "live" all through, with a joy and energy as inexhaustible as its
Fountain, and unencumbered at last and for ever by the conditions of
our mortality. To that vast future, vast in its scope yet all
concentrated round the fact that "we shall be like HIM, for we shall
see HIM as HE is," the Apostle here looks onward. He will say more of
it, and more largely, later, in the eighth chapter. But as with other
themes so with this he preludes with a few glorious chords the great
strain soon to come. He takes the Lord's slave by the hand, amidst his
present tasks and burthens, (dear tasks and burthens, because the
Master's, but still full of the conditions of earth,) and he points
upward--not to a coming _manumission_ in glory; the man would be
dismayed to foresee that; he wants to "serve for ever";--but to a
scene of service in which the last remainders of hindrance to its
action will be gone, and a perfected being will for ever, perfectly,
be not its own, and so will perfectly live in God. And this, so he
says to his fellow-servant, to you and to me, is "_the gift of God_";
a grant as free, as generous, as ever King gave vassal here below. And
it is to be enjoyed as such, by a being which, living wholly for Him,
will freely and purely exult to live wholly on Him, in the heavenly
places.

Yet surely the bearing of the sentences is not wholly upon heaven.
Life eternal, so to be developed hereafter that Scripture speaks of it
often as if it began hereafter, really begins here, and develops here,
and is already "more abundant" (John x. 10) here. It is, as to its
secret and also its experience, to know and to enjoy God, to be
possessed by Him, and used for all His will. In this respect it is
"_the end_," the issue and the goal, now and perpetually, of the
surrender of the soul. The Master meets that attitude with more and
yet more of Himself, known, enjoyed, possessed, possessing. And so He
gives, evermore gives, out of His sovereign bounty, life eternal to
the bondservant who has embraced the fact that he is nothing, and has
nothing, outside his Master. Not at the outset of the regenerate life
only, and not only when it issues into the heavenly ocean, but all
along the course, the life eternal is still "the free gift of God."
Let us now, to-day, to-morrow, and always, open the lips of
surrendering and obedient faith, and drink it in, abundantly, and yet
more abundantly. And let us use it for the Giver.

We are already, here on earth, at its very springs; so the Apostle
reminds us. For it is "_in Jesus Christ our Lord_"; and we, believing,
are in Him, "saved in His life." It is in Him; nay, it is He. "I am
the Life"; "He that hath the Son, hath the life." Abiding in Christ,
we live "because He liveth." It is not to be "attained"; it is given,
it is our own. In Christ, it is given, in its divine fulness, as to
covenant provision, here, now, from the first, to every Christian. In
Christ, it is supplied, as to its fulness and fitness for each arising
need, as the Christian asks, receives, and uses for his Lord.

So from, or rather in, our holy bondservice the Apostle has brought us
to our inexhaustible life, and its resources for willing holiness. But
he has more to say in explaining the beloved theme. He turns from
slave to wife, from surrender to bridal, from the purchase to the vow,
from the results of a holy bondage to the offspring of a heavenly
union. Hear him as he proceeds:

[Sidenote: Ch. vii. Ver. 1.] =Or do you not know, brethren, (for I am
talking (λαλῶ) to those acquainted with law,= whether Mosaic or
Gentile,) =that the law has claim on the man,= the party (ἄνθρωπος)
in any given case, =for his whole lifetime?= [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =For
the woman with a husband (ἀνὴρ) is to her living husband bound by
law,= stands all along bound (δέδεται) to him. _His life_, under
normal conditions, is his adequate claim. Prove him living, and you
prove her his. =But if the husband should have died, she stands ipso
facto cancelled[103] (κατήργηται) from the husband's law,=
the marriage law as he could bring it to bear against her.
[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =So, therefore, while the husband lives, she will
earn adulteress for her name, if she weds another (ἑτέρῳ, "a
second") husband. But if the husband should have died, she is free
from the law= in question, =so as to be no adulteress, if wedded to
another,= a second, =husband.= [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =Accordingly, my
brethren, you too,= as a mystic bride, collectively and individually,[104]
=were done to death as to the Law,= so slain that its capital claim
upon you is met _and done_, =by means of the Body of the Christ (τοῦ
Χριστοῦ),= by "the doing to death" of His sacred Body for you, on His
atoning Cross, to satisfy for you the aggrieved Law; =in order to your
wedding Another,= a second Party (ἑτέρῳ), =Him who rose from the dead;
that we might bear fruit for God;= "_we_," Paul and his converts, in
one happy _fellowship_, which he delights thus to remember and
indicate by the way.

The parable is stated and explained with a clearness which leaves us
at first the more surprised that in the application the illustration
should be reversed. In the illustration, the husband dies, the woman
lives, and weds again. In the application, the Law does not die, but
we, its unfaithful bride, are "_done to death to it_," and then,
strange sequel, are wedded to the Risen Christ. We are taken by Him to
be "one spirit" with Him (1 Cor. vi. 17). We are made one in all His
interests and wealth, and fruitful of a progeny of holy deeds in this
vital union. Shall we call all this a simile confused? Not if we
recognize the deliberate and explicit carefulness of the whole
passage. St Paul, we may be sure, was quite as quick as we are to see
the inverted imagery. But he is dealing with a subject which would be
distorted by a mechanical correspondence in the treatment. The Law
cannot die, for it is the preceptive will of God. Its claim is, in its
own awful _forum domesticum_, like the injured Roman husband, to
sentence its own unfaithful wife to death. And so it does; so it has
done. But behold, its Maker and Master steps upon the scene. He
surrounds the guilty one with Himself, takes her whole burthen on
Himself, and meets and exhausts her doom. He dies. He lives again,
after death, because of death; and the Law acclaims His resurrection
as infinitely just. He rises, clasping in His arms her for whom He
died, and who thus died in Him, and now rises in Him. Out of His
sovereign love, while the Law attests the sure contract, and rejoices
as "the Bridegroom's Friend," He claims her--herself, yet in Him
another--for His blessed Bride.

All is love, as if we walked through the lily-gardens of the holy
Song, and heard the call of the turtle in the vernal woods, and saw
the King and His Beloved rest and rejoice in one another. All is law,
as if we were admitted to watch some process of Roman matrimonial
contract, stern and grave, in which every right is scrupulously
considered, and every claim elaborately secured, without a smile,
without an embrace, before the magisterial chair. The Church, the
soul, is married to her Lord, who has died for her, and in whom now
she lives. The transaction is infinitely happy. And it is absolutely
right. All the old terrifying claims are amply and for ever met. And
now the mighty, tender claims which take their place instantly and of
course begin to bind the Bride. The Law has "given her away"--not to
herself, but to the Risen Lord.

For this, let us remember, is the point and bearing of the passage. It
puts before us, with its imagery at once so grave and so benignant,
not only the mystic Bridal, but the Bridal as it is concerned with
holiness. The Apostle's object is altogether this. From one side and
from another he reminds us that _we belong_. He has shewn us our
redeemed selves in their blessed bondservice; "free from sin, enslaved
to God." He now shews us to ourselves in our divine wedlock; "_married
to Another_," "_bound to the law of_" the heavenly Husband; clasped to
His heart, but also to His rights, without which the very joy of
marriage would be only sin. From either parable the inference is
direct, powerful, and, when we have once seen the face of the MASTER
and of the HUSBAND, unutterably magnetic on the will. You are set
free, into a liberty as supreme and as happy as possible. You are
appropriated, into a possession, and into a union, more close and
absolute than language can set forth. You are wedded to One who "_has
and holds_ from this time forward." And the sacred bond is to be
prolific of results. A life of willing and loving obedience, in the
power of the risen Bridegroom's life, is to have as it were for its
progeny the fair circle of active graces, "love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control."

Alas, in the time of the old abolished wedlock there was result, there
was progeny. But that was the fruit not of the union but of its
violation. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For when we were in the flesh,= in our
unregenerate days, when our rebel self,[105] the antithesis of "the
Spirit," ruled and denoted us, (a state, he implies, in which we all
were once, whatever our outward differences were,) =the passions,= the
strong but reasonless impulses, =of our sins, which= passions =were by
means of the Law,= occasioned by the fact of its just but unloved
claim, fretting the self-life into action, =worked actively in our
limbs,= in our bodily life in its varied faculties and senses, =so as
to bear fruit for death.= We wandered, restive, from our bridegroom,
the Law, to Sin, our paramour. And behold, a manifold result of evil
deeds and habits, born as it were into bondage in the house of Death.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But now,= now as the wonderful case stands in the
grace of God, =we are= (it is the aorist, but our English fairly
represents it) =abrogated from the Law,= divorced from our first
injured Partner, nay, slain (in our crucified Head) in satisfaction of
its righteous claim, =as having died (ἀποθανόντες[106]) with regard
to that in which we were held captive,= even the Law and its violated
bond, =so that we do bondservice in= the =Spirit's newness, and not
in= the =Letter's oldness.=

Thus he comes back, through the imagery of wedlock, to that other
parable of slavery which has become so precious to his heart. "_So
that we do bondservice_," "_so that we live a slave-life_"; ὤστε
δουλεύειν ἡμᾶς. It is as if he must break in on the heavenly
Marriage itself with that brand and bond, not to disturb the joy of
the Bridegroom and the Bride, but to clasp to the Bride's heart the
vital fact that she is not her own; that fact so blissful, but so
powerful also and so practical that it is _worth anything_ to bring it
home.

It is to be no dragging and dishonouring bondage, in which the poor
toiler looks wistfully out for the sinking sun and the extended
shadows. It is to be "_not in the Letter's oldness_"; no longer on the
old principle of the dread and unrelieved "_Thou shalt_," cut with a
pen of legal iron upon the stones of Sinai; bearing no provision of
enabling power, but all possible provision of doom for the disloyal.
It is to be "_in the Spirit's newness_"; on the new, wonderful
principle, new in its full manifestation and application in Christ, of
the Holy Ghost's empowering presence.[107] In that light and strength
the new relations are discovered, accepted, and fulfilled. Joined by
the Spirit to the Lord Christ, so as to have full benefit of His
justifying merit; filled by the Spirit with the Lord Christ, so as to
derive freely and always the blessed virtues of His life; the willing
bondservant finds in his absolute obligations an inward liberty ever
"_new_," fresh as the dawn, pregnant as the spring. And the
worshipping Bride finds in the holy call to "keep her only unto HIM"
who has died for her life, nothing but a perpetual surprise of love
and gladness, "new every morning," as the Spirit shews her the heart
and the riches of her Lord.

Thus closes, in effect, the Apostle's reasoned exposition of the
self-surrender of the justified. Happy the man who can respond to it
all with the _Amen_ of a life which, reposing on the Righteousness of
God, answers ever to His Will with the loyal gladness found in "the
newness of the Spirit." It is "perfect freedom" to understand, in
experience, the bondage and the bridal of the saints.

[94] It will be observed that we place _the paragraph_ after ver. 13,
not, as many editions of the Epistle do, after ver. 14. It seems to us
clear that ver. 14 has a closer connexion with the following than with
the previous context. It looks back, not precisely to ver. 13, but to
the general recent argument, that it may then look definitely forward,
over new ground.

[95] Ὑπὸ νόμον, ὑπὸ χάριν: the accusative case gives the preposition
properly the meaning of _motion underwards_. But this must not be
pressed too far.

[96] p. 157.

[97] Luther's _Esto peccator, et pecca fortiter_, has been often
quoted as if that great saint meant to argue licence from
Justification by faith. "God forbid." The words occur in a counsel to
Melanchthon, whose anxious conscience doubted whether it were not a
sin to communicate in one Kind, even where the true Rite in both Kinds
could not be had. It was Luther's glowing paradox, to drive a
manifestly morbid and weakening scrupulousness from his friend's mind.
See Julius Hare's _Vindication of Luther_, pp. 178, etc.

[98] So undoubtedly the Greek must be rendered.

[99] See above, p. 173.

[100] We do not forget that many Christians feel a strong repugnance
to the use of this word, steeped as it is in associations of
degradation and wrong. For ourselves, we would yield to this feeling
so far as habitually to prefer the word of milder sound,
"_bondservant_." But surely in this passage the Apostle on purpose so
accentuates the thought of our bondservice that its fullest and
sternest designation is in place. And, if in any degree we gather the
thought of other hearts from our own, there are times and connexions
in which the fulness of _the joy_ of service demands that designation
in order to its adequate realization.

[101] Μέλη: what "_the body_" is in such passages as xii. 1 that
"_the limbs_" are in detail.

[102] Exod. xxi. 5, 6; Deut. xv. 16, 17.

[103] We render the bold phrase literally.

[104] See 1 Cor. vi. 17.

[105] No word, _for practical purposes_, answers better than "_self_"
(as popularly used in Christian parlance) to the idea represented by
St Paul's use of the word σὰρξ in moral connexions.

[106] So read, not ἀποθανόντος. The textual evidence supports
ἀποθανόντες, and the evidence of the context is all for it. He has
elaborately _avoided_, in applying his illustration, the thought that
_the Law can die_. _We die_, in Christ, in judicial satisfaction of
its most righteous claim. It lives with us, it guides us, with the
authority of God. But it is now our monitor, not our avenger of blood.

[107] Such passages as this and its companion, 2 Cor. iii. 4-8, have
no reference, however remote, to the "letter and spirit" of Holy
Scripture. They contrast Sinai and Pentecost.




CHAPTER XVI

_THE FUNCTION OF THE LAW IN THE SPIRITUAL LIFE_

ROMANS vii. 7-25


The Apostle has led us a long way in his great argument; through sin,
propitiation, faith, union, surrender, to that wonderful and
"excellent mystery," the bridal oneness of Christ and the Church, of
Christ and the believer. He has yet to unfold the secrets and glories
of the experience of a life lived in the power of that Spirit of whose
"_newness_" he has just spoken. But his last parable has brought him
straight to a question which has repeatedly been indicated and
deferred. He has told us that the Law of God was at first, ideally,
our mystic husband, and that we were unfaithful in our wedded life,
and that the injured lord sentenced to death his guilty spouse, and
that the sentence was carried out--but carried out in Christ. Thus a
death-divorce took place between us, the justified, and the Law,
regarded as the violated party in the covenant--"Do this and live."

Is this ancient husband then a party whom we are now to suspect, and
to defy? Our wedlock with him brought us little joy. Alas, its main
experience was that we sinned. At best, if we did right, (in any deep
sense of right,) we did it against the grain; while we did wrong, (in
the deep sense of wrong, difference from the will of God,) with a
feeling of nature and gravitation. Was not our old lord to blame? Was
there not something wrong about the Law? Did not the Law misrepresent
God's will? Was it not, after all, _Sin itself in disguise_, though it
charged us with the horrible guilt of a course of adultery with Sin?

We cannot doubt that the statement and the treatment of this question
here are in effect a record of personal experience. The paragraph
which it originates, this long last passage of i., bears every trace
of such experience. Hitherto, in the main, he has dealt with "_you_"
and "_us_"; now he speaks only as "_I_," only of "_me_," and of
"_mine_." And the whole dialect of the passage, so to say, falls in
with this use of pronouns. We overhear the colloquies, the
altercations, of will with conscience, of will with will, almost of
self with self, carried on in a region which only self-consciousness
can penetrate, and which only the subject of it all can thus describe.
Yes, the person Paul is here, analysing and reporting upon himself;
drawing the veil from his own inmost life, with a hand firm because
surrendered to the will of God, who bids him, for the Church's sake,
expose himself to view. Nothing in literature, no _Confessions_ of an
Augustine, no _Grace Abounding_ of a Bunyan, is more intensely
individual. Yet on the other hand nothing is more universal in its
searching application. For the man who thus writes is "the chosen
vessel" of the Lord who has perfectly adjusted not his words only but
his being, his experience, his conflicts and deliverances, to be
manifestations of universal spiritual facts.

We need hardly say that this profound paragraph has been discussed and
interpreted most variously. It has been held by some to be only St
Paul's intense way of presenting that great phenomenon, wide as fallen
humanity--human will colliding with human conscience, so that "no man
does all he knows." Passages from every quarter of literature, of all
ages, of all races, have been heaped around it, to prove, (what is
indeed so profoundly significant a fact, largely confirmatory of the
Christian doctrine of Original Sin,[108]) that universal man is
haunted by undone duties; and this passage is placed as it were in the
midst, as the fullest possible confession of that fact, in the name of
humanity, by an ideal individual. But surely it needs only an
attentive reading of the passage, as a part of the Epistle to the
Romans, as a part of the teaching of St Paul, to feel the extreme
inadequacy of such an account. On the one hand the long groaning
confession is no artificial embodiment of a universal fact; it is the
cry of a human soul, if ever there was a personal cry. On the other
hand the passage betrays a kind of conflict far deeper and more
mysterious than merely that of "_I ought_" with "_I will not_." It is
a conflict of "_I will_" with "_I will not_"; of "_I hate_" with "_I
do_." And in the later stages of the confession we find the subject of
the conflict avowing a wonderful sympathy with the Law of God;
recording not merely an avowal that right is right, but a
consciousness that God's precept is delectable. All this leads us to a
spiritual region unknown to Euripides, and Horace, and even Epictetus.

Again it has been held that the passage records the experiences of a
half-regenerate soul; struggling on its way from darkness to light,
stumbling across a border-zone between the power of Satan and the
kingdom of God; deeply convinced of sin, but battling with it in the
old impossible way after all, meeting self with self, or, otherwise,
the devil with the man. But here again the passage seems to refuse the
exposition, as we read _all_ its elements. It is no experience of a
half-renewed life to "take delight with the law of God after the inner
man." It is utterly unlawful for a half-regenerate soul to describe
itself as so beset by sin that "it is _not I_, but sin that dwelleth
in me." No more dangerous form of thought about itself could be
adopted by a soul not fully acquainted with God.

Again, and quite on the other hand, it has been held that our passage
lays it down that a stern but on the whole disappointing conflict with
internal evil is the lot of the true Christian, in his fullest life,
now, always, and to the end; that the regenerate and believing man is,
if indeed awake to spiritual realities, to _feel_ at every step, "O
wretched man that I am"; "What I hate, that I do"; and to expect
deliverance from such a consciousness only when he attains his final
heavenly rest with Christ. Here again extreme difficulties attend the
exposition; not from within the passage, but from around it. It is
literally encircled with truths of liberty, in a servitude which is
perfect freedom; with truths of power and joy, in a life which is by
the Holy Ghost. It is quite incongruous with such surroundings that it
should be thought to describe a spiritual experience dominant and
characteristic in the Christian life.

"What shall we say then?" Is there yet another line of exegesis which
will better satisfy the facts of both the passage and its context? We
think there is one, which at once is distinctive in itself, and
combines elements of truth indicated by the others which we have
outlined. For those others _have_ each an element of truth, if we read
aright. The passage _has_ a reference to the universal conflict of
conscience and will. It does say some things quite appropriate to the
man who is awake to his bondage but has not yet found his Redeemer.
And there is, we dare to say, a sense in which it may be held that the
picture is true for the whole course of Christian life here on earth;
for there is never an hour of that life when the man who "says he has
no sin" does not "deceive himself" (1 Joh. i. 8). And if that sin be
but simple defect, a falling "short of the glory of God"; nay, if it
be only that mysterious tendency which, felt or not, hourly needs a
divine counteraction; still, the man "has sin," and must long for a
final emancipation, with a longing which carries in it at least _a
latent_ "groan."

So we begin by recognizing that Paul, the personal Paul, speaking here
to all of us, as in some solemn "testimony" hour, takes us first to
his earliest deep convictions of right and wrong, when, apparently
after a previous complacency with himself, he woke to see--but not to
welcome--the absoluteness of God's will. He glided along a smooth
stream of moral and mental culture and reputation till he struck the
rock of "Thou shalt not covet," "Thou shalt not desire," "Thou must
not have self-will." Then, as from a grave, which was however only an
ambush, "_sin_" sprang up; a conscious force of opposition to the
claim of God's will as against the will of Paul; and his dream of
religious satisfaction died. Till we close ver. 11, certainly, we are
in the midst of the unregenerate state. The tenses are past; the
narrative is explicit. He made a discovery of law which was as death
after life to his then religious experience. He has nothing to say of
counter-facts in his soul. It was conviction, with only rebellion as
its issue.

Then we find ourselves, we hardly know how, in a range of confessions
of a different order. There is a continuity. The Law is there, and sin
is there, and a profound moral conflict. But there are now
counter-facts. The man, the _Ego_, now "_wills not_," nay, "_hates_,"
what he practises. He wills what God prescribes, though he does it
not. His sinful deeds are, in a certain sense, in this respect, not
his own. He actually "_delights, rejoices, with the Law of God_." Yet
there is a sense in which he is "_sold_," "_enslaved_," "_captured_,"
in the wrong direction.

Here, as we have admitted, there is much which is appropriate to the
not yet regenerate state, where however the man is awakening morally,
to good purpose, under the hand of God. But the passage as a whole
refuses to be satisfied thus, as we have seen. He who can truly speak
thus of an inmost sympathy, a sympathy of delight, with the most holy
Law of God, is no half-Christian; certainly not in St Paul's view of
things.

But now observe one great negative phenomenon of the passage. We read
words about this regenerate sinner's moral being and faculties; about
his "_inner man_," his "_mind_," "_the law of his mind_"; about
"_himself_," as distinguished from the "_sin_" which haunts him. But
we read not one clear word about that eternal SPIRIT, whose glorious
presence we have seen (vii. 6), characterizing the Gospel, and of whom
we are soon to hear in such magnificent amplitude. Once only is He
even distantly indicated; "the _Law_ is _spiritual_" (ver. 14). But
that is no comfort, no deliverance. The Spirit is indeed in the Law;
but He must be also in the man, if there is to be effectual response,
and harmony, and joy. No, we look in vain through the passage for one
hint that the man, that Paul, is contemplated in it as filled by faith
with the Holy Ghost for his war with indwelling sin working through
his embodied conditions.

But he was regenerate, you say. And if so, he was an instance of the
Spirit's work, a receiver of the Spirit's presence. It is so; not
without the Spirit, working in him, could he "delight in the law of
God," and "with his true self serve the law of God." But does this
necessarily mean that he, as a conscious agent, was fully using his
eternal Guest as his power and victory?

We are not merely discussing a literary passage. We are pondering an
oracle of God about man. So we turn full upon the reader--and upon
ourselves--and ask the question, whether the heart cannot help to
expound this hard paragraph. Christian man, by grace,--that is to say,
by the Holy Spirit of God,--you have believed, and live. You are a
limb of Christ, who is your life. But you are a sinner still; always,
actually, in defect, and in tendency; always, potentially, in ways
terribly positive. For whatever the presence of the Spirit in you has
done, it has not so altered you that, if He should go, you would not
_instantly_ "revert to the type" of unholiness. Now, how do you meet
temptation from without? How do you deal with the dread fact of guilty
imbecility within? Do you, if I may put it so, use regenerate faculty
in unregenerate fashion, meeting the enemy _practically_ alone, with
only high resolves, and moral scorn of wrong, and assiduous processes
of discipline on body or mind? God forbid we should call these things
evil. They are good. But they are the accidents, not the essence, of
the secret; the wall, not the well, of power and triumph. It is the
Lord Himself dwelling in you who is your victory; and that victory is
to be realized by a conscious and decisive appeal to Him. "Through Him
you shall do valiantly; for He it is that shall tread down your
enemies" (Psal. lx. 12). And is not this verified in your experience?
When, in your regenerate state, you use the true regenerate way, is
there not a better record to be given? When, realizing that the true
principle is indeed a Person, you less resolve, less struggle, and
more appeal and confide--is not sin's "reign" broken, and is not your
foot, even yours, because you are in conscious union with the
Conqueror, placed effectually on "all the power of the enemy"?

We are aware of the objection ready to be made, and by devout and
reverent men. It will be said that the Indwelling Spirit works always
through the being in whom He dwells; and that so we are not to think
of Him as a separable Ally, but just to _act ourselves_, leaving it to
Him to act through us. Well, we are willing to state the matter almost
exactly in those last words, as theory. But the subject is too
deep--and too practical--for neat logical consistency. He does indeed
work in us, and through us. But then--it is HE. And to the hard
pressed soul there is an unspeakable reality and power in thinking of
Him as a separable, let us say simply a personal, Ally, who is also
Commander, Lord, Life-Giver; and in calling Him definitely in.

So we read this passage again, and note this absolute and eloquent
silence in it about the Holy Ghost. And we dare, in that view, to
interpret it as St Paul's confession, not of a long past experience,
not of an imagined experience, but of his own normal experience
always--when he acts out of character as a regenerate man. He fails,
he "reverts," when, being a sinner by nature still, and in the body
still, he meets the Law, and meets temptation, in any strength short
of the definitely sought power of the Holy Ghost, making Christ all to
him for peace and victory. And he implies, surely, that this failure
is not a bare hypothesis, but that he knows what it is. It is not that
God is not sufficient. He is so, always, now, for ever. But the man
does not always adequately use God; as he ought to do, as he might do,
as he will ever rise up afresh to do. And when he does not, the
resultant failure--though it be but a thought of vanity, a flush of
unexpressed anger, a microscopic flaw in the practice of truthfulness,
an unhallowed imagination darting in a moment through the soul--is to
him sorrow, burthen, shame. It tells him that "the flesh" is present
still, present at least in its elements, though God can keep them out
of combination. It tells him that, though immensely blest, and knowing
now exactly where to seek, and to find, a constant practical
deliverance (oh joy unspeakable!), he is still "in the body," and that
its conditions are still of "death." And so he looks with great desire
for its redemption. The present of grace is good, beyond all his hopes
of old. But the future of glory is "far better."

Thus the man at once "serves the Law of God," as its willing bondman
(δουλεύω, ver. 25), in the life of grace, and submits himself, with
reverence and shame, to its convictions, when, if but for an hour, or
a moment, he "reverts" to the life of the flesh.

Let us take the passage up now for a nearly continuous translation.

[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =What shall we say then,= in face of the thought
of our death-divorce, in Christ, from the Law's condemning power. =Is
the Law sin?= Are they only two phases of one evil? =Away with the
thought! But=--here is the connexion of the two--=I should not have
known,= recognized, understood, =sin but by means of law. For
coveting,= for example, =I should not have known,= should not have
recognized as sin, =if the Law had not been saying, "Thou shalt not
covet."[109]= [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =But sin, making a fulcrum of the
commandment,[110] produced,= effected, =in me all coveting,= every
various application of the principle. =For, law apart, sin is
dead=--in the sense of lack of conscious action. It needs _a holy
Will_, more or less revealed, to occasion its collision. Given no holy
will, known or surmised, and it is "dead" _as rebellion_, though not
_as pollution_. [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =But I,= the person in whom it lay
buried, =was all alive (ἔζων),= conscious and content, =law apart,
once on a time= (strange ancient memory in that biography!). =But when
the commandment came= to my conscience and my will, =sin rose to life
again,= ("_again_"; so it was no new creation after all)
[Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =and I--died;= I found myself legally doomed to
death, morally without life-power, and bereft of the self-satisfaction
that seemed my vital breath. =And the commandment that was
life-wards,= prescribing nothing but perfect right, the straight
line to life eternal, =proved (εὑρέθη) for me deathwards.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =For sin, making a fulcrum of the commandment,
deceived me,= into thinking fatally wrong of God and of myself, =and
through it killed me,= discovered me to myself as legally and morally
a dead man. [Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =So that the Law, indeed (μὲν), is
holy, and the commandment,= the special precept which was my actual
death-blow, =holy, and just, and good.= (He says, "the Law, _indeed_"
(μὲν), with the implied antithesis that "sin, _on the other hand_,"
is the opposite; the whole fault of his misery beneath the Law lies
with sin.) [Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =The good thing then,= this good Law,
=has it to me[111] become death? Away with the thought! Nay, but sin=
did so become =that it might come out as sin, working out death for me
by means of the good= Law =--that sin might prove overwhelmingly
sinful, through the commandment,= which at once called it up, and, by
awful contrast, exposed its nature. Observe, he does not say merely
that sin thus "_appeared_" unutterably evil. More boldly, in this
sentence of mighty paradoxes, he says that it "_became_" such. As it
were, it developed its _character_ into its fullest _action_, when it
thus used the eternal Will to set creature against Creator. Yet even
this was overruled; all happened thus "in order," so that the very
virulence of the plague might effectually demand the glorious Remedy.

[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =For we know,= we men with our conscience, we
Christians with our Lord's light, =that the Law,= this Law which sin
so foully abused, =is spiritual,= the expression of the eternal
Holiness, framed by the sure guidance of the Holy Spirit; =but= then
=I,= I Paul, taken as a sinner, viewed apart from Christ, =am
fleshly,= a child of self, =sold to be under sin;= yes, not only when,
in Adam, my nature sold itself at first, but still and always, just so
far as I am considered apart from Christ, and just so far as, in
practice, I live apart from Christ, "reverting," if but for a minute,
to my self-life. [Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =For the work I work out, I do
not know,= I do not recognize; I am lost amidst its distorted
conditions; =for= it is =not what I will that I practise (πράσσω),
but= it is =what I hate that I do (ποιῶ).= [Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =But
if what I do is what I do not will, I assent to the Law that it,= the
Law, =is good;= I shew my moral sympathy with the precept by the
endorsement given it by my will, in the sense of my earnest moral
preference.[112] [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =But now,= in this state of
facts, =it is no longer I who work out the work, but the indweller in
me--Sin.=

He implies by "_no longer_" that once it was otherwise; once _the
central_ choice was for self, now, in the regenerate life, even in its
conflicts, yea, even in its failures, it is for God. A mysterious
"other self" is latent still, and asserts itself in awful reality when
the true man, the man as regenerate, ceases to watch and to pray. And
in this sense he dares to say "_it is no more I_." It is a sense the
very opposite to the dream of self-excuse; for though the _Ego_ as
regenerate does not do the deed, it has, by its sleep, or by its
confidence, betrayed the soul to the true doer. And thus he passes
naturally into the following confessions, in which we read at once the
consciousness of a state which ought not to be, though it is, and also
the conviction that it is a state _out of character_ with himself,
with his personality as redeemed and new-created. Into such a
confession there creeps no lying thought that he "is delivered to do
these abominations" (Jer. vii. 10); that it is fate; that he cannot
help it. Nor is the miserable dream present here that evil is but a
phase of good, and that these conflicts are only discordant melodies
struggling to a cadence where they will accord. It is a groan of shame
and pain, from a man who could not be thus tortured if he were not
born again. Yet it is also an avowal,--as if to assure himself that
deliverance is intended, and is at hand,--that the treacherous tyrant
he has let into the place of power _is an alien_ to him as he is a man
regenerate. Not for excuse, but to clear his thought, and direct his
hope, he says this to himself, and to us, in his dark hour.

[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =For I know that there dwells not in me, that is,
in my flesh, good;= in my personal life, so long, and so far, as it
"reverts" to self as its working centre, all is evil, for nothing is
as God would have it be. And that "_flesh_," that self-life, is ever
there, latent if not patent; present in such a sense that it is ready
for instant reappearance, from within, if any moral power less than
that of the Lord Himself is in command. =For the willing lies at my
hand; but the working out what is right, does not.[113]= "_The
willing_" (τὸ θέλειν), as throughout this passage, means not the
ultimate _fiat_ of the man's soul, deciding his action, but his
earnest moral approbation, moral sympathy, _the convictions_ of the
enlightened being. [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =For not what I will, even
good, do I; but what I do not will, even evil, that I practise.[114]=
[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =Now if what I do is what I do not will, no
longer,= as once, =do I work it out, but the indweller in me, Sin.=

Again his purpose is not excuse, but deliverance. No deadly
antinomianism is here, such as has withered innumerable lives, where
the thought has been admitted that sin may be in the man, and yet the
man may not sin. His thought is, as all along, that it is his own
shame that thus it is; yet that the evil is, ultimately, a thing alien
to his true character, and that therefore he is right to call the
lawful King and Victor in upon it.

And now comes up again the solemn problem of the Law. That stern,
sacred, monitor is looking on all the while, and saying all the while
the things which first woke sin from its living grave in the old
complacent experience, and then, in the regenerate state, provoked sin
to its utmost treachery, and most fierce invasions. And the man hears
the voice, and in his new-created character he loves it. But he has
"reverted," ever so little, to his old attitude, to the self-life, and
so there is _also_ rebellion in him when that voice says "Thou shalt."
[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =So I find the Law=--he would have said, "I find
it my monitor, honoured, aye and loved, but not my helper"; but he
breaks the sentence up in the stress of this intense confession; =so I
find the Law--for me,= me =with a will to do the right,--that for me
the evil lies at hand.= [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =For I have glad sympathy
with (συνήδομαι) the Law of God;= what He prescribes I endorse with
delight as good, =as regards the inner man,= that is, my world of
conscious insight and affection[115] in the new life; [Sidenote: Ver. 23.]
=but I see= (as if I were a watcher from without) =a rival (ἕτερον)
law,= another and contradictory precept, "serve _thyself_," =in my
limbs,= in my world of sense and active faculty, =at war with the law
of my mind,= the Law of God, adopted by my now enlightened
thinking-power as its sacred code, =and seeking to make me captive in
that war[116] to the law of sin,= the law =which is in my limbs.=

[Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =Unhappy man am I. Who will rescue me out of the
body of this death,[117]= out of a life conditioned by this mortal
body, which in the Fall became sin's especial vehicle, directly or
indirectly, and which is not yet (vii. 23) actually "redeemed"?
[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =Thanks be to God,[118]= who giveth that
deliverance, in covenant and in measure now, fully and in eternal
actuality hereafter, =through Jesus Christ our Lord.=

=So then,= to sum the whole phenomenon of the conflict up, leaving
aside for the moment this glorious hope of the issue, =I, myself, with
the mind indeed do bondservice to the law of God, but with the flesh,=
with the life of self, wherever and whenever I "revert" that way, I do
bondservice =to the law of sin.=

       *       *       *       *       *

Do we close the passage with a sigh, and almost with a groan? Do we
sigh over the intricacy of the thought, the depth and subtlety of the
reasoning, the almost fatigue of fixing and of grasping the facts
below the terms "_will_," and "_mind_," and "_inner man_," and
"_flesh_," and "_I_"? Do we groan over the consciousness that no
analysis of our spiritual failures can console us for the fact of
them, and that the Apostle seems in his last sentences to relegate our
consolations to the future, while it is in the present that we fail,
and in the present that we long with all our souls to do, as well as
to approve, the will of God?

Let us be patient, and also let us think again. Let us find a solemn
and sanctifying peace in the patience which meekly accepts the mystery
that we must needs "wait yet for the redemption of our body"; that the
conditions of "this corruptible" must yet for a season give ambushes
and vantages to temptation, which will be all annihilated hereafter.
But let us also think again. If we went at all aright in our remarks
previous to this passage, there are glorious possibilities for the
present hour "readable between the lines" of St Paul's unutterably
deep confession. We have seen in conflict the Christian man,
regenerate, yet taken, in a practical sense, apart from his
Regenerator. We have seen him really fight, though he really fails. We
have seen him unwittingly, but guiltily, betray his position to the
foe, by occupying it as it were alone. We have seen also,
nevertheless, that he is not his foe's ally but his antagonist.
Listen; he is calling for his KING.

That cry will not be in vain. The King will take a double line of
action in response. While his soldier-bondservant is yet in the body,
"the body of this death," He will throw HIMSELF into the narrow hold,
and wonderfully turn the tide within it, and around it. And hereafter,
He will demolish it. Rather, He will transfigure it, into the
counterpart--even as it were into the part--of His own Body of glory;
and the man shall rest, and serve, and reign for ever, with a being
homogeneous all through in its likeness to the Lord.

[108] See J. B. Mozley's _Lectures, etc._, ix, x.

[109] Exod. xx. 17.--Observe here that great fact of Christian
doctrine; that desire, bias, gravitation away from God's will, is sin,
whether carried into act _or not_. Is not St Paul here recalling some
quite special spiritual incident?

[110] Ἀφορμὴν λαβοῦσα διὰ τῆς ἐντολῆς.

[111] Ἐμοὶ is slightly emphatic; as if to say, "_at least in my
case_."

[112] For this meaning of θέλειν see the closely parallel passage,
the almost sketch or embryo of this paragraph, Gal. v. 17.

[113] Read not οὐχ εὑρίσκω, but simply οὔ.

[114] Again ποιῶ and πράσσω, as in ver. 16.

[115] In itself, the phrase ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος is neutral. By usage it
attaches itself to ideas of regeneration. See 2 Cor. iv. 16, Eph.
iii. 16.

[116] Αἰχμαλωτίζοντα: "Making me prisoner of _war_." Observe the
present tense, which indicates not necessarily the full success of the
strategy, but its aim.

[117] The Greek equally allows the rendering "_out of this body of
death_."

[118] Read χάρις τῷ Θεῶ.




CHAPTER XVII

_THE JUSTIFIED: THEIR LIFE BY THE HOLY SPIRIT_

ROMANS viii. 1-11


The sequence of the eighth chapter of the Epistle on the seventh is a
study always interesting and fruitful. No one can read the two
chapters over without feeling the strong connexion between them, a
connexion at once of contrast and of complement. Great indeed is the
contrast between the paragraphs vii. 7-25 and the eighth chapter. The
stern analysis of the one, unrelieved save by the fragment of
thanksgiving at its close, (and even this is followed at once by a
re-statement of the mysterious dualism,) is to the revelations and
triumphs of the other as an almost starless night, stifling and
electric, to the splendour of a midsummer morning with a yet more
glorious morrow for its future. And there is complement as well as
contrast. The day is related to the night, which has prepared us for
it, as hunger prepares for food. Precisely what was absent from the
former passage is supplied richly in the latter. There the Name of the
Holy Spirit, "the Lord, the Life-Giver," was unheard. Here the fact
and power of the Holy Spirit are present everywhere, so present that
there is no other portion of the whole Scripture, unless we except the
Redeemer's own Paschal Discourse, which presents us with so great a
wealth of revelation on this all-precious theme. And here we find the
secret that is to "stint the strife" which we have just witnessed, and
which in our own souls we know so well. Here is the way "_how_ to walk
and to please God" (1 Thess. iv. 1), in our justified life. Here is
the way how, not to be as it were the victims of "the body," and the
slaves of "the flesh," but to "_do to death the body's practices_" in
a continuous exercise of inward power, and to "_walk after the
Spirit_." Here is the resource on which we may be for ever joyfully
paying "_the debt_" of such a walk; giving our redeeming Lord His due,
the value of His purchase, even our willing, loving surrender, in the
all-sufficient strength of "the Holy Ghost given unto us."

Noteworthy indeed is the manner of the introduction of this glorious
truth. It appears not without preparation and intimation; we have
heard already of the Holy Ghost in the Christian's life, v. 5, vii. 6.
The heavenly water has been seen and heard in its flow; as in a
limestone country the traveller may see and hear, through fissures in
the fields, the buried but living floods. But here the truth of the
Spirit, like those floods, finding at last their exit at some rough
cliff's base, pours itself into the light, and animates all the scene.
In such an order and manner of treatment there is a spiritual and also
a practical lesson. We are surely reminded, as to the experiences of
the Christian life, that in a certain sense we possess the Holy Ghost,
yea, in His fulness, from the first hour of our possession of Christ.
We are reminded also that it is at least possible on the other hand
that we may need so to realize and to use our covenant possession,
after sad experiments in other directions, that life shall be
thenceforth a new experience of liberty and holy joy. We are reminded
meanwhile that such a "new departure," when it occurs, is new rather
from our side than from the Lord's. The water was running all the
while below the rocks. Insight and faith, given by His grace, have not
called it from above, but as it were from within, liberating what was
there.

The practical lesson of this is important for the Christian teacher
and pastor. On the one hand, let him make very much in his
instructions, public and private, of the revelation of the Spirit. Let
him leave no room, so far as he can do it, for doubt or oblivion in
his friends' minds about the absolute necessity of the fulness of the
presence and power of the Holy One, if life is to be indeed Christian.
Let him describe as boldly and fully as the Word describes it what
life may be, must be, where that sacred fulness dwells; how assured,
how happy within, how serviceable around, how pure, free, and strong,
how heavenly, how practical, how humble. Let him urge any who have yet
to learn it to learn all this in their own experience, claiming on
their knees the mighty gift of God. On the other hand, let him be
careful not to overdraw his theory, and to prescribe too rigidly the
methods of experience. Not all believers fail in the first hours of
their faith to realize, and to use, the fulness of what the Covenant
gives them. And where that realization comes later than our first
sight of Christ, as with so many of us it does come, not always is the
experience and action the same. To one it is a crisis of memorable
consciousness, a private Pentecost. Another wakes up as from sleep to
find the unsuspected treasure at his hand--hid from him till then by
nothing thicker than shadows. And another is aware that somehow, he
knows not how, he has come to use the Presence and Power as a while
ago he did not; he has passed a frontier--but he knows not when.

In all these cases, meanwhile, the man had, in one great respect,
possessed the great gift all along. In covenant, in Christ, it was
his. As he stepped by penitent faith into the Lord, he trod on ground
which, wonderful to say, was all his own. And beneath it ran, that
moment, the River of the water of life. Only, he had to discover, to
draw, and to apply.

Again, the relation we have just indicated between our possession of
Christ and our possession of the Holy Ghost is a matter of the utmost
moment, spiritual and practical, presented prominently in this
passage. All along, as we read the passage, we find linked
inextricably together the truths of the Spirit and of the Son. "_The
law of the Spirit of life_" is bound up with "_Christ Jesus_." The Son
of God was sent, to take our flesh, to die as our Sin-Offering, that
we might "_walk according to the Spirit_." "_The Spirit of God_" is
"_the Spirit of Christ_." The presence of the Spirit of Christ is such
that, where He dwells, "_Christ is in you_." Here we read at once a
caution, and a truth of the richest positive blessing. We are warned
to remember that there is no _separable_ "Gospel of the Spirit." Not
for a moment are we to advance, as it were, from the Lord Jesus Christ
to a higher or deeper region, ruled by the Holy Ghost. All the
reasons, methods, and issues of the work of the Holy Ghost are
eternally and organically connected with the Son of God. We have Him
at all because Christ died. We have life because He has joined us to
Christ living. Our experimental proof of His fulness is that Christ to
us is all. And we are to be on the guard against any exposition of His
work and glory which shall for one moment leave out those facts. But
not only are we to be on our guard; we are to rejoice in the thought
that the mighty, the endless, work of the Spirit _is_ all done always
upon that sacred Field, Christ Jesus. And every day we are to draw
upon the indwelling Giver of Life to do for us His own, His
characteristic, work; to shew us "our King in His beauty," and to
"fill our springs of thought and will with Him."

To return to the connexion of the two great chapters. We have seen how
close and pregnant it is; the contrast and the complement. But it is
also true, surely, that the eighth chapter is not merely and only the
counterpart to the seventh. Rather the eighth, though the seventh
applies to it a special motive, is also a review of the whole previous
argument of the Epistle, or rather the crown on the whole previous
structure. It begins with a deep re-assertion of our Justification; a
point unnoticed in vii. 7-25. It does this using an inferential
particle, "_therefore_," ἄπα--to which, surely, nothing in the just
preceding verses is related. And then it unfolds not only the present
acceptance and present liberty of the saints, but also their amazing
future of glory, already indicated, especially in ch. v. 2. And its
closing strains are full of the great first wonder, our Acceptance.
"_Them He justified_"; "_It is God that justifieth_." So we forbear to
take ch. viii. as simply the successor and counterpart of ch. vii. It
is this, in some great respects. But it is more; it is the meeting
point of all the great truths of grace which we have studied, their
meeting point in the sea of holiness and glory.[119]

As we approach the first paragraph of the chapter, we ask ourselves
what is its message on the whole, its true _envoi_. It is, our
possession of the Holy Spirit of God, for purposes of holy loyalty and
holy liberty. The foundation of that fact is once more indicated, in
the brief assertion of our full Justification in Christ, and of His
propitiatory Sacrifice (ver. 3). Then from those words, "_in Christ_,"
he opens this ample revelation of our possession, in our union with
Christ, of the Spirit who, having joined us to Him, now liberates us
in Him, not from condemnation only but from sin's dominion. If we are
indeed in Christ, the Spirit is in us, dwelling in us, and we are in
the Spirit. And so, possessed and filled by the blessed Power, we
indeed have power to walk and to obey. Nothing is mechanical,
automatic; we are fully persons still; He who annexes and possesses
our personality does not for a moment violate it. But then, He _does_
possess it; and the Christian, so possessing and so possessed, is not
only bound but enabled, in humble but practical reality, in a liberty
otherwise unknown, to "_fulfil the just demand of the Law_," "_to
please God_," in a life lived not to self but to Him.

Thus, as we shall see in detail as we proceed, the Apostle, while he
still firmly keeps his hand, so to speak, on Justification, is
occupied fully now with its issue, Holiness. And this issue he
explains as not merely a matter of grateful feeling, the outcome of
the loyalty supposed to be natural to the pardoned. He gives it as a
matter of divine power, secured to them under the Covenant of their
acceptance.

Shall we not enter on our expository study full of holy expectation,
and with unspeakable desires awake, to receive all things which in
that Covenant are ours? Shall we not remember, over every sentence,
that in it Christ speaks by Paul, and speaks to us? For us also, as
for our spiritual ancestors, all this is true. It shall be true in us
also, as it was in them.

We shall be humbled as well as gladdened; and thus our gladness will
be sounder. We shall find that whatever be our "_walk according to the
Spirit_," and our veritable dominion over sin, we shall still have
"_the practices of the body_" with which to deal--of the body which
still is "_dead because of sin_," "_mortal_," not yet "_redeemed_." We
shall be practically reminded, even by the most joyous exhortations,
that possession and personal condition are one thing in covenant, and
another in realization; that we must watch, pray, examine self, and
deny it, if we would "be" what we "are." Yet all this is but the
salutary accessory to the blessed main burthen of every line. We are
accepted in the Lord. In the Lord we have the Eternal Spirit for our
inward Possessor. Let us arise, and "walk humbly," but also in
gladness, "with our God."

St Paul speaks again, perhaps after a silence, and Tertius writes down
for the first time the now immortal and beloved words. [Sidenote: Ver. 1.]
=So no adverse sentence is there now,= in view of this great fact of
our redemption, =for those in Christ Jesus.[120]= "_In Christ
Jesus_"--mysterious union, blessed fact, wrought by the Spirit who
linked us sinners to the Lord.[121] [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =For the law
of the Spirit of the life which is in Christ Jesus[122] freed me,= the
man of the conflict just described, =from the law of sin and of
death.= The "law," the preceptive will, which legislates the covenant
of blessing for all who are in Christ, has set him free. By a strange,
pregnant paradox, so we take it, the Gospel--the message which carries
with it acceptance, and also holiness, by faith--is here called a
"law." For while it is free grace to us it is also immovable ordinance
with God. The amnesty is His edict. It is by heavenly _statute_ that
sinners, believing, possess the Holy Spirit in possessing Christ. And
here, with a sublime abruptness and directness, that great gift of the
Covenant, the Spirit, for which the Covenant gift of Justification was
given, is put forward as the Covenant's characteristic and crown. It
is for the moment as if this were all--that "_in Christ Jesus_" we, I,
are under the _fiat_ which assures to us the fulness of the Spirit.
And this "law," unlike the stern "letter" of Sinai, has actually
"_freed me_." It has endowed me not only with place but with power, in
which to live emancipated from a rival law, the law of sin and of
death. And what is that rival "law"? We dare to say, it is the
preceptive will of Sinai; "Do this, and thou shalt live." This is a
hard saying; for in itself that very Law has been recently vindicated
as holy, and just, and good, and spiritual. And only a few lines above
in the Epistle we have heard of a "law of sin" which is "served by the
flesh." And we should unhesitatingly explain this "law" to be
identical with that _but for the next verse here_, a still nearer
context, in which "the law" is unmistakably the divine moral Code,
considered however as _impotent_. Must not this and that be the same?
And to call that sacred Code "_the Law of sin and of death_" is not to
say that it is sinful and deathful. It need only mean, and we think it
does mean, that it is sin's occasion, and death's warrant, by the
unrelieved collision of its holiness with fallen man's will. It must
command; he, being what he is, must rebel. He rebels; it must condemn.
Then comes his Lord to die for him, and to rise again; and the Spirit
comes, to unite him to his Lord. And now, from the Law as provoking
the helpless, guilty will, and as claiming the sinner's penal
death--behold the man is "_freed_." [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For=--(the
process is now explained at large) =the impossible of the Law=--what
it could not do, for this was not its function, even to enable us
sinners to keep its precept from the soul--=God, when He sent His own
Son in likeness of flesh of sin,= Incarnate, in our identical nature,
under all those conditions of earthly life which for us are sin's
vehicles and occasions, =and as Sin-Offering,[123]= expiatory and
reconciling, =sentenced sin in the flesh;= not pardoned it, observe,
but sentenced it. He ordered it to execution; He killed its claim and
its power for all who are in Christ. And this, "_in the flesh_,"
making man's earthly conditions the scene of sin's defeat, for our
everlasting encouragement in our "life in the flesh." And what was the
aim and issue? [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =That the righteous demand
(δικαίωμα) of the Law might be fulfilled in us, us who walk not
flesh-wise, but Spirit-wise;= that we, accepted in Christ, and using
the Spirit's power in the daily "walk" of circumstance and experience,
might be liberated from the life of self-will, and meet the will of
God with simplicity and joy.

Such, and nothing less or else, was the Law's "_righteous demand_"; an
obedience not only universal but also cordial. For its first
requirement, "Thou shalt have no other God," meant, in the spiritual
heart of it, the dethronement of self from its central place, and the
session there of the Lord. But this could never be while there was a
reckoning still unsettled between the man and God. Friction there must
be while God's Law remained not only violated but unsatisfied,
unatoned.[124] And so it necessarily remained, till the sole adequate
Person, one with God, one with man, stepped into the gap; our Peace,
our Righteousness, and also by the Holy Ghost our Life. At rest
because of His sacrifice, at work by the power of His Spirit, we are
now free to love, and divinely enabled to walk in love. Meanwhile the
dream of an unsinning perfectness, such as could make a meritorious
claim, is not so much negatived as precluded, put far out of the
question. For the central truth of the new position is that THE LORD
has fully dealt, for us, with the Law's claim that man shall _deserve_
acceptance. "Boasting" is inexorably "excluded," to the last, from
this new kind of law-fulfilling life. For the "fulfilment" which means
legal satisfaction is for ever taken out of our hands by Christ, and
only that humble "fulfilment" is ours which means a restful,
unanxious, reverent, unreserved loyalty in practice. To this now our
"_mind_," our cast and gravitation of soul, is brought, in the life of
acceptance, and in the power of the Spirit. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For
they who are flesh-wise,= the unchanged children of the self-life,
=think,= "_mind_," have moral affinity and converse with, =the things
of the flesh; but they who are Spirit-wise, think the things of the
Spirit,= His love, joy, peace, and all that holy "fruit." Their
liberated and Spirit-bearing life now goes that way, in its true bias.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =For the mind,= the moral affinity, =of the
flesh,= of the self-life, =is death;= it involves the ruin of the
soul, in condemnation, and in separation from God; =but the mind of
the Spirit,= the affinity given to the believer by the indwelling Holy
One, =is life and peace;= it implies union with Christ, our life and
our acceptance; it is the state of soul in which He is realized.
[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =Because=--this absolute antagonism of the two
"_minds_" is such _because_--=the "mind" of the flesh is personal
hostility (ἔχθρα) towards God; for to God's Law it is not subject.
For indeed it cannot be= subject to it; [Sidenote: Ver. 8.]
=those[125] who are in flesh,= surrendered to the life of self as
their law, =cannot please God,[126]= "_cannot meet the wish_"
(ἀρέσαι) of Him whose loving but absolute claim is to be Lord of the
whole man.

"They cannot": it is a moral impossibility. "The Law of God" is, "Thou
shalt love Me with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself"; the
mind of the flesh is, "I will love my self and its will first and
most." Let this be disguised as it may, even from the man himself; it
is always the same thing in its essence. It may mean a defiant choice
of open evil. It may mean a subtle and almost evanescent preference of
literature, or art, or work, or home, to God's will as such. It is in
either case "_the mind of the flesh_," a thing which cannot be refined
and educated into holiness, but must be surrendered at discretion, as
its eternal enemy.

[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =But you= (there is a glad emphasis on "_you_")
=are not in flesh, but in Spirit,= surrendered to the indwelling
Presence as your law and secret, =on the assumption that= (εἴπερ: he
suggests not weary misgivings but a true examination) =God's Spirit
dwells in you;= has His home in your hearts, humbly welcomed into a
continuous residence. =But if any one has not Christ's Spirit,= (who
is the Spirit as of the Father so of the Son, sent by the Son, to
reveal and to impart Him,) =that man is not His.= He may bear his
Lord's name, he may be externally a Christian, he may enjoy the divine
Sacraments of union; but he has not "the Thing." The Spirit, evidenced
by His holy fruit, is no Indweller there; and the Spirit is our vital
Bond with Christ. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =But if Christ is,= thus by the
Spirit, =in you,= dwelling by faith in the hearts which the Spirit has
"strengthened" to receive Christ (Eph. iii. 16, 17)--=true (μὲν),
the body is dead, because of sin,= the primeval sentence still holds
its way _there_; the body is deathful still, it is the body of the
Fall; =but the Spirit[127] is life,= He is in that body, your secret
of power and peace eternal, =because of righteousness,= because of the
merit of your Lord, in which you are accepted, and which has won for
you this wonderful Spirit-life.

Then even for the body there is assured a glorious future, organically
one with this living present. Let us listen as he goes on:
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus,= the
slain Man, =from the dead, dwells in you, He who raised from the dead
Christ Jesus,= the Man so revealed and glorified as the Anointed
Saviour, =shall also bring to life your mortal bodies, because of
(διὰ τὸ κτλ[128]) His Spirit, dwelling in you.= That "frail temple,"
once so much defiled, and so defiling, is now precious to the Father
because it is the habitation of the Spirit of His Son. Nor only so;
that same Spirit, who, by uniting us to Christ, made actual our
redemption, shall surely, in ways to us unknown, carry the process to
its glorious crown, and be somehow the Efficient Cause of "the
redemption of our body."

Wonderful is this deep characteristic of the Scripture; its Gospel for
the body. In Christ, the body is seen to be something far different
from the mere clog, or prison, or chrysalis, of the soul. It is its
destined implement, may we not say its mighty wings in prospect, for
the life of glory. As invaded by sin, it must needs pass through
either death or, at the Lord's Return, an equivalent transfiguration.
But as created in God's plan of Human Nature it is for ever congenial
to the soul, nay, it is necessary to the soul's full action. And
whatever be the mysterious mode (it is absolutely hidden from us as
yet) of the event of Resurrection, this we know, if only from this
Oracle, that the glory of the immortal body will have profound
relations with the work of God in the sanctified soul. No mere
material sequences will bring it about. It will be "_because of the
Spirit_"; and "because of the Spirit _dwelling in you_," as your power
for holiness in Christ.[129]

So the Christian reads the account of his present spiritual wealth,
and of his coming completed life, "his perfect consummation and bliss
in the eternal glory." Let him take it home, with most humble but
quite decisive assurance, as he looks again, and believes again, on
his redeeming Lord. For him, in his inexpressible need, God has gone
about to provide "so great salvation." He has accepted his person in
His Son who died for him. He has not only _forgiven him_ through that
great Sacrifice, but in it He has "_condemned_," sentenced to chains
and death, _his sin_, which is now a doomed thing, beneath his feet,
in Christ. And He has given to him, as personal and perpetual
Indweller, to be claimed, hailed, and used by humble faith, His own
Eternal Spirit, the Spirit of His Son, the Blessed One who, dwelling
infinitely in the Head, comes to dwell fully in the members, and make
Head and members wonderfully one. Now then let him give himself up
with joy, thanksgiving, and expectation, to the "_fulfilling of the
righteous demand of God's Law_," "_walking Spirit-wise_," with steps
moving ever away from self and towards the will of God. Let him meet
the world, the devil, and that mysterious "flesh," (all ever in
potential presence,) with no less a Name than that of the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Let him stand up not as a defeated and
disappointed combatant, maimed, half-blinded, half-persuaded to
succumb, but as one who treads upon "all the power of the enemy," in
Christ, by the indwelling Spirit. And let him reverence his mortal
body, even while he "keeps it in subjection," and while he willingly
tires it, or gives it to suffer, for his Lord. For it is the temple of
the Spirit. It is the casket of the hope of glory.

[119] "In this surpassing chapter the several streams of the preceding
arguments meet and flow in one 'river of the water of life, clear as
crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb,' until
it seems to lose itself in the ocean of a blissful eternity."--David
Brown, D.D., "_The Epistle to the Romans_," in "_Handbooks for Bible
Classes_."

[120] There can be no reasonable doubt that the words "_who walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit_," should be omitted. They are
probably a _gloss_ from ver. 4; inserted (perhaps first as a
side-note) by scribes who failed to appreciate the profound simplicity
of the Apostle's dictum.

[121] We thus indicate the thought given by the otherwise difficult
"_For_" of ver. 2. That "_for_" cannot mean to imply that there is no
condemnation _because the Spirit has enabled us to be holy_; this
would stultify the whole argument of chapters iii.-v. What, in that
context, it must imply is the complex fact (1) that _we are in
Christ_--where there is no condemnation, and (2) that we are there _by
the Holy Spirit_, who brought us to saving faith. Now we are to learn
(3) what that Spirit has done _also_ for us in giving us union with
Christ.

[122] Τοῦ πνεύματος τῆς ζωῆς ἐν Χπριστῷ Ἰησοῦ. In the Greek of the
N. T. it is possible so to interpret. Classical Greek would require
τῆς ζωῆς τῆς ἐν Χ. Ἰ. The rendering, however, "_the law of the
Spirit of life, in Christ Jesus_," (making the last three words govern
the whole previous thought,) is amply admissible.

[123] Περὶ ἁμαρτίας: the phrase is stamped with a sacrificial
speciality by the Greek of the O. T. See _e.g._ Levit. xvi. 3, 5, 6,
9, 11, 15, 16, 25, 27. And cp. Heb. x. 8.

[124] "The way of him that is laden with guilt is exceeding crooked."
Prov. xxi. 8 R.V.

[125] We do not translate the δὲ. It seems to be best represented in
English by connecting the clause only by position with what goes
before.

[126] The Greek lays a solemn emphasis by position on Θεῷ.

[127] We refer the word πνεῦμα here, as throughout the passage, to
the Holy Ghost. No other interpretation seems either consistent with
the whole context, or adequate to its grandeur.

[128] We read thus, not διὰ τοῦ κτλ ("_by means of, by the agency
of, His Spirit_"). The two readings have each strong support, but we
think the balance of evidence is for the accusative not the genitive.
Happily the exegetical difference is not serious. The accusative gives
indeed a meaning which may well include that given by the genitive,
while it includes other ideas also.

[129] We are aware that ver. 11 has been sometimes interpreted of
present blessings for the body; as if the fulness of the Holy Ghost
was to effect a quasi-glorification of the body's condition now;
exempting it from illness, and at least retarding its decay. But this
seems untenable. If the words point this way at all, ought they not to
mean a literal exemption from death altogether? But this manifestly
was not in the Apostle's mind, if we take his writings as a whole.
That spiritual blessings may, and often do, act wonderfully in the
life of the body, is most true. But that is not the truth of this
verse.




CHAPTER XVIII

_HOLINESS BY THE SPIRIT, AND THE GLORIES THAT SHALL FOLLOW_

ROMANS viii. 12-25


Now the Apostle goes on to develop these noble premisses into
conclusions. How true to himself, and to his Inspirer, is the line he
follows! First come the most practical possible of reminders of duty;
then, and in profound connexion, the inmost experiences of the
regenerate soul in both its joy and its sorrow, and the most radiant
and far-reaching prospects of glory to come. We listen still, always
remembering that this letter from Corinth to Rome is to reach us too,
by way of the City. He who moved His servant to send it to Aquila and
Herodion had us too in mind, and has now carried out His purpose. It
is open in our hands for our faith, love, hope, life to-day.

St Paul begins with Holiness viewed as Duty, as Debt. He has led us
through our vast treasury of privilege and possession. What are we to
do with it? Shall we treat it as a museum, in which we may
occasionally observe the mysteries of New Nature, and with more or
less learning discourse upon them? Shall we treat it as the unwatchful
King[130] of old treated his splendid stores, making them his personal
boast, and so betraying them to the very power which one day was to
make them all its spoil? No, we are to live upon our Lord's
magnificent bounty--to His glory, and in His will. We are rich; but it
is for Him. We have His talents; and those talents, in respect of His
grace, as distinct from His "gifts," are not one, nor five, nor ten,
but ten thousand--for they are Jesus Christ. But we have them all _for
Him_. We are free from the law of sin and of death; but we are in
perpetual and delightful debt to Him who has freed us. And our debt
is--to walk with Him.

"_So, brethren, we are debtors._" Thus our new paragraph begins. For a
moment he turns to say what we owe _no_ debt to; even "_the flesh_,"
the self-life. But it is plain that his main purpose is positive, not
negative. He implies in the whole rich context that we are debtors to
the Spirit, to the Lord, "to walk Spirit-wise."

What a salutary thought it is! Too often in the Christian Church the
great word Holiness has been practically banished to a supposed almost
inaccessible background, to the steeps of a spiritual ambition, to a
region where a few might with difficulty climb in the quest, men and
women who had "leisure to be good," or who perhaps had exceptional
instincts for piety. God be thanked, He has at all times kept many
consciences alive to the illusion of such a notion; and in our own
day, more and more, His mercy brings it home to His children that
"this is His will, even the sanctification"--not of some of them, but
of all. Far and wide we are reviving to see, as the fathers of our
faith saw before us, that whatever else holiness is, it is a sacred
and binding _debt_. It is not an ambition; it is a duty. We are bound,
every one of us who names the name of Christ, to be holy, to be
separate from evil, to walk by the Spirit.

Alas for the misery of indebtedness, when funds fall short! Whether
the unhappy debtor examines his affairs, or guiltily ignores their
condition, he is--if his conscience is not dead--a haunted man. But
when an honourable indebtedness concurs with ample means, then one of
the moral pleasures of life is the punctual scrutiny and discharge.
"He hath it by him"; and it is his happiness, as it is assuredly his
duty, _not_ to "say to his neighbour, Go and come again, and to-morrow
I will give" (Prov. iii. 28).

Christian brother, partaker of Christ, and of the Spirit, we also owe,
to Him who owns. But it is an indebtedness of the happy type. Once we
owed, and there was worse than nothing in the purse. Now we owe, and
we have Christ in us, by the Holy Ghost, wherewithal to pay. The
eternal Neighbour comes to us, with no frowning look, and shews us His
holy demand; to live to-day a life of truth, of purity, of confession
of His Name, of unselfish serviceableness, of glad forgiveness, of
unbroken patience, of practical sympathy, of the love which seeks not
her own. What shall we say? That it is a beautiful ideal, which we
should like to realize, and may yet some day seriously attempt? That
it is admirable, but impossible? Nay; "we are debtors." And He who
claims has first immeasurably given. We have His Son for our
acceptance and our life. His very Spirit is in us. Are not these good
resources for a genuine solvency? "Say not, Go and come again; I will
pay Thee--to-morrow. _Thou hast it by thee!_"

Holiness is beauty. But it is first duty, practical and present, in
Jesus Christ our Lord.

[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =So then, brethren, debtors are we--not to the
flesh, with a view to living flesh-wise;= but to the Spirit--who is
now both our law and our power--with a view to living Spirit-wise.
=For if you are living flesh-wise, you are on the way (μέλλετε) to
die. But if by the Spirit you are doing to death[131] the practices,=
the stratagems, the machinations, =of the body, you will live.= Ah,
the body is still there, and is still a seat and vehicle of
temptation. "It is for the Lord, and the Lord is for it" (1 Cor.
vi. 13). It is the temple of the Spirit. Our call is (1 Cor. vi. 20)
to glorify God in it. But all this, _from our point of view_, passes
from realization into mere theory, wofully gainsaid by experience,
when we let our acceptance in Christ, and our possession in Him of the
Almighty Spirit, pass out of use into mere phrase. Say what some men
will, we are never for an hour here below exempt from elements and
conditions of evil residing not merely around us but within us. There
is no stage of life when we can dispense with the power of the Holy
Ghost as our victory and deliverance from "_the machinations of the
body_." And the body is no separate and as it were minor personality.
If the man's body "machinates," it is the man who is the sinner.

But then, thanks be to God, this fact is not the real burthen of the
words here. What St Paul has to say is that the man who has the
indwelling Spirit has with him, in him, a divine and all-effectual
Counter-Agent to the subtlest of his foes. Let him do what we saw him
above (vii. 7-25) neglecting to do. Let him with conscious purpose,
and firm recollection of his wonderful position and possession (so
easily forgotten!), call up the eternal Power which is indeed not
himself, though in himself. Let him do this with _habitual_
recollection and simplicity. And he shall be "more than conqueror"
where he was so miserably defeated. His path shall be as of one who
walks over foes who threatened, but who fell, and who die at his feet.
It shall be less a struggle than a march, over a battlefield indeed,
yet a field of victory so continuous that it shall be as peace.

"_If by the Spirit you are doing them to death._" Mark well the words.
He says nothing here of things often thought to be of the essence of
spiritual remedies; nothing of "will-worship, and humility, and
unsparing treatment of the body" (Col. ii. 23); nothing even of fast
and prayer. Sacred and precious is self-discipline, the watchful care
that act and habit are true to that "temperance" which is a vital
ingredient in the Spirit's "fruit" (Gal. v. 22, 23). It is the Lord's
own voice (Matt. xxvi. 41) which bids us always "watch and pray";
"praying in the Holy Ghost" (Jude 20). Yes, but these true exercises
of the believing soul are after all only as the covering fence around
that central secret--our use by faith of the presence and power of
"the Holy Ghost given unto us." The Christian who neglects to watch
and pray will most surely find that he knows not how to use this his
great strength, for he will be losing realization of his oneness with
his Lord. But then the man who actually, and in the depth of his
being, is "doing to death the practices of the body," is doing so,
_immediately_, not by discipline, nor by direct effort, but by the
believing use of "the Spirit." Filled with Him, he treads upon the
power of the enemy. And that fulness is according to surrendering
faith.

[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =For as many as are led by God's Spirit, these
are God's sons;= [Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =for you did not receive a
spirit of slavery,= to take you =back again (πάλιν) to fear; no, you
received a Spirit of adoption to sonship, in which= Spirit,
surrendered to His holy power, =we cry,= with no bated, hesitating
breath, ="Abba, our (ὁ) Father."= His argument runs thus; "If you
would live indeed, you must do sin to death by the Spirit. And this
means, in another aspect, that you must yield yourselves to be led
along by the Spirit, with that leading which is sure to conduct you
always away from self and into the will of God. You must welcome the
Indweller to have His holy way with your springs of thought and will.
So, and only so, will you truly answer the idea, the description,
'sons of God'--that glorious term, never to be _satisfied_ by the
relation of mere creaturehood, or by that of merely exterior
sanctification, mere membership in a community of men, though it be
the Visible Church itself. But if you so meet sin by the Spirit, if
you are so led by the Spirit, you do shew yourselves nothing less than
God's own sons. He has called you to nothing lower than sonship; to
vital connexion with a divine Father's life, and to the eternal
embraces of His love. For when He gave and you received the Spirit,
the Holy Spirit of promise, who reveals Christ and joins you to Him,
what did that Spirit do, in His heavenly operation? Did He lead you
back to the old position, in which you shrunk from God, as from a
Master who bound you against your will? No, He shewed you that in the
Only Son you are nothing less than sons, welcomed into the inmost home
of eternal life and love. You found yourselves indescribably near the
Father's heart, because accepted, and new-created, in His Own Beloved.
And so you learnt the happy, confident call of the child, 'Father, O
Father; Our Father, Abba.'"[132]

So it was, and so it is. The living member of Christ is nothing less
than the dear child of God. He is other things besides; he is
disciple, follower, bondservant. He never ceases to be bondservant,
though here he is expressly told that he has received no "spirit of
slavery." So far as "slavery" means service forced against the will,
he has done with this, in Christ. But so far as it means service
rendered by one who is his master's absolute property, he has entered
into its depths, for ever. Yet all this is exterior as it were to that
inmost fact, that he is--in a sense ultimate, and which alone really
fulfils the word--the child, the son, of God. He is dearer than he can
know to his Father. He is more welcome than he can ever realize to
take his Father at His word, and lean upon His heart, and tell Him
all.

[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit,
that we are God's children,= born children, τεκνά. The Holy One, on
His part, makes the once cold, reluctant, apprehensive heart "know and
believe the love of God." He "sheds abroad God's love in it." He
brings home to consciousness and insight the "sober certainty" of the
promises of the Word; that Word through which, above all other means,
He speaks. He shews to the man "the things of Christ," the Beloved, in
whom he has the adoption and the regeneration; making him see, as
souls see, what a paternal welcome there _must_ be for those who are
"in HIM." And then, on the other part, the believer meets Spirit with
spirit. He responds to the revealed paternal smile with not merely a
subject's loyalty but a son's deep love; deep, reverent, tender,
genuine love. "Doubtless thou art His own child," says the Spirit.
"Doubtless He is my Father," says our wondering, believing, seeing
spirit in response.

[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =But if children, then also heirs; God's heirs,
Christ's co-heirs,= possessors in prospect of our Father's heaven
(towards which the whole argument now gravitates), in union of
interest and life with our Firstborn Brother, in whom lies our right.
From one hand a gift, infinitely merciful and surprising, that unseen
bliss will be from another the lawful portion of the lawful child, one
with the Beloved of the Father. Such heirs we are, =if indeed we share
His sufferings,= those deep but hallowed pains which will surely come
to us as we live in and for Him in a fallen world, =that we may also
share His glory,= for which that path of sorrow is, not indeed the
meriting, but the capacitating, preparation.

Amidst the truths of life and love, of the Son, of the Spirit, of the
Father, he thus throws in the truth of pain. Let us not forget it. In
one form or another, it is for all "_the children_." Not all are
martyrs, not all are exiles or captives, not all are called as a fact
to meet open insults in a defiant world of paganism or unbelief. Many
are still so called, as many were at first, and as many will be to the
end; for "the world" is no more now than it ever was in love with God,
and with His children as such. But even for those whose path is--not
by themselves but the Lord--most protected, there must be
"_suffering_," somehow, sooner, later, in this present life, if they
are really living the life of the Spirit, the life of the child of
God, "paying the debt" of daily holiness, even in its humblest and
gentlest forms. We must observe, by the way, that it is to _such_
sufferings, and not to sorrows in general, that the reference lies
here. The Lord's heart is open for all the griefs of His people, and
He can use them all for their blessing and for His ends. But the
"suffering _with Him_" must imply a pain _due to our union_. It must
be involved in our being His members, used by the Head for His work.
It must be the hurt of His "hand" or "foot" in subserving His
sovereign thought. What will the bliss be of the corresponding sequel!
"That we may _share His glory_"; not merely, "be glorified," but share
His glory; a splendour of life, joy, and power whose eternal law and
soul will be, union with Him who died for us and rose again.

Now towards that prospect St Paul's whole thought sets, as the waters
set towards the moon, and the mention of that glory, after suffering,
draws him to a sight of the mighty "plurity" of the glory.
[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =For I reckon,= "_I calculate_"--word of
sublimest _prose_, more moving here than any poetry, because it bids
us handle the hope of glory _as a fact_--=that not worthy= of mention
=are the sufferings of the present season= (καιροῦ, not χρόνου;
he thinks of time not in its length but in its limit), =in view of the
glory about to be unveiled upon us (εἰς ἡμᾶς),= unveiled, and then
heaped upon us, in its golden fulness.[133] [Sidenote: Ver. 19.]
=For=--he is going to give us a deep reason for his "calculation";
wonderfully characteristic of the Gospel. It is that the final glory
of the saints will be a crisis of mysterious blessing for the whole
created Universe.[134] In ways absolutely unknown, certainly as
regards anything said in this passage, but none the less divinely fit
and sure, the ultimate and eternal manifestation of Christ Mystical,
the Perfect Head with His perfected members, will be the occasion, and
in some sense too the cause, the mediating cause, of the emancipation
of "Nature," in its heights and depths, from the cancer of decay, and
its entrance on an endless æon of indissoluble life and splendour.
Doubtless that goal shall be reached through long processes and
intense crises of strife and death. "Nature," like the saint, may need
to pass to glory through a tomb. But the issue will indeed be glory,
when He who is the Head at once of "Nature,"[135] of the heavenly
nations, and of redeemed man, shall bid the vast periods of conflict
and dissolution cease, in the hour of eternal purpose, and shall
manifestly "_be_ what He _is_" to the mighty total.

With such a prospect natural philosophy has nothing to do. Its own
laws of observation and tabulation forbid it to make a single
affirmation of what the Universe shall be, or shall not be, under new
and unknown conditions. Revelation, with no arbitrary voice, but as
the authorized while reserved messenger of THE MAKER, and standing by
the open Grave of the Resurrection, announces that there are to be
profoundly new conditions, and that they bear a relation inscrutable
but necessary to the coming glorification of Christ and His Church.
And what we now see and feel as the imperfections and shocks and
seeming failures of the Universe, so we learn from this voice, a voice
so quiet yet so triumphant, are only as it were the throes of birth,
in which "Nature," impersonal indeed but so to speak animated by the
thinking of the intelligent orders who are a part of her universal
being, preludes her wonderful future.

[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =For the longing outlook of the creation is
expecting--the unveiling of the sons of God.= [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =For
to vanity,= to evil, to failure and decay, =the creation was subjected
not willingly, but because of Him who made it subject;= its Lord and
Sustainer, who in His inscrutable but holy will bade physical evil
correspond to the moral evil of His conscious fallen creatures, angels
or men. So that there is a deeper connexion than we can yet analyse
between sin, the primal and central evil, and everything that is
really wreck or pain. But this "subjection," under His _fiat_, was
[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =in hope, because the creation itself shall be
liberated from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory
of the children of God,= the freedom brought in for _it_ by _their_
eternal liberation from the last relics of the Fall. [Sidenote: Ver. 22.]
=For we know,= by observation of natural evil, in the light of the
promises, =that the whole creation is uttering a common groan= of
burthen and yearning, =and suffering a common birth-pang, even till
now,= when the Gospel has heralded the coming glory. [Sidenote: Ver. 23.]
=Nor only so, but even the actual possessors of the firstfruits of the
Spirit,= possessors of that presence of the Holy One in them now,
which is the sure pledge of His eternal fulness yet to come, =even we
ourselves,= richly blest as we are in our wonderful Spirit-life, =yet
in ourselves are groaning,= burthened still with mortal conditions
pregnant of temptation, lying not around us only but deep within (ἐν
ἑαυτοῖς), =expecting adoption,= full instatement into the fruition
of the sonship which already is ours, even =the redemption of our
body.=

From the coming glories of the Universe he returns, in the
consciousness of an inspired but human heart, to the present
discipline and burthen of the Christian. Let us observe the noble
candour of the words; this "_groan_" interposed in the midst of such a
song of the Spirit and of glory. He has no ambition to pose as the
possessor of an impossible experience. He is more than conqueror; but
he is conscious of his foes. The Holy Ghost is in him; he does the
body's practices victoriously to death by the Holy Ghost. But the body
is there, as the seat and vehicle of manifold temptation. And though
there is a joy in victory which can sometimes make even the presence
of temptation seem "all joy" (Jas i. 2), he knows that something "far
better" is yet to come. His longing is not merely for a personal
victory, but for an eternally unhindered service. That will not fully
be his till his whole being is actually, as well as in covenant,
redeemed. That will not be till not the spirit only but the body is
delivered from the last dark traces of the Fall, in the resurrection
hour.

[Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =For it is as to our (τῇ) hope that we were
saved.= When the Lord laid hold of us we were indeed saved,[136] but
with a salvation which was only in part actual. Its total was not to
be realized till the whole being was in actual salvation. Such
salvation (see below, xiii. 11) was coincident in prospect with "the
Hope," "that blessed Hope,"[137] the Lord's Return and the
resurrection glory. So, to paraphrase this clause, "_It was in the
sense of the Hope that we were saved_."[138] =But a hope in sight is
not a hope; for, what a man sees, why does he hope for?= Hope, in that
case, has, in its nature, expired in possession. And our full
"salvation" _is_ a hope; it is bound up with a Promise not yet
fulfilled; therefore, in its nature, it is still unseen, still
unattained. But then, it is certain; it is infinitely valid; it is
worth any waiting for. [Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =But if, for what we do
not see, we do hope,= looking on good grounds for the sunrise in the
dark east, =with patience we expect it.= "_With patience_," literally
"_through patience_," δι' ὑπομονῆς. The "patience" is as it were
the means, the secret, of the waiting; "patience," that noble word of
the New Testament vocabulary, the saint's active submission,
submissive action, beneath the will of God. It is no nerveless,
motionless prostration; it is the going on and upward, step by step,
as the man "waits upon the Lord, and walks, and does not faint."

[130] 2 Kings xx. 12, 13.

[131] Θανατοῦτε: observe the present tense, the process is a
continuing one.

[132] The Aramaic "_Abba_," used by our Lord in His hour of darkness,
had probably become an almost personal Name to the believers.

[133] With this verse on his lips, unfinished, Calvin died, 1564.

[134] We cannot think that the κτίσις of this passage refers only,
as some would have it, _to humanity_ (as Mark xvi. 15, Col. i. 23).
The κτίσις is a something which was "subjected" _involuntarily_, and
so, surely, not guiltily. This could not be said of humanity.

[135] See Col. i. 15, 16. The Lord's Headship of Creation, explicitly
revealed there, is seen as it were only just below the surface here.

[136] See the _perfect_ participle, κτίσις, Eph. ii. 5, 8.

[137] Is ἡ ἐλπὶς ever used in the N. T. in any other connexion than
this?

[138] Luther's rendering is good as a paraphrase, _Wir sind wohl
selig, doch in der Hoffnung_.




CHAPTER XIX

_THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER IN THE SAINTS: THEIR PRESENT AND ETERNAL WELFARE
IN THE LOVE OF GOD_

ROMANS viii. 26-39


In the last paragraph the music of this glorious didactic prophecy
passed, in some solemn phrases, into the minor mood. "_If we share His
sufferings_"; "_The sufferings of this present season_"; "_We groan
within ourselves_"; "_In the sense of our hope we were saved_." All is
well. The deep harmony of the Christian's full experience, if it is
full downwards as well as upwards, demands sometimes such tones; and
they are all music, for they all express a life in Christ, lived by
the power of the Holy Ghost. But now the strain is to ascend again
into its largest and most triumphant manner. We are now to hear how
our salvation, though its ultimate issues are still things of hope, is
itself a thing of eternity--from everlasting to everlasting. We are to
be made sure that all things are working now, in concurrent action,
for the believer's good; and that his justification is sure; and that
his glory is so certain that its future is, from his Lord's point of
sight, present; and that nothing, absolutely nothing, shall separate
him from the eternal Love.

But first comes one most deep and tender word, the last of its kind in
the long argument, about the presence and power of the Holy Ghost. The
Apostle has the "groan" of the Christian still in his ear, in his
heart; in fact, it is his own. And he has just pointed himself and his
fellow believers to the coming glory, as to a wonderful antidote; a
prospect which is at once great in itself and unspeakably suggestive
of _the greatness_ given to the most suffering and tempted saint by
his union with his Lord. As if to say to the pilgrim, in his moment of
distress, "Remember, you are more to God than you can possibly know;
He has made you such, in Christ, that universal Nature is concerned in
the prospect of your glory." But now, as if nothing must suffice but
what is directly divine, he bids him remember also the presence in him
of the Eternal Spirit, as his mighty but tenderest indwelling Friend.
Even as "that blessed Hope," so, "_likewise also_," this blessed
present Person, is the weak one's power. HE takes the man in his
bewilderment, when troubles from without press him, and fears from
within make him groan, and he is in sore need, yet at a loss for the
right cry. And He moves in the tired soul, and breathes Himself into
its thought, and His mysterious "groan" of divine yearning mingles
with our groan of burthen, and the man's longings go out above all
things not towards rest but towards God and His will. So the
Christian's innermost and ruling desire is both fixed and animated by
the blessed Indweller, and he seeks what the Lord will love to grant,
even Himself and whatever shall please Him. The man prays aright, as
to the essence of the prayer, because (what a divine miracle is put
before us in the words!) the Holy Ghost, immanent in him, prays
through him.

Thus we venture, in advance, to explain the sentences which now
follow. It is true that St Paul does not explicitly say that the
Spirit makes intercession _in_ us, as well as _for_ us. But must it
not be so? For _where is He_, from the point of view of Christian
life, but _in us_?

[Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =Then, in the same way, the Spirit also=--as well
as "the hope"--=helps,= as with a clasping, supporting hand
(συναντιλαμβάνεται), =our weakness,[139]= our shortness and
bewilderment of insight, our feebleness of faith. =For what we should
pray for as we ought, we do not know; but the Spirit Itself interposes
to intercede (ὑπερεντυγχάνει) for us, with groanings unutterable;
but= (whatever be the utterance or no utterance) [Sidenote: Ver. 27.]
=the Searcher of our (τὰς) hearts knows what is the mind,= the
purport, =of the Spirit; because God-wise,[140]= with divine insight
and sympathy, the Spirit with the Father, =He intercedes for saints.=

Did He not so intercede for Paul, and in him, fourteen years before
these words were written, when (2 Cor. xii. 7-10) the man thrice asked
that "the thorn" might be removed, and the Master gave him a better
blessing, the victorious overshadowing power? Did He not so intercede
for Monnica, and in her, when she sought with prayers and tears to
keep her rebellious Augustine by her, and the Lord let him fly from
her side--to Italy, to Ambrose, and so to conversion?[141]

But the strain rises now, finally and fully, into the rest and triumph
of faith. "_We know not_ what we should pray for as we ought"; and the
blessed Spirit meets this deep need in His own way. And this, with all
else that we have in Christ, reminds us of a somewhat that "_we know_"
indeed; namely, that all things, favourable or not in themselves,
concur in blessing for the saints. And then he looks backward (or
rather, upward) into eternity, and sees the throne, and the King with
His sovereign will, and the lines of perfect and infallible plan and
provision which stretch from that Centre to infinity. These
"_saints_," who are they? From one view-point, they are simply sinners
who have seen themselves, and "fled for refuge to the" one possible
"hope"; a "hope set before" every soul that cares to win it. From
another view-point, that of the eternal Mind and Order, they are those
whom, for reasons infinitely wise and just, but wholly hidden in
Himself, the Lord has chosen to be His own for ever, so that His
choice takes effect in their conversion, their acceptance, their
spiritual transformation, and their glory.

There, as regards this great passage, the thought rests and ceases--in
the glorification of the saints. What their Glorifier will do with
them, and through them, thus glorified, is another matter. Assuredly
He will _make use_ of them in His eternal kingdom. The Church, made
most blessed for ever, is yet beatified, ultimately, not for itself
but for its Head, and for His Father. It is to be, in its final
perfectness, "an habitation of God, in the Spirit" (Eph. ii. 22). Is
He not so to possess it that the Universe shall see Him in it, in a
manner and degree now unknown and unimaginable? Is not the endless
"service" of the elect to be such that all orders of being shall
through them behold and adore the glory of the Christ of God? For ever
they will be what they here become, the bondservants of their
Redeeming Lord, His Bride, His vehicle of power and blessing; "having
of their own nothing, in Him all, and all for Him." No self-full
exaltations await them in the place of light; or the whole history of
sin would begin over again, in a new æon. No celestial Pharisaism will
be their spirit; a look downward upon less blessed regions of
existence, as from a sanctuary of their own. Who can tell what
ministries of boundless love will be the expression of their life of
inexpressible and inexhaustible joy? Always, like Gabriel, "in the
presence," will they not always also, like him, "be sent" (Luke i. 19)
on the messages of their glorious Head, in whom at length, in the
"divine event," "all things shall be gathered together"?

But this is not the thought of the passage now in our hands. Here, as
we have said, the thought terminates in the final glorification of the
saints of God, as the immediate goal of the process of their
redemption.

[Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =But we know that for those who love God all
things work together for good, even for those who, purpose-wise, are
His called ones.= "_We know it_," with the cognition of faith; that is
to say, because He, absolutely trustworthy, guarantees it by His
character, and by His word. Deep, nay insoluble is the mystery, from
every other point of view. The lovers of the Lord are indeed unable to
explain, to themselves or others, how this concurrence of "all things"
works out its infallible issues in them. And the observer from outside
cannot understand their certainty that it is so. But the fact is
there, given and assured, not by speculation upon events, but by
personal knowledge of an Eternal Person. "Love God, and thou shalt
know."[142]

They "love God," with a love perfectly unartificial, the genuine
affection of human hearts, hearts not the less human because divinely
new-created, regenerated from above. Their immediate consciousness is
just this; we love Him. Not, we have read the book of life; we have
had a glimpse of the eternal purpose in itself; we have heard our
names recited in a roll of the chosen; but, we love Him. We have found
in Him the eternal Love. In Him we have peace, purity, and that deep,
final satisfaction, that view of "the King in His beauty," which is
the _summum bonum_ of the creature. It was our fault that we saw it no
sooner, that we loved Him no sooner. It is the duty of every soul that
He has made to reflect upon its need of Him, and upon the fact that it
owes it to Him to love Him in His holy beauty of eternal Love. If we
could not it was because we would not. If you cannot it is because,
somehow and somewhere, you will not; will not put yourselves without
reserve in the way of the sight. "Oh taste and see that the Lord is
good"; oh love the eternal Love.

But those who thus simply and genuinely love God are also, on the
other side, "_purpose-wise, His called ones_"; "_called_," in the
sense which we have found above (p. 19) to be consistently traceable
in the Epistles; not merely invited, but brought in; not evangelized
only, but converted. In each case of the happy company, the man, the
woman, came to Christ, came to love God with the freest possible
coming of the will, the heart. Yet each, having come, had the Lord to
thank for the coming. The human personality had traced its orbit of
will and deed, as truly as when it willed to sin and to rebel. But lo,
in ways past our finding out, its free track lay along a previous
track of the purpose of the Eternal; its free "_I will_" was the
precise and fore-ordered correspondence to His "_Thou shalt_." It was
the act of man; it was the grace of God.

Can we get below such a statement, or above it? If we are right in our
reading of the whole teaching of Scripture on the sovereignty of God,
our thoughts upon it, practically, must sink down, and must rest, just
here. The doctrine of the Choice of God, in its sacred mystery,
refuses--so we humbly think--to be explained away so as to mean in
effect little but the choice of man. But then the doctrine is "a lamp,
not a sun." It is presented to us everywhere, and not least in this
Epistle, as a truth not meant to explain everything, but to enforce
_this_ thing--that the man who as a fact loves the eternal Love has to
thank not himself but that Love that his eyes, guiltily shut, were
effectually opened. Not one link in the chain of actual Redemption is
of our forging--or the whole would indeed be fragile. It is "of Him"
that we, in this great matter, will as we ought to will. I ought to
have loved God always. It is of His mere mercy that I love Him now.

With this lesson of uttermost humiliation the truth of the heavenly
Choice, and its effectual Call, brings us also that of an
encouragement altogether divine. Such a "purpose" is no fluctuating
thing, shifting with the currents of time. Such a call to such an
embrace means a tenacity, as well as a welcome, worthy of God. "Who
shall separate us?" "Neither shall any pluck them out of My Father's
hand." And this is the motive of the words in this wonderful context,
where everything is made to bear on _the safety_ of the children of
God, in the midst of all imaginable dangers.

[Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =For whom He knew beforehand,= with a
foreknowledge which, in this argument, can mean nothing short of
foredecision[143]--no mere foreknowledge of what they would do, but
rather of what He would do for them--=those He also set apart
beforehand, for conformation,= deep and genuine, a resemblance due to
kindred _being_,[144] =to the image,= the manifested Countenance, =of
His Son, that He might be Firstborn amongst many brethren,= surrounded
by the circling host of kindred faces, congenial beings, His Father's
children by their union with Himself. So, as ever in the Scriptures,
mystery bears full on character. The man is saved that he may be holy.
His "_predestination_"[145] is not merely not to perish, but to be
made like Christ, in a spiritual transformation, coming out in the
moral features of the family of heaven. And all bears ultimately on
the glory of Christ. The gathered saints are an organism, a family,
before the Father; and their vital Centre is the Beloved Son, who sees
in their true sonship the fruit of "the travail of His soul."

[Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =But those whom He thus set apart beforehand, He
also called,= effectually drew so as truly and freely to choose
Christ; =and those whom He= thus =called= to Christ, =He also
justified= in Christ, in that great way of propitiation and faith of
which the Epistle has so largely spoken; =but[146] those whom He= thus
=justified, He also glorified.= "_Glorified_": it is a marvellous past
tense. It reminds us that in this passage we are placed, as it were,
upon the mountain of the Throne; our finite thought is allowed to
speak for once (however little it understands it) the language of
eternity, to utter the facts as the Eternal sees them. To Him, the
pilgrim is already in the immortal Country; the bondservant is already
at his day's end, receiving His Master's "Well done, good and
faithful." He to whom time is not as it is to us thus sees His
purposes complete, always and for ever. We see through His sight, in
hearing His word about it. So for us, in wonderful paradox, our
glorification is presented, as truly as our call, in terms of
accomplished fact.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here, in a certain sense, the long golden chain of _the doctrine_ of
the Epistle ends--in the hand of the King who thus crowns the sinners
whose redemption, faith, acceptance, and holiness, He had, in the
Heaven of His own Being, fore-willed and fore-ordered, "before the
world began," above all time. What remains of the chapter is the
application of the doctrine. But what an application! The Apostle
brings his converts out into the open field of trial, and bids them
_use_ his doctrine _there_. Are they thus dear to the Father in the
Son? Is their every need thus met? Is their guilt cancelled in
Christ's mighty merit? Is their existence filled with Christ's eternal
Spirit? Is sin thus cast beneath their feet, and is such a heaven
opened above their heads? "Then what have they to fear," before man,
or before God? What power in the universe, of whatever order of being,
can really hurt them? For what can separate them from their portion in
their glorified Lord, and in His Father's love in Him? Again we
listen, with Tertius, as the voice goes on:

[Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =What therefore shall we say in view of these
things? If God is for us, who is against us?= [Sidenote: Ver. 32.]
=HE[147] who did not spare His own true (ἰδίου) Son, but for us all
handed Him over= to that awful expiatory, propitiatory, darkness and
death, so that HE was "pleased to bruise Him, to put Him to grief"
(Isai. liii. 10), all for His own great glory, but, no whit the less,
all for our pure blessing; =how= (wonderful "_how_"!) =shall He not
also with Him,= because _all_ is included and involved in Him who is
the Father's All, =give us also freely all things= (τὰ πάντα, "_the
all_ things that are")? And do we want to be sure that He will not,
after all, find a flaw in our claim, and cast us in His court?
[Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =Who will lodge a charge against God's chosen
ones?= Will =God--who justifies them?[148] Who will condemn them,= if
the charge _is_ lodged? Will =Christ--who died, nay rather who rose,
who is on the right hand of God, who is actually (καὶ) interceding
for us?= (Observe this one mention in the whole Epistle of His
Ascension, and His action for us above, as He is, by the fact of His
Session on the Throne, our sure Channel of eternal blessing, unworthy
that we are.) Do we need assurance, amidst "the sufferings of this
present time," that through them always the invincible hands of Christ
clasp us, with untired love? We "look upon the covenant" of our
acceptance and life in Him who died for us, and who lives both for and
in us, and we meet the fiercest buffet of these waves in peace.
[Sidenote: Ver. 35.] =Who shall sunder us from the love of Christ?=
There rise before him, as he asks, like so many angry personalities,[149]
the outward woes of the pilgrimage. =Tribulation? or Perplexity? or
Persecution? or Famine? or Nakedness? or Peril? or Sword?=
[Sidenote: Ver. 36.] =As it stands written,= in that deep song of
anguish and faith (Psal. xliv.) in which the elder Church, one with us
in deep continuity, tells her story of affliction, ="For Thy sake we
are done to death all the day long; we have been reckoned,= estimated,
=as sheep of slaughter."= Even so. [Sidenote: Ver. 37.] =But in these
things, all of them, we more than conquer;= not only do we tread upon
our foes; we spoil them, we find them occasions of glorious gain,[150]
=through Him who loved us.= [Sidenote: Ver. 38.] =For I am sure that
neither death, nor life,= life with its natural allurements or its
bewildering toils, =nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,[151]=
whatever Orders of being unfriendly to Christ and His saints the vast
Unseen contains, =nor present things, nor things to come,= in all the
boundless field of circumstance and contingency, =nor height, nor
depth,= in the illimitable sphere of space, =nor any other creature,=
no thing, no being, under the Uncreated One, =shall be able to sunder
us,= "_us_" with an emphasis upon the word and thought (ἡμας χωρίσαι),
=from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord=--from the
eternal embrace wherein the Father embosoms the Son, and, in the Son,
all who are one with Him.

So once more the divine music rolls itself out into the blessed Name.
We have heard the previous cadences as they came in their order;
"Jesus our Lord, who was delivered because of our offences, and was
raised again because of our justification" (iv. 25); "That grace might
reign, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (v. 21); "The gift of God is
eternal life, in Jesus Christ our Lord" (vi. 23); "I thank God,
through Jesus Christ our Lord" (vii. 25). Like the theme of a fugue it
has sounded on, deep and high; still, always, "our Lord Jesus Christ,"
who is all things, and in all, and for all, to His happy believing
members. And now all is gathered up into this. Our "Righteousness, and
Sanctification, and Redemption" (1 Cor. i. 33), the golden burthens of
the third chapter, and the sixth, and the eighth, are all, in their
living ultimate essence, "Jesus Christ our Lord." HE makes every
truth, every doctrine of peace and holiness, every sure premiss and
indissoluble inference, to be life as well as light. HE is pardon, and
sanctity, and heaven. Here, finally, the Eternal Love is seen not as
it were diffused into infinity, but gathered up wholly and for ever in
Him. Therefore to be in Him is to be in It. It is to be within the
clasp which surrounds the Beloved of the Father.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some years ago we remember reading this passage, this close of the
eighth chapter, under moving circumstances. On a cloudless January
night, late arrived in Rome, we stood in the Coliseum, a party of
friends from England. Orion, the giant with the sword, glimmered like
a spectre, the spectre of persecution, above the huge precinct; for
the full moon, high in the heavens, overpowered the stars. By its
light we read from a little Testament these words, written so long ago
to be read in that same City; written by the man whose dust now sleeps
at Tre Fontane, where the executioner dismissed him to be with Christ;
written to men and women some of whom at least, in all human
likelihood, suffered in that same Amphitheatre, raised only twenty-two
years after Paul wrote to the Romans, and soon made the scene of
countless martyrdoms. "Do you want a relic?" said a Pope to some eager
visitor. "Gather dust from the Coliseum; it is all the martyrs."

We recited the words of the Epistle, and gave thanks to Him who had
there triumphed in His saints over life and death, over beasts, and
men, and demons. Then we thought of the inmost factors in that great
victory; Truth and Life. They "knew whom they had believed"--their
Sacrifice, their Head, their King. He whom they had believed lived in
them, and they in Him, by the Holy Ghost given to them. Then we
thought of ourselves, in our circumstances so totally different on the
surface, yet carrying the same needs in their depths. Are we too to
overcome, in "the things present" of our modern world, and in face of
"the things to come" yet upon the earth? Are we to be "more than
conquerors," winning blessing out of all things, and really living "in
our own generation" (Acts xiii. 36) as the bondmen of Christ and the
sons of God? Then for us also the absolute necessities are--the same
Truth, and the same Life. And they are ours, thanks be to the Name of
our salvation. Time hath no more dominion over them, because death
hath no more dominion over Him. For us too Jesus died. In us too, by
the Holy Ghost, He lives.

[139] Read ἀσθενείᾳ.

[140] So we venture to render κατὰ Θεόν.

[141] _Confessiones_, v. 8.

[142] See a noble poem by James Montgomery, _The Lot of the
Righteous_.

[143] See _e.g._ xi. 2; Acts ii. 23; 1 Pet. i. 2, 20.

[144] Συμμόρφους: μορφὴ is likeness not by accident but of
essence. The Greek here is literally, "conformed ones _of_ the image,
etc."; as if their similitude made them part of that which they
resembled.

[145] Let us banish from the idea of "_predestination_" all thought of
a mechanical pagan _destiny_, and use it of the sure purpose of the
living and loving God.

[146] Δέ: the "_but_" of logic. He is _proving_ the security of the
prospect of _glory_.

[147] Ὅς γε: the particle deeply _underlines_ the pronoun.

[148] Ὁ δικαιῶν: we adopt the interrogative rendering of all the
clauses here. It is equally good as grammar, and far more congenial to
the glowing context.

[149] Observe the τίς of the question, not τί.

[150] Cp. 1 Cor. iii. 22: "All things _are yours_, whether life _or
death_."

[151] Strong documentary evidence favours the transference of
"_powers_" to a place after "_things to come_." But surely rhythm, and
the affinity of words, look the other way.




CHAPTER XX

_THE SORROWFUL PROBLEM: JEWISH UNBELIEF; DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY_

ROMANS ix. 1-33


We may well think that again there was silence awhile in that
Corinthian chamber, when Tertius had duly inscribed the last words we
have studied. A "silence in heaven" follows, in the Apocalypse
(viii. 1), the vision of the white hosts of the redeemed, gathered at
last, in their eternal jubilation, before the throne and the Lamb. A
silence in the soul is the fittest immediate sequel to such a
revelation of grace and glory as has passed before us here. And did
not the man whose work it was to utter it, and whose personal
experience was as it were the informing soul of the whole argument of
the Epistle from the first, and not least in this last sacred pæan of
faith, keep silence when he had done, hushed and tired by this
"exceeding weight" of grace and glory?

But he has a great deal more to say to the Romans, and in due time the
pen obeys the voice again. What will the next theme be? It will be a
pathetic and significant contrast to the last; a lament, a discussion,
an instruction, and then a prophecy, about not himself and his happy
fellow-saints, but poor self-blinded unbelieving Israel.

The occurrence of that subject exactly here is true to the inmost
nature of the Gospel. The Apostle has just been counting up the wealth
of salvation, and claiming it all, as present and eternal property,
for himself and his brethren in the Lord. Justifying Righteousness,
Liberty from Sin in Christ, the Indwelling Spirit, electing Love,
coming and certain Glory, all have been recounted, and asserted, and
embraced. _Is it selfish_, this great joy of possession and prospect?
Let those say so who see these things only from outside. Make proof of
what they are in their interior, enter into them, learn yourself what
it is to have peace with God, to receive the Spirit, to expect the
eternal glory; and you will find that nothing is so sure to expand the
heart towards other men as the personal reception into it of the Truth
and Life of God in Christ. It is possible to hold a true creed--and to
be spiritually hard and selfish. But is it possible so to be when not
only the creed is held, but the Lord of it, its Heart and Life, is
received with wonder and great joy? The man whose certainties, whose
riches, whose freedom, are all consciously _in Him_, cannot but love
his neighbour, and long that he too should come into "the secret of
the Lord."

So St Paul, just at this point of the Epistle, turns with a peculiar
intensity of grief and yearning towards the Israel which he had once
led, and now had left, because they would not come with him to Christ.
His natural and his spiritual sympathies all alike go out to this
self-afflicting people, so privileged, so divinely loved, and now so
blind. Oh that he could offer any sacrifice that would bring them
reconciled, humbled, happy, to the feet of the true Christ! Oh that
they might see the fallacy of their own way of salvation, and submit
to the way of Christ, taking His yoke, and finding rest to their
souls! Why do they not do it? Why does not the light which convinced
him shine on them? Why should not the whole Sanhedrin say, "Lord, what
wouldst Thou have us to do?" Why does not the fair beauty of the Son
of God make them too "count all things but loss" for Him? Why do not
the voices of the Prophets prove to them, as they do now to Paul,
absolutely convincing of the historical as well as spiritual claims of
the Man of Calvary? Has the promise failed? Has God done with the race
to which He guaranteed such a perpetuity of blessing? No, that cannot
be. He looks again, and he sees in the whole past a long warning that,
while an outer circle of benefits might affect the nation, the inner
circle, the light and life of God indeed, embraced "a remnant" only;
even from the day when Isaac and not Ishmael was made heir of Abraham.
And then he ponders the impenetrable mystery of the relation of the
Infinite Will to human wills; he remembers how, in a way whose full
reasons are unknowable, (but they are good, for they are in God,) the
Infinite Will has to do with our willing; genuine and responsible
though our willing is. And before that opaque veil he rests. He knows
that only righteousness and love is behind it; but he knows that _it
is_ a veil, and that in front of it man's thought must cease and be
silent. Sin is altogether man's fault. But when man turns from sin it
is all God's mercy, free, special, distinguishing. Be silent, and
trust Him, O man whom He has made. Remember, He _has made_ thee. It is
not only that He is greater than thou, or stronger; but He has made
thee. Be reasonably willing to trust, out of sight, the reasons of thy
MAKER.

Then he turns again with new regrets and yearnings to the thought of
that wonderful Gospel which was meant for Israel and for the world,
but which Israel rejected, and now would fain check on its way to the
world. Lastly, he recalls the future, still full of eternal promises
for the chosen race, and through them full of blessing for the world;
till he rises at length from perplexity and anguish, and the wreck of
once eager expectations, into that great Doxology in which he blesses
the Eternal Sovereign for the very mystery of His ways, and adores Him
because He is His own eternal End.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Truth I speak in Christ,= speaking as the member
of the All-Truthful; =I do not lie, my conscience, in the Holy Ghost,=
informed and governed by Him, =bearing me concurrent witness=--the
soul within affirming to itself the word spoken without to
others--[Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =that I have great grief, and my heart has
incessant pain,= yes, the heart in which (v. 5) the Spirit has "poured
out" God's love and joy; there is room for both experiences in its
human depths. [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For I was wishing, I myself, to be
anathema from Christ,= to be devoted to eternal separation from Him;
awful dream of uttermost sacrifice, made impossible only because it
would mean self-robbery from the Lord who had bought him; a spiritual
suicide by sin--=for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen flesh-wise.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For they are (οἵτινές εἰσιν) Israelites,=
bearers of the glorious theocratic name, sons of the "Prince with God"
(Gen. xxxii. 28); =theirs is the adoption,= the call to be Jehovah's
own filial race, "His son, His firstborn" (Exod. iv. 22) of the
peoples; =and the glory,= the Shechinah of the Eternal Presence,
sacramentally seen in Tabernacle and Temple, spiritually spread over
the race; =and the Covenants,= with Abraham, and Isaac, and Levi, and
Moses, and Aaron, and Phinehas, and David; =and the Legislation,= the
holy Moral Code, =and the Ritual,= with its divinely ordered
symbolism, that vast Parable of Christ, =and the Promises,= of "the
pleasant land," and the perpetual favour, and the coming Lord;
[Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =theirs are the Fathers,= patriarchs, and priests,
and kings; =and out of them, as to what is flesh-wise, is the
Christ,--He who is over all things, God, blessed to all eternity.
Amen.[152]=

It is indeed a splendid roll of honours, recited over this race
"separate among the nations," a race which to-day as much as ever
remains the enigma of history, to be solved only by Revelation. "_The
Jews, your Majesty_," was the reply of Frederick the Great's old
believing courtier, when asked with a smile for the credentials of the
Bible; the short answer silenced the Encyclopædist King. It is indeed
a riddle, made of indissoluble facts, this people everywhere
dispersed, yet everywhere individual; scribes of a Book which has
profoundly influenced mankind, and which is recognized by the most
various races as an august and lawful claimant to be divine, yet
themselves, in so many aspects, provincial to the heart; historians of
their own glories, but at least equally of their own unworthiness and
disgrace; transmitters of predictions which may be slighted, but can
never, as a whole, be explained away, yet obstinate deniers of the
majestic fulfilment in the Lord of Christendom; human in every fault
and imperfection, yet so concerned in bringing to man the message of
the Divine that Jesus Himself said of them (John iv. 22), "Salvation
comes from the Jews." On this wonderful race this its most illustrious
member (after his Lord) here fixes his eyes, full of tears. He sees
their glories pass before him--and then realizes the spiritual squalor
and misery of their rejection of the Christ of God. He groans, and in
real agony asks how it can be. One thing only cannot be; the promises
have not failed; there has been no failure in the Promiser. What may
seem such is rather man's misreading of the promise.

[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But it is not as though the word of God has been
thrown out (ἐκπέπτωκε),= that "word" whose divine honour was dearer
to him than even that of his people. =For not all who come from Israel
constitute Israel;= [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =nor, because they are seed of
Abraham, are they all= his =children,= in the sense of family life and
rights; =but "In Isaac shall a seed be called thee"= (Gen. xxi. 12);
Isaac, and not any son of thy body begotten, is father of those whom
thou shalt claim as thy covenant-race. [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =That is to
say, not the children of his (τῆς) flesh are the children of his
(τοῦ) God; no, the children of the promise,= indicated and limited
by its developed terms, =are reckoned as seed.= [Sidenote: Ver. 9.]
=For of the promise this was the word= (Gen. xviii. 10, 14),
="According to this time I will come, and Sarah,= she and not _any_
spouse of thine; no Hagar, no Keturah, but Sarah, =shall have a son."=
And the law of limitations did not stop there, but contracted yet
again the stream of even physical filiation: [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =Nor
only so, but Rebecca too--being with child,= with twin children, =of
one husband=--no problem of complex parentage, as with Abraham,
occurring here--=even of Isaac our father,= just named as the selected
heir--[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =(for= it was =while they were not yet
born, while they had not yet shewn any conduct (πραξάντων τι) good
or bad, that the choice-wise purpose of God might remain,= sole and
sovereign, [Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =not based on works, but= wholly =on
the Caller)--it was said to her= (Gen. xxv. 23), ="The greater shall
be bondman to the less." As it stands written,= in the prophet's
message a millennium later, ="Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,"[153]=
I repudiated him as heir.

So the limit has run always along with the promise. Ishmael is
Abraham's son, yet not his son. Esau is Isaac's son, yet not his son.
And though we trace in Ishmael and in Esau, as they grow,
characteristics which may seem to explain the limitation, this will
not really do. For the chosen one in each case has his conspicuous
unfavourable characteristics too. And the whole tone of the record
(not to speak of this its apostolic interpretation) looks towards
mystery, not explanation. Esau's "profanity" was the concurrent
occasion, not the cause, of the choice of Jacob. The reason of the
choice lay in the depths of God, that World "dark with excess of
bright." All is well there, but not the less all is unknown.

So we are led up to the shut door of the sanctuary of God's Choice.
Touch it; it is adamantine, and it is fast locked. No blind Destiny
has turned the key, and lost it. No inaccessible Tyrant sits within,
playing to himself both sides of a game of fate, and indifferent to
the cry of the soul. The Key-Bearer, whose Name is engraved on the
portal, is "He that liveth, and was dead, and is alive for evermore"
(Rev. i. 18). And if you listen you will hear words within, like the
soft deep voice of many waters, yet of an eternal Heart; "_I am that I
am; I will that I will; trust Me_." But the door _is_ locked; and the
Voice _is_ mystery.

Ah, what agonies have been felt in human souls, as men have looked at
that gate, and pondered the unknown interior! The Eternal knows, with
infinite kindness and sympathy, the pain unspeakable which can beset
the creature when it wrestles with His Eternity, and tries to clasp it
with both hands, and to say that "that is all!" We do not find in
Scripture, surely, anything like an anathema for that awful sense of
the unknown which can gather on the soul drawn--irresistibly as it
sometimes seems to be--into the problems of the Choice of God, and
oppressed as with "the weight of all the seas upon it," by the very
questions stated presently here by the Apostle. The Lord knoweth, not
only His will, but our heart, in these matters. And where He entirely
declines to explain (surely because we are not yet of age to
understand Him if He did) He yet shews us JESUS, and bids us meet the
silence of the mystery with the silence of a personal trust in the
personal Character revealed in Him.

In something of such stillness shall we approach the paragraph now to
follow? Shall we listen, not to explain away, not even over much to
explain, but to submit, with a submission which is not a suppressed
resentment but an entire reliance? We shall find that the whole
matter, in its practical aspect, has a voice articulate enough for the
soul which sees Christ, and believes on Him. It says to that soul,
"Who maketh thee to differ? Who hath fashioned thee to honour? Why art
thou not now, as once, guiltily rejecting Christ, or, what is the
same, postponing Him? Thank HIM who has 'compelled thee,' yet without
violation of thyself, 'to come in.' See in thy choice of Him His mercy
on thee. And now, fall at His feet, to bless Him, to serve Him, and to
trust Him. Think ill of thyself. Think reverently of others. And
remember (the Infinite, who has chosen thee, says it), He willeth not
the death of a sinner, He loved the world, He bids thee to tell it
that He loves it, to tell it that He is Love."

Now we listen. With a look which speaks awe, but not misgiving,
disclosing past tempests of doubt, but now a rest of faith, the
Apostle dictates again:

[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =What therefore shall we say? Is there injustice
at God's bar (παρὰ τῷ Θεῷ)? Away with the thought.= The thing is,
in the deepest sense, unthinkable. God, the God of Revelation, the God
of Christ, is a Being who, if unjust--_ceases to be_, "denies
_Himself_." But the thought that His reasons for some given action
should be, at least to us now, absolute mystery, He being the Infinite
Personality, is not unthinkable at all. And in such a case it is not
unreasonable, but the deepest reason, to ask for no more than His
articulate guarantee, so to speak, that the mystery is fact; that He
is conscious of it, alive to it (speaking humanly); and that He avows
it as His will. For when GOD, the God of Christ, bids us "take His
will for it," it is a different thing from an attempt, however
powerful, to frighten us into silence. It is a reminder WHO He is who
speaks; the Being who is kindred to us, who is in relations with us,
who loved us, but who also has absolutely made us, and cannot (because
we are sheer products of His will) make us so much His equals as to
tell us all. So the Apostle proceeds with a "_for_" whose bearing we
have thus already indicated: [Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =For to Moses he
says= (Exod. xxxiv. 19), in the dark sanctuary of Sinai, ="I shall
pity whomsoever I do pity, and compassionate whomsoever I do
compassionate";= My account of My saving action shall stop there.
[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =It appears (ἄρα) therefore that it,= the
ultimate account of salvation, =is not of= (as the effect is "_of_"
the first cause) =the willer, nor of the runner,= the carrier of
willing into work, =but of the Pitier--God.= [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =For
the Scripture[154] says= (Exod. x. 16) =to Pharaoh,= that large
example of defiant human sin, real and guilty, but also, concurrently,
of the sovereign Choice which sentenced him to go his own way, and
used him as a beacon at its end, ="For this very purpose I raised thee
up,= made thee stand, even beneath the Plagues, =that I might display
in thee My power, and that My Name,= as of the just God who strikes
down the proud, =might be told far and wide (διαγγελῇ) in all the
earth."=

Pharaoh's was a case of concurrent phenomena. _A man_ was there on the
one hand, willingly, deliberately, and most guiltily, battling with
right, and rightly bringing ruin on his own head, wholly of himself.
_God_ was there on the other hand, making that man a monument not of
grace but of judgment. And that side, that line, is isolated here, and
treated as if it were all.

[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =It appears then that whom He pleases, He pities,
and whom He pleases, He hardens,= in that sense in which He "hardened
Pharaoh's heart," "made it stiff" (חזק), "made it heavy" (כבד), "made
it harsh" (קשׁה)--by sentencing it to have its own way. Yes,[155] thus
"_it appears_." And beyond that inference we can take no step of
thought but this--that the Subject of that mysterious "_will_," HE who
thus "_pleases_," and "_pities_," and "_hardens_," is no other than
the God of Jesus Christ. HE may be, not only submitted to, but
trusted, in that unknowable sovereignty of His will. Yet listen
to the question which speaks out the problem of all hearts:
[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =You will say to me therefore, Why does He
still,= after such an avowal of His sovereignty, softening this heart,
hardening that, why does He still =find fault?= Ah why? =For His act
of will who has withstood?= (Nay, you have withstood His will, and so
have I. Not one word of the argument has contradicted the primary fact
of our will, nor therefore our responsibility. But this he does not
bring in here.) Nay rather, rather than take such an attitude of
narrow and helpless logic, think deeper; [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =Nay
rather, O man,= O mere human being (ὦ ἄνθρωπε), =you--who are you, who
are answering back to your (τῷ) God? Shall the thing formed say to its
Former, Why did you make me like this?= [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =Has not
the potter authority over his (τοῦ) clay, out of the same kneaded
mass to make this vessel for honour but that for dishonour?=
[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =But if God, being pleased to demonstrate His
(τὴν) wrath, and to evidence what He can do=--_what_ will St Paul go
on to say? That the Eternal, being thus "pleased," created responsible
beings on purpose to destroy them, gave them personality, and then
compelled them to transgress? No, he does not say so. The sternly
simple illustration, in itself one of the least relieved utterances in
the whole Scripture--that dread Potter and his kneaded Clay!--gives
way, in its application, to a statement of the work of God on man full
of significance in its variation. Here are indeed the "_vessels_"
still; and the vessels "_for honour_" are such because of "_mercy_,"
and His own hand has "_prepared them for glory_." And there are the
vessels "_for dishonour_," and in a sense of awful mystery they are
such because of "_wrath_." But the "_wrath_" of the Holy One can fall
only upon demerit; so these "_vessels_" have merited His displeasure
of themselves. And they are "_prepared for ruin_"; but where is any
mention of _His_ hand preparing them? And meanwhile He "_bears them in
much longsuffering_." The mystery is there, impenetrable as ever, when
we try to pierce behind "His will." But on every side it is limited
and qualified by facts which witness to the compassions of the
Infinite Sovereign even in His judgments, and remind us that sin is
altogether "of" the creature. So we take up the words where we dropped
them above: =What if He bore,= (the tense throws us forward into
eternity, to look back thence on His ways in time,) =in much
longsuffering, vessels of wrath, adjusted for ruin?= And acted
otherwise with others, [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =that He might evidence
the wealth of His glory,= the resources of His inmost Character,
poured =upon vessels of pity, which He prepared in advance for
glory,= by the processes of justifying and hallowing grace--
[Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =whom in fact (καὶ) He called,= effectually, in
their conversion, =even us, not only from the Jews, but also from the
Gentiles?= For while the lineal Israel, with its privilege and its
apparent failure, is here first in view, there lies behind it the
phenomenon of "the Israel of God," the heaven-born heirs of the
Fathers, a race not of blood but of the Spirit. The great Promise, all
the while, had set towards _that_ Israel as its final scope; and now
he gives proof from the Prophets that this intention was at least half
revealed all along the line of revelation.

[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =As actually (καὶ) in our (τῷ) Hosea=
(ii. 23, Heb., 25) in the book we know as such, =He says, "I will call
what= was =not My people, My people; and the not-beloved one,
beloved.[156]= [Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =And= (another Hosean oracle,[157]
in line with the first) =it shall be, in the place where it was said
to them, Not My people are ye, there they shall be called sons of the
living God."= In both places the first incidence of the words is on
the restoration of the Ten Tribes to covenant blessings. But the
Apostle, in the Spirit, sees an ultimate and satisfying reference to a
vaster application of the same principle; the bringing of the
rebelling and banished ones of all mankind into covenant and blessing.

Meanwhile the Prophets who foretell that great ingathering indicate
with equal solemnity the spiritual failure of all but a fraction of
the lineal heirs of promise. [Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =But Isaiah cries
over[158] Israel, "If the number of the sons of Israel should be as
the sand of the sea, the remnant= only =shall be saved;=
[Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =for as one who completes and cuts short will the
Lord do His work (λόγον, דבר) upon the earth."[159]= Here again
is a first and second incidence of the prophecy. In every stage of the
history of Sin and Redemption the Apostle, in the Spirit, sees an
embryo of the great Development. So, in the wofully limited numbers of
the Exiles who returned from the old captivity he sees an embodied
prophecy of the fewness of the sons of Israel who shall return from
the exile of incredulity to their true Messiah. [Sidenote: Ver. 29.]
=And as Isaiah= (i. 9) =has foretold (προείρηκεν),= so it is;
="Unless the Lord of Hosts (Σαβαώθ, צבאות) had left us a seed,[160]
like Sodom we had become, and to Gomorrah we had been resembled."=

Such was the mystery of the facts, alike in the older and in the later
story of Israel. A remnant, still a remnant, not the masses, entered
upon an inheritance of such ample provision, and so sincerely offered.
And behind this lay the insoluble shadow within which is concealed the
relation of the Infinite Will to the wills of men. But also, in front
of the phenomenon, concealed by no shadow save that which is cast by
human sin, the Apostle sees and records the reasons, as they reside in
the human will, of this "salvation of a remnant." The promises of God,
all along, and supremely now in Christ, had been conditioned (it was
in the nature of spiritual things that it should be so) by submission
to His way of fulfilment. The golden gift was there, in the most
generous of hands, stretched out to give. But it could be put only
into a recipient hand open and empty. It could be taken only by
submissive and self-forgetting faith. And man, in his fall, had
twisted his will out of gear for such an action. Was it wonderful
that, by his own fault, he failed to receive? [Sidenote: Ver. 30.]
=What therefore shall we say?[161] Why, that the Gentiles, though they
did not (τὰ μὴ) pursue righteousness,= though no Oracle had set them
on the track of a true divine acceptance and salvation, =achieved
righteousness,= grasped it when once revealed, =but[162] the
righteousness that results on faith;= [Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =but Israel,
pursuing a law of righteousness,= aiming at what is, for fallen man,
the impossible goal, a perfect meeting of the Law's one principle of
acceptance, "This do and thou shalt live," =did not attain that
law[163];= that is to say, practically, as we now review their story
of vain efforts in the line of self, did not attain the acceptance to
which that law was to be the avenue. The Pharisee as such, the
Pharisee Saul of Tarsus for example, neither had peace with God, nor
dared to think he had, in the depth of his soul. He knew enough of the
divine ideal to be hopelessly uneasy about his realization of it. He
could say, stiffly enough, "_God, I thank Thee_" (Luke xviii. 11, 14);
but he "went down to his house" unhappy, unsatisfied, unjustified.
[Sidenote: Ver. 32.] =On what account? Because= it was =not of faith,
but as of works[164];= in the unquiet dream that man must, and could,
work up the score of merit to a valid claim. =They stumbled[165] on
the Stone of their (τοῦ) stumbling;= [Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =as it
stands written= (Isai. viii. 14, xxviii. 16), in a passage where the
great perpetual Promise is in view, and where the blind people are
seen rejecting it as their foothold in favour of policy, or of
formalism, =Behold, I place in Sion,= in the very centre of light and
privilege, =a Stone of stumbling, and a Rock of upsetting;= and =he
who[166] confides in Him,= (or, perhaps, in it,) he who rests on it,
on Him (ἐπ' αὐτῷ), =shall not be put to shame.=

One great Rabbi at least, Rashi, of the twelfth century, bears witness
to the mind of the Jewish Church upon the significance of that mystic
Rock. "Behold," so runs his interpretation, "I have established a
King, Messiah, who shall be in Zion a stone of proving."

Was ever prophecy more profoundly verified in event? Not for the
lineal Israel only, but for Man, the King Messiah is, as ever, the
Stone of either stumbling or foundation. He is, as ever, "a Sign
spoken against." He is, as ever, the Rock of Ages, where the believing
sinner hides, and rests, and builds,

  "Below the storm-mark of the sky,
  Above the flood-mark of the deep."

Have we known what it is to stumble over Him? "We will not have this
Man to reign over us"; "We were never in bondage to any man; who is He
that He should set us free?" And are we now lifted by a Hand of
omnipotent kindness to a place deep in His clefts, safe on His summit,
"knowing nothing" for the peace of conscience, the satisfaction of
thought, the liberation of the will, the abolition of death, "but
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified"? Then let us think with always
humbled sympathy of those who, for whatever reason, still "forsake
their own mercy" (Jonah ii. 8). And let us inform them where we are,
and how we are here, and that "the ground is good." And for ourselves,
that we may do this the better, let us often read again the simple,
strong assurance which closes this chapter of mysteries; "_He who
confides in Him shall not be put to shame_"; "_shall not be
disappointed_"; "_shall not_" in the vivid phrase of the Hebrew
itself, "_make haste_." No, we shall not "make haste." From that safe
Place no hurried retreat shall ever need to be beaten. That Fortress
cannot be stormed; it cannot be surprised; it cannot crumble. For "IT
is HE"; the Son, the Lamb, of God; the sinner's everlasting
Righteousness, the believer's unfailing Source of peace, of purity,
and of power.


DETACHED NOTE TO IX. 5.

The following is transcribed, with a few modifications, from the
writer's Commentary on the Epistle in _The Cambridge Bible_:

["_Who is over all, God blessed for ever._] The Greek may, with more
or less facility, be translated (1) as in A.V.; or (2) '=who is God
over all,=' etc.; or (3) '=blessed for ever be He who is God over
all=' (_i.e._, the Eternal Father).... If we adopt (3) we take the
Apostle to be led, by the mention of the Incarnation, to utter a
sudden and solemn doxology to the God who gave that crowning mercy. In
favour of this it is urged (by some entirely orthodox commentators, as
H. A. W. Meyer) that St Paul nowhere else styles the Lord simply
'God,' but rather 'the Son of God,' etc. By this they do not mean to
detract from the Lord's Deity; but they maintain that St Paul always
so states that Deity, under divine guidance, as to mark the
'Subordination of the Son'--that Subordination which is not a
difference of Nature, Power, or Eternity, but of Order; just such as
is marked by the simple but profound words FATHER and SON.

"But on the other hand there is Tit. ii. 13, where the Greek is (at
least) _perfectly capable_ of the rendering, 'our great God and
Saviour, Jesus Christ.' [There is Acts xx. 28, where the evidence is
very strong for the reading, retained by the R.V. (text), '_the Church
of God_, which He purchased with His own blood.' And if St John is to
be taken to report words exactly, in his narrative of the
Resurrection, in an incident whose point is deeply connected with
verbal precision, we have one of the first Apostles, within eight days
of the Resurrection, addressing the Risen Lord (John xx. 28) as '_my
God_.' (We call attention to this as against the contention that only
the latest developments of inspiration, represented in _e.g._ St
John's Preamble to his Gospel, shew us Christ called explicitly God.)]

"If ... it is divinely true that 'the WORD IS GOD,' it is surely far
from wonderful if here and there, in peculiar connexions, [St Paul]
should so speak of Christ, even though guided to keep another phase of
the truth _habitually_ in view.

"Now, beyond all fair question, the Greek here is quite naturally
rendered as in the A.V.; had it not been for historical controversy,
probably, no other rendering would have been suggested. And lastly,
and what is important, the context far rather suggests _a lament_
(over the fall of Israel) than an ascription of praise. And what is
most significant of all, it pointedly suggests _some explicit allusion
to the super_-human Nature of Christ, by the words '_according to the
flesh_.' But if there is such an allusion, then it must lie in the
words, '_over all, God_.'"

It may be interesting to add the following note from Franz Delitzsch
(_Brief an die Römer in das Hebräische übersetzt und aus Talmud und
Midrasch erläutert_, Leipzig, 1870, p. 89):

"_Christus, nach dem Fleisch, welcher ist Gott über alles, hochgelobet
in Ewigkeit._ Deshalb nämlich weil er Gott und Mensch in Einer Person
ist. Er ist der andere David (דוד אחר), und ist Jahve unsere
Gerechtigkeit (יהוה צדקנו Jer. xxiii. 6). Auch der Midrasch
_Mischle_ zu Spr. xix. 21 zählt ה׳ צדקנו neben דוד unter den
Messiasnamen auf, und auch anderwärts bezeugen Talmud und Midrasch,
dass der Messias יהוה heisst; denn 'Gott war in Christo und
versöhnte die Welt mit ihm selber.' Paulus sagt im Grunde nichts
anderes als was Jesaia ix. 5, wo die Zunz'sche Bibelübersetzung, der
exegetischen Wahrheit die Ehre gebend, übersetzt: 'Man nennt seinen
Namen: Wunder, Berather, starker Gott, ewiger Vater, Fürst des
Friedens.' Der Messias ist und heisst אל גבור und אבי־עד, also
obwohl nicht האלהים, doch אלהים (אל) לעולמים."

Delitzsch renders the close of ix. 5 thus:

וַאֲשֶׁר מֵהֶם יָצָא הַמָּשִׁיחַ לְפִי בְשָׂרוֹ אֲשֶׁר הוּא אֵל עַל־הַכֹּל מְבֹרָךְ לְעוֹל מִים אָמֵו

[152] For this rendering, rather than the alternative, "_Blessed for
ever be the God who is over all_," see the reasons offered below, p.
261.

[153] Mal. i. 2, 3.--It is plain that "_hatred_" in such a connexion
(and cp. Matt. vi. 24, Luke xiv. 26) need mean no more than relative
repudiation. No personal animosity is in question, but a decisive
rejection of a rival claim. See Grimm's _N. T. Lexicon_ (Thayer),
_s.v._ μισεῖν.

[154] Observe the vital personality of the phrase; "_the Scripture
speaks_." Cp. Gal. iii. 8 for perhaps the strongest example of the
kind.

[155] Cp. Psal. lxxxi. 12, and above, i. 24, 26.

[156] In the Hebrew, literally, "_I will pity the not-pitied one_"
(feminine, of the idealized people or church; so in the Greek here,
ἠγαπημένην). Divine "_pity_" is more than "akin to" divine "_love_."

[157] i. 10 (Hebrew, ii. 1).

[158] Ὑπέρ: with the thought of a _lament over_ the ruined ones.
The preposition appears here in its original and literal meaning.

[159] Isa. x. 22, 23: perhaps with an insertion of the phrase, "_the
number of_," from Hos. i. 10. As to wording, he quotes freely from the
Hebrew, more nearly from the Lxx. But the substance is identical as
compared with both. Following considerable documentary evidence, we
omit here the Greek words represented by "_in righteousness; because a
short work_."

[160] The equivalent of the Lxx. for the "very small _remnant_" (שׂריד)
of the Hebrew.

[161] For the seventh and last time he uses this characteristic
phrase.

[162] Δέ: in slightly suggested contrast to the ideal of the Jew, a
_merited_ acceptance.

[163] Omit here the word δικαιοσύνης.

[164] Omit τοῦ νόμου.

[165] Omit γάρ.

[166] Omit πᾶς.




CHAPTER XXI

_JEWISH UNBELIEF AND GENTILE FAITH: PROPHECY_

ROMANS x. 1-21


The problem of Israel is still upon the Apostle's soul. He has
explored here and there the conditions of the fact that his brethren,
as a mass, have rejected Jesus. He has delivered his heart of its
loving human groan over the fact. He has reminded himself, and then
his readers, that the fact however involves no failure of the purpose
and promise of God; for God from the first had indicated limitations
within the apparent scope of the Abrahamic Promise. He has looked in
the face, once for all, the mystery of the relation between God's
efficient will and the will of the creature, finding a refuge, under
the moral strain of that mystery, not away from it but as it were
behind it, in the recollection of the infinite trustworthiness, as
well as eternal rights, of man's MAKER. Then he has recurred to the
underlying main theme of the whole Epistle, the acceptance of the
sinner in God's own one way; and we have seen how, from Israel's own
point of view, Israel has stumbled and fallen just by his own fault.
Israel would not rest upon "the Stone of stumbling"; he would collide
with it. Divine sovereignty here or there--the heart of Jewish man, in
its responsible personality, and wholly of itself, rebelled against a
man-humbling salvation. And so all its religiousness, its earnestness,
its intensity, went for nothing in the quest for peace and purity.
They stumbled--a real striking of real wayward feet--at the Stumbling
Stone; which all the while lay ready to be their basis and repose.

He cannot leave the subject, with its sadness, its lessons, and its
hope. He must say more of his love and longing for Israel; and also
more about this aspect of Israel's fall--this collision of man's will
with the Lord's Way of Peace. And he will unfold the deep witness of
the prophecies to the nature of that Way, and to the reluctance of the
Jewish heart to accept it. Moses shall come in with the Law, and
Isaiah with the Scriptures of the Prophets; and we shall see how their
Inspirer, all along from the first, indicated what should surely
happen when a salvation altogether divine should be presented to
hearts filled with themselves.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Brethren,= he begins, =the deliberate desire
(εὐδοκία) of my heart,= whatever discouragements may oppose it,[167]
=and my petition unto God for them,[168]= is =salvationwards.= He is
inevitably moved to this by the pathetic sight of their earnestness,
misguided indeed, guiltily misguided, utterly inadequate to constitute
for them even a phantom of merit; yet, to the eyes that watch it, a
different thing from indifference or hypocrisy. He cannot see their
real struggles, and not long that they may reach the shore.

[Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =For I bear them witness,= the witness of one who
once was the type of the class, =that they have zeal of God,= an
honest jealousy for His Name, His Word, His Worship, =only not in the
line of spiritual knowledge (κατ' ἐπίγνωσιν).= They have not seen
all He is, all His Word means, all His worship implies. They are sure,
and rightly sure, of many things about Him; but they have not "seen
HIM." And so they have not "abhorred themselves" (Job xli. 5, 6). And
thus they are _not_, in their own conviction, shut up to a salvation
which must be altogether of Him; which is no contract with Him, but
eternal bounty from Him.

Solemn and heart-moving scene! There are now, and were then, those who
would have surveyed it, and come away with the comfortable reflection
that so much earnestness would surely somehow work itself right at
last; nay, that it was already sufficiently good in itself to secure
these honest zealots a place in some comprehensive heaven. If ever
such thoughts had excuse, surely it was here. The "_zeal_" was quite
sincere. It was ready to suffer, as well as to strike. The zealot was
not afraid of a world in arms. And he felt himself on fire not for
evil, but for God, for the God of Abraham, of Moses, of the Prophets,
of the Promise. Would not this do? Would not the lamentable rejection
of Jesus which attended it be condoned as a tremendous but mere
accident, while the "_zeal of God_" remained as the substance, the
essence, of the spiritual state of the zealot? Surely a very large
allowance would be made; to put it at the lowest terms.

Yet such was not the view of St Paul, himself once the most honest and
disinterested Jewish zealot in the world. He had seen THE LORD. And so
he had seen himself. The deadly mixture of motive which may underlie
what nevertheless we may have to call an _honest_ hatred of the Gospel
had been shewn to him in the white light of Christ. In that light he
had seen--what it alone can fully shew--the condemnableness of all
sin, and the hopelessness of self-salvation. From himself he reasons,
and rightly, to his brethren. He knows, with a solemn sympathy, how
much they are in earnest. But his sympathy conceals no false
liberalism; it is not cheaply generous of the claims of God. He does
not think that because they are in earnest they are saved. Their
earnestness drives his heart to a deeper prayer for their salvation.

[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For knowing not the righteousness of our (τοῦ)
God,= His way of being just, yet the Justifier, =and seeking to set up
their own righteousness,= to construct for themselves a claim which
should "stand in judgment," =they did not submit to the righteousness
of our (τοῦ) God,= when it appeared before them, embodied in "the
Lord our Righteousness." They _aspired_ to acceptance. God bade them
_submit_ to it. In their view, it was a matter of attainment; an
ascent to a difficult height, where the climber might exult in his
success. As He presented it, it was a matter of surrender, as when a
patient, given over, places himself helpless in a master-healer's
hands, for a recovery which is to be due to those hands alone, and to
be celebrated only to their praise.[169]

Alas for such "ignorance" in these earnest souls; for such a failure
in Israel to strike the true line of "knowledge"! For it was a guilty
failure. The Law had been indicating all the while that their
Dispensation was not its own end, but one vast complex means to shut
man up to a Redeemer who was at once to satisfy every type, and every
oracle, and to supply "the impossible of the Law" (viii. 3), by giving
Himself to be the believer's vicarious Merit. [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For
the Law's end,= its Goal, its Final Cause in the plan of redemption,
=is--Christ, unto righteousness,= to effect and secure this wonderful
acceptance, =for every one who believes.= Yes, He is no arbitrary
sequel to the Law; He stands organically related to it. And to this
the Law itself is witness, both by presenting an inexorable and
condemning standard as its only possible code of acceptance, and by
mysteriously pointing the soul away from that code, in its quest for
mercy, to something altogether different, at once accessible and
divine. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For Moses writes down (γράφει)= thus
=the righteousness= got =from the Law, "The man who does[170] them,
shall live in it"[171]= (Levit. xviii. 5); it is a matter of personal
action and personal meriting alone. Thus the code, feasible and
beneficent indeed on the plane of national and social life, which is
its lower field of action, is necessarily fatal to fallen man when the
question lies between his conscience and the eternal Judge.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But the righteousness= got =from faith,= the
acceptance received by surrendering trust, =thus speaks= (Deut.
xxx. 12-14)--in Moses' words indeed, (and this is one main point in
the reasoning, that _he_ is witness,) yet as it were with a personal
voice of its own, deep and tender; ="Say not in thy heart, Who shall
ascend to the heaven?" that is, to bring down Christ,= by human
efforts, by a climbing merit; [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] ="or, Who shall
descend into the abyss? that is, to bring up Christ from the dead,="
as if His victorious Sacrifice needed your supplement in order to its
resurrection-triumph. [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =But what does it say? "Near
thee is the utterance,= the explicit account of the Lord's willingness
to bless the soul which casts itself on Him,[172] =in thy mouth,= to
recite it, =and in thy heart,"= to welcome it. And =this= message =is
the utterance of faith,= the creed of acceptance by faith alone,
=which we proclaim;= [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =that if you shall confess in
your mouth Jesus as Lord,[173]= as divine King and Master, =and shall
believe in your heart= that God =raised Him from the dead,= owning in
the soul the glory of the Resurrection, as revealing and sealing the
triumph of the Atonement, =you shall be saved.= [Sidenote: Ver. 10.]
=For with the heart faith is exercised, unto righteousness,= with
acceptance for its resultant; =while (δὲ) with the mouth confession
is made, unto salvation,= with present deliverance and final glory for
its resultant, the moral sequel of a life which owns its Lord as all
in all. [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =For the Scripture says= (Isai. xxviii. 16),
="Everyone who believes on Him shall not be ashamed,"[174]= shall
never be disappointed; shall be "kept, through faith, unto the
salvation ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Pet. i. 5).

We have traversed here a tract pregnant of questions and mystery. We
have to remember here also, as in previous places, that the Scripture
is "not a sun, but a lamp." Much, very much, which this passage
suggests as problem finds in its words no answer. This citation from
Deuteronomy, with its vision of ascents and descents, its thoughts of
the heaven and the abyss, what did it mean when aged Moses spoke it in
the plains of Moab? What did it mean _to him_? Did he see, did he
feel, Messiah in every clause? Had he conscious foreviews, then and
there, of what was to be done ages later beyond that stern ridge of
hills, westward of "the narrow stream"? Did he knowingly "testify
beforehand" that God was to be born Man at Bethlehem, and to die Man
at Jerusalem? We do not know; we cannot possibly know, until the
eternal day finds Moses and ourselves together in the City of God, and
we better understand the mysterious Word, at last, in that great
light. If our Master's utterances are to be taken as final, it is
quite certain that "Moses wrote of Him" (John v. 46). But it is not
certain that he always knew he was so writing when he so wrote; nor is
it certain _how far_ his consciousness went when it was most awake
that way. In the passage here cited by St Paul the great Prophet may
have been aware only of a reference of his words to the seen, the
temporal, the national, to the blessings of loyalty to Israel's
God-given polity, and of a return to it after times of revolt and
decline. But then, St Paul neither affirms this nor denies it. As if
on purpose, he almost drops the personality of Moses out of sight, and
personifies Justification as the speaker. His concern is less with the
Prophet than with his Inspirer, the ultimate Author behind the
immediate author. And his own prophet-insight is guided to see that in
the thought of _that_ Author, as He wielded Moses' mind and diction at
His will, CHRIST was the inmost purport of the words.

We may ask again what are the laws by which the Apostle modifies here
the Prophet's phrases. "_Who shall descend into the abyss?_" The Hebrew
reads, "_Who shall go over_ (or _on_) _the sea?_" The Septuagint
reads, "_Who shall go to the other side of the sea?_" Here too "we
know in part." Assuredly the change of terms was neither unconsciously
made, nor arbitrarily; and it was made for readers who could challenge
it, if so it seemed to them to be done. But we should need to know the
whole relation of the One inspiring Master to the minds of both His
Prophet and His Apostle to answer the question completely. However, we
can see that Prophet and Apostle both have in their thought here the
antithesis of depth to height; that the sea is, to Moses here, the
antithesis to the sky, not to the land; and that St Paul intensifies
the imagery in its true direction accordingly when he writes, "_into
the abyss_."

Again, he finds Justification by Faith in the Prophet's oracle about
the subjective "_nearness_" of "_the utterance_" of mercy. Once more
we own our ignorance of the conscious purport of the words, as Moses'
words. We shall quite decline, if we are reverently cautious, to say
that for certain Moses was not aware of such an inmost reference in
what he said; it is very much easier to assert than to know what the
limitations of the consciousness of the Prophets were. But here also
we rest in the fact that behind both Moses and Paul, in their free and
mighty personalities, stood their one Lord, building His Scripture
slowly into its manifold oneness through them both. He was in the
thought and word of Moses; and meantime already to Him the thought and
word of Paul was present, and was in His plan. And the earlier
utterance had this at least to do with the later, that it drew the
mind of the pondering and worshipping Israel to the idea of a contact
with God in His Promises which was not external and mechanical but
deep within the individual himself, and manifested in the individual's
free and living avowal of it.

As we quit the passage, let us mark and cherish its insistence upon
"_confession_," "_confession with the mouth that Jesus is Lord_." This
specially he connects with "_salvation_," with the believer's
preservation to eternal glory. "_Faith_" is "_unto righteousness_";
"_confession_" is "_unto salvation_." Why is this? Is faith after all
not enough for our union with the Lord, and for our safety in Him?
Must we bring in something else, to be a more or less meritorious
makeweight in the scale? If this is what he means, he is gainsaying
the whole argument of the Epistle on its main theme. No; it is
eternally true that we are justified, that we are accepted, that we
are incorporated, that we are kept, through faith only; that is, that
Christ is all for all things in our salvation, and our part and work
in the matter is to receive and hold Him in _an empty_ hand. But then
this empty hand, holding Him, receives life and power from Him. The
man is vivified by his Rescuer. He is rescued that he may live, and
that he may serve as living. He cannot truly serve without loyalty to
his Lord. He cannot be truly loyal while he hides his relation to Him.
In some articulate way he must "_confess Him_"; or he is not treading
the path where the Shepherd walks before the sheep.

The "_confession with the mouth_" here in view is, surely, nothing
less than the believer's open loyalty to Christ. It is no mere
recitation of even the sacred catholic Creed; which may be recited as
by an automaton. It is the witness of the whole man to Christ, as his
own discovered Life and Lord. And thus it means in effect the path of
faithfulness along which the Saviour actually leads to glory those who
are justified by faith.

That no slackened emphasis on faith is to be felt here is clear from
ver. 11. There, in the summary and close of the passage, nothing but
faith is named; "whosoever _believeth on Him_." It is as if he would
correct even the slightest disquieting surmise that our repose upon
the Lord has to be secured by something other than Himself, through
some means more complex than taking Him at His word. Here, as much as
anywhere in the Epistle, this is the message; "from faith to faith."
The "confession with the mouth" is not a different something added to
this faith; it is its issue, its manifestation, its embodiment. "I
believed; _therefore have I spoken_" (Psal. cxvi. 10).

This recurrence to his great theme gives the Apostle's thought a
direction once again towards the truth of the world-wide scope of the
Gospel of Acceptance. In the midst of this _philo-judean_ section of
the Epistle, on his way to say glorious things about abiding mercy and
coming blessing for the Jews, he must pause again to assert the equal
welcome of "the Greeks" to the Righteousness of God, and the
foreshadow of this welcome in the Prophets. [Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =For
there is no distinction between Jew and Greek= (wonderful antithesis
to the "no distinction" of iii. 23!). =For the same Lord is Lord of
all, wealthy to all who call upon Him,= who invoke Him, who appeal to
Him, in the name of His own mercies in His redeeming Son.
[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =For= we have the prophecies with us here again.
Joel, in a passage (ii. 32) full of Messiah, the passage with which
the Spirit of Pentecost filled Peter's lips, speaks thus without a
limit; ="Every one, whoever shall call upon the Lord's Name, shall be
saved."= As he cites the words, and the thought rises upon him of this
immense welcome to the sinful world, he feels afresh all the need of
the heathen, and all the cruel narrowness of the Pharisaism which
would shut them out from such an amplitude of blessing.
[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =How then can[175] they call on Him on whom they
never[176] believed? But how can they believe= on Him =whom they never
heard? But how can they hear= Him =apart from a proclaimer?=
[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =But how can they proclaim unless they are sent,=
unless the Church which holds the sacred light sends her messengers
out into the darkness? And in this again the Prophets are with the
Christian Apostle, and against the loveless Judaist: =As it stands
written= (Isai. lii. 7), ="How fair the feet of the gospellers of
peace, of the gospellers of good!"[177]=

Here, as an incident in this profound discussion, is given for ever to
the Church of Christ one of the most distinct and stringent of her
missionary "marching-orders." Let us recollect this, and lay it on our
own souls, forgetting awhile, for we may, the problem of Israel and
the exclusiveness of ancient Pharisaism. What is there here for us?
What motive facts are here, ready to energize and direct the will of
the Christian, and of the Church, in the matter of the "gospelling" of
the world?

We take note first of what is written last, the moral beauty and glory
of the enterprise. "_How fair the feet!_" From the view-point of
heaven there is nothing on the earth more lovely than the bearing of
the name of Jesus Christ into the needing world, when the bearer is
one "who loves and knows." The work may have, and probably will have,
very little of the rainbow of romance about it. It will often lead the
worker into the most uncouth and forbidding circumstances. It will
often demand of him the patient expenditure of days and months upon
humiliating and circuitous preparations; as he learns a barbarous
unwritten tongue, or a tongue ancient and elaborate, in a stifling
climate; or finds that he must build his own hut, and dress his own
food, if he is to live at all among "the Gentiles." It may lay on him
the exquisite--and prosaic--trial of finding the tribes around him
entirely unaware of their need of his message; unconscious of sin, of
guilt, of holiness, of God. Nay, they may not only not care for his
message; they may suspect or deride his motives, and roundly tell him
that he is a political spy, or an adventurer come to make his private
gains, or a barbarian tired of his own Thule and irresistibly
attracted to the region of the sun. He will often be tempted to think
"the journey too great for him," and long to let his tired and heavy
feet rest for ever. But his Lord is saying of him, all the while, "How
fair the feet!" He is doing a work whose inmost conditions even now
are full of moral glory, and whose eternal issues, perhaps where he
thinks there has been most failure, shall be, by grace, worthy of "the
King in His beauty." It is the continuation of what the King Himself
"began to do" (Acts i. 1), when He was His own first Missionary to a
world which needed Him immeasurably, yet did not know Him when He
came.

Then, this paragraph asserts the necessity of the missionary's work
still more urgently than its beauty. True, it suggests many questions
(what great Scripture does not do so?) which we cannot answer yet at
all:--"Why has He left the Gentiles thus? Why is so much, for their
salvation, suspended (in our view) upon the too precarious and too
lingering diligence of the Church? What will the King say at last to
those who never could, by the Church's fault, even hear the blessed
Name, that they might believe in It, and call upon It?" HE knoweth
_the whole_ answer to such questions; not we. Yet here meanwhile
stands out this "thing revealed" (Deut. xxix. 29). In the Lord's
normal order, which is for certain the order of eternal spiritual
right and love, however little we can see all the conditions of the
case, man is to be saved through a personal "calling upon His Name."
And for that "calling" there is need of personal believing. And for
that believing there is need of personal hearing. And in order to that
hearing, God does not speak in articulate thunder from the sky, nor
send visible angels up and down the earth, but bids His Church, His
children, go and tell.

Nothing can be stronger and surer than the practical logic of this
passage. The need of the world, it says to us, is not only
amelioration, elevation, evolution. It is salvation. It is pardon,
acceptance, holiness, and heaven. It is God; it is Christ. And that
need is to be met not by subtle expansions of polity and society. No
"unconscious cerebration" of the human race will regenerate fallen
man. Nor will his awful wound be healed by any drawing on the shadowy
resources of a post-mortal hope. The work is to be done now, in the
Name of Jesus Christ, and _by_ His Name. And His Name, in order to be
known, has to be announced and explained. And that work is to be done
by those who already know it, or it will not be done at all. "There is
none other Name." There is no other method of evangelization.

Why is not that Name already at least externally known and reverenced
in every place of human dwelling? It would have been so, for a long
time now, if the Church of Christ had followed better the precept and
also the example of St Paul. Had the apostolic missions been sustained
more adequately throughout Christian history, and had the apostolic
Gospel been better maintained in the Church in all the energy of its
divine simplicity and fulness, the globe would have been covered--not
indeed in a hurry, yet ages ago now--with the knowledge of Jesus
Christ as Fact, as Truth, as Life. We are told even now by some of the
best informed advocates of missionary enterprise that if Protestant
Christendom (to speak of it alone) were really to respond to the
missionary call, and "send" its messengers out not by tens but by
thousands (no chimerical number), it would be soberly possible within
thirty years so to distribute the message that no given inhabited
spot should be, at furthest, one day's walk from a centre of
evangelization. This programme is not fanaticism, surely. It is a
proposal for possible action, too long deferred, in the line of St
Paul's precept and example. It is not meant to discredit any present
form of well-considered operation. And it does not for a moment ignore
the futility of all enterprise where the sovereign power of the
Eternal Spirit is not present. Nor does it forget the permanent call
to the Church to sustain amply the pastoral work at home, in "the
flock of God which is _among us_" (1 Pet. v. 2). But it sees and
emphasizes the fact that the Lord has laid it upon His Church to be
His messenger to the whole world, and to be in holy earnest about it,
and that the work, as to its human side, is quite feasible to a Church
awake. "Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the wills of Thy faithful
people," to both the glory and the necessity of this labour of labours
for Thee, "that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of it, may
of Thee be plenteously rewarded," in Thy divine use of their
obedience, for the salvation of the world.

But the great Missionary anticipates an objection from facts to his
burning plea for the rightness of an unrestrained evangelism. The
proclamation might be universal; but were not the results partial?
"Here a little, and there a little"; was not this the story of
missionary results even when a Paul, a Barnabas, a Peter, was the
missionary? Everywhere some faith; but everywhere more hostility, and
still more indifference! Could this, after all, be the main track of
the divine purposes--these often ineffectual excursions of the "fair
feet" of the messengers of an eternal peace? Ah, that objection must
have offered no mere logical difficulty to St Paul; it must have
pierced his heart. For while His Master was his first motive, his
fellow-men themselves were his second. He loved their souls; he longed
to see them blessed in Christ, saved in Him from "the death that
cannot die," filled in Him with "life indeed" (ἡ ὄντως ζωή, 1 Tim.
vi. 19). The man who shed tears over his converts as he warned them
(Acts xx. 31) had tears also, we may be sure, for those who would not
be converted; nay, we know he had: "I tell you, _even weeping_ (καὶ
κλαίων), that they are the enemies of the Cross of Christ" (Phil.
iii. 18). But here too he leans back on the solemn comfort, the answer
from within a veil,--that Prophecy had taken account of this
beforehand. Moses, and Isaiah, and David, had foretold on the one hand
a universal message of good, but on the other hand a sorrowfully
limited response from man, and notably from Israel. So he proceeds:
[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =But not all obeyed[178] the good tidings,= when
"the word" reached them; for--we were prepared for such a mystery,
such a grief--=for Isaiah says= (liii. 1), in his great Oracle of the
Crucified, ="Lord, who believed our hearing" (ἀκοὴ),= the message
they heard of us, about One "on whom were laid the iniquities of us
all"? And as he dictates that word "_hearing_," it emphasizes to him
the fact that not mystic intuitions born out of the depths of man are
the means of revelation, but articulate messages given from the depths
of God, and spoken by men to men. And he throws the thought into a
brief sentence, such as would lie in a footnote in a modern book:
[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =So we gather (ἄρα) that faith= comes =from
hearing; but the hearing= comes =through Christ's[179] utterance
(ῥῆμα);= the messenger has it because it was first given to him by
the Master who proclaimed HIMSELF the Way, Truth, Life, Light, Bread,
Shepherd, Ransom, Lord. All is revelation, not reverie; utterance, not
insight.

Then the swift thought turns, and returns again. The prophecies _have_
foretold an evangelical utterance to the whole human world. Not only
in explicit prediction do they do so, but in the "mystic glory" of
their more remote allusions. [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =But I say, Did they
not hear?= Was this failure of belief due to a limitation of the
messenger's range in the plan of God? =Nay, rather, "Unto all the
earth went out their tone, and to the ends of man's world (ἡ οἰκουμένη)
their utterances"= (Psal. xix. 4). The words are the voice
of that Psalm where the glories of the visible heavens are collocated
with the glories of the Word of God. The Apostle hears more than
Nature in the Sunrise Hymn of David; he hears grace and the Gospel in
the deep harmony which carries the immortal melody along. The God who
meant the skies, with their "silent voices," to preach a Creator not
to one race but to all, meant also His Word to have no narrower scope,
preaching a Redeemer. Yes, and there were articulate predictions that
it should be so, as well as starry parables; predictions too that
shewed the prospect not only of a world evangelized, but of an Israel
put to shame by the faith of pagans. [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =But I say=
(his rapid phrase meets with an anticipating answer the cavil yet
unspoken) =did not Israel know?= Had they no distinct forewarning of
what we see to-day? =First comes Moses, saying,[180]= in his prophetic
Song, sung at the foot of Pisgah (Deut. xxxii. 21), "=I=--the '_I_' is
emphatic; the Person is THE LORD, and the action shall be nothing less
than His--=I will take a no-nation to[181] move your jealousy; to move
your anger I will take a nation non-intelligent";= a race not only not
informed by a previous revelation, but not trained by thought upon it
to an insight into new truth. And what Moses indicates, Isaiah,
standing later in the history, indignantly explains: [Sidenote: Ver. 20.]
=But Isaiah dares anything (ἀποτολμᾷ), and says= (lxv. 1), ="I was
found by those who sought not Me; manifest I became to those who
consulted not Me."[182]= [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =But as to Israel he
says,= in the words next in order in the place (lxv. 2), ="All the day
long I spread my hands open,= to beckon and to embrace, =towards a
people disobeying and contradicting."=

       *       *       *       *       *

So the servant brings his sorrows for consolation to--may we write the
words in reverence?--the sorrows of his Master. He mourns over an
Athens, an Ephesus, and above all over a Jerusalem, that "will not
come to the Son of God, that they might have life" (John v. 40). And
his grief is not only inevitable; it is profoundly right, wise, holy.
But he need not bear it unrelieved. He grasps the Scripture which
tells him that his LORD has called those who would not come, and
opened the eternal arms for an embrace--to be met only with a
contradiction. He weeps, but it is as on the breast of Jesus as He
wept over the City. And in the double certainty that the Lord has felt
such grief, and that He is THE LORD, he yields, he rests, he is still.
"The King of the Ages" (1 Tim. i. 17) and "the Man of Sorrows" are
One. To know Him is to be at peace even under the griefs of the
mystery of sin.

[167] We thus attempt to convey the force of μέν.

[168] So read; not "_for Israel_."

[169] Cp. 1 Pet. i. 2; εἰς ὑπακοὴν ... Ἰησοῦ Χριτοῦυ; an
"_obedience_" which means the decisive _submission_ of the sinner to
the Saviour's _method of mercy_.

[170] Ὁ ποιήσας: the aorist sums up acts into a single idea of action.

[171] Ἐν αὐτῇ: "_in the righteousness_"; such seems to be the true
reading. To "_live in_" a righteousness is to live as it were
surrounded, guaranteed, by it.

[172] Observe that the context in Deut. xxx. is full of the thought
that rebels and law-breakers shall be welcome back when they come
penitent to their God, "without one plea," but taking Him at His word.

[173] Or, with an alternative reading, "_that Jesus is Lord_."

[174] See above, ix. 33.

[175] Throughout these questions we read the verbs in the conjunctive.

[176] We thus represent, with hesitation, the aorist tense.

[177] No doubt the immediate reference of Isai. lii. 7 is to good news
_for_ "Zion" rather than _from_ her to the world. But the context is
full not only of Messiah but (ver. 15) of "_many nations_."

[178] The aorist gathers up the history of evangelization into a point
of thought.

[179] Read Χρισυοῦ, probably.

[180] So we paraphrase πρῶτος (not πρῶτον) Μωϋσῆς λέγει.

[181] So we attempt to give the force of ἐπ' οὐκ ἔθνει, ἐπὶ ἔθνει.

[182] Ἐμὲ is emphatic in both clauses. Ἐπερωτᾶν is used of the
consultation of an oracle. Our translation thus seems better than the
more secondary explanation, "_who sought not to do My will_."




CHAPTER XXII

_ISRAEL HOWEVER NOT FORSAKEN_

ROMANS xi. 1-10


"_A people disobeying and contradicting._" So the Lord of Israel,
through the prophet, had described the nation. Let us remember as we
pass on what a large feature in the prophecies, and indeed in the
whole Old Testament, such accusations and exposures are. From Moses to
Malachi, in histories, and songs, and instructions, we find everywhere
this tone of stern truth-telling, this unsparing detection and
description of Israelite sin. And we reflect that every one of these
utterances, humanly speaking, was the voice of an Israelite; and that
whatever reception it met with at the moment--it was sometimes a
scornful or angry reception, oftener a reverent one--it was ultimately
treasured, venerated, almost worshipped, by the Church of this same
rebuked and humiliated Israel. We ask ourselves what this has to say
about the true origin of these utterances, and the true nature of the
environment into which they fell. Do they not bear witness to the
supernatural in both? It was not "human nature" which, in a race quite
as prone, at least, as any other, to assert itself, produced these
intense and persistent rebukes from within, and secured for them a
profound and lasting veneration. The Hebrew Scriptures, in this as in
other things, are a literature which mere man, mere Israelite man,
"could not have written if he would, and would not have written if he
could."[183] Somehow, the Prophets not only spoke with an authority
more than human, but they were known to speak with it. There was a
national consciousness of divine privilege; and it was inextricably
bound up with a national conviction that the Lord of the privileges
had an eternal right to reprove His privileged ones, and that He had,
as a fact, His accredited messengers of reproof, whose voice was not
theirs but His; not the mere outcry of patriotic zealots but the
Oracle of God. Yea, an awful privilege was involved in the reception
of such reproofs: "You only have I known; _therefore_ will I punish
you" (Amos iii. 2).

But this is a recollection by the way. St Paul, so we saw in our last
study, has quoted Isaiah's stern message, only now to stay his
troubled heart on the fact that the unbelief of Israel in his day was,
if we may dare to put it so, no surprise to the Lord, and therefore no
shock to the servant's faith. But is he to stop there, and sit down,
and say, "This must be so"? No; there is more to follow, in this
discourse on Israel and God. He has "good words, and comfortable
words" (Zech. i. 13), after the woes of the last two chapters, and
after those earlier passages of the Epistle where the Jew is seen only
in his hypocrisy, and rebellion, and pride. He has to speak of a
faithful Remnant, now as always present, who make as it were the
golden unbroken link between the nation and the promises. And then he
has to lift the curtain, at least a corner of the curtain, from the
future, and to indicate how there lies waiting there a mighty blessing
for Israel, and through Israel for the world. Even now the mysterious
"People" was serving a spiritual purpose in their very unbelief; they
were occasioning a vast transition of blessing to the Gentiles, by
their own refusal of blessing. And hereafter they were to serve a
purpose of still more illustrious mercy. They were yet, in their
multitudes, to return to their rejected Christ. And their return was
to be used as the means of a crisis of blessing for the world.

We seem to see the look and hear the voice of the Apostle, once the
mighty Rabbi, the persecuting patriot, as he begins now to dictate
again. His eyes brighten, and his brow clears, and a happier emphasis
comes into his utterance, as he sets himself to speak of his people's
good, and to remind his Gentile brethren how, in God's plan of
redemption, all their blessing, all they know of salvation, all they
possess of life eternal, has come to them through Israel. Israel is
the Stem, drawing truth and life from the unfathomable soil of the
covenant of promise. They are the grafted Branches, rich in every
blessing--because they are the mystical seed _of Abraham_, in Christ.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =I say therefore, Did God ever thrust[184] away
His people? Away with the thought! For I am an Israelite, of Abraham's
seed, Benjamin's tribe;= full member of the theocratic race
(Ἰσραηλίτης), and of its first royal and always loyal tribe; in my
own person, therefore, I am an instance of Israel still in covenant.
[Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =God never[184] thrust away His people, whom He
foreknew= with the foreknowledge of eternal choice and purpose.[185]
That foreknowledge was "not according to their works," or according to
their power; and so it holds its sovereign way across and above their
long unworthiness. =Or do you not know, in Elijah,= in his story, in
the pages marked with his name, =what the Scripture says? How he
intercedes before God,= on God's own behalf, =against Israel, saying=
(1 Kings xix. 10), [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] ="Lord, Thy prophets they
killed, and Thy altars they dug up; and I was left solitary, and they
seek my life"?= [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =But what says the oracular answer
(ὁ χρηματισμὸς) to him? "I have left for Myself seven thousand
men, men who (οἵτινες) bowed never knee to Baal"= (1 Kings
xix. 18). [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =So therefore at the present season also
there proves to be (γέγονεν) a remnant,= "_a leaving_" (λεῖμμα),
left by the Lord for Himself, =on the principle of (κατὰ) election
of grace;= their persons and their number following a choice and gift
whose reasons lie in God alone. And then follows one of those
characteristic "foot-notes" of which we saw an instance above (x. 17):
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But if by grace, no longer of works;= "_no
longer_," in the sense of a logical succession and exclusion; =since
the grace proves (γίνεται),= on the other principle, =no longer
grace. But if of works, it is no longer grace; since the work is no
longer work.[186]= That is to say, when once the grace-principle is
admitted, as it is here assumed to be, "_the work_" of the man who is
its subject is "_no longer work_" in the sense which makes an
antithesis to grace; it is no longer so much toil done in order to so
much pay to be given. In other words, the two supposed principles of
the divine Choice are in their nature mutually exclusive. Admit the
one as the condition of the "election," and the other ceases; you
cannot combine them into an amalgam. If the election is of grace, _no_
meritorious antecedent to it is possible in the subject of it. If it
is according to meritorious antecedent, _no_ sovereign freedom is
possible in the divine action, such freedom as to bring the saved man,
the saved remnant, to an adoring confession of unspeakable and
mysterious mercy.

This is the point, here in this passing "foot-note," as in the longer
kindred statements above (ch. ix.), of the emphasized allusion to
"_choice_" and "_grace_." He writes thus that he may bring the
believer, Gentile or Jew, to his knees, in humiliation, wonder,
gratitude, and trust. "Why did I, the self-ruined wanderer, the
self-hardened rebel, come to the Shepherd who sought me, surrender my
sword to the King who reclaimed me? Did I reason myself into harmony
with Him? Did I lift myself, hopelessly maimed, into His arms? No; it
was the gift of God, _first_, last, and in the midst. And if so, it
was the choice of God." That point of light is surrounded by a
cloud-world of mystery, though within those surrounding clouds there
lurks, as to God, only rightness and love. But the point of light is
there, immovable, for all the clouds; where fallen man chooses God, it
is thanks to God who has chosen fallen man. Where a race is not
"_thrust away_," it is because "_God foreknew_." Where some thousands
of members of that race, while others fall away, are found faithful to
God, it is because He has "_left them for Himself on the principle of
choice of grace_." Where, amidst a widespread rejection of God's Son
Incarnate, a Saul of Tarsus, an Aquila, a Barnabas, behold in Him
their Redeemer, their King, their Life, their All, it is on that same
principle. Let the man thus beholding and believing give _the whole_
thanks for his salvation in the quarter where it is all due. Let him
not confuse one truth by another. Let not this truth disturb for a
moment his certainty of personal moral freedom, and of its
responsibility. Let it not for a moment turn him into a fatalist. But
let him abase himself, and give thanks, and humbly trust Him who has
thus laid hold of him for blessing. As he does so, in simplicity, not
speculating but worshipping, he will need no subtle logic to assure
him that he is to pray, and to work, without reserve, for the
salvation of all men. It will be more than enough for him that His
SOVEREIGN bids him do it, and tells him that it is according to His
heart.

To return a little on our steps, in the matter of the Apostle's
doctrine of the divine Choice: the reference in this paragraph to the
seven thousand faithful in Elijah's day suggests a special reflection.
To us, it seems to say distinctly that the "election" intended all
along by St Paul cannot possibly be explained adequately by making it
either an election (to whatever benefits) of mere masses of men, as
for instance of a nation, considered apart from its individuals; or an
election merely to privilege, to opportunity, which may or may not be
used by the receiver. As regards national election, it is undoubtedly
present and even prominent in the passage, and in this whole section
of the Epistle. For ourselves, we incline to see it quite simply in
ver. 2 above; "_His people, whom He foreknew_." We read there, what we
find so often in the Old Testament, a sovereign choice of a nation to
stand in special relation to God; of a nation taken, so to speak, in
the abstract, viewed not as the mere total of so many individuals, but
as a quasi-personality. But we maintain that the idea of election
takes another line when we come to the "_seven thousand_." Here we are
thrown at once on the thought of individual experiences, and the
ultimate secret of them, found only in the divine Will affecting the
individual. The "seven thousand" had no aggregate life, so to speak.
They formed, _as_ the seven thousand, no organism or quasi-personality.
They were "_left_" not as a mass, but as units; so isolated, so little
grouped together, that even Elijah did not know of their existence.
They were just so many individual men, each one of whom found power,
by faith, to stand personally firm against the Baalism of that dark
time, with the same individual faith which in later days, against
other terrors, and other solicitations, upheld a Polycarp, an
Athanasius, a Huss, a Luther, a Tyndale, a De Seso, a St Cyran. And
the Apostle quotes them as an instance and illustration of the Lord's
way and will with the believing of all time. In their case, then, he
both passes as it were through national election to individual
election, as a permanent spiritual mystery; and he shews that he means
by this an election not only to opportunity but to holiness. The
Lord's "_leaving them for Himself_" lay behind their not bowing their
knees to Baal. Each resolute confessor was individually enabled, by a
sovereign and special grace. He was a true human personality, freely
acting, freely choosing not to yield in that terrible storm. But
behind his freedom was the higher freedom of the Will of God, saving
him from himself that he might be free to confess and suffer. To our
mind, no part of the Epistle more clearly than this passage affirms
this individual aspect of the great mystery. Ah, it is a mystery
indeed; we have owned this at every step. And it is never for a moment
to be treated therefore as if we knew all about it. And it is never
therefore to be used to confuse the believer's thought about other
sides of truth. But it is there, as a truth among truths; to be
received with abasement by the creature before the Creator, and with
humble hope by the simple believer.

He goes on with his argument, taking up the thread broken by the
"foot-note" upon grace and works: [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =What therefore?
What Israel,= the nation, the character, =seeks after,= righteousness
in the court of God, =this it lighted not upon (οὐκ ἐπέτυχεν),[187]=
as one who seeks a buried treasure in the wrong field "lights not
upon" it; =but the election,= the chosen ones, the "seven thousand" of
the Gospel era, =did light upon it. But the rest were hardened,= (not
as if God had created their hardness, or injected it; but He gave it
to be its own penalty;) [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =as it stands written=
(Isai. xxix. 10, and Deut. xxix. 4[188]), ="God gave them a spirit of
slumber, eyes not to see, and ears not to hear, even to this day."= A
persistent ("_unto this day_") unbelief was the sin of Israel in the
Prophets' times, and it was the same in those of the Apostles. And the
condition was the same; God "gave" sin to be its own way of
retribution. [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =And David says= (Psal. lxix. 22), in
a Psalm full of Messiah, and of the awful retribution justly ordained
to come on His impenitent enemies, ="Let their table turn into a trap,
and into toils (θήρα), and into a stumbling-block, and into a
requital to them;= [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =darkened be their eyes, not
to see, and their back ever bow Thou together."=

The words are awful, in their connexion here, and in themselves, and
as a specimen of a class. Their purpose here is to enforce the thought
that there is such a thing as positive divine action in the self-ruin
of the impenitent; a _fiat_ from the throne which "gives" a coma to
the soul, and beclouds its eyes, and turns its blessings into a curse.
Not one word implies the thought that He who so acts meets a soul
tending upwards and turns it downward; that He ignores or rejects even
the faintest enquiry after Himself; that He is Author of one particle
of the sin of man. But we do learn that the adversaries of God and
Christ may be, and, where the Eternal so sees it good, are,
_sentenced_ to go their own way, even to its issues in destruction.
The context of every citation here, as it stands in the Old Testament,
shews abundantly that those so sentenced are no helpless victims of an
adverse fate, but sinners of their own will, in a sense most definite
and personal. Only, a sentence of judgment is concerned also in the
case; "_Fill ye up then the measure_" (Matt. xxiii. 32).

But then also in themselves, and as a specimen of a class, the words
are a dark shadow in the Scripture sky. It is only by the way that we
can note this here, but it must not be quite omitted in our study.
This sixty-ninth Psalm is a leading instance of the several Psalms
where the Prophet appears calling for the sternest retribution on his
enemies. What thoughtful heart has not felt the painful mystery so
presented? Read in the hush of secret devotion, or sung perhaps to
some majestic chant beneath the minster-roof, they still tend to
affront the soul with the question, Can this possibly be after the
mind of Christ? And there rises before us the form of One who is in
the act of Crucifixion, and who just then articulates the prayer,
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Can these
"imprecations" have HIS sanction? Can HE pass them, endorse them, as
His Word?

The question is full of pressing pain. And no answer can be given,
surely, which shall relieve all that pain; certainly nothing which
shall turn the clouds of such passages into rays of the sun. They
_are_ clouds; but let us be sure that they belong to the cloud-land
which gathers _round the Throne_, and which only conceals, not wrecks,
its luminous and immovable righteousness and love. Let us remark, for
one point, that this same dark Psalm is, by the witness of the
Apostles, as taught by their Master, a Psalm full of Messiah. It was
undoubtedly claimed as His own mystic utterance by THE LAMB of the
Passion. HE speaks in these dread words who also says, in the same
utterance (ver. 9), "The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up." So the
Lord Jesus did endorse this Psalm. He more than endorsed it; He
adopted it as His own. Let this remind us further that the utterer of
these denunciations, even the first and non-mystical utterer,--David,
let us say,--appears in the Psalm not merely as a private person
crying out about his violated personal rights, but as an ally and
vassal of God, one whose life and cause is identified with His. Just
in proportion as this is so, the violation of his life and peace, by
enemies described as quite consciously and deliberately malicious, is
a violation of the whole sanctuary of divine righteousness. If so, is
it incredible that even the darkest words of such a Psalm are to be
read as a true echo from the depths of man to the Voice which
announces "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, to every
soul of man that doeth evil"? Perhaps even the most watchful assertor
of the divine character of Scripture is not bound to assert that no
human frailty in the least moved the spirit of a David when he, in the
sphere of his own personality, thought and said these things. But we
have no right to assert, as a known or necessary thing, that it was
so. And we have right to say that in themselves these utterances are
but a sternly true response to the avenging indignation of the Holy
One.

In any case, do not let us talk with a loose facility about their
incompatibility with "the spirit of the New Testament." From one side,
the New Testament is an even sterner Book than the Old; as it must be
of course, when it brings sin and holiness "out into the light" of the
Cross of Christ. It is in the New Testament that, "the souls" of
saints at rest are heard saying (Rev. vi. 10), "How long, O Lord, holy
and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell
on the earth?" It is in the New Testament that an Apostle writes
(2 Thess. i. 6), "It is a righteous thing with God to recompense
tribulation to them which trouble you." It is the Lord of the New
Testament, the Offerer of the Prayer of the Cross, who said (Matt.
xxiii. 32-35) "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. I send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes, and some of them ye shall kill
and crucify; that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon
the earth."

His eyes must have rested, often and again, upon the denunciations of
the Psalms. He saw in them that which struck no real discord, in the
ultimate spiritual depth, with His own blessed compassions. Let us not
resent what He has countersigned. It is His, not ours, to know all the
conditions of those mysterious outbursts from the Psalmists'
consciousness. It is ours to recognize in them the intensest
expression of what rebellious evil merits, and will find, as its
reward.

But we have digressed from what is the proper matter before us. Here,
in the Epistle, the sixty-ninth Psalm is cited only to affirm with the
authority of Scripture the mystery of God's action in sentencing the
impenitent adversaries of His Christ to more blindness and more ruin.
Through this dark and narrow door the Apostle is about to lead us now
into "a large room" of hope and blessing, and to unveil to us a
wonderful future for the now disgraced and seemingly rejected Israel.

[183] I borrow the phrase from the late Prof. H. Rogers' _Supernatural
Origin of the Bible inferred from Itself_, a book of masterly thinking
and reasoning.

[184] We attempt to express the aorist thus, with hesitation.

[185] See above, p. 237.

[186] This last sentence, "_But if of works, etc._," is only
doubtfully supported by documents. But it bears, to our mind, strong
internal marks of genuineness. It is at once too difficult, and too
_deeply_ related to the context, to look like the insertion of a
scribe.

[187] The aorists _sum up_ the manifold history.

[188] Such a combination of citations is a significant witness to the
Apostle's view of the O. T. as, from its divine side, _one Book_
everywhere.




CHAPTER XXIII

_ISRAEL'S FALL OVERRULED, FOR THE WORLD'S BLESSING, AND FOR ISRAEL'S
MERCY_

ROMANS xi. 11-24


The Apostle has been led a few steps backwards in the last previous
verses. His face has been turned once more toward the dark region of
the prophetic sky, to see how the sin of Christ-rejecting souls is met
and punished by the dreadful "_gift_" of slumber, and apathy, and the
transmutation of blessings to snares. But now, decisively, he looks
sunward. He points our eyes, with his own, to the morning light of
grace and promise. We are to see what Israel's fall has had to do with
the world's hope and with life in Christ, and then what blessings
await Israel himself, and again the world through him.

[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =I say, therefore,= (the phrase resumes the point
of view to which the same words above (ver. 1) led us,) =did they
stumble that they might fall?= Did their national rejection of an
unwelcome because unworldly Messiah take place, in the divine
permission, with the positive divine purpose that it should bring on a
final rejection of the nation, its banishment out of its place in the
history of redemption? =Away with the thought! But their partial
fall[189] is the occasion of God's salvation (ἡ σωτηρία) for the
Gentiles, with a view to move them,= the Jews, =to jealousy,= to awake
them to a sight of what Christ is, and of what their privilege in Him
might yet be, by the sight of His work and glory in once pagan lives.

Observe here the divine benignity which lurks even under the edges of
the cloud of judgment. And observe too, thus close to the passage
which has put before us the mysterious side of divine action on human
wills, the daylight simplicity of _this_ side of that action; the
loving skill with which the world's blessing is meant by the God of
grace to act, exactly in the line of human feeling, upon the will of
Israel.

But would that "the Gentiles" had borne more in heart that last short
sentence of St Paul's, through these long centuries since the Apostles
fell asleep! It is one of the most marked, as it is one of the
saddest, phenomena in the history of the Church that for ages, almost
from the days of St John himself, we look in vain either for any
appreciable Jewish element in Christendom, or for any extended effort
on the part of Christendom to win Jewish hearts to Christ by a wise
and loving evangelization. With only relatively insignificant
exceptions this was the abiding state of things till well within the
eighteenth century, when the German Pietists began to call the
attention of believing Christians to the spiritual needs and prophetic
hopes of Israel, and to remind them that the Jews were not only a
beacon of judgment, or only the most impressive and awful illustration
of the fulfilment of prophecy, but the bearers of yet unfulfilled
predictions of mercy for themselves and for the world. Meanwhile, all
through the Middle Age, and through generations of preceding and
following time also, Christendom did little for Israel but retaliate,
reproach, and tyrannize. It was so of old in England; witness the
fires of York. It is so to this day in Russia, and where the
_Judenhetze_ inflames innumerable hearts in Central Europe.

No doubt there is more than one side to the persistent phenomenon.
There is a side of mystery; the permissive sentence of the Eternal has
to do with the long affliction, however caused, of the people which
once uttered the fatal cry, "His blood be on us, and on our children"
(Matt. xxvii. 25). And the wrong-doings of Jews, beyond a doubt, have
often made a dark occasion for a "Jew-hatred," on a larger or narrower
scale. But all this leaves unaltered, from the point of view of the
Gospel, the sin of Christendom in its tremendous failure to seek, in
love, the good of erring Israel. It leaves as black as ever the guilt
of every fierce retaliation upon Jews by so-called Christians, of
every slanderous belief about Jewish creed or life, of every unjust
anti-Jewish law ever passed by Christian king or senate. It leaves an
undiminished responsibility upon the Church of Christ, not only for
the flagrant wrong of having too often animated and directed the civil
power in its oppressions of Israel, and not only for having so awfully
neglected to seek the evangelization of Israel by direct appeals for
the true Messiah, and by an open setting forth of His glory, but for
the deeper and more subtle wrong, persistently inflicted from age to
age, in a most guilty unconsciousness--the wrong of having failed to
manifest Christ to Israel through the living holiness of Christendom.
Here, surely, is the very point of the Apostle's thought in the
sentence before us: "_Salvation to the Gentiles, to move the Jews to
jealousy_." In his inspired idea, Gentile Christendom, in Christ, was
to be so pure, so beneficent, so happy, finding manifestly in its
Messianic Lord such resources for both peace of conscience and a life
of noble love, love above all directed towards opponents and
traducers, that Israel, looking on, with eyes however purblind with
prejudice, should soon see a moral glory in the Church's face
impossible to be hid, and be drawn as by a moral magnet to the
Church's hope. Is it the fault of God (may He pardon the formal
question, if it lacks reverence), or the fault of man, man carrying
the Christian name, that facts have been so wofully otherwise in the
course of history? It is the fault, the grievous fault, of us
Christians. The narrow prejudice, the iniquitous law, the rigid
application of exaggerated ecclesiastical principle, all these things
have been man's perversion of the divine idea, to be confessed and
deplored in a deep and interminable repentance. May the mercy of God
awaken Gentile Christendom, in a manner and degree as yet unknown, to
remember this our indefeasible debt to this people everywhere present
with us, everywhere distinct from us;--the debt of _a life_, personal
and ecclesiastical, so manifestly pure and loving in our Lord the
Christ as to "move them to the jealousy" which shall claim Him again
for their own. Then we shall indeed be hastening the day of full and
final blessing, both for themselves and for the world.

To that bright coming day the Apostle points us now, more directly
than ever: [Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =But if their partial fall[190] be the
world's wealth, and their lessening (ἥττημα),= their reduction, (a
reduction in one aspect to a race of scattered exiles, in another to a
mere remnant of "Israelites indeed,") =be the Gentiles' wealth,= the
occasion by which "the unsearchable wealth of Messiah" (Eph. iii. 8)
has been as it were forced into Gentile receptacles, =how much more
their fulness,= the filling of the dry channel with its ample ideal
stream, the change from a believing remnant, fragments of a
fragmentary people, to a believing nation, reanimated and reunited?
What blessings for "the world," for "the Gentiles," may not come
through the vehicle of such an Israel? [Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =But[191]
to you I speak, the Gentiles[192]= to you, because if I reach the
Jews, in the way I mean, it must be through you. =So far indeed as I,
distinctively I (ἐγώ), am the Gentiles' Apostle, I glorify my
ministry= as such; I rejoice, Pharisee that I once was, to be devoted
as no other Apostle is to a ministry for those whom I once thought of
as of outcasts in religion. But I speak as your own Apostle, and to
you, [Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =if perchance I may move the jealousy of my
flesh and blood,[193] and may save some from amongst them,= by letting
them as it were overhear what are the blessings of you Gentile
Christians, and how it is the Lord's purpose to use those blessings as
a magnet to wandering Israel.[194] His hope is that, through the Roman
congregation, this glorious open secret will come out, as they meet
their Jewish neighbours and talk with them. So would one here, another
there, "in the streets and lanes of the City," be drawn to the feet of
Jesus, under the constraint of that "jealousy" which means little else
than the human longing to understand what is evidently the great joy
of another's heart; a "jealousy" on which often grace can fall, and
use it as the vehicle of divine light and life.

He says only, "_some of them_"; as he does in the sister Epistle;
1 Cor. ix. 22.[195] He recognizes it as his present task, indicated
alike by circumstance and revelation, to be not the glad ingatherer of
vast multitudes to Christ, but the patient winner of scattered sheep.
Yet let us observe that none the less he spends his whole soul upon
that winning, and takes no excuse from a glorious future to slacken a
single effort in the difficult present.

[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =For if the throwing away of them,= their
downfall as the Church of God, was =the world's reconciliation,= the
instrumental or occasioning cause of the direct proclamation to the
pagan peoples of the Atonement of the Cross, =what will their
reception be, but life from the dead?= That is to say, the great event
of Israel's return to God in Christ, and His to Israel, will be the
signal and the means of a vast rise of spiritual life in the Universal
Church, and of an unexampled ingathering of regenerate souls from the
world. When Israel, as a Church, fell, the fall worked good for the
world merely by driving, as it were, the apostolic preachers out from
the Synagogue, to which they so much longed to cling. The Jews did
anything but aid the work. Yet even so they were made an occasion for
world-wide good. When they are "received again," as this Scripture so
definitely affirms that they shall be received, the case will be
grandly different. As before, they will be "occasions." A national and
ecclesiastical return of Israel to Christ will of course give occasion
over the whole world for a vastly quickened attention to Christianity,
and for an appeal for the world's faith in the facts and claims of
Christianity, as bold and loud as that of Pentecost. But more than
this; Israel will now be not only occasion but agent. The Jews,
ubiquitous, cosmopolitan, yet invincibly national, coming back in
living loyalty to the Son of David, the Son of God, will be a positive
power in evangelization such as the Church has never yet felt.
Whatever the actual facts shall prove to be in the matter of their
return to the Land of Promise[196] (and who can watch without deep
reflection the nation-less land and the land-less nation?) no
prediction obliges us to think that the Jews will be withdrawn from
the wide world by a national resettlement in their Land. A nation is
not a Dispersion merely because it has individual citizens widely
dispersed; if it has a true national centre, it is a people at home, a
people with a home. Whether as a central mass in Syria, or as also a
presence everywhere in the human world, Israel will thus be ready,
once restored to God in Christ, to be a more than natural evangelizing
power.

Let this be remembered in every enterprise for the spiritual good of
the great Dispersion now. Through such efforts God is already
approaching His hour of blessing, long expected. Let that fact animate
and give a glad patience to His workers, on whose work He surely
begins in our day to cast His smile of growing blessing.

Now the argument takes a new direction. The restoration thus
indicated, thus foretold, is not only sure to be infinitely
beneficial. It is also to be looked for and expected as a thing lying
so to speak in the line of spiritual fitness, true to the order of
God's plan. In His will, when He went about to create and develop His
Church, Israel sprung from the dry ground as the sacred Olive, rich
with the sap of truth and grace, full of branch and leaf. From the
tents of Abraham onward, the world's true spiritual light and life was
there. There, not elsewhere, was revelation, and God-given ordinance,
and "the covenants, and the glory." There, not elsewhere, the Christ
of God, for whom all things waited, towards whom all the lines of
man's life and history converged, was to appear. Thus, in a certain
profound sense, all true salvation must be not only "of" Israel (John
iv. 24) but through him. Union with Christ was union with Abraham. To
become a Christian, that is to say, one of Messiah's men, was to
become, mystically, an Israelite. From this point of view the
Gentile's union with the Saviour, though not in the least less genuine
and divine than the Jew's, was, so to speak, less normal. And thus
nothing could be more spiritually normal than the Jew's recovery to
his old relation to God, from which he had violently dislocated
himself. These thoughts the Apostle now presses on the Romans, as a
new motive and guide to their hopes, prayers, and work. (Do we gather
from the length and fulness of the argument that already it was
difficult to bring Gentiles to think aright of the chosen people in
their fall and rebellion?) He reminds them of the inalienable
consecration of Israel to special divine purposes. He points them to
the ancient Olive, and boldly tells them that they are, themselves,
only a graft of a wild stock, inserted into the noble tree. Not that
he thinks of the Jew as a superior being. But the Church of Israel was
the original of the Church. So the restoration of Israel to Christ,
and to the Church, is a recovery of normal life, not a first and
abnormal grant of life.

[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =But if the first-fruit was holy, holy is the
kneaded lump too.= Abraham was as it were the Lord's First-fruits of
mankind, in the field of His Church. "Abraham's seed" are as it were
the mass kneaded from that first-fruits; made of it. Was the
first-fruits holy, in the sense of consecration to God's redeeming
purpose? Then that which is made of it must somehow still be a
consecrated thing, even though put aside as if "common" for awhile.
=And if the root= was =holy,= holy are =the branches too;= the lineal
heirs of Abraham are still, ideally, potentially, consecrated to Him
who separated Abraham to Himself, and moved him to his great
self-separation. [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =But if some of the branches=
(how tender is the euphemism of the "_some_"!) =were broken off, while
you, wild-olive as you were, were grafted in among them,= in their
place of life and growth, =and became a sharer of the root and of the
Olive's fatness,--= [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =do not boast over the=
torn-off =branches. But if you do boast over them--not you carry the
root, but the root carries you.= [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =You will say
then, The branches were broken off--that I might be grafted in. Good:=
true--and untrue: =because of their unbelief they were broken off,
while you because of your faith stand.= They were no better beings
than you, in themselves. But neither are you better than they, in
yourself. They and you alike are, personally, mere subjects of
redeeming mercy; owing all to Christ; possessing all only as accepting
Christ. "Where is your boasting, then?" =Do not be high-minded, but
fear,= fear yourself, your sin, your enemy. [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =For
if God did not spare the natural branches, take care lest He spare not
you either.= [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =See therefore God's goodness and
sternness. On those who fell,= came His =sternness= (ἀποτομία, not
ἀποτομίαν); =but on you,= His =goodness, if you abide by that (τῇ)
goodness,= with the adherence and response of faith; =since you too
will be cut out= otherwise. [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =And they too, if
they do not abide by their (τῇ) unbelief, shall be grafted in; for
God is able to graft them in again.= [Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =For if you
from the naturally wild olive were cut out, and non-naturally (παρὰ
φύσιν) were grafted into the Garden-Olive, how much more shall
those, the= branches =naturally, be grafted into their own Olive!=

Here are more topics than one which call for reverent notice and
study.

1. The imagery of the Olive, with its root, stem, and branches. The
Olive, rich and useful, long-lived, and evergreen, stands, as a
"nature-parable" of spiritual life, beside the Vine, the Palm, and the
Cedar, in the Garden of God. Sometimes it pictures the individual
saint, living and fruitful in union with his Lord (Psal. lii. 8).
Sometimes it sets before us the fertile organism of the Church, as
here, where the Olive is the great Church Universal in its long life
before and after the historical coming of Christ; the life which in a
certain sense began with the Call of Abraham, and was only
magnificently developed by the Incarnation and Passion. Its Root, in
this respect, is the great Father of Faith. Its Stem is the Church of
the Old Testament, which coincided, in the matter of external
privilege, with the nation of Israel, and to which at least the
immense majority of true believers in the elder time belonged. Its
Branches (by a slight and easy modification of the image) are its
individual members, whether Jewish or Gentile. The Master of the Tree,
arriving on the scene in the Gospel age, comes as it were to prune His
Olive, and to graft. The Jewish "branch," if he is what he seems, if
he believes indeed and not only by hypothesis, abides in the Tree.
Otherwise, he is--from the divine point of view--broken off. The
Gentile, believing, is grafted in, and becomes a true part of the
living organism; as genuinely and vitally one with Abraham in life and
blessing as his Hebrew brother. But the fact of the Hebrew "race" in
root and stem rules still so far as to make the re-ingrafting of a
Hebrew branch, repenting, more "natural" (not more possible, or more
beneficial, but more "natural") than the first ingrafting of a Gentile
branch. The whole Tree is for ever Abrahamic, Israelite, in stock and
growth; though all mankind has place now in its forest of branches.

2. The imagery of Grafting. Here is an instance of partial, while
truthful, use of a natural process in Scripture parable. In our
gardens and orchards it is the wild stock which receives, in grafting,
the "good" branch; a fact which lends itself to many fertile
illustrations. Here, on the contrary, the "wild" branch is inserted
into the "good" stock. But the olive-yard yields to the Apostle all
the imagery he really needs. He has before him, ready to hand, the
Tree of the Church; all that he wants is an illustration of
communication and union of life by artificial insertion. And this he
finds in the olive-dresser's art, which shews him how a vegetable
fragment, apart and alien, can by human design be made to grow into
the life of the tree, as if a native of the root.

3. The teaching of the passage as to the Place of Israel in the divine
Plan of life for the world. We have remarked on this already, but it
calls for reiterated notice and recollection. "At sundry times, and in
divers manners," and through many and divers races and civilizations,
God has dealt with man, and is dealing with him, in the training and
development of his life and nature. But in the matter of man's
spiritual salvation, in the gift to him, in his Fall, of the life
eternal, God has dealt with man, practically, through _one_ race,
Israel. Let it never be forgotten that the "sundry times and divers
manners" of the apostolic Epistle (Heb. i. 1) are all referred to "the
prophets"; they are the "times" and "manners" of the Old Testament
revelation. And when at length the same Eternal Voice spoke to man
"_in the Son_" (ἐν Ὑιῷ), that Son came of Israel, "took hold of
Abraham's seed" (Heb. ii. 16), and Himself bore definite witness that
"salvation is from the Jews" (John iv. 24). Amidst the unknown
manifoldness of the work of God for man, and in man, this is single
and simple--that in one racial line only runs the stream of authentic
and supernatural revelation; in the line of this mysteriously chosen
Israel. From this point of view, the great Husbandman has planted not
a forest but a Tree; and the innumerable trees of the forest can get
the sap of Eden only as their branches are grafted by His hand into
His one Tree, by the faith which unites them to Him who is the Root
below the root, "the Root of David," and of Abraham.

4. The appeal to the new-grafted "branch" to "abide by the goodness of
God." We have listened, as St Paul has dictated to his scribe, to many
a deep word about a divine and sovereign power on man; about man's
absolute debt to God for the fact that he believes and lives. Yet
here, with equal decision, we have man thrown back on the thought of
his responsibility, of the contingency in a certain sense of his
safety on his fidelity.[197] "If you are true to mercy, mercy will be
true to you; otherwise you too will be broken off." Here, as in our
study of earlier passages, let us be willing to go all along with
Scripture in the seeming inconsistency of its absolute promises and
its contingent cautions. Let us, like it, "go to both extremes"; then
we shall be as near, probably, as our finite thought can be at present
to the whole truth as it moves, a perfect sphere, in God. Is the
Christian worn and wearied with his experience of his own pollution,
instability, and helplessness? Let him embrace, without a misgiving,
the whole of that promise, "My sheep shall never perish." Has he
drifted into a vain confidence, not in Christ, but in privilege, in
experience, in apparent religious prosperity? Has he caught himself in
the act of saying, even in a whisper, "God, I thank Thee that I am not
as other men are"? Then let him listen in time to the warning voice,
"Be not high-minded, but fear"; "Take heed lest He spare not thee."
And let him put no pillow of theory between the sharpness of that
warning and his soul. Penitent, self-despairing, resting in Christ
alone, let him "_abide by the goodness of God_."

[189] Παράπτωμα: so we venture to render the word here, where its
compound form gets a special point from its neighbourhood to the
simple verb πίπτειν (πέσωσι).

[190] Παράπτωμα: see above p. 294.

[191] Read δὲ not γάρ. It is the "_but_" of a slight pause and
resumption.

[192] The converts of the Roman Mission were surely Gentiles for the
most part. See further below, ver. 25.

[193] Τὴν σάρκα μου: we venture to write "_flesh and blood_" as the
nearest equivalent in our parlance to the vigorous Greek, "_my
flesh_."

[194] It will be seen that we punctuate the Greek here as follows:
Ὑμῖν δὲ λέγω τοῖς ἔθνεσιν (ἐφ' ὅσον μὲν οὖν εἰμὶ ἐγὼ ἐθνῶν ἀπόστολος,
τὴν διακονίαν μου δοξάζω) εἴ πῶς κτλ. The thought of his "_glory_"
in his "_ministry_" is surely _parenthetical_; thrown in to remind
them that his plea for Israel means no change of heart towards his
Gentile converts, or any wavering in the certainty that in Christ they
are as completely "the people of God" as Israel is. The "main line" of
the sentence runs past this parenthesis: "To you Gentiles I speak, in
the hope of moving the jealousy of the Jews."

[195] Cp. too 2 Cor. iii. 14-16 with this whole passage.

[196] This chapter is silent on that great matter.

[197] "To our safety our sedulity is required." Hooker, _Sermon on the
Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect_ (at the close of the sermon). See
the whole sermon, with its temperate and well-balanced assertion of
the power of grace.




CHAPTER XXIV

_THE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL DIRECTLY FORETOLD: ALL IS OF AND FOR GOD_

ROMANS xi. 25-36


Thus far St Paul has rather reasoned than predicted. He has shewn his
Gentile friends the naturalness, so to speak, of a restoration of
Israel to Christ, and the manifest certainty that such a restoration
will bring blessing to the world. Now he advances to the direct
assertion, made with a Prophet's full authority, that so it shall be.
"_How much rather shall they be grafted into their own Olive?_" The
question implies the assertion; nothing remains but to open it in
full.

[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of
this mystery,= this fact in God's purposes, impossible to be known
without revelation,[198] but luminous when revealed; (=that you may
not be wise in your own esteem,= valuing yourselves on an insight
which is all the while only a partial glimpse); =that failure of
perception (πώρωσος), in a measure,= in the case of many, not all,
of the nation, =has come upon Israel,= and will continue =until the
fulness[199] of the Gentiles shall come in,= until Gentile conversion
shall be in some sense a flowing tide. [Sidenote: Ver 26.] =And so all
Israel,= Israel as a mass, no longer as by scattered units, =shall be
saved,= coming to the feet of Him in whom alone is man's salvation
from judgment and from sin; =as it stands written= (Psal. xiv. 7,
Isai. lix. 20, with Isai. xxvii. 9), ="There shall come from Sion the
Deliverer; He shall turn away all impiety (ἀσεβείας) from Jacob;=
[Sidenote: Ver 27.] =and such they shall find the covenant I shall
have granted,[200]= such shall prove to be My promise and provision,
'ordered and sure,' =when I shall take away their sins,"= in the day
of My pardoning and restoring return to them.

This is a memorable passage. It is in the first place one of the most
definitely predictive of all the prophetic utterances of the Epistles.
Apart from all problems of explanation in detail, it gives us this as
its message on the whole; that there lies hidden in the future, for
the race of Israel, a critical period of overwhelming blessing. If
anything is revealed as fixed in the eternal plan, which, never
violating the creature's will yet is not subject to it, it is this. We
have heard the Apostle speak fully, and without compromise, of the sin
of Israel; the hardened or paralysed spiritual perception, the
refusal to submit to pure grace, the restless quest for a valid
self-righteousness, the deep exclusive arrogance. And thus the promise
of coming mercy, such as shall surprise the world, sounds all the more
sovereign and magnificent. It shall come; so says Christ's prophet
Paul. Not because of historical antecedents, or in the light of
general principles, but because of the revelation of the Spirit, he
speaks of that wonderful future as if it were in full view from the
present; "_All Israel shall be saved_."

We read "no date prefixed." As far as this chapter is concerned, years
and days are as if they were not. On the whole, surely, a large range
of process is in his view; he cannot expect to see fulfilled within a
narrow season the accomplishment of all the preliminaries to the great
event. But he says nothing about this. All we gather is that he sees
in the future a great progress of Gentile Christianity; a great
impression to be made by this on the mind of Israel; a vast and
comparatively sudden awakening of Israel, by the grace of God, however
brought to bear; the salvation of Israel in Christ on a national
scale; "the receiving of them again"; and "life from the dead" as the
result--life from the dead to the world at large. However late or
soon, with whatever attendant events, divine or human, thus it shall
be. The "_spiritual failure of perception in part_" shall vanish.
"_The Deliverer shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob._" "_All Israel
shall be saved._"

"Believest thou the Prophets?" The question, asked of Agrippa by St
Paul, comes to us from this prediction of his own. "Lord, we believe."
Our Master knows that for us in our day it is not easy. The bad air of
materialism, and the profound and stolid fatalism which it involves,
is thick around us. And one symptom of its malign influence is the
growing tendency in the Church to limit, to minimize, to explain if
possible away, from the Scriptures, the properly and distinctively
superhuman, whether of work or word. Men bearing the Christian name,
and bearing it often with loyal and reverent intention, seem to think
far otherwise than their Lord thought about this very element of
prediction in the holy Book, and would have us believe that it is no
great thing to grasp, and to contend for. But as for us, we desire in
all things to be of the opinion of Him who is the eternal Truth and
Light, and who took our nature, expressly, as to one great purpose, in
order to unfold to us articulately His opinion. He lived and died in
the light and power of predictive Scripture. He predicted. He rose
again to commission His Apostles, as the Spirit should teach them, to
see "things to come" (John xvi. 13). To us, this oracle of His "chosen
Vessel" gives us articles of faith and hope. We do not understand, but
we believe, because here it is written, that after these days of the
prevalence of unbelief, after all these questions, loud or half
articulate, angry or agonizing, "Where is the promise?" the world
shall see a spiritual miracle on a scale unknown before. "_All Israel
shall be saved._" Even so, Lord Jesus Christ, the Deliverer. Fill us
with the patience of this hope, for Thy chosen race, and for the
world.

It is almost a pain to turn from this conspectus of the passage to a
discussion of some of its details. But it is necessary; and for our
purpose it need be only brief. Whatever the result may be, it will
leave untouched the grandeur of the central promise.

1. "_Until the fulness of the Gentiles come in._" Does this mean that
the stream of Gentile conversions shall have _flowed and ceased_,
before the great blessing comes to Israel? Certainly the Greek may
carry this meaning; perhaps, taken quite apart, it carries it more
easily than any other. But it has this difficulty, that it would
assign to the "_salvation_" of Israel no influence of blessing upon
the Gentile world. Now ver. 12 has implied that "_the fulness_" of
Israel is to be the more-than-wealth of "_the world_," of "_the
Gentiles_." And ver. 15 has implied, if we have read it aright, that
it is to be to "_the world_" as "_life from the dead_." This leads us
to explain the phrase here to refer not to the close of the
ingathering of the Gentile children of God, but to a time when that
process shall be, so to speak, running high.[201] That time of great
and manifest grace shall be the occasion to Israel of the shock, as it
were, of blessing; and from Israel's blessing shall date an unmeasured
further access of divine good for the world.

As we pass, let us observe the light thrown by these sentences on the
duty of the Church in evangelizing the Gentiles for the Jews, as well
as the Jews for the Gentiles. _Both_ holy enterprises have a destined
effect outside themselves. The evangelist of Africa, India, China, is
working for the hour of the "salvation of all Israel." The evangelist
of the Hebrew Dispersion is preparing Israel for that hour of final
blessing when the "saved" nation shall, in the hand of God, kindle the
world with holy life.

2. "_All Israel shall be saved._" It has been held by some
interpreters that this points to the Israel of God, the spiritual sons
of Abraham. If so, it would be fairly paraphrased as a promise that
when the Gentile conversions are complete, and the "spiritual failure
of perception" gone from the Jewish heart, the family of faith shall
be complete. But surely it puts violence on words, and on thought, to
explain "Israel" in this whole passage mystically. Interpretation
becomes an arbitrary work if we may suddenly do so here, where the
antithesis of Israel and "the Gentiles" is the very theme of the
message. No; we have here the nation, chosen once to a mysterious
speciality in the spiritual history of man, chosen with a choice never
cancelled, however abeyant. A blessing is in view for the nation; a
blessing spiritual, divine, all of grace, quite individual in its
action on each member of the nation, but national in the scale of its
results. We are not obliged to press the word "_all_" to a rigid
literality. Nor are we obliged to limit the crisis of blessing to
anything like a moment of time. But we may surely gather that the
numbers blessed will be at least the vast majority, and that the work
will not be chronic but critical. A transition, relatively swift and
wonderful, shall shew the world a nation penitent, faithful, holy,
given to God.

3. The quotations from Psalms and Prophets (verses 26, 27) offer more
questions than one. They are closely interlaced, and they are not
literal quotations. "_Out of Sion_" takes the place of "_for Zion_."
"_He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob_" takes the place of "_For
them that turn from transgression in Jacob_." "_This is the covenant_"
takes the place of "_This is His blessing_." And there are other
minute points of variation. Yet we reverently trace in the originals
and the citations, which all alike are the work of prophetic organs of
the Spirit, the great ruling thought, identical in both, that "_the
Deliverer_" belongs primarily to "_Zion_," and has in store primarily
a blessing for her people.

Are we, with some devout interpreters, to explain the words, "_The
Deliverer shall come out of Sion_," as predicting a personal and
visible return of the Ascended Jesus to the literal Zion, in order to
the salvation of Israel, and an outgoing of Him from thence to the
Dispersion, or the world, in millennial glory? We deliberately
forbear, in this exposition, to discuss in detail the great
controversy thus indicated. We leave here on one side some questions,
eagerly and earnestly asked. Will Israel return to the Land as
Christian or as anti-Christian? Will the immediate power for their
conversion be the visible Return of the Lord, or will it be an
effusion of His Spirit, by which, spiritually, He shall visit and
bless? What will be the attendant works and wonders of the time? All
we do now is to express the conviction that the prophetic quotations
here cannot be held to predict _unmistakably_ a visible and local
Return. If we read them aright, their import is satisfied by a
paraphrase somewhat thus: "It stands predicted that to Zion, that is,
to Israel, belongs the Deliverer of man, and that for Israel He is to
do His work, whenever finally it is done, with a speciality of grace
and glory." Thus explained, the "_shall come_" of ver. 26 is the
abstract future of divine purpose. In the eternal plan, the Redeemer
was, when He first came to earth, to come to, for, and from "Zion."
And His saving work was to be on lines, and for issues, for ever
characterized by that fact.

Assuredly the Lord Jesus Christ is, personally, literally, visibly,
and to His people's eternal joy, coming again; "this same Jesus, in
like manner" (Acts i. 11). And as the ages unfold themselves,
assuredly the insight of the believing Church into the fulness and, if
we may say so, manifoldness of that great prospect grows. But it still
seems to us that a deep and reverent caution is called for before we
attempt to treat of any detail of that prospect, as regards time,
season, mode, as if we quite knew. Across _all_ lines of interpretation
of unfulfilled prophecy--to name one problem only--it lies as an
unsolved riddle how all the saints of all ages are equally bidden to
watch, as those who "know not _what hour_ their Lord shall come."

But let us oftener and oftener, however we may differ in detail,
recite to one another the glorious essence of our hope. "To them that
look for Him will He appear the second time, without sin, unto
salvation"; "We shall meet the Lord in the air"; "So shall we be ever
with the Lord" (Heb. ix. 28, 1 Thess. iv. 17).

We shall never quite understand the chronology and process of
unfulfilled prophecy, till then.

Now briefly and in summary the Apostle concludes this "Epistle within
the Epistle"; this oracle about Israel. [Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =As
regards the Gospel,= from the point of view of the evangelization of
the world apart from Judaism, that "gospelling" which was, as it were,
precipitated by the rebellion of Israel, =they are enemies, on account
of you,= permitted, for your sakes, in a certain sense, to take a
hostile attitude towards the Lord and His Christ, and to be treated
accordingly; =but as regards the election,= from the point of view of
the divine choice, =they are beloved, on account of the Fathers;=
[Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =for irrevocable[202] are the gifts and the call
of our (τοῦ) God.= The "_gifts_" of unmerited choice, of a love
uncaused by the goodness of its object, but coming from the depth of
the Eternal; the "_call_" which not only invites the creature, but
effects the end of the invitation[203]; these are things which in
their nature are not variable with the variations of man and of time.
The nation so gifted and called, "not according to its works," is for
ever the unalterable object of the eternal affection.

May we not extend the reference of a sentence so absolute in its
oracular brevity, and take it to speak the secret of an indefectible
mercy not only to nation, but to individual? Here as elsewhere we
shall need to remember the rule which bids us, in the heights and
depths of all truth, "go to both extremes." Here as elsewhere we must
be reverently careful how we apply the oracle, and to whom. But does
not the oracle say this, that where the eternal Love has, without
merit, in divine speciality, settled upon a person, there, not
arbitrarily but by a law, which we cannot explain but which we can
believe, it abides for ever? Still, this is a reflection to be made
only in passing here. The immediate matter is a chosen people, not a
chosen soul; and so he proceeds: [Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =For as once you
obeyed not our (τῷ) God, but now,= in the actual state of things, in
His grace, =found mercy, on occasion of their disobedience;=
[Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =so they too now obeyed not, on occasion of your
mercy,= in mysterious connexion with the compassion which, in your
pagan darkness, revealed salvation to you,[204] =that they too may
find mercy.= Yes, even their "_disobedience_," in the mystery of
grace, was permitted _in order to_ their ultimate blessing; it was to
be overruled to that self-discovery which lies deep in all true
repentance, and springs up towards life eternal in the saving
"confidence of self-despair." The pagan (ch. i.) was brought to
self-discovery as a rebel against God indicated in nature; the Jew
(ch. ii.) as a rebel against God revealed in Christ. This latter, if
such a comparison is possible, was the more difficult and as it were
advanced work in the divine plan. It took place, or rather it is
taking and shall take place, later in order, and nearer to the final
and universal triumph of redemption. [Sidenote: Ver. 32.] =For God
shut them all (τοὺς πάντας) up into disobedience, that He might have
mercy upon them all.= With a _fiat_ of judicial permission He let the
Gentile develop his resistance to right into unnatural outrage. He let
the Jew develop his into the desperate rejection of his own glorious
Messiah. But He gave the _fiat_ not as a God who did not care, a mere
supreme Law, a Power sitting unconcerned above the scene of sin. He
let the disease burst into the plague-spot in order that the guilty
victim might ask at last for His remedy, and might receive it as mere
and most astonishing mercy.

Let us not misuse the passage by reading into it a vain hope of an
indiscriminate actual salvation, at the last, of all individuals of
the race; a predestinarian hope for which Scripture not only gives no
valid evidence, but utters against it what at least sound like the
most urgent and unequivocal of its warnings. The context here, as we
saw in another connexion just now, has to do rather with masses than
with persons; with Gentiles and Jews in their common characteristics
rather than taken as individuals. Yet let us draw from the words, with
reverent boldness, a warrant to our faith wholly to trust the Eternal
to be, even in the least fathomable of His dealings, true to Himself,
true to eternal Love, whatever be the action He shall take.

Here the Apostle's voice, as we seem to listen to it, pauses for a
moment, as he passes into unspoken thoughts of awe and faith. He has
now given out his prophetic burthen, telling us Gentiles how great has
been the sin of Israel, but how great also is Israel's privilege, and
how sure his coming mercy. And behind this grand special revelation
there still rise on his soul those yet more majestic forms of truth
which he has led us to look upon before; the Righteousness of God, the
justifying grace, the believing soul's dominion over sin, the fulness
of the Spirit, the coming glory of the saints, the emancipated
Universe, the eternal Love. What remains, after this mighty process of
spiritual discoveries, but to adore? Listen, as he speaks again, and
again the pen moves upon the paper:

[Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =Oh depth of wealth of God's wisdom and knowledge
too! How past all searching are His judgments, and past all tracking
are His ways!= [Sidenote: Ver. 34.] ="For who ever knew the Lord's
mind? Or who ever proved His counsellor?"[205]= [Sidenote: Ver. 35.]
=Or who ever first gave to Him, and requital shall be made to the
giver (αὐτῷ)?= [Sidenote: Ver. 36.] =Because out of Him, and through
Him, and unto Him, are all things[206]: to Him be the glory, unto the
ages. Amen.=

Even so, Amen. We also prostrate our being, with the Apostle, with the
Roman saints, with the whole Church, with all the company of heaven,
and give ourselves to that action of pure worship in which the
creature, sinking lowest in his own eyes, yea out of his own sight
altogether, rises highest into the light of his Maker. What a moment
this is, what an occasion, for such an approach to Him who is the
infinite and personal Fountain of being, and of redemption! We have
been led from reason to reason, from doctrine to doctrine, from one
link to another in a golden chain of redeeming mercies. We have had
the dream of human merit expelled from the heart with arrows of light;
and the pure glory of a grace most absolute, most merciful, has come
in upon us in its place. All along we have been reminded, as it were
in fragments and radiant glimpses, that these doctrines, these truths,
are no mere principles in the abstract, but expressions of the will
and of the love of a Person; that fact full of eternal life, but all
too easily forgotten by the human mind, when its study of religion is
carried away, if but for an hour, from the foot of the Cross, and of
the Throne. But now all these lines converge upwards to their Origin.
By the Cross they reach the Throne. Through the Work of the SON--One
with the FATHER, for of the Son too it is written (Col. i. 16) that
"all things are through Him, and unto Him"--through His Work, and in
it, we come to the Father's Wisdom and Knowledge, which drew the plan
of blessing, and as it were calculated and furnished all its means. We
touch that point where the creature gravitates to its final rest, the
vision of the Glory of God. We repose, with a profound and rejoicing
silence, before the fact of mysteries too bright for our vision. After
all the revelations of the Apostle we own with him in faith, with an
acquiescence deep as our being, the fact that there is no searching,
no tracking out, the final secrets of the ways of God. It becomes to
us wonderfully sufficient, in the light of Christ, to know that "the
Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious," is also Sovereign,
Ultimate, His own eternal Satisfaction; that it is infinitely fit and
blessed that, as His Will is the true efficient cause of all things,
and His Presence their secret of continuance, so He is Himself their
final Cause, their End, their Goal; they fulfil their idea, they find
their bliss, in being altogether His; "all things are UNTO HIM."

"_To whom be the glory, unto the ages. Amen._" The advancing "ages,"
αἰῶνες, the infinite developments of the eternal life, what do we
know about them? Almost nothing, except the greatest fact of all; that
in them for ever the redeemed creature will glorify not itself but the
Creator; finding an endless and ever fuller youth, an inexhaustible
motive, a rest impossible to break, a life in which indeed "they
_cannot_ die any more," in surrendering always all its blissful wealth
of being to the will and use of the BLESSED ONE.

In these "ages" we already are, in Christ. We shall indeed grow for
ever with their eternal growth, in Him, to the glory of the grace of
God. But let us not forget that we are already in their course, as
regards that life of ours which is hid with Christ in God. With that
recollection, let us give ourselves often, and as by the "second
nature" of grace, to adoration. Not necessarily to frequent long
abstractions of our time from the active services of life; we need
only read on into the coming passages of the Epistle to be reminded
that we are hallowed, in our Lord, to a life of unselfish contact with
all the needs around us. But let that life have for its interior, for
its animation, the spirit of worship. Taking by faith our all from
God, let us inwardly always give it back to Him, as those who not only
own with the simplest gratitude that He has redeemed us from
condemnation and from sin, but who have seen with an adoring intuition
that we and our all are of the "all things" which, being "of Him," and
"by Him," are also wholly "unto Him," by an absolute right, by the
ultimate law of our being, as we are the creatures of the eternal
Love.

[198] Such is the normal meaning of μυστήριον in the N. T. It is a
thing which in itself may or may not be what we mean by "mysterious."
But it is a thing which mere observation and reasoning cannot _à
priori_ arrive at; God must disclose it.

[199] Πλήρωμα is the practical realization of an ideal.

[200] So we paraphrase αὕτη αὐτοῖς ἡ παρ' Ἐμοῦ διαθήκη.

[201] The aorist εἰσέλθῃ may rather gather up the great ingathering
into one thought than mark a narrow crisis in it.

[202] Ἀμεταμέλητα: literally, "_unrepented-of_," and so, "_admitting
no repentance_," μεταμελεία, "_change of mind_." This is fairly
represented by "_irrevocable_."

[203] See above, p. 19.

[204] It is possible to render here: "_they did not obey your mercy_";
_i.e._, they refused submission to that Gospel in which you found
embodied the mercy of God. But the balance of thoughts and sentences
is in favour of the rendering above.

[205] He quotes nearly verbatim from Isai. xl. 13. Cp. Jerem.
xxiii. 18.

[206] Τὰ πάντα: the Greek gives us at once the items and the sum of
the "_all_."




CHAPTER XXV

_CHRISTIAN CONDUCT THE ISSUE OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH_

ROMANS xii. 1-8


Again we may conjecture a pause, a long pause and deliberate, in the
work of Paul and Tertius. We have reached the end, generally speaking,
of the dogmatic and so to speak oracular contents of the Epistle. We
have listened to the great argument of Righteousness, Sanctification,
and final Redemption. We have followed the exposition of the
mysterious unbelief and the destined restoration of the chosen nation;
a theme which we can see, as we look back on the perspective of the
whole Epistle, to have a deep and suggestive connexion with what went
before it; for the experience of Israel, in relation to the sovereign
will and grace of God, is full of light thrown upon the experience of
the soul. Now in order comes the bright sequel of this mighty
antecedent, this complex but harmonious mass of spiritual facts and
historical illustrations of the will and ways of the Eternal. The
voice of St Paul is heard again; and he comes full upon the Lord's
message of duty, conduct, character.

As out of some cleft in the face of the rocky hills rolls the full
pure stream born in their depths, and runs under the sun and sky
through green meadows and beside the thirsty homes of men, so
here from the inmost mysteries of grace comes the message of
all-comprehensive holy duty. The Christian, filled with the knowledge
of an eternal love, is told how not to dream, but to serve, with all
the mercies of God for his motive.

This is indeed in the manner of the New Testament; this vital sequence
of duty and doctrine; the divine Truths first, and then and therefore
the blessed Life. To take only St Paul's writings, the Ephesian and
Colossian Epistles are each, practically, bisected by a line which has
eternal facts before it and present duties, done in the light and
power of them, after it. But the whole Book of God, in its texture all
over, shews the same phenomenon. Someone has remarked with homely
force that in the Bible everywhere, if only we dig deep enough, we
find "_Do right_" at the bottom. And we may add that everywhere also
we have only to dig one degree deeper to find that the precept is
rooted in eternal underlying facts of divine truth and love.

Scripture, that is to say, its Lord and Author, does not give us the
terrible gift of a precept isolated and in a vacuum. It supports its
commandments on a base of cogent motive; and it fills the man who is
to keep them with the power of a living Presence in him; this we have
seen at large in the pages of the Epistle already traversed. But then,
on the other hand, the Lord of Scripture does not leave the motive and
the Presence without the articulate precept. Rather, because they are
supplied and assured to the believer, it spreads out all the more
amply and minutely a moral directory before his eyes. It tells him, as
a man who now rests on God and loves Him, and in whom God dwells, not
only in general that he is to "walk and please God" but in particular
"_how_" to do it (1 Thess. iv. 1). It takes his life in detail, and
applies the will of the Lord to it. It speaks to him in explicit terms
about moral purity, in the name of the Holy One; about patience and
kindness, in the name of redeeming Love; about family duties, in the
name of the Father and of the Son; about civic duties, in the name of
the King Eternal. And the whole outline and all the details thus
become to the believer things not only of duty but of possibility, of
hope, of the strong interest given by the thought that thus and thus
the beloved Master would have us use His divine gift of life. Nothing
is more wonderfully free, from one point of view, than love and
spiritual power. But if the love is indeed given by God and directed
towards Him in Christ, the man who loves cannot possibly wish to be
his own law, and to spend his soul's power upon his own ideas or
preferences. His joy and his conscious aim must be to do, in detail,
the will of the Lord who is now so dear to him; and therefore, in
detail, to know it.

Let us take deep note of this characteristic of Scripture, its
minuteness of precept, in connexion with its revelation of spiritual
blessing. If in any sense we are called to be teachers of others, let
us carry out the example. Richard Cecil, wise and pregnant counsellor
in Christ, says that if he had to choose between preaching precepts
and preaching privileges, he would preach privileges; because the
privileges of the true Gospel tend in their nature to suggest and
stimulate right action, while the precepts taken alone do not reveal
the wealth of divine life and power. But Cecil, like his great
contemporaries of the Evangelical Revival, constantly and diligently
preached as a fact both privilege and precept; opening with energetic
hands the revealed fulness of Christ, and then and therefore teaching
"them which had believed through grace" not only the idea of duty, but
its details. Thomas Scott, at Olney, devoted his week-night "lecture"
in the parish church, almost exclusively, to instructions in daily
Christian life. Assuming that his hearers "knew Christ" in personal
reality, he told them how to be Christians in the home, in the shop,
in the farm; how to be consistent with their regenerate life as
parents, children, servants, masters, neighbours, subjects. There have
been times, perhaps, when such didactic preaching has been too little
used in the Church. But the men who, under God, in the last century
and the early years of this century, revived the message of Christ
Crucified and Risen as all in all for our salvation, were eminently
diligent in teaching Christian morals. At the present day, in many
quarters of our Christendom, there is a remarkable revival of the
desire to apply saving truth to common life, and to keep the Christian
always mindful that he not only has heaven in prospect, but is to
travel to it, every step, in the path of practical and watchful
holiness. This is a sign of divine mercy in the Church. This is
profoundly Scriptural.

Meanwhile, God forbid that such "teaching how to live" should ever be
given, by parent, pastor, schoolmaster, friend, where it does not
first pass through the teacher's own soul into his own life. Alas for
us if we shew ever so convincingly, and even ever so winningly, the
bond between salvation and holiness, and do not "walk accurately"
(Eph. v. 15) ourselves, in the details of our walk.

As we actually approach the rules of holiness now before us, let us
once more recollect what we have seen all along in the Epistle, that
holiness is the aim and issue of the entire Gospel. It is indeed an
"evidence of life," infinitely weighty in the enquiry whether a man
knows God indeed and is on the way to His heaven. But it is much more;
it is the expression of life; it is the form and action in which life
is intended to come out. In our orchards (to use again a parable we
have used already) the golden apples are evidences of the tree's
species, and of its life. But a wooden label could tell us the
species, and leaves can tell the life. The fruit is more than label or
leaf; it is the thing for which the tree is there. We who believe are
"chosen" and "ordained" to "bring forth fruit" (John xv. 16), fruit
much and lasting. The eternal Master walks in His garden for the very
purpose of seeing if the trees bear. And the fruit He looks for is no
visionary thing; it is a life of holy serviceableness to Him and to
our fellows, in His Name.

But now we draw near again and listen:

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =I exhort you therefore, brethren, by means of the
compassions of God;= using as my logic and my fulcrum this "depth of
riches" we have explored; this wonderful Redemption, with its
sovereignty, its mercy, its acceptance, its holiness, its glory; this
overruling of even sin and rebellion, in Gentile and in Jew, into
occasions for salvation; these compassionate indications in the nearer
and the eternal future of golden days yet to come;--=I exhort you
therefore to present,= to give over, =your bodies as a sacrifice,= an
altar-offering, =living, holy, well-pleasing, unto God; for this
(ἥτις) is your rational devotion (λατρεία).= That is to say, it
is the "_devotion_," the _cultus_, the worship-service, which is done
by the reason, the mind, the thought and will, of the man who has
found God in Christ. The Greek term, _latreia_, is tinged with
associations of ritual and temple; but it is taken here, and qualified
by its adjective, on purpose to be lifted, as in paradox, into the
region of the soul. The robes and incense of the visible sanctuary are
here out of sight; the individual believer is at once priest,
sacrifice, and altar; he immolates himself to the Lord,--living, yet
no longer to himself.

But observe the pregnant collocation here of "_the body_" with "_the
reason_." "_Give over your bodies_"; not now your spirit, your
intelligence, your sentiments, your aspirations, but "_your bodies_,"
to your Lord. Is this an anti-climax? Have we retreated from the
higher to the lower, in coming from the contemplation of sovereign
grace and the eternal glory to that of the physical frame of man? No
more than the Lord Jesus did, when He walked down from the hill of
Transfiguration to the crowd below, and to the sins and miseries it
presented. He came from the scene of glory to serve men in its abiding
inner light. And even He, in the days of His flesh, served men,
ordinarily, only through His sacred body; walking to them with His
feet; touching them with His hands; meeting their eyes with His;
speaking with His lips the words that were spirit and life. As with
Him so with us. It is only through the body, practically, that we can
"serve our generation by the will of God." Not without the body but
through it the spirit must tell on the embodied spirits around us. We
look, we speak, we hear, we write, we nurse, we travel, by means of
these material servants of the will, our living limbs. Without the
body, where should we be, as to other men? And therefore, without the
surrender of the body, where are we, as to other men, from the point
of view of the will of God?

So there is a true sense in which, while the surrender of the will is
all important and primary from one point of view, the surrender of the
body, the "giving over" of the body, to be the implement of God's will
in us, is all-important, is crucial, from another. For many a
Christian life it is the most needful of all things to remember this;
it is the oblivion, or the mere half-recollection, of this which keeps
that life an almost neutral thing as to witness and service for the
Lord.

[Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =And do not grow[207] conformed to this world,=
this _æon_ (αἰών), the course and state of things in this scene of
sin and death; do not play "the worldling," assuming a guise
(σχῆμα) which in itself is fleeting, and which for you, members of
Christ, must also be hollow; =but grow transfigured,= living out a
lasting and genuine change of tone and conduct, in which the figure
(μορφὴ) is only the congenial expression of the essence[208]--=by
the renewal of your mind,= by using as an implement in the holy
process that divine light which has cleared your intelligence of the
mists of self-love, and taught you to see as with new eyes "the
splendour of the will of God"; =so as that you test,= discerning as by
a spiritual touchstone, =what is the will of God, the good, and
acceptable, and perfect (will).=

Such was to be the method, and such the issue, in this development of
the surrendered life. All is divine in origin and secret. The eternal
"compassions," and the sovereign work of the renewing and illuminating
Spirit, are supposed before the believer can move one step. On the
other hand the believer, in the full conscious action of his renewed
"intelligence," is to ponder the call to seek "transfiguration" in a
life of unworldly love, and to attain it in detail by using the new
insight of a regenerated heart. He is to look, with the eyes of the
soul, straight through every mist of self-will to the now beloved Will
of God, as his deliberate choice, seen to be welcome, seen to be
perfect, not because all is understood, but because the man is
joyfully surrendered to the all-trusted Master. Thus he is to move
along the path of an ever brightening transfiguration; at once
open-eyed, and in the dark; seeing the Lord, and so with a sure
instinct gravitating to His will, yet content to let the mists of the
unknown always hang over the next step but one.

It is a process, not a crisis; "_grow_ transfigured." The origin of
the process, the liberation of the movement, is, at least in idea, as
critical as possible; "_Give over your bodies_." That precept is
conveyed, in its Greek form (παραστῆσαι, aorist), so as to suggest
precisely the thought of a critical surrender. The Roman Christian,
and his English younger brother, are called here, as they were above
(vi. 13, 19), to a transaction with the Lord quite definite, whether
or no the like has taken place before, or shall be done again. They
are called, as if once for all, to look their Lord in the face, and to
clasp His gifts in their hands, and then to put themselves and His
gifts altogether into _His_ hands, for perpetual use and service. So,
from the side of his conscious experience, the Christian is called to
a "hallowing of himself" decisive, crucial, instantaneous. But its
outcome is to be a perpetual progression, a growth, not so much "into"
grace as "_in_" it (2 Pet. iii. 18), in which the surrender in purpose
becomes a long series of deepening surrenders in habit and action, and
a larger discovery of self, and of the Lord, and of His will, takes
effect in the "shining" of the transfigured life "more and more, unto
the perfect day" (Prov. iv. 18).

Let us not distort this truth of progression, and its correlative
truth of the Christian's abiding imperfection. Let us not profane it
into an excuse for a life which at the best is stationary, and must
almost certainly be retrograde, because not intent upon a genuine
advance. Let us not withhold "_our bodies_" from the sacred surrender
here enjoined upon us, and yet expect to realize somehow, at some
vague date, a "_transfiguration, by the renewal of our mind_." We
shall be indeed disappointed of that hope. But let us be at once
stimulated and sobered by the spiritual facts. As we are "yielded to
the Lord," in sober reality, we are in His mercy "liberated for
growth." But the growth is to come, among other ways, by the diligent
application of "the renewal of our mind" to the details of His blessed
Will.

And it will come, in its true development, only in the line of holy
humbleness. To exalt oneself, even in the spiritual life, is not to
grow; it is to wither. So the Apostle goes on:

[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For I say, through the grace that has been given
me,= "_the grace_" of power for apostolic admonition, =to every one
who is among you, not to be high-minded beyond what his mind should
be, but to be minded toward sober-mindedness, as to each God
distributed faith's measure.= That is to say, let the individual
never, in himself, forget his brethren, and the mutual relation of
each to all in Christ. Let him never make himself the centre, or think
of his personal salvation as if it could really be taken alone. The
Lord, the sovereign Giver of faith, the Almighty Bringer of souls into
acceptance and union with Christ by faith, has given thy faith to
thee, and thy brother's faith to him; and why? That the individual
gifts, the bounty of the One Giver, might join the individuals not
only to the Giver but to one another, as recipients of riches many yet
one, and which are to be spent in service one yet many. The One Lord
distributes the one faith-power into many hearts, "_measuring_" it out
to each, so that the many, individually believing in the One, may not
collide and contend, but lovingly cooperate in a manifold service, the
issue of their "like precious faith" (2 Pet. i. 2) conditioned by the
variety of their lives. So comes in that pregnant parable of the Body,
found only in the writings of St Paul, and in four only of his
Epistles, but so stated there as to take a place for ever in the
foreground of Christian truth. We have it here in the Romans, and in
larger detail in the contemporary 1 Corinthians (xii. 12-27). We have
it finally and fully in the later Epistolary Group, of the first Roman
Captivity--in Ephesians and Colossians. There the supreme point in the
whole picture, the glorious HEAD, and His relation to the Limb and to
the Body, comes out in all its greatness, while in these earlier
passages it appears only incidentally.[209] But each presentation, the
earlier and the later, is alike true to its purpose. When St Paul
wrote to the Asiatics, he was in presence of errors which beclouded
the living splendour of the Head. When he wrote to the Romans, he was
concerned rather with the interdependence of the limbs, in the
practice of Christian social life.

We have spoken of "_the parable_ of the Body." But is the word
"parable" adequate? "What if earth be but the shadow of heaven?" What
if our physical frame, the soul's house and vehicle, be only the
feebler counterpart of that great Organism in which the exalted Christ
unites and animates His saints? That union is no mere aggregation, no
mere alliance of so many men under the presidency of an invisible
Leader. It is a thing of life. Each to the living Head, and so each to
all His members, we are joined in that wonderful connexion with a
tenacity, and with a relation, genuine, strong, and close as the
eternal life can make it. The living, breathing man, multifold yet
one, is but the reflection, as it were, of "Christ Mystical," the true
Body with its heavenly Head.

[Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For just as in one body we have many limbs, but
all the limbs have not the same function,= [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =so we,
the many, are one body in Christ,= in our personal union with Him,
=but in detail (τὸ δὲ καθεῖς), limbs of one another,= coherent and
related not as neighbours merely but as complementary parts in the whole.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But having endowments (χαρίσματα)--according to
the grace that was given to us--differing, be it prophecy,= inspired
utterance, a power from above, yet mysteriously conditioned (1 Cor.
xiv. 32) by the judgment and will of the utterer, =let it follow the
proportion of the= man's =faith,= let it be true to his entire
dependence on the revealed Christ, not left at the mercy of his mere
emotions, or as it were played upon by alien unseen powers;
[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =be it active service (διακονία),= let the man
be =in his service,= wholly given to it, not turning aside to covet
his brother's more mystic gift; =be it the teacher,= let him likewise
be =in his teaching,= whole-hearted in his allotted work, free from
ambitious outlooks from it; [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =be it the exhorter,=
let him be =in his exhortation; the distributer= of his means, for
God, =with open-handedness; the superintendent,= of Church, or of
home, =with earnestness; the pitier,= (large and unofficial
designation!) =with gladness,= doubling his gifts and works of mercy
by the hallowed brightness of a heart set free from the aims of self,
and therefore wholly at the service of the needing.

This paragraph of eight verses lies here before us, full all along of
that deep characteristic of Gospel life, surrender for service. The
call is to a profoundly passive inward attitude, with an express view
to a richly active outward usefulness. Possessed, and knowing it, of
the compassions of God, the man is asked to give himself over to
Eternal Love for purposes of unworldly and unambitious employment in
the path chosen for him, whatever it may be. In this respect above all
others he is to be "_not conformed to this world_"--that is, he is to
make not himself but his Lord his pleasure and ambition. "_By the
renewal of his mind_" he is to view the Will of God from a point
inaccessible to the unregenerate, to the unjustified, to the man not
emancipated in Christ from the tyranny of sin. He is to see in it his
inexhaustible interest, his line of quest and hope, his ultimate and
satisfying aim; because of the practical identity of the Will and the
infinitely good and blessed Bearer of it. And this more than surrender
of his faculties, this happy and reposeful consecration of them, is to
shew its reality in one way above all others first; in a humble
estimate of self as compared with brother Christians, and a watchful
willingness to do--not another's work, but the duty that lies next.

This relative aspect of the life of self-surrender is the burthen of
this great paragraph of duty. In the following passage we shall find
precepts more in detail; but here we have what is to govern all along
the whole stream of the obedient life. The man rich in Christ is
reverently to remember others, and God's will in them, and for them.
He is to avoid the subtle temptation to intrude beyond the Master's
allotted work _for him_. He is to be slow to think, "I am richly
qualified, and could do this thing, and that, and the other, better
than the man who does it now." His chastened spiritual instinct will
rather go to criticize himself, to watch for the least deficiency in
his own doing of the task which at least to-day is his. He will "give
himself wholly to this," be it more or less attractive to him in
itself. For he works as one who has not to contrive a life as full of
success and influence as he can imagine, but to accept a life assigned
by the Lord who has first given to him Himself.

The passage itself amply implies that he is to use actively and
honestly his renewed _intelligence_. He is to look circumstances and
conditions in the face, remembering that in one way or another the
will of God is expressed in them. He is to seek to understand not his
duties only but his personal equipments for them, natural as well as
spiritual. But he is to do this as one whose "mind" is "renewed" by
his living contact and union with his redeeming King, and who has
really laid his faculties at the feet of an absolute Master, who is
the Lord of order as well as of power.

What peace, energy, and dignity comes into a life which is consciously
and deliberately thus surrendered! The highest range of duties, as man
counts highest, is thus disburthened both of its heavy anxieties and
of its temptations to a ruinous self-importance. And the lowest range,
as man counts lowest, is filled with the quiet greatness born of the
presence and will of God. In the memoirs of Mme de la Mothe Guyon much
is said of her faithful maid-servant, who was imprisoned along with
her (in a separate chamber) in the Bastille, and there died, about the
year 1700. This pious woman, deeply taught in the things of the
Spirit, and gifted with an understanding far above the common, appears
never for an hour to have coveted a more ambitious department than
that which God assigned her in His obedience. "She desired to be what
God would have her be, and to be nothing more, and nothing less. She
included time and place, as well as disposition and action. She had
not a doubt that God, who had given remarkable powers to Mme Guyon,
had called her to the great work in which she was employed. But
knowing that her beloved mistress could not go alone, but must
constantly have some female attendant, she had the conviction, equally
distinct, that she was called to be her maid-servant."[210]

A great part of the surface of Christian society would be
"transfigured" if its depth was more fully penetrated with that
spirit. And it is to that spirit that the Apostle here definitely
calls us, each and every one, not as with a "counsel of perfection"
for the few, but as the will of God for all who have found out what is
meant by His "compassions," and have caught even a glimpse of His Will
as "good, and acceptable, and perfect."

  "I would not have the restless will
    That hurries to and fro,
  Seeking for some great thing to do
    Or secret thing to know;
  I would be treated as a child,
    And guided where I go."

[207] The Greek imperative is present, and indicates a process.

[208] See Trench, _N. T. Synonyms_, _s.v._ μορφή, for the pregnant
difference of the two nouns which are the distinctive elements here of
the two verbs.

[209] See 1 Cor. xii. 21: "_Can the head say_ to the feet, etc.?"

[210] Upham: _Life, etc., of Mme de la M. Guyon_, ch. I.




CHAPTER XXVI

_CHRISTIAN DUTY: DETAILS OF PERSONAL CONDUCT_

ROMANS xii. 9-21


St Paul has set before us the life of surrender, of the "giving-over"
of faculty to God, in one great preliminary aspect. The fair ideal
(meant always for a watchful and hopeful realization) has been held
aloft. It is a life whose motive is the Lord's "compassions"; whose
law of freedom is His will; whose inmost aim is, without envy or
interference towards our fellow-servants, to "finish the work He hath
given _us_ to do." Now into this noble outline are to be poured the
details of personal conduct which, in any and every line and field,
are to make the characteristics of the Christian.

As we listen again, we will again remember that the words are levelled
not at a few but at all who are in Christ. The beings indicated here
are not the chosen names of a Church Calendar, nor are they the
passionless inhabitants of a Utopia. They are all who, in Rome of old,
in England now, "have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,"
"have the Spirit of God dwelling in them," and are living out this
wonderful but most practical life in the straight line of their
Father's will.

As if he could not heap the golden words too thickly together, St Paul
dictates here with even unusual abruptness and terseness of
expression. He leaves syntax very much alone; gives us noun and
adjective, and lets them speak for themselves. We will venture to
render as nearly verbatim as possible. The English will inevitably
seem more rough and crude than the Greek, but the impression given
will be truer on the whole to the original than a fuller rendering
would be.

[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =Your (ἡ) love, unaffected. Abominating the
ill, wedded to[211] the good.= [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =For your
brotherly-kindness, full of mutual home-affection (φιλόστοργοι).
For your honour,= your code of precedence, =deferring to one another.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =For your earnestness,[212] not slothful. For the
Spirit,= as regards your possession and use of the divine Indweller,
=glowing.[213] For the Lord, bond-serving.[214]= [Sidenote: Ver. 12.]
=For your hope,= that is to say, as to the hope of the Lord's Return,
=rejoicing. For your affliction, enduring. For your prayer,
persevering.= [Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =For the wants of the saints,= for
the poverty of fellow-Christians, =communicating;= "_sharing_"
(κοινωνοῦντες), a yet nobler thing than the mere "_giving_" which
may ignore the sacred fellowship of the provider and the receiver.
=Hospitality[215]--prosecuting (διώκοντες)= as with a studious
cultivation. [Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =Bless those who persecute[216] you;
bless, and do not curse.= This was a solemnly appropriate precept, for
the community over which, eight years later, the first great
Persecution was to break in "blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke."
And no doubt there was abundant present occasion for it, even while
the scene was comparatively tranquil. Every modern mission-field can
illustrate the possibilities of a "persecution" which may be
altogether private, or which at most may touch only a narrow
neighbourhood; which may never reach the point of technical outrage,
yet may apply a truly "fiery trial" to the faithful convert. Even in
circles of our decorous English society is no such thing known as the
"persecution" of a life "not conformed to this world," though the
assault or torture may take forms almost invisible and impalpable,
except to the sensibilities of the object of it? For all such cases,
as well as for the confessor on the rack, and the martyr in the fire,
this precept holds expressly; "_Bless, do not curse_." In Christ find
possible the impossible; let the resentment of nature die, at His
feet, in the breath of His love.

[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =To rejoice with the rejoicing, and to weep with
the weeping;= holy duties of the surrendered life, too easily
forgotten. Alas, there is such a phenomenon, not altogether rare, as a
life whose self-surrender, in some main aspects, cannot be doubted,
but which utterly fails in sympathy. A certain spiritual exaltation is
allowed actually to harden, or at least to seem to harden, the
consecrated heart; and the man who perhaps witnesses for God with a
prophet's ardour is yet not one to whom the mourner would go for tears
and prayer in his bereavement, or the child for a perfectly human
smile in its play. But this is not as the Lord would have it be. If
indeed the Christian has "given his body over," it is that his eyes,
and lips, and hands, may be ready to give loving tokens of fellowship
in sorrow, and (what is less obvious) in gladness too, to the human
hearts around him.

[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Feeling[217] the same thing towards one
another;= animated by a happy identity of sympathy and brotherhood.
=Not haughty in feeling,[218] but full of lowly sympathies[219];=
accessible, in an unaffected fellowship, to the poor, the social
inferior, the weak and the defeated, and again to the smallest and
homeliest interests of all. It was the Lord's example; the little
child, the wistful parent, the widow with her mites, the poor fallen
woman of the street, could "lead away" (συναπάγειν) His blessed
sympathies with a touch, while He responded with an unbroken majesty
of gracious power, but with a kindness for which condescension seems a
word far too cold and distant.

=Do not get to be wise in your own opinion;= be ready always to learn;
dread the attitude of mind, too possible even for the man of earnest
spiritual purpose, which assumes that you have nothing to learn and
everything to teach; which makes it easy to criticize and to
discredit; and which can prove an altogether repellent thing to the
observer from outside, who is trying to estimate the Gospel by its
adherent and advocate. [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =Requiting no one evil for
evil;= safe from the spirit of retaliation, in your surrender to Him
"who when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered,
threatened not." =Taking forethought for good in the sight of all
men;= not letting habits, talk, expenses, drift into inconsistency;
watching with open and considerate eyes against what others may fairly
think to be unchristian in you. Here is no counsel of cowardice, no
recommendation of slavery to a public opinion which may be altogether
wrong. It is a precept of loyal jealousy for the heavenly Master's
honour. His servant is to be nobly indifferent to the world's thought
and word where he is sure that God and the world antagonize. But he is
to be sensitively attentive to the world's observation where the
world, more or less acquainted with the Christian precept or
principle, and more or less conscious of its truth and right, is
watching, maliciously or it may be wistfully, to see if it governs the
Christian's practice. In view of this the man will never be content
even with the satisfaction of his own conscience; he will set himself
not only to do right, but to be seen to do it. He will not only be
true to a monetary trust, for example; he will take care that the
proofs of his fidelity shall be open. He will not only mean well
towards others; he will take care that his manner and bearing, his
dealings and intercourse, shall unmistakably breathe the Christian
air.

[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =If possible, as regards your side,= (the
"_your_" is as emphatic as possible in position and in meaning,)
=living at peace with all men;= yes, even in pagan and hostile Rome. A
peculiarly Christian principle speaks here. The men who had "given
over their bodies a living sacrifice" might think, imaginably, that
their duty was to court the world's enmity, to tilt as it were against
its spears, as if the one supreme call was to collide, to fall, and to
be glorified. But this would be fanaticism; and the Gospel is never
fanatical, for it is the law of love. The surrendered Christian is
not, as such, an aspirant for even a martyr's fame, but the servant of
God and man. If martyrdom crosses his path, it is met as duty; but he
does not court it as _éclat_. And what is true of martyrdom is of
course true of every lower and milder form of the conflict of the
Church, and of the Christian, in the world.

Nothing more nobly evidences the divine origin of the Gospel than this
essential precept; "as far as it lies with _you_, live peaceably with
all men." Such wise and kind forbearance and neighbourliness would
never have been bound up with the belief of supernatural powers and
hopes, if those powers and hopes had been the mere issue of human
exaltation, of natural enthusiasm. The supernatural of the Gospel
leads to nothing but rectitude and considerateness, in short to
nothing but love, between man and man. And why? Because it is indeed
divine; it is the message and gift of the living Son of God, in all
the truth and majesty of His rightfulness. All too early in the
history of the Church "the crown of martyrdom" became an object of
enthusiastic ambition. But that was not because of the teaching of the
Crucified, nor of His suffering Apostles. [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =Not
avenging yourselves, beloved; no, give place to the wrath;= let the
angry opponent, the dread persecutor, have his way, so far as your
resistance or retaliation is concerned. "_Beloved_, let us love"
(1 John iv. 7); with that strong and conquering love which wins by
suffering. And do not fear lest eternal justice should go by default;
there is One who will take care of that matter; you may leave it with
Him. =For it stands written= (Deut. xxxii. 35), ="To Me belongs
vengeance; I will recompense, saith the Lord."= [Sidenote: Ver. 20.]
="But if"[220]= (and again he quotes the older Scriptures, finding in
the Proverbs (xxv. 21, 22) the same oracular authority as in the
Pentateuch), ="but if thy enemy is hungry, give him food; if he is
thirsty, give him drink; for so doing thou wilt heap coals of fire on
his head";= taking the best way to the only "_vengeance_" which a
saint can wish, namely, your "enemy's" conviction of his wrong, the
rising of a burning shame in his soul, and the melting of his spirit
in the fire of love. [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =Be not thou conquered by
the evil, but conquer, in the good, the evil.=

"_In_ the good"; as if surrounded by it,[221] moving invulnerable, in
its magic circle, through "the contradiction of sinners," "the
provoking of all men." The thought is just that of Psal. xxxi. 18, 19:
"How great is Thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear
Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee before the
sons of men! Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy presence from
the pride of man; Thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the
strife of tongues." "_The good_" of this sentence of St Paul's is no
vague and abstract thing; it is "the gift of God" (vi. 28); it is the
life eternal found and possessed in union with Christ, our
Righteousness, our Sanctification, our Redemption. Practically,[222]
it is "not It but _He_." The Roman convert who should find it more
than possible to meet his enemy with love, to do him positive good in
his need, with a conquering simplicity of intention, was to do so not
so much by an internal conflict between his "better self" and his
worse, as by the living power of Christ received in his whole being;
by "abiding in Him."

It is so now, and for ever. The open secret of divine peace and love
is what it was; as necessary, as versatile, as victorious. And its
path of victory is as straight and as sure as of old. And the precept
to tread that path, daily and hourly, if occasion calls, is still as
divinely binding as it ever was for the Christian, if indeed he has
embraced "the mercies of God," and is looking to his Lord to be
evermore "transfigured, by the renewing of his mind."

       *       *       *       *       *

As we review this rich field of the flowers, and of the gold, of
holiness, this now completed paragraph of epigrammatic precepts, some
leading and pervading principles emerge. We see first that the
sanctity of the Gospel is no hushed and cloistered "indifferentism."
It is a thing intended for the open field of human life; to be lived
out "before the sons of men." A strong positive element is in it. The
saint is to "_abominate_ the evil"; not only to deprecate it, and
deplore. He is to be energetically "_in earnest_." He is to "_glow_"
with the Spirit, and to "_rejoice_" in the hope of glory. He is to
take practical, provident pains to live not only aright, but
manifestly aright, in ways which "_all men_" can recognize. Again, his
life is to be essentially social. He is contemplated as one who meets
other lives at every turn, and he is never to forget or neglect his
relation to them. Particularly in the Christian Society, he is to
cherish the "family affection" of the Gospel; to defer to fellow
Christians in a generous humility; to share his means with the poor
among them; to welcome the strangers of them to his house. He is to
think it a sacred duty to enter into the joys and the sorrows round
him. He is to keep his sympathies open for despised people, and for
little matters. Then again, and most prominently after all, he is to
be ready to suffer, and to meet suffering with a spirit far greater
than that of only resignation. He is to bless his persecutor; he is to
serve his enemy in ways most practical and active; he is to conquer
him for Christ, in the power of a divine communion.

Thus, meanwhile, the life, so positive, so active in its effects, is
to be essentially all the while a passive, bearing, enduring, life.
Its strength is to spring not from the energies of nature, which may
or may not be vigorous in the man, but from an internal surrender to
the claim and government of his Lord. He has "presented himself to
God" (vi. 13); he has "presented his body, a living sacrifice"
(xii. 1). He has recognized, with a penitent wonder and joy, that he
is but the limb of a Body, and that his Head is the Lord. His thought
is now not for his personal rights, his individual exaltation, but for
the glory of his Head, for the fulfilment of the thought of his Head,
and for the health and wealth of the Body, as the great vehicle in the
world of the gracious will of the Head.

It is among the chief and deepest of the characteristics of Christian
ethics, this passive root below a rich growth and harvest of activity.
All through the New Testament we find it expressed or suggested. The
first Beatitude uttered by the Lord (Matt. v. 3) is given to "the
poor, the mendicant (πτωχοί), in spirit." The last (John xx. 29) is
for the believer, who trusts without seeing. The radiant portrait of
holy Love (1 Cor. xiii.) produces its effect, full of indescribable
life as well as beauty, by the combination of almost none but negative
touches; the "total abstinence" of the loving soul from impatience,
from envy, from self-display, from self-seeking, from brooding over
wrong, from even the faintest pleasure in evil, from the tendency to
think ill of others. Everywhere the Gospel bids the Christian take
sides against himself. He is to stand ready to forego even his surest
rights, if only _he_ is hurt by so doing; while on the other hand he
is watchful to respect even the least obvious rights of others, yea,
to consider their weaknesses, and their prejudices, to the furthest
just limit. He is "not to resist evil"; in the sense of never fighting
for self as self. He is rather to "suffer himself to be defrauded"
(1 Cor. vi. 7) than to bring discredit on his Lord in however due a
course of law. The straits and humiliations of his earthly lot, if
such things are the will of God for him, are not to be materials for
his discontent, or occasions for his envy, or for his secular
ambition. They are to be his opportunities for inward triumph; the
theme of a "song of the Lord," in which he is to sing of strength
perfected in weakness, of a power not his own "overshadowing" him
(2 Cor. xii. 9, 10).

Such is the passivity of the saints, deep beneath their serviceable
activity. The two are in vital connexion. The root is not the accident
but the proper antecedent of the product. For the secret and
unostentatious surrender of the will, in its Christian sense, is no
mere evacuation, leaving the house swept but empty; it is the
reception of the Lord of life into the open castle of the City of
Mansoul. It is the placing in His hands of all that the walls contain.
And placed in His hands, the castle, and the city, will shew at once,
and continually more and more, that not only order but life has taken
possession. The surrender of the Moslem is, in its theory, _a mere_
submission. The surrender of the Gospel is a reception also; and thus
its nature is to come out in "the fruit of the Spirit."

Once more, let us not forget that the Apostle lays his main emphasis
here rather on being than on doing. Nothing is said of great spiritual
enterprises; everything has to do with the personal conduct of the men
who, if such enterprises are done, must do them. This too is
characteristic of the New Testament. Very rarely do the Apostles say
anything about their converts' duty, for instance, to carry the
message of Christ around them in evangelistic aggression. Such
aggression was assuredly attempted, and in numberless ways, by the
primeval Christians, from those who were "scattered abroad" (Acts
viii. 4) after the death of Stephen onwards. The Philippians (ii. 15,
16) "shone as lights in the world, holding out the word of life." The
Ephesians (v. 13) penetrated the surrounding darkness, being
themselves "light in the Lord." The Thessalonians (1, i. 8) made their
witness felt "in Macedonia, and Achaia, and in every place." The
Romans, encouraged by St Paul's presence and sufferings, "were bold to
speak the word without fear" (Phil. i. 14). St John (3 Ep. 7) alludes
to missionaries who, "for the Name's sake, went forth, taking nothing
of the Gentiles."

Yet is it not plain that, when the Apostles thought of the life and
zeal of their converts, their first care, by far, was that they should
be wholly conformed to the will of God in personal and social matters?
This was the indispensable condition to their being, as a community,
what they must be if they were to prove true witnesses and
propagandists for their Lord.

God forbid that we should draw from this phenomenon one inference,
however faint, to thwart or discredit the missionary zeal now in our
day rising like a fresh, pure tide in the believing Church. May our
Master continually animate His servants in the Church at home to seek
the lost around them, to recall the lapsed with the voice of truth and
love. May He multiply a hundredfold the scattered host of His
"witnesses in the uttermost parts of the earth," through the
dwelling-places of those eight hundred millions who are still pagan,
not to speak of the lesser yet vast multitudes of misbelievers,
Mahometan and Jewish. But neither in missionary enterprise, nor in any
sort of activity for God and man, is this deep suggestion of the
Epistles to be forgotten. What the Christian does is even more
important than what he says. What he is is the all-important
antecedent to what he does. He is "nothing yet as he ought to" be if,
amidst even innumerable efforts and aggressions, he has not "presented
his body a living sacrifice" for his Lord's purposes, not his own; if
he has not learnt, in his Lord, an unaffected love, a holy family
affection, a sympathy with griefs and joys around him, a humble esteem
of himself, and the blessed art of giving way to wrath, and of
overcoming evil in "the good" of the presence of the Lord.

[211] See the context of 1 Cor. vi. 17 for an apology for this
paraphrase of κολλώμενοι.

[212] "_In business_" gives perhaps too special a direction to the
thought, as we use the word "_business_" now. Not that that special
direction would not have a noble truth in it, rightly understood.

[213] Literally "_boiling_," as a caldron on the fire.

[214] This reading, τῷ κυρίῳ, as against τῷ καιρῷ, appears to be
certainly right.--Our rendering is bold; for undoubtedly "_serving the
Lord_" meets the Greek grammar more simply. But the datives are
hitherto so clearly datives of relation that we think this also must
be so explained. We can only apologize for the crude compound
"_bond-serving_" by the wish to represent the full force of
δουλεύοντες.

[215] Τὴν φιλοξενίαν: we may paraphrase the article by "_your_
hospitality," or even "_Christian_ hospitality." But this would
exaggerate the impression it represented.

[216] Διώκοντας: it seems certain that this word was suggested by
the διώκοντες just before, widely different as the references are.
But how shall English convey this echo?

[217] Φρονοῦντεσ: the word "_thinking_" does not quite rightly
represent the Greek. Φρονεῖν is not "_to think_," in the sense of
articulate reflection, but to have a mental and moral disposition, of
whatever kind. A popular use of the word "_to feel_" fairly represents
this.

[218] Lit., "_not 'minding,' affecting, high things_." We paraphrase,
to retain the word "_feeling_" for φρονεῖν.

[219] Lit., "_being led away with the humble (things)_." Some
paraphrase is necessary here.

[220] Read, ἀλλ' ἐὰν.

[221] We are aware that not seldom in the N. T. ἐν represents the
Hebrew ב (of בכלם) in its familiar instrumental meaning, without any
definite trace of _local_ imagery. But where the more literal
rendering has an obvious fitness it is best to retain it. Thus we
render ἐν here by "_by_" not "_in_."

[222] Though the τῳ ἀγαθῳ of the Greek is certainly neuter, by its
balance with τὸ κακόν.




CHAPTER XXVII

_CHRISTIAN DUTY; IN CIVIL LIFE AND OTHERWISE: LOVE_

ROMANS xiii. 1-10


A new topic now emerges, distinct, yet in close and natural connexion.
We have been listening to precepts for personal and social life, all
rooted in that inmost characteristic of Christian morals,
self-surrender, self-submission to God. Loyalty to others in the Lord
has been the theme. In the circles of home, of friendship, of the
Church; in the open field of intercourse with men in general, whose
personal enmity or religious persecution was so likely to cross the
path--in all these regions the Christian was to act on the principle
of supernatural submission, as the sure way to spiritual victory.

The same principle is now carried into his relations with the State.
As a Christian, he does not cease to be a citizen, to be a subject.
His deliverance from the death-sentence of the Law of God only binds
him, in his Lord's name, to a loyal fidelity to human statute; limited
only by the case where such statute may really contradict the supreme
divine law. The disciple of Christ, as such, while his whole being has
received an emancipation unknown elsewhere, is to be the faithful
subject of the Emperor, the orderly inhabitant of his quarter in the
City, the punctual taxpayer, the ready giver of not a servile yet a
genuine deference to the representatives and ministers of human
authority.

This is he to do for reasons both general and special. In general, it
is his Christian duty rather to submit than otherwise, where
conscience toward God is not in the question. Not weakly, but meekly,
he is to yield rather than resist in all his intercourse, purely
personal, with men; and therefore with the officials of order, as men.
But in particular also, he is to understand that civil order is not
only a desirable thing, but divine; it is the will of God for the
social Race made in His Image. In the abstract, this is absolutely so;
civil order is a God-given law, as truly as the most explicit precepts
of the Decalogue, in whose Second Table it is so plainly implied all
along. And in the concrete, the civil order under which the Christian
finds himself to be is to be regarded as a real instance of this great
principle. It is quite sure to be imperfect, because it is necessarily
mediated through human minds and wills. Very possibly it may be
gravely distorted, into a system seriously oppressive of the
individual life. As a fact, the supreme magistrate for the Roman
Christians in the year 58 was a dissolute young man, intoxicated by
the discovery that he might do almost entirely as he pleased with the
lives around him; by no defect however in the idea and purpose of
Roman law, but by fault of the degenerate world of the day. Yet civil
authority, even with a Nero at its head, was still in principle a
thing divine. And the Christian's attitude to it was to be always that
of a willingness, a purpose, to obey; an absence of the resistance
whose motive lies in self-assertion. Most assuredly his attitude was
not to be that of the revolutionist, who looks upon the State as a
sort of belligerent power, against which he, alone or in company,
openly or in the dark, is free to carry on a campaign. Under even
heavy pressure the Christian is still to remember that civil
government is, in its principle, "of God." He is to reverence the
Institution in its idea. He is to regard its actual officers, whatever
their personal faults, as so far dignified by the Institution that
their governing work is to be considered always first in the light of
the Institution. The most imperfect, even the most erring,
administration of civil order is still a thing to be respected before
it is criticized. In its principle, it is a "_terror not to good
works, but to the evil_."

It hardly needs elaborate remark to shew that such a precept, little
as it may accord with many popular political cries of our time, means
anything in the Christian but a political servility, or an
indifference on his part to political wrong in the actual course of
government. The religion which invites every man to stand face to face
with God in Christ, to go straight to the Eternal, knowing no
intermediary but His Son, and no ultimate authority but His Scripture,
for the certainties of the soul, for peace of conscience, for dominion
over evil in himself and in the world, and for more than deliverance
from the fear of death, is no friend to the tyrants of mankind. We
have seen how, by enthroning Christ in the heart, it inculcates a
noble inward submissiveness. But from another point of view it
equally, and mightily, develops the noblest sort of individualism. It
lifts man to a sublime independence of his surroundings, by joining
him direct to God in Christ, by making him the Friend of God. No
wonder then that, in the course of history, Christianity, that is to
say the Christianity of the Apostles, of the Scriptures, has been the
invincible ally of personal conscience and political liberty, the
liberty which is the opposite alike of licence and of tyranny. It is
Christianity which has taught men calmly to die, in face of a
persecuting Empire, or of whatever other giant human force, rather
than do wrong at its bidding. It is Christianity which has lifted
innumerable souls to stand upright in solitary protest for truth and
against falsehood, when every form of governmental authority has been
against them. It was the student of St Paul who, alone before the
great Diet, uttering no denunciation, temperate and respectful in his
whole bearing, was yet found immovable by Pope and Emperor: "_I can
not otherwise; so help me God_." We may be sure that if the world
shuts the Bible it will only the sooner revert, under whatever type of
government, to essential despotism, whether it be the despotism of the
master, or that of the man. The "individual" indeed will "wither." The
Autocrat will find no purely independent spirits in his path. And what
then shall call itself, however loudly, "Liberty, Fraternity,
Equality," will be found at last, where the Bible is unknown, to be
the remorseless despot of the personality, and of the home.

It is Christianity which has peacefully and securely freed the slave,
and has restored woman to her true place by the side of man. But then,
Christianity has done all this in a way of its own. It has never
flattered the oppressed, nor inflamed them. It has told impartial
truth to them, and to their oppressors. One of the least hopeful
phenomena of present political life is the adulation (it cannot be
called by another name) too frequently offered to the working classes
by their leaders, or by those who ask their suffrages. A flattery as
gross as any ever accepted by complacent monarchs is almost all that
is now heard about themselves by the new master-section of the State.
This is not Christianity, but its parody. The Gospel tells
uncompromising truth to the rich, but also to the poor. Even in the
presence of pagan slavery it laid the law of duty on the slave, as
well as on his master. It bade the slave consider his obligations
rather than his rights; while it said the same, precisely, and more at
length, and more urgently, to his lord. So it at once avoided
revolution and sowed the living seed of immense, and salutary, and
ever-developing reforms. The doctrine of spiritual equality, and
spiritual connexion, secured in Christ, came into the world as the
guarantee for the whole social and political system of the truest
ultimate political liberty. For it equally chastened and developed the
individual, in relation to the life around him.

Serious questions for practical casuistry may be raised, of course,
from this passage. Is resistance to a cruel despotism never
permissible to the Christian? In a time of revolution, when power
wrestles with power, which power is the Christian to regard as
"_ordained of God_"? It may be sufficient to reply to the former
question that, almost self-evidently, the absolute principles of a
passage like this take for granted some balance and modification by
concurrent principles. Read without any such reserve, St Paul leaves
here no alternative, under any circumstances, to submission. But he
certainly did not mean to say that the Christian must submit to an
imperial order to sacrifice to the Roman gods. It seems to follow that
the letter of the precept does not pronounce it inconceivable that a
Christian, under circumstances which leave his action unselfish,
truthful, the issue not of impatience but of conviction, might be
justified in positive resistance; such resistance as was offered to
oppression by the Huguenots of the Cevennes, and by the Alpine Vaudois
before them. But history adds its witness to the warnings of St Paul,
and of his Master, that almost inevitably it goes ill in the highest
respects with saints who "take the sword," and that the purest
victories for freedom are won by those who "endure grief, suffering
wrongfully," while they witness for right and Christ before their
oppressors. The Protestant pastors of Southern France won a nobler
victory than any won by Jean Cavalier in the field of battle when, at
the risk of their lives, they met in the woods to draw up a solemn
document of loyalty to Louis XV.; informing him that their injunction
to their flocks always was, and always would be, "_Fear God, honour
the King._"

Meanwhile Godet, in some admirable notes on this passage, remarks that
it leaves the Christian not only not bound to aid an oppressive
government by active co-operation, but amply free to witness aloud
against its wrong; and that his "submissive but firm conduct is itself
a homage to the inviolability of authority. Experience proves that it
is in this way all tyrannies have been morally broken, and all true
progress in the history of humanity effected."

What the servant of God should do with his allegiance at a
revolutionary crisis is a grave question for any whom it may unhappily
concern. Thomas Scott, in a useful note on our passage, remarks that
"perhaps nothing involves greater difficulties, in very many
instances, than to ascertain to whom the authority _justly_
belongs.... Submission in all things lawful to 'the existing
authorities' is our duty at all times and in all cases; though in
civil convulsions ... there may frequently be a difficulty in
determining which are 'the existing authorities.'" In such cases "the
Christian," says Godet, "will submit to the new power as soon as the
resistance of the old shall have ceased. In the actual state of
matters he will recognize the manifestation of God's will, and will
take no part in any reactionary plot."

As regards the problem of forms or types of government, it seems clear
that the Apostle lays no bond _of conscience_ on the Christian. Both
in the Old Testament and in the New a just monarchy appears to be the
ideal. But our Epistle says that "there is _no power_ but of God." In
St Paul's time the Roman Empire was in theory, as much as ever, a
republic, and in fact a personal monarchy. In this question, as in so
many others of the outward framework of human life, the Gospel is
liberal in its applications, while it is, in the noblest sense,
conservative in principle.

We close our preparatory comments, and proceed to the text, with the
general recollection that in this brief paragraph we see and touch as
it were the corner-stone of civil order. One side of the angle is the
indefeasible duty, for the Christian citizen, of reverence for law, of
remembrance of the religious aspect of even secular government. The
other side is the memento to the ruler, to the authority, that God
throws His shield over the claims of the State only because authority
was instituted not for selfish but for social ends, so that it belies
itself if it is not used for the good of man.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Let every soul,= every person, who has "presented
his body a living sacrifice," =be submissive to the ruling
authorities;= manifestly, from the context, the authorities of the
State. =For there is no authority except by God[223]; but the existing
authorities have been appointed by God.= That is, the _imperium_ of
the King Eternal is absolutely reserved; an authority not sanctioned
by Him is nothing; man is no independent source of power and law. But
then, it has pleased God so to order human life and history, that His
will in this matter is expressed, from time to time, in and through
the actual constitution of the state. [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =So that the
opponent of the authority withstands the ordinance of God,= not merely
that of man; =but the withstanders will on themselves bring sentence
of judgment;= not only the human crime of treason, but the charge, in
the court of God, of rebellion against His will. This is founded on
the idea of law and order, which means by its nature the restraint of
public mischief and the promotion, or at least protection, of public
good. "Authority," even under its worst distortions, still so far
keeps that aim that no human civic power, as a fact, punishes good as
good, and rewards evil as evil; and thus for the common run of lives
the worst settled authority is infinitely better than real anarchy.
[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For rulers, as a class (οἱ ἄρχοντες), are not
a terror to the good deed, but to the evil;= such is always the fact
in principle, and such, taking human life as a whole, is the tendency,
even at the worst, in practice, where the authority in any degree
deserves its name. =Now do you wish not to be afraid of the authority?
do what is good, and you shall have praise from it;= the "_praise_,"
at least, of being unmolested and protected. [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For
God's agent (διάκονος) he is to you, for what is good;= through his
function God, in providence, carries out His purposes of order. =But
if you are doing what is evil, be afraid; for not for nothing
(εἰκῆ),= not without warrant, nor without purpose, =does he wear his
(τὴν) sword,= symbol of the ultimate power of life and death; =for
God's agent is he, an avenger, unto wrath, for the practiser of the
evil.= [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =Wherefore,= because God is in the matter,
=it is a necessity to submit, not only because of the wrath,= the
ruler's wrath in the case supposed, =but because of the conscience
too;= because you know, as a Christian, that God speaks through the
state and through its minister, and that anarchy is therefore
disloyalty to Him. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =For on this account too you
pay taxes;= the same commission which gives the state the right to
restrain and punish gives it the right to demand subsidy from its
members, in order to its operations; =for God's ministers are they,=
His λειτουργοί, a word so frequently used in sacerdotal connexions
that it well may suggest them here; as if the civil ruler were, in his
province, an almost religious instrument of divine order; =God's
ministers, to this very end persevering= in their task; working on in
the toils of administration, for the execution, consciously or not, of
the divine plan of social peace.

This is a noble point of view, alike for governed and for governors,
from which to consider the prosaic problems and necessities of public
finance. Thus understood, the tax is paid not with a cold and
compulsory assent to a mechanical exaction, but as an act in the line
of the plan of God. And the tax is devised and demanded, not merely as
an expedient to adjust a budget, but as a thing which God's law can
sanction, in the interests of God's social plan. [Sidenote: Ver. 7.]
=Discharge therefore to all men,= to all men in authority, primarily,
but not only, =their dues; the tax, to whom you owe the tax,= on
person and property; =the toll, to whom the toll,= on merchandise;
=the fear, to whom the fear,= as to the ordained punisher of wrong;
=the honour, to whom the honour,= as to the rightful claimant in
general of loyal deference.

Such were the political principles of the new Faith, of the mysterious
Society, which was so soon to perplex the Roman statesman, as well as
to supply convenient victims to the Roman despot. A Nero was shortly
to burn Christians in his gardens as a substitute for lamps, on the
charge that they were guilty of secret and horrible orgies. Later, a
Trajan, grave and anxious, was to order their execution as members of
a secret community dangerous to imperial order. But here is a private
missive sent to this people by their leader, reminding them of their
principles, and prescribing their line of action. He puts them in
immediate spiritual contact, every man and woman of them, with the
Eternal Sovereign, and so he inspires them with the strongest possible
independence, as regards "the fear of man." He bids them know, for a
certainty, that the Almighty One regards them, each and all, as
accepted in His Beloved, and fills them with His great Presence, and
promises them a coming heaven from which no earthly power or terror
can for a moment shut them out. But in the same message, and in the
same Name, he commands them to pay their taxes to the pagan State, and
to do so, not with the contemptuous indifference of the fanatic, who
thinks that human life in its temporal order is God-forsaken, but in
the spirit of cordial loyalty and ungrudging deference, as to an
authority representing in its sphere none other than their Lord and
Father.

It has been suggested that the first serious antagonism of the state
towards these mysterious Christians was occasioned by the inevitable
interference of the claims of Christ with the stern and rigid order of
the Roman Family. A power which could assert the right, the duty, of a
son to reject his father's religious worship was taken to be a power
which meant the destruction of all social order as such; a _nihilism_
indeed. This was a tremendous misunderstanding to encounter. How was
it to be met? Not by tumultuary resistance, not even by passionate
protests and invectives. The answer was to be that of love, practical
and loyal, to God and man, in life and, when occasion came, in
death.[224] Upon the line of that path lay at least the possibility of
martyrdom, with its lions and its funeral piles; but the end of it was
the peaceful vindication of the glory of God and of the Name of Jesus,
and the achievement of the best security for the liberties of man.

Congenially then the Apostle closes these precepts of civil order with
the universal command to love. [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =Owe nothing to
anyone;= avoid absolutely the social disloyalty of debt; pay every
creditor in full, with watchful care; =except the loving one another.=
Love is to be a perpetual and inexhaustible debt, not as if repudiated
or neglected, but as always due and always paying; a debt, not as a
forgotten account is owing to the seller, but as interest on capital
is continuously owing to the lender. And this, not only because of the
fair beauty of love, but because of the legal duty of it: =For the
lover of his fellow= (τὸν ἕτερον, "_the other man_," be he who he
may, with whom the man has to do) =has fulfilled the law,= the law of
the Second Table, the code of man's duty to man, which is in question
here. He "_has_ fulfilled" it; as having at once entered, in principle
and will, into its whole requirement; so that all he now needs is not
a better attitude but developed information. [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =For
the, "Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not murder, Thou
shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness,[225] Thou shalt
not covet," and whatever other commandment there is, all is summed up
in this utterance, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"= (Lev.
xix. 18). [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =Love works the neighbour no ill;
therefore love is the Law's fulfilment.=

Is it a mere negative precept then? Is the life of love to be only an
abstinence from doing harm, which may shun thefts, but may also shun
personal sacrifices? Is it a cold and inoperative "harmlessness,"
which leaves all things as they are? We see the answer in part in
those words, "_as thyself_." Man "loves _himself_," (in the sense of
nature, not of sin,) with a love which instinctively avoids indeed
what is repulsive and noxious, but does so because it positively likes
and desires the opposite. The man who "loves his neighbour _as
himself_" will be as considerate of his neighbour's feelings as of his
own, in respect of abstinence from injury and annoyance. But he will
be more; he will be actively desirous of his neighbour's good.
"_Working him no evil_," he will reckon it as much "_evil_" to be
indifferent to his positive true interests as he would reckon it
unnatural to be apathetic about his own. "_Working him no evil_," as
one who "_loves him as himself_," he will care, and seek, to work him
good.

"Love," says Leibnitz, in reference to the great controversy on Pure
Love agitated by Fénelon and Bossuet, "is that which finds its
felicity in another's good."[226] Such an agent can never terminate
its action in a mere cautious abstinence from wrong.

The true divine commentary on this brief paragraph is the nearly
contemporary passage written by the same author, 1 Cor. xiii. There,
as we saw above, the description of the sacred thing, love, like that
of the heavenly state in the Revelation, is given largely in
negatives. Yet who fails to feel the wonderful _positive_ of the
effect? That is no merely negative innocence which is greater than
mysteries, and knowledge, and the use of an angel tongue; greater than
self-inflicted poverty, and the endurance of the martyr's flame;
"chief grace below, and all in all above." Its blessed negatives are
but a form of unselfish _action_. It forgets itself, and remembers
others, and refrains from the least needless wounding of them, not
because it wants merely "to live and let live," but because it loves
them, finding its felicity in their good.

It has been said that "love is holiness, spelt short." Thoughtfully
interpreted and applied, the saying is true. The holy man in human
life is the man who, with the Scriptures open before him as his
informant and his guide, while the Lord Christ dwells in his heart by
faith as his Reason and his Power, forgets himself in a work for
others which is kept at once gentle, wise, and persistent to the end,
by the love which, whatever else it does, knows how to sympathize and
to serve.

[223] Read ὑπὸ not ἀπό.

[224] "To believe, to suffer, and to love, was the primitive taste"
(Milner).

[225] This clause is perhaps to be omitted here.

[226] See Card. Bausset, _Vie de Fénelon_, ii. 375. Leibnitz, in a
letter to T. Burnet, quotes the words from a work of his own; _Amare
est felicitate alterius delectari_.




CHAPTER XXVIII

_CHRISTIAN DUTY IN THE LIGHT OF THE LORD'S RETURN AND IN THE POWER OF
HIS PRESENCE_

ROMANS xiii. 11-14


The great teacher has led us long upon the path of duty, in its
patient details, all summed up in the duty and joy of love. We have
heard him explaining to his disciples how to live as members together
of the Body of Christ, and as members also of human society at large,
and as citizens of the state. We have been busy latterly with thoughts
of taxes, and tolls, and private debts, and the obligation of
scrupulous rightfulness in all such things. Everything has had
relation to the seen and the temporal. The teaching has not strayed
into a land of dreams, nor into a desert and a cell; it has had at
least as much to do with the market, and the shop, and the secular
official, as if the writer had been a moralist whose horizon was
altogether of this life, and who for the future was "without hope."

Yet all the while the teacher and the taught were penetrated and
vivified by a certainty of the future perfectly supernatural, and
commanding the wonder and glad response of their whole being. They
carried about with them the promise of their Risen Master that He
would personally return again in heavenly glory, to their infinite
joy, gathering them for ever around Him in immortality, bringing
heaven with Him, and transfiguring them into His own celestial Image.

Across all possible complications and obstacles of the human world
around them they beheld "that blissful hope" (Tit. ii. 13). The smoke
of Rome could not becloud it, nor her noise drown the music of its
promise, nor her splendour of possessions make its golden vista less
beautiful and less entrancing to their souls.[227] Their Lord, once
crucified, but now alive for evermore, was greater than the world;
greater in His calm triumphant authority over man and nature, greater
in the wonder and joy of Himself, His Person and His Salvation. It was
enough that He had said He would come again, and that it would be to
their eternal happiness. He had promised; therefore it would surely
be.

How the promise would take place, and when, was a secondary question.
Some things were revealed and certain, as to the manner; "_This same
Jesus, in like manner as ye saw Him going into heaven_" (Acts i. 11).
But vastly more was unrevealed and even unconjectured. As to the time,
His words had left them, as they still leave us, suspended in a
reverent sense of mystery, between intimations which seem almost
equally to promise both speed and delay. "Watch therefore, for ye know
not when the Master of the house cometh" (Mark xiii. 35); "After a
long time the Lord of the servants cometh, and reckoneth with them"
(Matt. xxv. 19). The Apostle himself follows his Redeemer's example in
the matter. Here and there he seems to indicate an Advent at the
doors, as when he speaks of "_us_ who are alive and remain" (1 Thess.
iv. 15). But again, in this very Epistle, in his discourse on the
future of Israel, he appears to contemplate great developments of time
and event yet to come; and very definitely, for his own part, in many
places, he records his expectation of death, not of a death-less
transfiguration at the Coming. Many at least among his converts looked
with an eagerness which was sometimes restless and unwholesome, as at
Thessalonica, for the coming King; and it may have been thus with some
of the Roman saints. But St Paul at once warned the Thessalonians of
their mistake; and certainly this Epistle _suggests_ no such upheaval
of expectation at Rome.

Our work in these pages is not to discuss "the times and the seasons"
which now, as much as then, lie in the Father's "power" (Acts i. 7).
It is rather to call attention to the fact that in all ages of the
Church this mysterious but definite Promise has, with a silent force,
made itself as it were present and contemporary to the believing and
watching soul. How at last it shall be seen that "_I come quickly_"
and, "_The day of Christ is not at hand_" (Rev. xxii. 12, 20, 2 Thess.
ii. 2), were both divinely and harmoniously truthful, it does not yet
fully appear. But it is certain that both are so; and that in every
generation of the now "long time" "the Hope," as if it were at the
doors indeed, has been calculated for mighty effects on the
Christian's will and work.

So we come to this great Advent oracle, to read it for our own age.
Now first let us remember its wonderful illustration of that
phenomenon which we have remarked already, the concurrence in
Christianity of a faith full of eternity, with a life full of common
duty. Here is a community of men called to live under an almost opened
heaven; almost to see, as they look around them, the descending Lord
of glory coming to bring in the eternal day, making Himself present in
this visible scene "with the voice of the archangel and the trump of
God," waking His buried saints from the dust, calling the living and
the risen to meet Him in the air. How can they adjust such an
expectation to the demands of "the daily round"? Will they not fly
from the City to the solitude, to the hill-tops and forests of the
Apennines, to wait with awful joy the great lightning-flash of glory?
Not so. They somehow, while "looking for the Saviour from the heavens"
(Phil. iii. 20), attend to their service and their business, pay their
debts and their taxes, offer sympathy to their neighbours in their
human sadnesses and joys, and yield honest loyalty to the magistrate
and the Prince. They are the most stable of all elements in the civic
life of the hour, if "the powers that be" would but understand them;
while yet, all the while, they are the only people in the City whose
home, consciously, is the eternal heavens. What can explain the
paradox? Nothing but the Fact, the Person, the Character of our Lord
Jesus Christ. It is not an enthusiasm, however powerful, which governs
them, but a Person. And HE is at once the Lord of immortality and the
Ruler of every detail of His servant's life. HE is no author of
fanaticism, but the divine-human King of truth and order. To know Him
is to find the secret alike of a life eternal and of a patient
faithfulness in the life that now is.

What was true of Him is true for evermore. His servant now, in this
restless close of the nineteenth age, is to find in Him this wonderful
double secret still. He is to be, in Christ, by the very nature of his
faith, the most practical and the most willing of the servants of his
fellow-men, in their mortal as well as immortal interests; while also
disengaged internally from a bondage to the seen and temporal by his
mysterious union with the Son of God, and by his firm expectation of
His Return. [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =And this,= this law of love and
duty, let us remember, let us follow, =knowing the season,= the
occasion, the growing crisis (καιρόν); =that it is already the hour
for our awaking out of sleep,= the sleep of moral inattention, as if
the eternal Master were not near. =For nearer now is our salvation,=
in that last glorious sense of the word "_salvation_" which means the
immortal issue of the whole saving process, nearer now =than when we
believed,= and so by faith entered on our union with the Saviour.
(See how he delights to associate himself with his disciples in the
blessed unity of remembered conversion; "when _we_ believed.")
[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =The night,= with its murky silence, its "poring
dark," the night of trial, of temptation, of the absence of our
Christ, =is far spent,[228] but the day has drawn near;= it has been a
long night, _but_ that means a near dawn; the everlasting sunrise of
the longed-for _Parousia_, with its glory, gladness, and unveiling.
=Let us put off therefore,= as if they were a foul and entangling
night-robe, =the works of the darkness,= the habits and acts of the
moral night, things which _we can_ throw off in the Name of Christ;
=but let us put on the weapons of the light,= arming ourselves, for
defence, and for holy aggression on the realm of evil, with faith,
love, and the heavenly hope. So to the Thessalonians five years before
(1, v. 8), and to the Ephesians four years later (vi. 11-17), he wrote
of the holy Panoply, rapidly sketching it in the one place, giving the
rich finished picture in the other; suggesting to the saints always
the thought of a warfare first and mainly defensive, and _then_
aggressive with the drawn sword, and indicating as their true armour
not their reason, their emotions, or their will, taken in themselves,
but the eternal facts of their revealed salvation in Christ, grasped
and used by faith. [Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =As by day,= for it is already
dawn, in the Lord, =let us walk[229] decorously,= becomingly, as we
are the hallowed soldiers of our Leader; let our life not only be
right in fact; let it _shew_ to all men the open "_decorum_" of truth,
purity, peace, and love; =not in revels and drunken bouts; not in
chamberings,= the sins of the secret couch, =and profligacies,=
not--to name evils which cling often to the otherwise reputable
Christian--=in strife and envy,= things which are pollutions, in the
sight of the Holy One, as real as lust itself. =No; put on,= clothe
and arm yourselves with, =the Lord Jesus Christ,= Himself the living
sum and true meaning of all that can arm the soul; =and for the flesh
take no forethought lust-ward.= As if, in euphemism, he would say,
"Take all possible _forethought against_ the life of self (σάρξ),
with its lustful, self-wilful gravitation away from God. And let that
forethought be, to arm yourselves, as if never armed before, with
Christ."

How solemnly explicit he is, how plain-spoken, about the temptations
of the Roman Christian's life! The men who were capable of the appeals
and revelations of the first eight chapters yet needed to be told not
to drink to intoxication, not to go near the house of ill-fame, not to
quarrel, not to grudge. But every modern missionary in heathendom will
tell us that the like stern plainness is needed now among the
new-converted faithful. And is it not needed among those who have
professed the Pauline faith much longer, in the congregations of our
older Christendom?

It remains for our time, as truly as ever, a fact of religious
life--this necessity to press it home upon the religious, _as_ the
religious, that they are called to a practical and detailed holiness;
and that they are never to ignore the possibility of even the worst
falls. So mysteriously can the subtle "flesh," in the believing
receiver of the Gospel, becloud or distort the holy import of the
thing received. So fatally easy is it "to corrupt the best into the
worst," using the very depth and richness of spiritual truth as if it
could be a substitute for patient practice, instead of its mighty
stimulus.

But glorious is the method illustrated here for triumphant resistance
to that tendency. What is it? It is not to retreat from spiritual
principle upon a cold naturalistic programme of activity and probity.
It is to penetrate through the spiritual principle to the Crucified
and Living Lord who is its heart and power; it is to bury self in Him,
and to arm the will with Him. It is to look for Him as Coming, but
also, and yet more urgently, to use Him as Present. In the great Roman
Epic, on the verge of the decisive conflict, the goddess-mother laid
the invulnerable panoply at the feet of her Æneas; and the astonished
Champion straightway, first pondering every part of the heaven-sent
armament, then "put it on," and was prepared. As it were at our feet
is laid THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, in all He is, in all He has done, in
His indissoluble union with us in it all, as we are one with Him by
the Holy Ghost. It is for us to see in Him our power and victory, and
to "put Him on," in a personal act which, while all by grace, is yet
in itself our own. And how is this done? It is by the "committal of
the keeping of our souls unto Him" (1 Pet. iv. 19), not vaguely, but
definitely and with purpose, in view of each and every temptation. It
is by "living our life in the flesh by faith in the Son of God" (Gal.
ii. 20); that is to say, in effect, by perpetually _making use of_ the
Crucified and Living Saviour, One with us by the Holy Spirit; by using
Him as our living Deliverer, our Peace and Power, amidst _all_ that
the dark hosts of evil can do against us.

Oh wonderful and all-adequate secret; "Christ, which is the Secret of
God" (Col. ii. 2)! Oh divine simplicity of its depth;

  "Heaven's easy, artless, unencumber'd plan"!

Not that its "ease" means our indolence. No; if we would indeed "arm
ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ" we must awake and be astir to
"_know whom_ we have trusted" (2 Tim. i. 12). We must explore His Word
about Himself. We must ponder it, above all in the prayer which
converses with Him over His promises, till they live to us in His
light. We must watch and pray, that we may be alert to employ our
armament. The Christian who steps out into life "light-heartedly,"
thinking superficially of his weakness, and of his foes, is only too
likely also to think of his Lord superficially, and to find of even
this heavenly armour that "he cannot _go_ with it, for he hath not
proved it" (1 Sam. xvii. 39). But all this leaves absolutely untouched
the divine simplicity of the matter. It leaves it wonderfully true
that the decisive, the satisfying, _the thorough_, moral victory and
deliverance comes to the Christian man not by trampling about with his
own resolves, but by committing himself to his Saviour and Keeper, who
has conquered _him_, that now He may conquer "his strong Enemy" for
him.

"Heaven's unencumbered plan" of "victory and triumph, against the
devil, the world, and the flesh," is no day-dream of romance. It
lives, it works in the most open hour of the common world of sin and
sorrow. _We have seen_ this "putting on of the Lord Jesus Christ"
victoriously successful where the most fierce, or the most subtle,
forms of temptation were to be dealt with. _We have seen_ it
preserving, with beautiful persistency, a life-long sufferer from the
terrible solicitations of pain, and of still less endurable
helplessness--every limb fixed literally immovable by paralysis on the
ill-furnished bed; _we have seen_ the man cheerful, restful, always
ready for wise word and sympathetic thought, and affirming that his
Lord, present to his soul, was infinitely enough to "keep him." _We
have seen_ the overwhelmed toiler for God, while every step through
the day was clogged by "thronging duties," such duties as most wear
and drain the spirit, yet maintained in an equable cheerfulness and as
it were inward leisure by this same always adequate secret, "the Lord
Jesus Christ put on." _We have known_ the missionary who had, in sober
earnest, hazarded his life for the blessed Name, yet ready to bear
quiet witness to the repose and readiness to be found in meeting
disappointment, solitude, danger, not so much by a stern resistance as
by the use, then and there, confidingly, and in surrender, of the
Crucified and Living Lord. Shall we dare to add, with the humiliated
avowal that only a too partial proof has been made of this glorious
open Secret, that _we know_ by experiment that the weakest of the
servants of our King, "putting on HIM," find victory and deliverance,
where there was defeat before?

Let us, writer and reader, address ourselves afresh in practice to
this wonderful secret. Let us, as if we had never done it before, "put
on the Lord Jesus Christ."[230] Vain is our interpretation of the holy
Word, which not only "abideth, but _liveth_ for ever" (1 Pet. i. 23),
if it does not somehow _come home_. For that Word was written on
purpose to come home; to touch and move the conscience and the will,
in the realities of our inmost, and also of our most outward, life.
Never for one moment do we stand as merely interested students and
spectators, outside the field of temptation. Never for one moment
therefore can we dispense with the great Secret of victory and safety.

Full in face of the realities of sin--of Roman sin, in Nero's days;
but let us just now forget Rome and Nero; they were only dark
accidents of a darker essence--St Paul here writes down, across them
all, these words, this spell, this Name; "_Put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ_." Take first a steady look, he seems to say, at your sore
need, in the light of God; but then, at once, look off, look _here_.
Here is the more than Antithesis to it all. Here is that by which you
can be "more than conqueror." Take your iniquities at the worst; this
can subdue them. Take your surroundings at the worst; this can
emancipate you from their power. It is "the Lord Jesus Christ," and
the "putting on" of Him.

Let us remember, as if it were a new thing, that He, the Christ of
Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, is a Fact. Sure as the existence
now of His universal Church, as the observance of the historic
Sacrament of His Death, as the impossibility of Galilean or Pharisaic
imagination having _composed_, instead of _photographed_, the portrait
of the Incarnate Son, the Immaculate Lamb; sure as is the glad
verification in ten thousand blessed lives to-day of all, of all, that
the Christ of Scripture undertakes to be to the soul that will take
Him at His own terms--so sure, across all oldest and all newest
doubts, across all _gnosis_ and all _agnosia_, lies the present Fact
of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Then let us remember that it is a fact that man, in the mercy of God,
_can_ "put Him on." He is not far off. He presents Himself to our
touch, our possession. He says to us, "Come to Me." He unveils
Himself as literal partaker of our nature; as our Sacrifice; our
Righteousness, "through faith in His blood"; as the Head and
Life-spring, in an indescribable union, of a deep calm tide of life
spiritual and eternal, ready to circulate through our being. He
invites Himself to "make His abode _with_ us" (John xiv. 23); yea
more, "I will come _in_ to him; I will dwell _in_ his heart by faith"
(Rev. iii. 20; Eph. iii. 17). In that ungovernable heart of ours, that
interminably self-deceptive heart (Jerem. xvii. 9), He engages to
reside, to be permanent Occupant, the Master always at home. He is
prepared thus to take, with regard to our will, a place of power
nearer than all circumstances, and deep in the midst of all possible
inward traitors; to keep His eye on their plots, His foot, not ours,
upon their necks. Yes, He invites us thus to embrace Him into a full
contact; to "put Him on."

May we not say of Him what the great Poet says of Duty, and glorify
the verse by a yet nobler application?--

    "Thou who art victory and law
    When empty terrors overawe,
    From vain temptations dost set free,
  And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!"

Yes, we can "put Him on" as our "Panoply of Light." We can put Him on
as "THE LORD," surrendering ourselves to His absolute while most
benignant sovereignty and will, deep secret of repose. We can put Him
on as "JESUS," clasping the truth that He, our Human Brother, yet
Divine, "saves His people from their sins" (Matt. i. 21). We can put
Him on as "CHRIST," our Head, anointed without measure by the Eternal
Spirit, and now sending of that same Spirit into His happy members, so
that we are indeed one with Him, and receive into our whole being the
resources of His life.

Such is the armour and the arms. St Jerome, commenting on a kindred
passage (Eph. vi. 13), says that "it most clearly results that by 'the
weapons of God' _the Lord our Saviour_ is to be understood."

We may recollect that this text is memorable in connexion with the
Conversion of St Augustine. In his _Confessions_ (viii. 12) he records
how, in the garden at Milan, at a time of great moral conflict, he was
strangely attracted by a voice, perhaps the cry of children playing:
"_Take and read, take and read._" He fetched and opened again a copy
of the Epistles (_codicem Apostoli_), which he had lately laid down.
"I read in silence the first place on which my eyes fell; '_Not in
revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in
strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh in its lusts_.' I neither cared, nor needed,
to read further. At the close of the sentence, as if a ray of
certainty were poured into my heart, the clouds of hesitation fled at
once." His will was in the will of God.

Alas, there falls one shadow over that fair scene. In the belief of
Augustine's time, to decide fully for Christ meant, or very nearly
meant, so to accept the ascetic idea as to renounce the Christian
home. But the Lord read His servant's heart aright through the error,
and filled it with His peace. To us, in a surrounding religious light
far clearer, in many things, than that which shone even upon Ambrose
and Augustine; to us who quite recognize that in the paths of
homeliest duty and commonest temptation lies the line along which the
blessed power of the Saviour may best overshadow His disciple; the
Spirit's voice shall say of this same text, "_Take and read, take and
read_." We will "put on," never to put off. Then we shall step out
upon the old path in a strength new, and to be renewed for ever, armed
against evil, armed for the will of God, with Jesus Christ our Lord.

[227] Omitte mirari beatæ Fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ. (Horace.)

[228] Προέκοψε: literally, "_made progress_." The aorist may refer
to the event of the First Advent, when our eternal Sun was heralded by
Himself the Morning Star. But perhaps it is best represented by the
English perfect, as in the A.V. and above.

[229] Περιπατήσωμεν: perhaps the aorist suggests a new outset in the
"_walk_."

[230] From this point to the close of the chapter the writer has used,
with modifications, passages from a Sermon (No. iii.) in his volume
entitled _Christ is All_.




CHAPTER XXIX

_CHRISTIAN DUTY: MUTUAL TENDERNESS AND TOLERANCE: THE SACREDNESS
OF EXAMPLE_

ROMANS xiv. 1-23


[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =But him who is weak=--we might almost render,
=him who suffers from weakness (τὸν ἀσθενοῦντα), in his (τῇ)
faith= (in the sense here not of creed, a meaning of πίστις rare in
St Paul, but of reliance on his Lord; reliance not only for
justification but, in this case, for holy liberty), =welcome into
fellowship--not for criticisms of his scruples,= of his διαλογισμοί,
the anxious internal debates of conscience. [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =One
man believes,= has faith, issuing in a conviction of liberty, in such
a mode and degree as =to eat all kinds of food; but the man in
weakness eats vegetables= only; an extreme case, but doubtless not
uncommon, where a convert, tired out by his own scruples between food
and food, cut the knot by rejecting flesh-meat altogether.
[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =The eater--let him not despise the non-eater[231];
while the non-eater--let him not judge the eater; for our (ὁ) God
welcomed him to fellowship,= when he came to the feet of His Son for
acceptance. [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =You--who are you, thus judging
Another's domestic (οἰκέτην)? To his own Lord,= his own Master, =he
stands,= in approval,--=or, if that must be, falls,= under
displeasure; =but he shall be upheld= in approval; =for able is that
(ὁ) Lord[232] to set him= so, to bid him "_stand_," under His
sanctioning smile. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =One man distinguishes (κρίνει)
day above day; while another distinguishes every day;= a phrase
paradoxical but intelligible; it describes the thought of the man who,
less anxious than his neighbour about stated "holy-days," still aims
not to "level down" but to "level up" his use of time; to count every
day "holy," equally dedicated to the will and work of God. =Let each
be quite assured in his own mind;= using the thinking-power (νοῦς)
given him by his Master, let him reverently work the question out, and
then live up to his ascertained convictions, while (this is intimated
by the emphatic "_his own_ mind") he respects the convictions of his
neighbour. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =The man who 'minds' (ὁ φρονῶν) the
day,= the "holy-day" in question, in any given instance, =to the Lord
he 'minds' it; [and the man who 'minds' not the day, to the Lord he
does not 'mind' it][233];= both parties, as Christians, in their
convictions and their practice, stand related and responsible,
directly and primarily, to the Lord; that fact must always govern and
qualify their mutual judgments. =And[234] the eater,= the man who
takes food indifferently without scruple, =to the Lord he eats, for he
gives thanks= at his meal =to God; and the non-eater, to the Lord he
does not eat= the scrupled food, =and gives thanks to God= for that of
which his conscience allows him to partake.

       *       *       *       *       *

The connexion of the paragraph just traversed with what went before it
is suggestive and instructive. There _is_ a close connexion between
the two; it is marked expressly by the "_but_" (δέ) of ver. 1, a
link strangely missed in the Authorized Version. The "but" indicates a
difference of thought, however slight, between the two passages. And
the difference, as we read it, is this. The close of the thirteenth
chapter has gone all in the direction of Christian wakefulness,
decision, and the battle-field of conquering faith. The Roman convert,
roused by its trumpet-strain, will be eager to be up and doing,
against the enemy and for his Lord, armed from head to foot with
Christ. He will bend his whole purpose upon a life of open and active
holiness. He will be filled with a new sense at once of the
seriousness and of the liberty of the Gospel. But then--some "weak
brother" will cross his path. It will be some recent convert, perhaps
from Judaism itself, perhaps an ex-pagan, but influenced by the Jewish
ideas so prevalent at the time in many Roman circles. This Christian,
not untrustful, at least in theory, of the Lord alone for pardon and
acceptance, is however quite full of scruples which, to the man fully
"armed with Christ," may seem, and do seem, lamentably morbid, really
serious mistakes and hindrances. The "weak brother" spends much time
in studying the traditional rules of fast and feast, and the code of
permitted food. He is sure that the God who has accepted him will hide
His face from him if he lets the new moon pass like a common day; or
if the Sabbath is not kept by the rule, not of Scripture, but of the
Rabbis. Every social meal gives him painful and frequent occasion for
troubling himself, and others; he takes refuge perhaps in an anxious
vegetarianism, in despair of otherwise keeping undefiled. And
inevitably such scruples do not terminate in themselves. They infect
the man's whole tone of thinking and action. He questions and
discusses everything, with himself, if not with others. He is on the
way to let his view of acceptance in Christ grow fainter and more
confused. He walks, he lives; but he moves like a man chained, and in
a prison.

Such a case as this would be a sore temptation to the "strong"
Christian. He would be greatly inclined, of himself, first to make a
vigorous protest, and then, if the difficulty proved obstinate, to
think hard thoughts of his narrow-minded friend; to doubt his right to
the Christian name at all; to reproach him, or (worst of all) to
satirize him. Meanwhile the "weak" Christian would have his harsh
thoughts too. He would not, by any means for certain, shew as much
meekness as "weakness." He would let his neighbour see, in one way or
other, that he thought him little better than a worldling, who made
Christ an excuse for personal self-indulgence.

How does the Apostle meet the trying case, which must have crossed his
own path so often, and sometimes in the form of a bitter opposition
from those who were "suffering from weakness in their faith"? It is
quite plain that his own convictions lay with "the strong," so far as
_principle_ was concerned. He "knew that nothing was unclean" (ver.
14). He knew that the Lord was not grieved, but pleased, by the
temperate and thankful use, untroubled by morbid fears, of His natural
bounties. He knew that the Jewish festival-system had found its goal
and end in the perpetual "_let us keep the feast_" (1 Cor. v. 3) of
the true believer's happy and hallowed life.[235] And accordingly he
does, in passing, rebuke "the weak" for their harsh criticisms
(κρίνειν) of "the strong." But then, he throws all the more weight,
the main weight, on his rebukes and warnings to "the strong." Their
principle might be right on this great detail. But this left untouched
the yet more stringent overruling principle, to "_walk in love_"; to
take part against themselves; to live in this matter, as in everything
else, for others. They were not to be at all ashamed of their special
principles. But they were to be deeply ashamed of one hour's unloving
conduct. They were to be quietly convinced, in respect of private
judgment. They were to be more than tolerant--they were to be
loving--in respect of common life in the Lord.

Their "strength" in Christ was never to be ungentle; never to be "used
like a giant." It was to be shewn, first and most, by patience. It was
to take the form of the calm, strong readiness to understand another's
point of view. It was to appear as reverence for another's conscience,
even when the conscience went astray for want of better light.

Let us take this apostolic principle out into modern religious life.
There are times when we shall be specially bound to put it carefully
in relation to other principles, of course. When St Paul, some months
earlier, wrote to Galatia, and had to deal with an error which
darkened the whole truth of the sinner's way to God as it lies
straight through Christ, he did not say, "Let every man be quite
assured in his own mind." He said (i. 8), "If an angel from heaven
preach any other Gospel, which is not another, let him be anathema."
The question _there_ was, Is Christ all, or is He not? Is faith all,
or is it not, for our laying hold of Him? Even in Galatia, he warned
the converts of the miserable and fatal mistake of "biting and
devouring one another" (v. 15). But he adjured them not to wreck their
peace with God upon a fundamental error. _Here_, at Rome, the question
was different; it was secondary. It concerned certain details of
Christian practice. Was an outworn and exaggerated ceremonialism a
part of the will of God, in the justified believer's life? It was not
so, as a fact. Yet it was a matter on which the Lord, by His Apostle,
rather counselled than commanded. It was not of the foundation. And
the always overruling law for the discussion was--the tolerance born
of love. Let us in our day remember this, whether our inmost
sympathies are with "the strong" or with "the weak." In Jesus Christ,
it is possible to realize the ideal of this paragraph even in our
divided Christendom. It is possible to be convinced, yet sympathetic.
It is possible to see the Lord for ourselves with glorious clearness,
yet to understand the practical difficulties felt by others, and to
love, and to respect, where there are even great divergences. No man
works more for a final spiritual _consensus_ than he who, in Christ,
so lives.

Incidentally meantime, the Apostle, in this passage which so curbs
"the strong," lets fall maxims which for ever protect all that is good
and true in that well-worn and often misused phrase, "the right of
private judgment." No spiritual despot, no claimant to be the
autocratic director of a conscience, could have written those words,
"_Let every man be quite certain in his own mind_"; "_Who art thou
that judgest Another's domestic?_" Such sentences assert not the right
so much as _the duty_, for the individual Christian, of a reverent
"_thinking for himself_." They maintain a true and noble individualism.
And there is a special need just now in the Church to remember, _in
its place_, the value of Christian individualism. The idea of the
community, the society, is just now so vastly prevalent (doubtless not
without the providence of God) in human life, and also in the Church,
that an assertion of the individual, which was once disproportionate,
is now often necessary, lest the social idea in its turn should be
exaggerated into a dangerous mistake. Coherence, mutuality, the truth
of the Body and the Members; all this, _in its place_, is not only
important but divine. The individual must inevitably lose where
individualism is his whole idea. But it is ill for the community,
above all for the Church, where in the total the individual tends
really to be merged and lost. Alas for the Church where the Church
tries to take the individual's place in the knowledge of God, in the
love of Christ, in the power of the Spirit. The religious Community
must indeed inevitably lose where religious communism is its whole
idea. It can be perfectly strong only where individual consciences are
tender, and enlightened; where individual souls personally know God in
Christ; where individual wills are ready, if the Lord call, to stand
alone for known truth even against the religious Society;--if there
also the individualism is not self-will, but Christian personal
responsibility; if the man "thinks for himself" _on his knees_; if he
reverences the individualism of others, and the relations of each to
all.

The individualism of Rom. xiv., asserted in an argument full of the
deepest secrets of cohesion, is the holy and healthful thing it is
because it is _Christian_. It is developed not by the assertion of
self, but by individual communion with Christ.

Now he goes on to further and still fuller statements in the same
direction:

[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =For none of us to himself lives, and none of us
to himself dies.= How, and wherefore? Is it merely that "_we_" live
lives always, necessarily, related _to one another_? He has this in
his heart indeed. But he reaches it through the greater, deeper,
antecedent truth of our relation _to the Lord_. The Christian is
related to his brother-Christian through Christ, not to Christ through
his brother, or through the common Organism in which the brethren are
"each other's limbs." "_To the Lord_," with absolute directness, with
a perfect and wonderful immediateness, each individual Christian is
first related. His life and his death are "to others," but through
Him. THE MASTER'S claim is eternally first; for it is based direct
upon the redeeming work in which He bought us for Himself.

[Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =For whether we live, to the Lord we live; and
whether we be dead (ἀποθνήσκωμεν), to the Lord we are dead;= in the
state of the departed, as before, "relation stands." =Alike therefore
whether (ἐαν τε οὖν) we be dead, or whether we live, the Lord's we
are;= His property, bound first and in everything to His possession.
[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =For to this end Christ both died and lived
again,[236] that He might become Lord= (κυριεύσῃ, not κυριεύῃ)
=of= us =both dead and living.=

Here is the profound truth seen already in earlier passages in the
Epistle. We have had it reasoned out, above all in the sixth chapter,
in its revelation of the way of Holiness, that our only possible right
relations with the Lord are clasped and governed by the fact that to
Him we rightly and everlastingly _belong_. There, however, the thought
was more of our surrender under His rights. Here it is of the mighty
antecedent fact, under which our most absolute surrender is nothing
more than the recognition of His indefeasible claim. What the Apostle
says here, in this wonderful passage of mingled doctrine and duty, is
that, whether or no _we are owning_ our vassalage to Christ, we are
nothing if not _de jure_ His vassals. He has not only rescued us, but
so rescued us as to buy us for His own. We may be true to the fact in
our internal attitude; we may be oblivious of it; but we cannot get
away from it. It looks us every hour in the face, whether we respond
or not. It will still look us in the face through the endless life to
come.

For manifestly it is this objective aspect of our "belonging" which is
here in point. St Paul is not reasoning with the "weak" and the
"strong" from their experience, from their conscious loyalty to the
Lord. Rather, he is calling them to a new realization of what such
loyalty should be. It is in order to this that he reminds them of the
eternal claim of the Lord, made good in His Death and Resurrection;
His claim to be so their Master, individually and altogether, that
every thought about one other was to be governed by that claim of His
on them all. "The Lord" must always interpose, with a right
inalienable. Each Christian is annexed, by all the laws of Heaven, to
Him. So each must--not make but _realize_ that annexation, in every
thought about neighbour and about brother.

The passage invites us meantime to further remark, in another
direction. It is one of those utterances which, luminous with light
given by their context, shine also with a light of their own, giving
us revelations independent of the surrounding matter. Here one such
revelation appears; it affects our knowledge of the Intermediate
State.

The Apostle,[237] four times over in this short paragraph, makes
mention of death, and of the dead. "_No one of us dieth to himself_";
"_Whether we die, we die unto the Lord_"; "_Whether we die, we are the
Lord's_"; "_That He might be Lord of the dead_." And this last
sentence, with its mention not of the dying but of the dead, reminds
us that the reference in them all is to the Christian's relation to
his Lord, not only in the hour of death, but in the state after death.
It is not only that Jesus Christ, as the slain One risen, is absolute
Disposer of the time and manner of our dying. It is not only that when
our death comes we are to accept it as an opportunity for the
"glorifying of God" (John xxi. 19; Phil. i. 20) in the sight and in
the memory of those who know of it. It is that when we have "passed
through death," and come out upon the other side,

  "When we enter yonder regions,
  When we touch the sacred shore,"

our relation to the slain One risen, to Him who, as such, "hath the
keys of Hades and of death" (Rev. i. 18), is perfectly continuous and
the same. He is our absolute Master, _there_ as well as here. And we,
by consequence and correlation, are vassals, servants, bondservants to
Him, there as well as here.

Here is a truth which, we cannot but think, richly repays the
Christian's repeated remembrance and reflection; and that not only in
the way of asserting the eternal rights of our blessed Redeemer over
us, but in the way of shedding light, and peace, and the sense of
reality and expectation, on both the prospect of our own passage into
eternity and the thoughts we entertain of the present life of our holy
beloved ones who have entered into it before us.

Everything is precious which really assists the soul in such thoughts,
and at the same time keeps it fully and practically alive to the
realities of faith, patience, and obedience here below, here in the
present hour. While the indulgence of unauthorized imagination in that
direction is almost always enervating and disturbing to the present
action of Scriptural faith, the least help to a solid realization and
anticipation, supplied by the Word that cannot lie, is in its nature
both hallowing and strengthening. Such a help we have assuredly here.

He who died and rose again is at this hour, in holy might and right,
"the Lord" of the blessed dead. Then, the blessed dead are vassals and
_servants_ of Him who died and rose again. And all our thought of
them, as they are now, at this hour, "in those heavenly habitations,
where the souls of them that sleep in the Lord Jesus enjoy perpetual
rest and felicity,"[238] gains indefinitely in life, in reality, in
strength and glory, as we see them, through this narrow but bright
"door in heaven" (Rev. v. 1), not resting only but serving also before
their Lord, who has bought them for His use, and who holds them in His
use quite as truly now as when we had the joy of their presence with
us, and He was seen by us living and working in them and through them
here.

True it is that the leading and essential character of their present
state is rest, as that of their resurrection state will be action. But
the two states overflow into each other. In one glorious passage the
Apostle describes the resurrection bliss as also "rest" (2 Thess.
i. 7). And here we have it indicated that the heavenly intermediate
rest is also service. What the precise nature of that service is we
cannot tell. "Our knowledge of that life is small." Most certainly,
"in vain our _fancy_ strives to paint" its blessedness, both of repose
and of occupation. This is part of our normal and God-chosen lot here,
which is to "walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor. v. 7), οὐ διὰ
εἴδους, "not by Object seen," not by objects seen. But blessed is the
spiritual assistance in such a walk as we recollect, step by step, as
we draw nearer to that happy assembly above, that, whatever be the
manner and exercise of their holy life, it is life indeed; power, not
weakness; service, not inaction. He who died and revived is Lord, not
of us only, but of them.

But from this excursion into the sacred Unseen we must return. St Paul
is intent now upon the believer's walk of loving large-heartedness in
this life, not the next. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =But you--why do you
judge your brother?= (he takes up the verb, κρίνειν, used in his
former appeal to the "weak," ver. 3). =Or you too= (he turns to the
"strong"; see again ver. 3)--=why do you despise your brother? For we
shall stand, all= of us, on one level, whatever were our mutual
sentiments on earth, whatever claim we made here to sit as judges on
our brethren, =before the tribunal (βῆμα) of our (τοῦ) God.[239]=
[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =For it stands written= (Isai. xlv. 23), ="As I
live, saith the Lord,= sure it is as My eternal Being, =that to Me,=
not to another, =shall bend every knee; and every tongue shall
confess,= shall ascribe all sovereignty, =to God,"= not to the
creature. [Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =So then each of us, about himself,=
not about the faults or errors of his brother, =shall give account to
God.=

We have here, as in 2 Cor. v. 10, and again, under other imagery,
in 1 Cor. iii. 11-15, a glimpse of that heart-searching prospect for
the Christian, his summons hereafter, _as a Christian_, to the
tribunal of his Lord. In all the three passages, and now particularly
in this, the language, though it lends itself freely to the universal
Assize, is limited by context, as to its direct purport, to the
Master's _scrutiny of His own servants as such_. The question to be
tried and decided (speaking after the manner of men) at His
"tribunal," in this reference, is not that of glory or perdition; the
persons of the examined are accepted; the enquiry is in the _domestic_
court of the Palace, so to speak; it regards the award of the King as
to the issues and value of His accepted servants' labour and conduct,
as His representatives, in their mortal life. "The _Lord of the
servants_ cometh, and reckoneth _with them_" (Matt. xxv. 19). They
have been justified by faith. They have been united to their glorious
Head. They "shall be saved" (1 Cor. iii. 15), whatever be the fate of
their "work." But what will their Lord say of their work? What have
they done for Him, in labour, in witness, and above all _in
character_? He will tell them what He thinks. He will be infinitely
kind; but He will not flatter. And somehow, surely,--"it doth not yet
appear" how, but somehow--eternity, even the eternity of salvation,
will bear the impress of that award, the impress of _the past of
service_, estimated by the King. "What shall the harvest be?"

And all this shall take place (this is the special emphasis of the
prospect here) with a solemn individuality of enquiry. "_Every one of
us--for himself_--shall give account." We reflected, a little above,
on the true place of"individualism" in the life of grace. We see here
that there will indeed be a place for it in the experiences of
eternity. The scrutiny of "the tribunal" will concern not the
Society, the Organism, the total, but the member, the man. Each will
stand in a solemn solitude there, before his divine Examiner. What
_he_ was, as the Lord's member, that will be the question. What _he_
shall be, as such, in the functions of the endless state, that will be
the result.

Let us not be troubled over that prospect with the trouble of the
worldling, as if we did not know Him who will scrutinize us, and did
not love Him. Around the thought of His "tribunal," in that aspect,
there are cast no exterminating terrors. But it is a prospect fit to
make grave and full of purpose the life which yet "is hid with Christ
in God," and which is life indeed through grace. It is a deep reminder
that the beloved Saviour is also, and in no figure of speech, but in
an eternal earnest, THE MASTER too. We would not have Him not to be
this. He would not be all He is to us as Saviour, were He not this
also, and for ever.

St Paul hastens to further appeals, after this solemn forecast. And
now all his stress is laid on the duty of the "strong" to use their
"strength" not for self-assertion, not for even spiritual selfishness,
but all for Christ, all for others, all in love.

[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =No more therefore let us judge one another; but
judge,= decide, =this rather--not to set stumblingblock for our (τῷ)
brother, or trap.= [Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =I know=--he instances his own
experience and principle--=and am sure, in the Lord Jesus,= as one who
is in union and communion with Him, seeing truth and life from that
view-point, =that nothing,= nothing of the sort in question, no food,
no time, =is "unclean" of itself;= literally, "_by means of itself_,"
by any _inherent_ mischief; =only, to the man who counts anything
"unclean," to him it is unclean.= And therefore you, because you are
not his conscience, must not tamper with his conscience. It is, in
this case, mistaken; mistaken to his own loss, and to the loss of the
Church. Yes, but what it wants is not your compulsion, but the Lord's
light. If you can do so, bring that light to bear, in a testimony made
impressive by holy love and unselfish considerateness. But dare not,
for Christ's sake, compel a conscience. For conscience means the man's
best actual sight of the law of right and wrong. It may be a dim and
distorted sight; but it is his best at this moment. He cannot violate
it without sin, nor can you bid him do so without yourself sinning.
Conscience may not always see aright. But to transgress conscience is
always wrong.

[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =For[240]=--the word takes up the argument at
large, rather than the last detail of it--=if for food's sake your
brother suffers pain,= the pain of a moral struggle between his
present convictions and your commanding example, =you have given up
walking (οὐκέτι περιπατεῖς) love-wise. Do not, with your food,=
(there is a searching point in the "_your_," touching to the quick the
deep selfishness of the action,) =work his ruin for whom Christ died.=

Such sentences are too intensely and tenderly in earnest to be called
sarcastic; otherwise, how fine and keen an edge they carry! "_For
food's sake!_" "_With your food!_" The man is shaken out of the sleep
of what seemed an assertion of liberty, but was after all much rather
a dull indulgence of--that is, a mere slavery to--himself. "I like
this meat; I like this drink; I don't like the worry of these
scruples; they interrupt me, they annoy me." Unhappy man! It is better
to be the slave of scruples, than of self. In order to allow yourself
another dish--you would slight an anxious friend's conscience, and, so
far as your conduct is concerned, push him to a violation of it. But
that means, a push on the slope which leans towards spiritual ruin.
The way to perdition is paved with violated consciences. The Lord may
counteract your action, and save your injured brother from
himself--and you. But your action is, none the less, calculated for
his perdition. And all the while this soul, for which, in comparison
with your dull and narrow "liberty," you care so little, was so much
cared for by the Lord that He--died for it.

Oh consecrating thought, attached now, for ever, for the Christian, to
every human soul which he can influence: "_For whom Christ died!_"

[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Do not therefore let your good,= your glorious
creed of holy liberty in Christ, =be railed at,= as only a thinly
veiled self-indulgence after all; [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =for the
kingdom of our (τοῦ) God is not feeding (βρῶσις) and drinking;= He
does not claim a throne in your soul, and in your Society, merely to
enlarge your bill of fare, to make it your sacred privilege, as an end
in itself, to take what you please at table; =but righteousness,=
surely here, in the Roman Epistle, the "righteousness" of our divine
acceptance, =and peace,= the peace of perfect relations with Him in
Christ, =and joy in the Holy Spirit,= the pure strong gladness of the
justified, as in their sanctuary of salvation they drink the "living
water," and "rejoice always in the Lord." [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =For he
who in this= way[241] =lives as bondservant to Christ,= spending his
spiritual talents not for himself but for his Master, =is pleasing to
his (τῷ) God, and is genuine to his fellow-men (τοῖς ἀνθρώποις).=
Yes, he _stands the test_ (δόκιμος) of their keen scrutiny. They can
soon detect the counterfeit under spiritual assertions which really
assert self. But their conscience affirms the genuineness of a life of
_unselfish_ and happy holiness; that life "reverbs no hollowness."

[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =Accordingly therefore let us pursue= the
interests of =peace, and= the interests of =an edification which is
mutual;= the "building up" (οἰκοδομὴ) which looks beyond the man to
his brother, to his brethren, and tempers by that look even his plans
for his own spiritual life.

Again he returns to the sorrowful _grotesque_ of preferring personal
comforts, and even the assertion of the principle of personal liberty,
to the good of others. [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =Do not for food's sake be
undoing (κατάλυε) the work of our God. "All things are pure";= he
doubtless quotes a watchword often heard; and it was truth itself in
the abstract, but capable of becoming a fatal fallacy in practice;
=but= anything =is bad to the man who is brought by a stumblingblock
to eat it.[242]= Yes, this is bad (κακόν). What is good (καλὸν) in
contrast?

[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =Good it is not to eat flesh, and not to drink
wine= (a word for our time and its conditions), =and not to do
anything in which your brother is stumbled, or entrapped, or
weakened.= Yes, this is Christian liberty; a liberation from the
strong and subtle law of self; a freedom to live for others,
independent of their evil, but the servant of their souls.

[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =You--the faith you have,[243] have it by
yourself, in the presence of your God.= You have believed; you are
therefore in Christ; in Christ you are therefore free, by faith, from
the preparatory restrictions of the past. Yes; but all this is not
given you for personal display, but for divine communion. Its right
issue is in a holy intimacy with your God, as in the confidence of
your acceptance you know Him as your Father, "nothing between." But as
regards human intercourse, you are emancipated not that you may
disturb the neighbours with shouts of freedom and acts of licence, but
that you may be at leisure to serve them in love. =Happy the man who
does not judge himself,= who does not, in effect, decide against his
own soul, =in that which he approves, δοκιμάζει,= pronounces
satisfactory to conscience. Unhappy he who says to himself, "This is
lawful," when the verdict is all the while purchased by self-love, or
otherwise by the fear of man, and the soul knows in its depths that
the thing is not as it should be. [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =And the man
who is doubtful,= whose conscience is not really satisfied between the
right and wrong of the matter, =if he does eat, stands condemned,= in
the court of his own heart, and of his aggrieved Lord's opinion,
=because= it was =not the result of faith;= the action had not, for
its basis, the holy conviction of the liberty of the justified. =Now
anything which is not the result of faith, is sin;= that is to say,
manifestly, "anything" _in such a case as this_; any indulgence, any
obedience to example, which the man, in a state of inward ambiguity,
decides for on a principle other than that of his union with Christ by
faith.

Thus the Apostle of Justification, and of the Holy Spirit, is the
Apostle of Conscience too. He is as urgent upon the awful sacredness
of our sense of right and wrong, as upon the offer and the security,
in Christ, of peace with God, and the holy Indwelling, and the hope of
glory. Let our steps reverently follow his, as we walk with God, and
with men. Let us "rejoice in Christ Jesus," with a "joy" which is "in
the Holy Ghost." Let us reverence duty, let us reverence conscience,
in our own life, and also in the lives around us.

[231] Τὸν μὴ (not οὐκ) ἐσθίοντα: the μὴ gives "non-eating" as
not merely a fact, but a _condition_, about the man.

[232] Read δυνατεῖ ηὰρ ὁ Κύρος.

[233] Probably the negative limb of ver. 6. is only an explanatory
gloss, not the words of the Apostle.

[234] Read καὶ.

[235] There seems to be a broad and intelligible difference between
the Sabbath-keeping _of the Jewish law_ and the Sabbath-keeping _of
man_; the enjoyment and holy use of the primeval Rest for man and
beast. We take it that _that_ duty and privilege is not in question
here at all. The "weak" Christian was the anxious scholar of the
Rabbis, not the man simply loyal to the Decalogue.

[236] Read ἀπέθανε καὶ ἀνέζησε.

[237] We transcribe here a few paragraphs from the closing pages of
our book _Life in Christ and for Christ_.

[238] Visitation of the Sick (Prayer for a Sick Child).

[239] So read, not τοῦ Χριστοῦ. It is significant meantime, as a
testimony to the Apostle's view of his Master's Nature, that in 2 Cor.
v. 10, a perfectly parallel passage, he writes, "we must all appear
before the tribunal _of Christ_."

[240] Probably read γὰρ not δὲ.

[241] Read τούτῳ not τούτοις. Possibly the pronoun refers to "the
Holy Spirit" (Πνεῦμα) just mentioned.

[242] Lit., "_who eats by means of a stumblingblock_"; the example,
with its weight of "public opinion," being _the means of_ overriding
his conscience.

[243] Probably read πίστιν ἣν ἔχεις, κατὰ κτλ.




CHAPTER XXX

_THE SAME SUBJECT: THE LORD'S EXAMPLE: HIS RELATION TO US ALL_

ROMANS xv. 1-13


The large and searching treatment which the Apostle has already given
to the right use of Christian Liberty, is yet not enough. He must
pursue the same theme further; above all, that he may put it into more
explicit contact with the Lord Himself.

We gather without doubt that the state of the Roman Mission, as it was
reported to St Paul, gave special occasion for such fulness of
discussion. It is more than likely, as we have seen from the first,
that the bulk of the disciples were ex-pagans; probably of very
various nationalities, many of them Orientals, and as such not more
favourable to distinctive Jewish claims and tenets. It is also likely
that they found amongst them, or beside them, many Christian Jews, or
Christian Jewish proselytes, of a type more or less pronounced in
their own direction; the school whose less worthy members supplied the
men to whom St Paul, a few years later, writing from Rome to Philippi,
refers as "preaching Christ of envy and strife" (Phil. i. 15). The
temptation of a religious (as of a secular) majority is always to
tyrannize, more or less, in matters of thought and practice. A
dominant school, in any age or region, too easily comes to talk and
act as if all decided expression on the other side were an instance of
"intolerance," while yet it allows itself in sufficiently severe and
censorious courses of its own. At Rome, very probably, this mischief
was in action. The "strong," with whose principle, in its true form,
St Paul agreed, were disposed to domineer in spirit over the "weak,"
because the weak were comparatively the few. Thus they were guilty of
a double fault; they were presenting a miserable parody of holy
liberty, and they were acting off the line of that unselfish fairness
which is essential in the Gospel character. For the sake not only of
the peace of the great Mission Church, but of the honour of the Truth,
and of the Lord, the Apostle therefore dwells on mutual duties, and
returns to them again and again after apparent conclusions of his
discourse. Let us listen as he now reverts to the subject, to set it
more fully than ever in the light of Christ.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =But= (it is the "_but_" of resumption, and of new
material) =we are bound, we the able, οἱ δυνατοὶ= (perhaps a sort
of soubriquet for themselves among the school of "liberty," "_the
capables_")--=to bear the weaknesses of the unable,= (again, possibly,
a soubriquet, and in this case an unkindly one, for a school,) =and
not to please ourselves.= [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =Each one of us, let him
please= not himself but =his neighbour, as regards what is good, with
a view to edification.=

"_Please_"; ἀρέσκειν, ἀρεσκέτω. The word is one often "soiled with
ignoble use," in classical literature; it tends to mean the
"_pleasing_" which fawns and flatters; the complaisance of the
parasite. But it is lifted by Christian usage to a noble level. The
cowardly and interested element drops out of it; the thought of
willingness to do _anything to please_ remains; only limited by the
law of right, and aimed only at the other's "good." Thus purified, it
is used elsewhere of that holy "complaisance" in which the grateful
disciple aims to "meet half way the wishes" of his LORD (see Col.
i. 10). Here, it is the unselfish and watchful aim to meet half way,
if possible, the thought and feeling of a fellow-disciple, to
conciliate by sympathetic attentions, to be considerate in the
smallest matters of opinion and conduct; a genuine exercise of inward
liberty.[244]

There is a gulph of difference between interested timidity and
disinterested considerateness. In flight from the former, the ardent
Christian sometimes breaks the rule of the latter. St Paul is at his
hand to warn him not to forget the great law of love. And THE LORD is
at his hand too, with His own supreme Example.

[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For even our (ὁ) Christ did not please Himself;
but, as it stands written= (Psal. lxix. 9), ="The reproaches of those
who reproached Thee, fell upon Me."=

It is the first mention in the Epistle of the Lord's Example. His
Person we have seen, and the Atoning Work, and the Resurrection Power,
and the great Return. The holy Example can never take the place of any
one of these facts of life eternal. But when they are secure, then the
reverent study of the Example is not only in place; it is of urgent
and immeasurable importance.

"_He did not please Himself._" "Not My will, but Thine, be done."
Perhaps the thought of the Apostle is dwelling on the very hour when
those words were spoken, from beneath the olives of the Garden, and
out of a depth of inward conflict and surrender which "it hath not
entered into the heart of man"--except the heart of the Man of men
Himself--"to conceive." Then indeed "He did not please Himself." From
pain as pain, from grief as grief, all sentient existence naturally,
necessarily, shrinks; it "pleases itself" in escape or in relief. The
infinitely refined sentient Existence of the Son of Man was no
exception to this law of universal nature; and now He was called to
such pain, to such grief, as never before met upon one head. We read
the record of Gethsemane, and its sacred horror is always new; the
disciple passes in thought out of the Garden even to the cruel
tribunal of the Priest with a sense of relief; his Lord has risen from
the unfathomable to the fathomable depth of His woes--till He goes
down again, at noon next day, upon the Cross. "He pleased not
Himself." He who soon after, on the shore of the quiet water, said to
Peter, in view of his glorious and God-glorifying end, "They shall
carry thee _whither thou wouldest not_"--along a path from which all
thy manhood shall shrink--He too, as to His Human sensibility, "would
not" go to His own unknown agonies. But then, blessed be His Name, "He
would go" to them, from that other side, the side of the infinite
harmony of His purpose with the purpose of His Father, in His
immeasurable desire of His Father's glory. So He "drank that cup,"
which shall never now pass on to His people. And then He went forth
into the house of Caiaphas, to be "reproached," during some six or
seven terrible hours, by men who, professing zeal for God, were all
the while blaspheming Him by every act and word of malice and untruth
against His Son; and from Caiaphas He went to Pilate, and to Herod,
and to the Cross, "bearing that reproach."

"I'm not anxious to die easy, when He died hard!" So said, not long
ago, in a London attic, lying crippled and comfortless, a little
disciple of the Man of Sorrows. He had "seen the Lord," in a strangely
unlikely conversion, and had found a way of serving Him; it was to
drop written fragments of His Word from the window on to the pavement
below. And for this silent mission he would have no liberty if he were
moved, in his last weeks, to a comfortable "Home." So he would rather
serve his beloved Redeemer thus, "pleasing not himself," than be
soothed in body, and gladdened by surrounding kindness, but with less
"fellowship of His sufferings." Illustrious confessor--sure to be
remembered when "the Lord of the servants cometh"! And with what an _a
fortiori_ does his simple answer to a kindly visitor's offer bring
home to us (for it is for us as much as for the Romans) this appeal of
the Apostle's! We are called in these words not necessarily to any
agony of body or spirit; not necessarily even to an act of severe
moral courage; only to patience, largeness of heart, brotherly love.
Shall we not answer _Amen_ from the soul? Shall not even one thought
of "the fellowship of His sufferings" annihilate in us the miserable
"self-pleasing" which shews itself in religious bitterness, in the
refusal to attend and to understand, in a censoriousness which has
nothing to do with firmness, in a personal attitude exactly opposite
to love?

He has cited Psalm lxix. as a Scripture which, with all the solemn
problems gathered round its dark "minatory" paragraph, yet lives and
moves with Christ, the Christ of love. And now--not to confirm his
application of the Psalm, for he takes that for granted--but to affirm
the positive Christian use of the Old Scriptures as a whole, he goes
on to speak at large of "the things fore-written." He does so with the
special thought that the Old Testament is full of truth in point for
the Roman Church just now; full of the bright, _and uniting_, "_hope_"
of glory; full of examples as well as precepts for "_patience_," that
is to say, holy perseverance under trial; full finally of the Lord's
equally gracious relation to "the Nations" and to Israel.

[Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For all the things fore-written,= written in the
Scriptures of the elder time, in the age that both preceded the Gospel
and prepared for it, =for our instruction were written=--with an
emphasis upon "_our_"--=that through the patience and through the
encouragement of the Scriptures we might hold our (τὴν) hope,= the
hope "sure and steadfast" of glorification in the glory of our
conquering Lord. That is to say, the true "Author behind the authors"
of that mysterious Book watched, guided, effected its construction,
from end to end, with the purpose full in His view of instructing for
all time the developed Church of Christ. And in particular, He
adjusted thus the Old Testament records and precepts of "_patience_,"
the patience which "suffers _and is strong_," suffers and _goes
forward_,[245] and of "_encouragement_," παράκλησις, the word which
is more than "_consolation_," while it includes it; for it means the
voice of positive and enlivening appeal. Rich indeed are Pentateuch,
and Prophets, and Hagiographa, alike in commands to persevere and be
of good courage, and in examples of men who were made brave and
patient by the power of God in them, as they took Him at His word. And
all this, says the Apostle, was on purpose, on God's purpose. That
multifarious Book is indeed in this sense one. Not only is it, in its
Author's intention, full of Christ; in the same intention it is full
of Him for us. Immortal indeed is its preciousness, if this was HIS
design. Confidently may we explore its pages, looking in them first
for Christ, then for ourselves, in our need of peace, and strength,
and hope.

Let us add one word, in view of the anxious controversy of our day,
within the Church, over the structure and nature of those "divine
Scriptures," as the Christian Fathers love to call them. The use of
the Holy Book in the spirit of this verse, the persistent searching of
it for the preceptive mind of God in it, with the belief that it was
"written for our instruction," will be the surest and deepest means to
give us "perseverance" and "encouragement" about the Book itself. The
more we really _know_ the Bible, at first hand, before God, with the
knowledge both of acquaintance and reverent sympathy, the more shall
we be able with intelligent spiritual conviction, to "_persist_" and
"_be of good cheer_" in the conviction that it is indeed not of man,
(though through man,) but of God. The more shall we use it as the Lord
and the Apostles used it, as being not only of God, but of God for us;
His Word, and for us. The more shall we make it our divine daily
Manual for a life of patient and cheerful sympathies, holy fidelity,
and "that blessed Hope"--which draws "=nearer now= than when we
believed."

[Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =But may the God of the patience and the
encouragement,= He who is Author and Giver of the graces unfolded in
His Word, He without whom even that Word is but a sound without
significance in the soul, =grant you,= in His own sovereign way of
acting on and in human wills and affections, =to be of one mind
mutually (ἐν ἀλλήλοις), according to Christ Jesus;= "_Christwise_,"
in His steps, in His temper, under His precepts; having towards one
another, not necessarily an identity of opinion on all details, but a
community of sympathetic kindness. No comment here is better than this
same Writer's later words, from Rome (Phil. ii. 2-5); "Be of one mind;
having the same love; nothing by strife, or vainglory; esteeming
others better than yourselves; looking on the things of others; with
the same mind which was also in Christ Jesus," when He humbled Himself
for us. And all this, not only for the comfort of the community, but
for the glory of God: [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =that unanimously, with one
mouth, you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;=
turning from the sorrowful friction worked by self-will when it
intrudes into the things of heaven, to an antidote, holy and
effectual, found in adoring Him who is equally near to all His true
people, in His Son.

[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =Wherefore welcome one another into fellowship,
even as our (ὁ) Christ welcomed you,[246]= all the individuals of
your company, and all the groups of it, =to our (τοῦ) God's glory.=
These last words may mean either that the Lord's welcome of "_you_"
"_glorified_" His Father's grace; or that that grace will be
"_glorified_" by the holy victory of love over prejudice among the
Roman saints. Perhaps this latter explanation is to be preferred,
as it echoes and enforces the last words of the previous verse.
But why should not both references reside in the one phrase, where
the actions of the Lord and His disciples are seen in their deep
harmony? [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =For[247] I say that Christ stands
constituted[248] Servant (διάκονον) of the Circumcision,= Minister
of divine blessings to Israel, =on behalf of God's truth, so as to
ratify= in act =the promises belonging to the Fathers,= so as to
secure and vindicate their fulfilment, by His coming as Son of David,
Son of Abraham; [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =but= (a "_but_" which, by its
slight correction, reminds the Jew that the Promise, given wholly
_through_ him, was not given wholly _for_ him) =so that the Nations,
on mercy's behalf, should glorify God,= blessing and adoring Him on
account of a salvation which, in their case, was less of "_truth_"
than of "_mercy_," because it was less explicitly and immediately of
covenant; =as it stands written= (Psal. xviii. 49), ="For this I will
confess to Thee,= will own Thee, =among the Nations, and will strike
the harp (ψαλῶ) to Thy Name";= Messiah confessing His Eternal
Father's glory in the midst of His redeemed Gentile subjects, who sing
their "lower part" with Him. [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =And again it,= the
Scripture, =says,= (Deut. xxxii. 43), ="Be jubilant, Nations, with His
people."[249]= [Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =And again= (Psal. cxvii. 1),
="Praise the Lord, all the Nations, and let all the peoples praise Him
again" (ἐπαινεσάτωσαν).= [Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =And again Isaiah
says= (xi. 10), ="There shall come= (literally, "_shall be_") =the
Root of Jesse, and He who rises up=--"_rises_," in the present tense
of the divine decree--=to rule (the) Nations; on Him (the) Nations
shall hope;"= with the hope which is in fact faith, looking from the
sure present to the promised future. [Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =Now may the
God of that hope,= τῆς ἐλπίδος, "_the_ Hope" just cited from the
Prophet, the expectation of all blessing, up to its crown and flower
in glory, on the basis of Messiah's work, =fill you with all joy and
peace in your (τῷ) believing, so that you may overflow in that
(τῇ) hope, in the Holy Spirit's power;= "_in_ His power," clasped as
it were within His divine embrace, and thus energized to look upward,
heavenward, away from embittering and dividing temptations to the
unifying as well as beatifying prospect of your Lord's Return.

       *       *       *       *       *

He closes here his long, wise, tender appeal and counsel about the
"unhappy divisions" of the Roman Mission. He has led his readers as it
were all round the subject. With the utmost tact, and also candour, he
has given them his own mind, "in the Lord," on the matter in dispute.
He has pointed out to the party of scruple and restriction the fallacy
of claiming the function of Christ, and asserting a divine rule where
He has not imposed one. He has addressed the "strong," (with whom he
agrees in a certain sense,) at much greater length, reminding them of
the moral error of making more of any given application of their
principle than of the law of love in which the principle was rooted.
He has brought both parties to the feet of Jesus Christ as absolute
Master. He has led them to gaze on Him as their blessed Example, in
His infinite self-oblivion for the cause of God, and of love. He has
poured out before them the prophecies, which tell at once the
Christian Judaist and the ex-pagan convert that in the eternal purpose
Christ was given equally to both, in the line of "truth," in the line
of "mercy." Now lastly he clasps them impartially to his own heart in
this precious and pregnant benediction, beseeching for both sides, and
for all their individuals, a wonderful fulness of those blessings in
which most speedily and most surely _the spirit_ of their strife would
expire. Let that prayer be granted, in its pure depth and height, and
how could "the weak brother" look with quite his old anxiety on the
problems suggested by the dishes at a meal, and by the dates of the
Rabbinic Calendar? And how could "the capable" bear any longer to lose
his joy in God by an assertion, full of self, of his own insight and
"liberty"? Profoundly happy and at rest in their Lord, whom they
embraced by faith as their Righteousness and Life, and whom they
anticipated in hope as their coming Glory; filled through their whole
consciousness, by the indwelling Spirit, with a new insight into
CHRIST; they would fall into each other's embrace, in Him. They would
be much more ready, when they met, to speak "concerning the King" than
to begin a new stage of their not very elevating discussion.

How many a Church controversy, now as then, would die of inanition,
leaving room for a living truth, if the disputants could only
_gravitate_, as to their always most beloved theme, to the praises and
glories of their redeeming LORD Himself! It is at His feet, and in His
arms, that we best understand both His truth, and the thoughts,
rightful or mistaken, of our brethren.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile, let us take this benedictory prayer, as we may take it,
from its instructive context, and carry it out with us into all the
contexts of life. What the Apostle prayed for the Romans, in view of
their controversies, he prays for us, as for them, in view of
everything. Let us "stand back and look at the picture." Here--conveyed
in this strong petition--is St Paul's idea of the true Christian's
true life, and the true life of the true Church. What are the
elements, and what is the result?

It is a life lived in direct contact with God. "Now _the God of hope_
fill you." He remits them here (as above, ver. 5) from even himself to
the Living God. In a sense, he sends them even from "the things
fore-written," to the Living God; not in the least to disparage the
Scriptures, but because the great function of the divine Word, as of
the divine Ordinances, is to guide the soul into _an immediate_
intercourse with the Lord God in His Son, and to secure it therein.
God is to deal direct with the Romans. He is to manipulate, He is to
fill, their being.

It is a life not starved or straitened, but full. "The God of hope
_fill you_." The disciple, and the Church, is not to live as if grace
were like a stream "in the year of drought," now settled into an
almost stagnant deep, then struggling with difficulty over the stones
of the shallow. The man, and the Society, are to live and work in
tranquil but moving strength, "rich" in the fruits of their Lord's
"poverty" (2 Cor. viii. 9); filled out of His fulness; never,
spiritually, at a loss for Him; never, practically, having to do or
bear except in His large and gracious power.

It is a life bright and beautiful; "filled with _all joy and peace_."
It is to shew a surface fair with the reflected sky of Christ, Christ
present, Christ to come. A sacred while open happiness and a pure
internal repose is to be there, born of "His presence, in which is
fulness of joy," and of the sure prospect of His Return, bringing with
it "pleasures for evermore." Like that mysterious ether of which the
natural philosopher tells us, this joy, this peace, found and
maintained "in the Lord," is to pervade _all_ the contents of the
Christian life, its moving masses of duty or trial, its interspaces of
rest or silence; not always demonstrative but always underlying, and
always a living power.

It is a life of faith; "all joy and peace _in your believing_." That
is to say, it is a life dependent for its all upon a Person and His
promises. Its glad certainty of peace with God, of the possession of
His Righteousness, is by means not of sensations and experiences, but
of believing; it comes, and stays, by taking Christ at His word. Its
power over temptation, its "victory and triumph against the devil, the
world, and the flesh," is by the same means. The man, the Church,
takes the Lord at His word;--"I am with you always"; "Through Me thou
shalt do valiantly";--and faith, that is to say, Christ trusted in
practice, is "more than conqueror."

It is a life overflowing with the heavenly hope; "that ye may abound
_in the hope_." Sure of the past, and of the present, it is--what out
of Christ no life can be--sure of the future. The golden age, for this
happy life, is in front, and is no Utopia. "Now is our salvation
nearer"; "We look for that blissful (μακαρίαν) hope, the appearing
of our great God and Saviour"; "Them which sleep in Him God will bring
with Him"; "We shall be caught up together with them; we shall ever be
with the Lord"; "They shall see His face; thine eyes shall see the
King in His beauty."

And all this it is as a life lived "_in the power of the Holy Ghost_."
Not by enthusiasm, not by any stimulus which self applies to self; not
by resources for gladness and permanence found in independent reason
or affection; but by the almighty, all-tender power of the Comforter.
"The Lord, the Life-Giver," giving life by bringing us to the Son of
God, and uniting us to Him, is the Giver and strong Sustainer of the
faith, and so of the peace, the joy, the hope, of this blessed life.

"Now it was not written for their sakes only, but for us also," in our
circumstances of personal and of common experience. Large and pregnant
is the application of this one utterance to the problems perpetually
raised by the divided state of organization, and of opinion, in modern
Christendom. It gives us one secret, above and below all others, as
the sure panacea, if it may but be allowed to work, for this
multifarious malady which all who think deplore. That secret is "the
secret of the Lord, which is with them that fear Him" (Psal. xxv. 14).
It is a fuller life in the individual, and so in the community, of the
peace and joy of believing; a larger abundance of "that blessed hope,"
given by that power for which numberless hearts are learning to thirst
with a new intensity, "the power of the Holy Ghost."

It was in that direction above all that the Apostle gazed as he
yearned for the unity, not only spiritual but practical, of the Roman
saints. This great master of order, this man made for government,
alive with all his large wisdom to the sacred importance, in its true
place, of the external mechanism of Christianity, yet makes no mention
of it here, nay, scarcely gives one allusion to it in the whole
Epistle. The word "Church" is not heard till the final chapter; and
then it is used only, or almost only, of the scattered mission-stations,
or even mission-_groups_, in their individuality. The ordered Ministry
only twice, and in the most passing manner, comes into the long
discourse; in the words (xii. 6-8) about prophecy, ministration,
teaching, exhortation, leadership; and in the mention (xvi. 1) of
Phœbe's relation to the Cenchrean Church. He is addressing the
saints of that great City which was afterwards, in the tract of time,
to develop into even terrific exaggerations the idea of Church Order.
But he has practically nothing to say to them about unification and
cohesion beyond this appeal to hold fast together by drawing nearer
each and all to the Lord, and so filling each one his soul and life
with Him.

Our modern problems must be met with attention, with firmness, with
practical purpose, with due regard to history, and with submission to
revealed truth. But if they are to be solved indeed they must be met
outside the spirit of self, and in the communion of the Christian with
Christ, by the power of the Spirit of God.

[244] Observe that St Paul utterly repudiates the thought of
"_pleasing_" (ἀρέσκειν) where it means a _servile and really
compromising_ deference to human opinion (Gal. i. 10).

[245] The noble word ὑπομονή, as we have remarked already, is
rarely if ever _merely_ passive in New Testament usage.

[246] So read, not ἡμᾶς. The point of the mention here of "_you_"
is manifest.

[247] Reading γὰρ not δέ, and omitting Ἰησοῦν just afterwards.

[248] Γεγενῆσθαι, the perfect. But perhaps read γενέσθαι.

[249] In the received Hebrew Text the word את, "_with_," is
absent, and the rendering may be, in paraphrase, either, "_Ye Nations,
congratulate His people_," or "_Rejoice ye Nations, who are His
people_." Either the great Rabbi-Apostle read את, or he gave the
essence of the Mosaic words, not their form, (using the Lxx. rendering
as his form,) to convey the thought of the loving sympathy, before
God, of Israel and the Nations.




CHAPTER XXXI

_ROMAN CHRISTIANITY: ST PAUL'S COMMISSION: HIS INTENDED ITINERARY:
HE ASKS FOR PRAYER_

ROMANS xv. 14-33


The Epistle hastens to its close. As to its instructions, doctrinal or
moral, they are now practically written. The Way of Salvation lies
extended, in its radiant outline, before the Romans, and ourselves.
The Way of Obedience, in some of its main tracks, has been drawn
firmly on the field of life. Little remains but the Missionary's last
words about persons and plans, and then the great task is done.

He will say a warm, gracious word about the spiritual state of the
Roman believers. He will justify, with a noble courtesy, his own
authoritative attitude as their counsellor. He will talk a little of
his hoped for and now seemingly approaching visit, and matters in
connexion with it. He will greet the individuals whom he knows, and
commend the bearer of the Letter, and add last messages from his
friends. Then Phœbe may receive her charge, and go on her way.

[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =But I am sure, my brethren, quite on my own part
(καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγώ), about you, that you are, yourselves,= irrespective
of my influence, =brimming with goodness,= with high Christian
qualities in general, =filled with all knowledge, competent in fact
(καὶ) to admonish one another.= Is this flattery, interested and
insincere? Is it weakness, easily persuaded into a false optimism?
Surely not; for the speaker here is the man who has spoken straight to
the souls of these same people about sin, and judgment, and holiness;
about the holiness of these everyday charities which some of them (so
he has said plainly enough) had been violating. But a truly great
heart always loves to praise where it can, and, discerningly, to think
and say the best. He who is Truth itself said of His imperfect, His
disappointing followers, as He spoke of them in their hearing to His
Father, "They have kept Thy word"; "I am glorified in them" (John
xvii. 6, 10). So here his Servant does not indeed give the Romans a
formal certificate of perfection, but he does rejoice to know, and to
say, that their community is Christian in a high degree, and that in a
certain sense they have not needed information about Justification by
Faith, nor about principles of love and liberty in their intercourse.
In essence, all has been in their cognizance already; an assurance
which could not have been entertained in regard of every Mission,
certainly. He has written not as to children, giving them an alphabet,
but as to men, developing facts into science.

[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =But with a certain boldness (τολμηρότερον) I
have written[250] to you, here and there,[251] just as reminding you;
because of the grace,= the free gift of his commission and of the
equipment for it, =given me by our (τοῦ) God,= given in order to
[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =my being Christ Jesus' minister= sent =to the
Nations, doing priest-work with the Gospel of God, that the oblation
of the Nations,= the oblation which is in fact the Nations self-laid
upon the spiritual altar, =may be acceptable, consecrated in the Holy
Spirit.= It is a startling and splendid passage of metaphor. Here
once, in all the range of his writings (unless we except the few and
affecting words of Phil. ii. 17), the Apostle presents himself to his
converts as a sacrificial ministrant, a "_priest_" in the sense which
usage (not etymology) has so long stamped on that English word as its
more special sense. Never do the great Founders of the Church,
and never does He who is its Foundation, use the term ἱερεύς,
sacrificing, mediating, priest, as a term to designate the Christian
minister in any of his orders; _never_, if this passage is not to be
reckoned in, with its ἱερουργεῖν, its "_priest-work_," as we have
ventured to translate the Greek. In the distinctively sacerdotal
Epistle, the Hebrews, the word ἱερεὺς comes indeed into the
foreground. But there it is absorbed into THE LORD. It is appropriated
altogether to Him in His self-sacrificial Work once done, and in His
heavenly Work now always doing, the work of mediatorial impartation,
from His throne,[252] of the blessings which His great Offering won.
One other Christian application of the sacrificial title we have in
the Epistles: "Ye are a holy priesthood," "a royal priesthood" (1 Pet.
ii. 5, 9). But who are "_ye_"? Not the consecrated pastorate, but the
consecrated Christian company altogether. And what are the
altar-sacrifices of that company? "Sacrifices _spiritual_"; "_the
praises_ of Him who called them into His wonderful light" (1 Pet.
ii. 5, 9). In the Christian Church, the pre-Levitical ideal of the old
Israel reappears in its sacred reality. He who offered to the Church
of Moses (Exod. xix. 6) to be one great priesthood, "a kingdom of
priests, and a holy nation," found His favoured nation unready for the
privilege, and so Levi representatively took the place alone. But now,
in His new Israel, as all are sons in the Son, so all are priests in
the Priest. And the sacred Ministry of that Israel, the Ministry which
is His own divine institution, the gift (Eph. iv. 11) of the ascended
Lord to His Church, is never once designated, as such, by the term
which would have marked it as the analogue to Levi, or to Aaron.

Is this passage in any degree an exception? No; for it contains its
own full inner evidence of its metaphorical cast. The "_priest-working_"
here has regard, we find, not to a ritual, but to "_the Gospel_."
"_The oblation_" is--the Nations. The hallowing Element, shed as it
were upon the victims, is the Holy Ghost. Not in a material temple,
and serving at no tangible altar, the Apostle brings his multitudinous
_converts_ as his holocaust to the Lord. The Spirit, at his preaching
and on their believing, descends upon them; and they lay themselves "a
living sacrifice" where the fire of love shall consume them, to His
glory.

[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =I have therefore my= (read τὴν) right to
=exultation, in Christ Jesus,= as His member and implement, =as to
what regards God;= not in any respect as regards myself, apart from
Him. And then he proceeds as if about to say, in evidence of that
assertion, that he always declines to intrude on a brother Apostle's
ground, and to claim as his own experience what was in the least
degree another's; but that indeed through him, in sovereign grace, God
_has_ done great things, far and wide. This he expresses thus, in
energetic compressions of diction:

[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =For I will not dare to talk at all of things
which Christ did not work out through me,= (there is an emphasis on
"_me_,") =to effect obedience of (the) Nations= to His Gospel, =by
word and deed,= [Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =in power of signs and wonders,
in power of God's Spirit;= a reference, strangely impressive by its
very passingness, to the exercise of miracle-working gifts by the
writer. This man, so strong in thought, so practical in counsel, so
extremely unlikely to have been under an illusion about a large factor
in his adult and intensely conscious experience, speaks direct from
himself of his wonder-works. And the allusion, thus dropped by the way
and left behind, is itself an evidence to the perfect mental balance
of the witness; this was no enthusiast, intoxicated with ambitious
spiritual visions, but a man put in trust with a mysterious yet sober
treasure. =So that from Jerusalem, and round about= it (Acts
xxvi. 20), =as far as the Illyrian= region, the highland seabord which
looks across the Adriatic to the long eastern side of Italy, =I have
fulfilled the Gospel of Christ,= carried it practically everywhere,
_satisfied the idea_ of so distributing it that it shall be accessible
everywhere to the native races.

[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =But= this I have done =with this ambition, to
preach the Gospel not where Christ was already named, that I might not
build on another man's foundation;= [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =but= to act
on the divine word, =as it stands written= (Isai. lii. 15), ="They to
whom no news was carried about Him, shall see; and those who have not
heard, shall understand."= Here was an "_ambition_" as far-sighted as
it was noble. Would that the principle of it could have been better
remembered in the history of Christendom, and not least in our own
age; a wasteful over-lapping of effort on effort, system on system,
would not need now to be so much deplored. [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =Thus
as a fact (καὶ) I was hindered for the most part=--hindrances were
the rule, signals of opportunity the exception--=in coming to you;=
you, whose City is no untrodden ground to messengers of Christ, and
therefore not the ground which had _a first_ claim on me.
[Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =But now, as no longer having place in these
regions,= eastern Roman Europe yielding him no longer an unattempted
and accessible district to enter, =and having a home-sick feeling=
(ἐπιποθίαν: see above, i. 11) =for coming to you, these many years=
[Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =whenever I may be journeying to Spain, [I will
come to you[253]]. For I hope, on my journey through, to see the sight
of you= (θεάσασθαι, as if the view of so important a Church would
be a _spectacle_ indeed), =and by you[254] to be escorted there, if
first I may have my fill of you, however imperfectly (ἀπὸ μέρους).=

As always, in the fine courtesy of pastoral love, he says more, and
thinks more, of his own expected gain of refreshment and encouragement
from them, than even of what he may have to impart to them. So he had
thought, and so spoken, in his opening page (i. 11, 12); it is the
same heart throughout.

How little did he realize the line and details of the destined
fulfilment of that "home-sick feeling"! He was indeed to "see Rome,"
and for no passing "sight of the scene." For two long years of sorrows
and joys, restraints and wonderful occasions, innumerable colloquies,
and the writing of great Scriptures, he was to "dwell in his own hired
lodgings" there. But he did not see what lay between.

For St Paul ordinarily, as always for us, it was true that "we know
not what awaits us." For us, as for him, it is better "to walk with
God in the dark, than to go alone in the light."

Did he ultimately visit Spain? We shall never know until perhaps we
are permitted to ask him hereafter. It is not at all impossible that,
released from his Roman prison, he first went westward and then--as at
some time he certainly did--travelled to the Levant. But no tradition,
however faint, connects St Paul with the great Peninsula which glories
in her legend of St James. Is it irrelevant to remember that _in his
Gospel_ he has notably visited Spain in later ages? It was the Gospel
of St Paul, the simple grandeur of his exposition of Justification by
Faith, which in the sixteenth century laid hold on multitudes of the
noblest of Spanish hearts, till it seemed as if not Germany, not
England, bid fairer to become again a land of "truth in the light."
The terrible Inquisition utterly crushed the springing harvest, at
Valladolid, at Seville, and in that ghastly Quemadero at Madrid,
which, five-and-twenty years ago, was excavated by accident, to reveal
its deep strata of ashes, and charred bones, and all the débris of the
_Autos_. But now again, in the mercy of God, and in happier hours, the
New Testament is read in the towns of Spain, and in her highland
villages, and churches are gathering around the holy light, spiritual
descendants of the true, the primeval, Church of Rome. May "the God of
hope fill them with all peace and joy in believing."

[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =But now I am journeying to Jerusalem,= the
journey whose course we know so well from Acts xx., xxi., =ministering
to the saints,= serving the poor converts of the holy City as the
collector and conveyer of alms for their necessities. [Sidenote: Ver. 26.]
=For Macedonia and Achaia,= the northern and southern Provinces of
Roman Greece, finely _personified_ in this vivid passage, =thought
good to make something of a (τινὰ) communication,= a certain gift to
be "_shared_" among the recipients, =for the poor of the saints who
live at Jerusalem;= the place where poverty seemed specially, for
whatever reason, to beset the converts. [Sidenote: Ver. 27.] ="For
they thought good!"= yes; but there is a different side to the matter.
Macedonia and Achaia are generous friends, but they have an obligation
too: =And debtors they are to them,= to these poor people of the old
City. =For if in their spiritual things the Nations shared, they,=
these Nations, =are in debt, as a fact, (καί,) in things carnal,=
things belonging to our "life in the flesh," =to minister to them;=
λειτουργῆσαι, to do them public _and religious_ service.

[Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =When I have finished this then, and sealed this
fruit to them,= put them into ratified ownership of this "_proceed_"
(καρπὸν) of Christian love, =I will come away by your road (δι' ὑμῶν)
to Spain.= (He _means_, "if the Lord will"; it is instructive to note
that even St Paul does not make it a duty, with an almost
superstitious iteration, always to _say so_). [Sidenote: Ver. 29.]
=Now I know that, coming to you, in the fulness of Christ's
benediction[255] I shall come.= He will come with his Lord's
"_benediction_" on him, as His messenger to the Roman disciples;
Christ will send him charged with heavenly messages, and attended with
His own prospering presence. And this will be "_in fulness_"; with a
rich overflow of saving truth, and heavenly power, and blissful
fellowship.

Here he pauses, to ask them for that boon of which he is so
covetous--intercessory prayer. He has been speaking with a kind and
even sprightly pleasantry (there is no irreverence in the recognition)
of those Personages, Macedonia and Achaia, and their gift, which is
also their debt. He has spoken also of what we know from elsewhere
(1 Cor. xvi. 1-4) to have been his own scrupulous purpose not only to
collect the alms but to see them punctually delivered, above all
suspicion of misuse. He has talked with cheerful confidence of "the
road by Rome to Spain." But now he realizes what the visit to
Jerusalem involves for himself. He has tasted in many places, and at
many times, the bitter hatred felt for him in unbelieving Israel; a
hatred the more bitter, probably, the more his astonishing activity
and influence were felt in region after region. Now he is going to the
central focus of the enmity; to the City of the Sanhedrin, and of the
Zealots. And St Paul is no Stoic, indifferent to fear, lifted in an
unnatural exaltation above circumstances, though he is ready to walk
through them in the power of Christ. His heart anticipates the
experiences of outrage and revilings, and the possible breaking up of
all his missionary plans. He thinks too of prejudice within the
Church, as well as of hatred from without; he is not at all sure that
his cherished collection will not be coldly received, or even
rejected, by the Judaists of the mother-church; whom yet he must and
will call "saints." So he tells all to the Romans, with a generous and
winning confidence in their sympathy, and begs their prayers, and
above all sets them praying that he may not be disappointed of his
longed-for visit to them.

All was granted. He was welcomed by the Church. He was delivered from
the fanatics, by the strong arm of the Empire. He did reach Rome, and
he had holy joy there. Only, the Lord took His own way, a way they
knew not, to answer Paul and his friends.

[Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =But I appeal to you, brethren,=--the "_but_"
carries an implication that something lay in the way of the happy
prospect just mentioned,--=by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love
of the Spirit,= by that holy family affection inspired by the Holy One
into the hearts which He has regenerated,[256] =to wrestle along with
me in your prayers on my behalf to our (τῷ) God;= [Sidenote: Ver. 31.]
=that I may be rescued from those who disobey= the Gospel =in Judea,
and that my ministration[257] which takes me to Jerusalem (ἡ εἰς
Ἱερουσαλὴμ) may prove acceptable to the saints,= may be taken by the
Christians there without prejudice, and in love; [Sidenote: Ver. 32.]
=that I may with joy come to you, through the will of God,[258] and
may share refreshing rest with you,= the rest of holy fellowship where
the tension of discussion and opposition is intermitted, and the two
parties perfectly "understand one another" in their Lord.
[Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =But the God of our (τῆς) peace be with you
all.= Yes, so be it, whether or no the longed-for "_joy_" and
"_refreshing rest_" is granted in His providence to the Apostle. With
his beloved Romans, anywise, let there be "_peace_"; peace in their
community, and in their souls; peace with God, and peace in Him. And
so it will be, whether their human friend is or is not permitted, to
see them, if only the Eternal Friend is there.

There is a deep and attractive tenderness, as we have seen above, in
this paragraph, where the writer's heart tells the readers quite
freely of its personal misgivings and longings. One of the most
pathetic, sometimes one of the most beautiful, phenomena of human life
is the strong man in his weak hour, or rather in his feeling hour,
when he is glad of the support of those who may be so much his weaker.
There is a sort of strength which prides itself upon never shewing
such symptoms; to which it is a point of honour to act and speak
always as if the man were self-contained and self-sufficient. But this
is a narrow type of strength, not a great one. The strong man truly
great is not afraid, in season, to "let himself go"; he is well able
to recover. An underlying power leaves him at leisure to shew upon the
surface very much of what he feels. The largeness of his insight puts
him into manifold contact with others, and keeps him open to their
sympathies, however humble and inadequate these sympathies may be. The
Lord Himself, "mighty to save," cared more than we can fully know for
human fellow-feeling. "Will ye also go away?" "Ye are they that have
continued with Me in My temptations"; "Tarry ye here, and watch with
Me"; "Lovest thou Me?"

No false spiritual pride suggests it to St Paul to conceal his
anxieties from the Romans. It is a temptation sometimes to those who
have been called to help and strengthen other men, to affect for
themselves a strength which perhaps they do not quite feel. It is well
meant. The man is afraid that if he owns to a burthen he may seem to
belie the Gospel of "perfect peace"; that if he even lets it be
suspected that he is not always in the ideal Christian frame, his
warmest exhortations and testimonies may lose their power. But at all
possible hazards let him, about such things as about all others, tell
the truth. It is a sacred duty in itself; the heavenly Gospel has no
corner in it for the manœuvres of spiritual prevarication. And he
will find assuredly that truthfulness, transparent candour, will not
really discount his witness to the promises of his Lord. It may
humiliate _him_, but it will not discredit Jesus Christ. It will
indicate the imperfection of the recipient, but not any defect in the
thing received. And the fact that the witness has been found quite
candid against himself, where there is occasion, will give a double
weight to his every direct testimony to the possibility of a life
lived in the hourly peace of God.

It is no part of our Christian duty to feel doubts and fears! And the
more we act upon our Lord's promises as they stand, the more we shall
rejoice to find that misgivings tend to vanish where once they were
always thickening upon us. Only, it is our duty always to be
transparently honest.

However, we must not treat this theme here too much as if St Paul had
given us an unmistakable text for it. His words now before us
_express_ no "carking care" about his intended visit to Jerusalem.
They only indicate a deep sense of the gravity of the prospect, and of
its dangers. And we know from elsewhere (see especially Acts xxi. 13)
that that sense did sometimes amount to an agony of feeling, in the
course of the very journey which he now contemplates. And we see him
here quite without the wish to conceal his heart in the matter.

In closing we note, "for our learning," his example as he is a man who
craves to be prayed for. Prayer, that great mystery, that blessed fact
and power, was indeed vital to St Paul. He is always praying himself;
he is always asking other people to pray for him. He "has seen Jesus
Christ our Lord"; he is his Lord's inspired Minister and Delegate; he
has been "caught up into the third heaven"; he has had a thousand
proofs that "all things," infallibly, "work together for his good."
But he is left by this as certain as ever, with a persuasion as simple
as a child's, and also as deep as his own life-worn spirit, that it is
immensely well worth his while to secure the intercessory prayers of
those who know the way to God in Christ.

[250] Ἔγραψα: the epistolary aorist.

[251] Ἀπὸ μέρους "_as regards part_" of his instructions and
cautions. He probably refers particularly to the discussions of ch.
xiv. 1--xv. 13.

[252] He is seen in the Epistle not before the throne, standing, but
_on_ the throne, _seated_.

[253] These words have weak documentary support. But surely the
ellipsis left by their absence is difficult to accept, even in St
Paul's free style.

[254] Or perhaps "_from you_," ἀφ' ὑμῶν.

[255] Omitting the words τοῦ εὐαγγελίου τοῦ.

[256] So we explain, rather than take the reference to be to the Holy
Spirit's _love for us_. In this context, surely, this latter would be
less in point.

[257] Διακονία: another possible reading is δωροφορία, "_gift-bearing_."

[258] Perhaps read, "_through the will of the Lord Jesus_."




CHAPTER XXXII

_A COMMENDATION: GREETINGS: A WARNING: A DOXOLOGY_

ROMANS xvi. 1-27


Once more, with a reverent licence of thought, we may imagine
ourselves to be watching in detail the scene in the house of Gaius.
Hour upon hour has passed over Paul and his scribe as the wonderful
Message has developed itself, at once and everywhere the word of man
and the Word of God. They began at morning, and the themes of sin, and
righteousness, and glory, of the present and the future of Israel, of
the duties of the Christian life, of the special problems of the Roman
Mission, have carried the hours along to noon, to afternoon. Now, to
the watcher from the westward lattice,

  "Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
  Along Morea's hills the setting sun;
  Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
  But one unclouded blaze of living light."

The Apostle, pacing the chamber, as men are wont to do when they use
the pens of others, is aware that his message is at an end, as to
doctrine and counsel. But before he bids his willing and wondering
secretary rest from his labours, he has to discharge his own heart of
the personal thoughts and affections which have lain ready in it all
the while, and which his last words about his coming visit to the City
have brought up in all their life and warmth. And now Paul and Tertius
are no longer alone; other brethren have found their way to the
chamber--Timotheus, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater; Gaius himself; Quartus;
and no less a neighbour than Erastus, Treasurer of Corinth. A page of
personal messages is yet to be dictated, from St Paul, and from his
friends.

Now first he must not forget the pious woman who is--so we surely may
assume--to take charge of this inestimable packet, and to deliver it
at Rome. We know nothing of Phœbe but from this brief mention. We
cannot perhaps be formally certain that she is here described as a
female Church-_official_, a "deaconess" in a sense of that word
familiar in later developments of Church-order--a woman set apart by
the laying-on of hands, appointed to enquire into and relieve temporal
distress, and to be the teacher of female enquirers in the mission.
But there is at least a great likelihood that something like this was
her position; for she was not merely an active Christian, she was "a
ministrant of _the Church_." And she was certainly, as a person,
worthy of reliance and of loving commendatory praise, now that some
cause--absolutely unknown to us; perhaps nothing more unusual than a
change of residence, obliged by private circumstances--took her from
Achaia to Italy. She had been a devoted and it would seem particularly
_a brave_[259] friend of converts in trouble, and of St Paul himself.
Perhaps in the course of her visits to the desolate she had fought
difficult battles of protest, where she found harshness and
oppression. Perhaps she had pleaded the forgotten cause of the poor,
with a woman's courage, before some neglectful richer "brother."

Then Rome itself, as he sees Phœbe reaching it, rises--as yet only
in fancy; it was still unknown to him--upon his mind. And there,
moving up and down in that strange and almost awful world, he sees one
by one the members of a large group of his personal Christian friends,
and his beloved Aquila and Prisca are most visible of all. These must
be individually saluted.

What the nature of these friendships was we know in some instances,
for we are told here. But why the persons were at Rome, in the place
which Paul himself had never reached, we do not know, nor ever shall.
Many students of the Epistle, it is well known, find a serious
difficulty in this list of friends so placed--the persons so familiar,
the place so strange; and they would have us look on this sixteenth
chapter as a fragment from some other Letter, pieced in here by
mistake; or what not. But no ancient copy of the Epistle gives us, by
its condition, any real ground for such conjectures. And all that we
have to do to realize possibilities in the actual features of the
case, is to assume that many at least of this large Roman group, as
surely Aquila and Prisca,[260] had recently migrated from the Levant
to Rome; a migration as common and almost as easy then as is the
modern influx of foreign denizens to London.

Bishop Lightfoot, in an Excursus in his edition of the Philippian
Epistle,[261] has given us reason to think that not a few of the
"Romans" named here by St Paul were members of that "Household of
Cæsar" of which in later days he speaks to the Philippians (iv. 22) as
containing its "saints," saints who send special greetings to the
Macedonian brethren. The _Domus Cæsaris_ included "the whole of the
Imperial household, the meanest slaves, as well as the most powerful
courtiers"; "all persons in the Emperor's service, whether slaves or
freemen, in Italy and even in the provinces." The literature of
sepulchral inscriptions at Rome is peculiarly rich in allusions to
members of "the Household." And it is from this quarter, particularly
from discoveries in it made early in the last century, that Lightfoot
gets good reasons for thinking that in Phil. iv. 22 we may, quite
possibly, be reading a greeting _from_ Rome sent by the very persons
(speaking roundly) who are here greeted in the Epistle _to_ Rome. A
place of burial on the Appian Way, devoted to the ashes of Imperial
freedmen and slaves, and other similar receptacles, all to be dated
with practical certainty about the middle period of the first century,
yield the following names: _Amplias_, _Urbanus_, _Stachys_, _Apelles_,
_Tryphæna_, _Tryphosa_, _Rufus_, _Hermes_, _Hermas_, _Philologus_,
_Julius_, _Nereis_; a name which might have denoted _the sister_ (see
ver. 15) of a man Nereus.

Of course such facts must be used with due reserve in inference. But
they make it abundantly clear that, in Lightfoot's words, "the names
and allusions at the close of the Roman Epistle are in keeping with
the circumstances of the metropolis in St Paul's day." They help us to
a perfectly truthlike theory. We have only to suppose that among St
Paul's converts and friends in Asia and Eastern Europe many either
belonged already to the ubiquitous "Household," or entered it after
conversion, as purchased slaves or otherwise; and that some time
before our Epistle was written there was a large draft from the
provincial to the metropolitan department; and that thus, when St Paul
thought of personal Christian friends at Rome, he would happen to
think, mainly, of "saints of Cæsar's Household." Such a theory would
also, by the way, help to explain the emphasis with which just these
"saints" sent their greeting, later, to Philippi. Many of them might
have lived in Macedonia, and particularly in the _colonia_ of
Philippi, before the time of their supposed transference to Rome.

We may add, from Lightfoot's discussion, a word about "the
households," or "people"--of Aristobulus and Narcissus--mentioned in
the greetings before us. It seems at least likely that the Aristobulus
of the Epistle was a grandson of Herod the Great, and brother of
Agrippa of Judea; a prince who lived and died at Rome. At his death it
would be no improbable thing that his "household" should pass by
legacy to the Emperor, while they would still, as a sort of clan, keep
their old master's name. Aristobulus' servants, probably many of them
Jews (_Herodion_, St Paul's kinsman, may have been a retainer of this
_Herod_), would thus now be a part of "the Household of Cæsar," and
the Christians among them would be a group of "the Household saints."
As to the Narcissus of the Epistle, he may well have been the
all-powerful freedman of Claudius, put to death early in Nero's time.
On his death, his great _familia_ would become, by confiscation, part
of "the Household"; and its Christian members would be thought of by
St Paul as among "the Household saints."

Thus it is at least possible that the holy lives which here pass in
such rapid file before us were lived not only in Rome, but in a
connexion more or less close with the service and business of the
Court of Nero. So freely does grace make light of circumstance.

Now it is time to come from our preliminaries to the text.

[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =But=--the word may mark the movement of thought
from his own delay in reaching them to Phœbe's immediate coming--=I
commend to you Phœbe, our sister,= (this Christian woman bore,
without change, and without reproach, the name of the Moon-Goddess of
the Greeks,) =being a ministrant (διάκονον) of the Church which is
in Cenchreæ,= the Ægæan port of Corinth; [Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =that you
may welcome her, in the Lord,= as a fellow-member of His Body, =in a
way worthy of the saints,= with all the respect and the affection of
the Gospel, =and that you may stand by her (παραστῆτε αὐτῇ) in any
matter in which she may need you,= stranger as she will be at Rome.
=For she on her part (αὕτη) has proved[262] a stand-by= (almost =a
champion,= one who _stands up for_ others, προστάτις) =of many,=
aye, =and of me= among them.

[Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =Greet Prisca[263] and Aquila (Ἀκύλας), my
co-workers in Christ Jesus;= the friends [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =who
(οἵτινες) for my life's sake submitted their own throat= to the
knife (it was at some stern crisis otherwise utterly unknown to us,
but well known in heaven); =to whom not only I give thanks, but also
all the Churches of the Nations;= for they saved the man whom the Lord
consecrated to the service of the Gentile world. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.]
=And the Church at their house= greet with them; that is, the
Christians of their neighbourhood, who used Aquila's great room as
their house of prayer; the embryo of our parish or district Church.
This provision of a place of worship was an old usage of this holy
pair, whom St Paul's almost reverent affection presents to us in such
a living individuality. They had gathered "_a domestic Church_" at
Corinth, not many months before (1 Cor. xvi. 19). And earlier still,
at Ephesus (Acts xviii. 26), they wielded such a Christian influence
that they must have been a central point of influence and gathering
there also. In Prisca, or Priscilla, as it has been remarked,[264] we
have "an example of what a married woman may do, for the general
service of the Church, in conjunction with home-duties, just as
Phœbe is the type of the unmarried servant of the Church, or
deaconess."

=Greet Epænĕtus, my beloved, who is the firstfruits of Asia,[265]=
that is of the Ephesian Province, =unto Christ;= doubtless one who
"owed his soul" to St Paul in that three years' missionary pastorate
at Ephesus, and who was now bound to him by the indescribable tie
which makes the converter and converted one.

[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =Greet Mary=--a Jewess probably, _Miriam_ or
_Maria_,--=for she (ἥτις) toiled hard for you[266];= when and how
we cannot know.

[Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =Greet Andronicus and Junias,= _Junianus_, =my
kinsmen, and my fellow-captives in= Christ's =war (συναιχμαλώτους);=
a loving and mindful reference to the human relationships which so
freely, but not lightly, he had sacrificed for Christ, and to some
persecution-battle (was it at Philippi?) when these good men had
shared his prison; =men who (οἵτινες) are distinguished among the
apostles;= either as being themselves, in a secondary sense, devoted
"_apostles_," Christ's missionary delegates, though not of the
Apostolate proper, or as being honoured above the common, for their
toil and their character, by the Apostolic Brotherhood; =who also
before me came to be,= as they are, =in Christ.[267]= Not improbably
these two early converts helped to "goad" (Acts xxvi. 14) the
conscience of their still persecuting Kinsman, and to prepare the way
of Christ in his heart.

[Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =Greet Amplias,= _Ampliatus_, =my beloved in the
Lord;= surely a personal convert of his own.

[Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =Greet Urbanus, my co-worker in Christ, and
Stachys=--another masculine name--=my beloved.=

[Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =Greet Apelles, that (τὸν) tested man in
Christ;= the Lord knows, not we, the tests he stood.

=Greet those who belong to Aristobulus' people.[268]=

[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =Greet Herodion, my kinsman.=

=Greet those who belong to Narcissus' people, those who are in the
Lord.=

[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =Greet Tryphæna and Tryphosa,= (almost certainly,
by the type of their names, female _slaves_,) =who toil= in the Lord,
perhaps as "servants of the Church," so far as earthly service would
allow them.

=Greet Persis, the beloved woman,= (with faultless delicacy he does
not here say "_my_ beloved," as he had said of the Christian _men_
mentioned just above,) =for she (ἥτις) toiled hard in the Lord;=
perhaps at some time when St Paul had watched her in a former and more
Eastern home.

[Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =Greet Rufus=--just possibly the Rufus of Mar.
xv. 21, brother of Alexander, and son of Cross-carrying Simon; the
family was evidently known to St Mark, and we have good cause to think
that St Mark wrote primarily for _Roman_ readers--Rufus, =the chosen
man in the Lord,= a saint of the _élite_; =and his mother--and mine!=
This nameless woman had done a mother's part, somehow and somewhere,
to the motherless Missionary, and her lovingkindness stands recorded
now

  "In either Book of Life, here and above."

[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =Greet Asyncrĭtus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrŏbas,
Hermes, and the brethren who are with them;= dwellers perhaps in some
isolated and distant quarter of Rome, a little Church by themselves.

[Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his
sister, and all the saints who are with them,= in their assembly.

[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =Greet one another with a sacred kiss;= the
Oriental pledge of friendship, and of respect. =All= (read πᾶσαι)
=the Churches of Christ greet you;= Corinth, Cenchreæ, "with all the
saints in the whole of Achaia" (2 Cor. i. 1).

       *       *       *       *       *

The roll of names is over, with its music, that subtle characteristic
of such recitations of human personalities, and with its moving charm
for the heart due almost equally to our glimpses of information about
one here and one there and to our total ignorance about others; an
ignorance of everything about them but that they were at Rome, and
that they were in Christ. We seem, by an effort of imagination, to
see, as through a bright cloud, the faces of the company, and to catch
the far-off voices; but the dream "dissolves in wrecks"; we do not
know them, we do not know their distant world. But we do know HIM in
whom they were, and are; and that they have been "with Him, which is
far better," for now so long a time of rest and glory. Some no doubt
by deaths of terror and wonder, by the fire, by the horrible
wild-beasts, "departed to be with Him"; some went, perhaps, with a
dismissal as gentle as love and stillness could make it. But however,
they were the Lord's; they are with the Lord. And we, in Him,

  "Are tending upward too,
    As fast as time can move."

So we watch this unknown yet well-beloved company, with a sense of
fellowship and expectation impossible out of Christ. This page is no
mere relic of the past; it is a list of friendships to be made
hereafter, and to be possessed for ever, in the endless life where
personality indeed shall be eternal, but where also the union of
personalities, in Christ, shall be beyond our utmost present thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

But the Apostle cannot close with these messages of love. He remembers
another and anxious need, a serious spiritual peril in the Roman
community. He has not even alluded to it before, but it must be
handled, however briefly, now:

[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =But I appeal to you, brethren, to watch the
persons who make the divisions and the stumbling-blocks= you know of,
=alien to the teaching which you learnt= (there is an emphasis on
"_you_," as if to difference the true-hearted converts from these
troublers);--=and do turn away from them;= go, and keep, out of their
way; wise counsel for a peaceable but effectual resistance.
[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =For such people are not bondservants of our Lord
Jesus Christ, but they are bondservants of their own belly.= They talk
much of a mystic freedom; and free indeed they are from the accepted
dominion of the Redeemer--but all the more they are enslaved to
themselves; =and by their (τῆς) pious language and their specious
pleas they quite beguile (ἐξαπατῶσι) the hearts of the simple,= the
unsuspicious. And they may perhaps have special hopes of beguiling
_you_, because of your well-known readiness to submit, with the
submission of faith, to sublime truths; a noble character, but
calling inevitably for the safeguards of intelligent caution:
[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =For your obedience,= "the obedience of faith,"
shewn when the Gospel reached you, =was carried= by report =to all
men,= and so to these beguilers, who hope now to entice your faith
astray. =As regards you, therefore,= looking only at your personal
condition, =I rejoice. Only I wish you to be wise as to what is good,
but uncontaminated= (by defiling knowledge) =as to what is evil.= He
would not have their holy readiness to believe distorted into an
unhallowed and falsely tolerant curiosity. He would have their faith
not only submissive but spiritually intelligent (σαφούς); then they
would be alive to the risks of a counterfeited and illusory "Gospel."
They would feel, as with an educated Christian instinct, where
decisively to hold back, where to refuse attention to unwholesome
teaching. [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =But the God of our (τῆς) peace will
crush Satan down beneath your feet speedily.= This spiritual mischief,
writhing itself, like the serpent of Paradise, into your happy
precincts, is nothing less than a stratagem of the great Enemy's own;
a movement of his mysterious personal antagonism to your Lord, and to
you His people. But the Enemy's Conqueror, working in you, will make
the struggle short and decisive. Meet the inroad in the name of Him
who has made peace for you, and works peace in you, and it will soon
be over.[269] =The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be= (or may we not
render _is?_) =with you.=

What precisely was the mischief, who precisely were the dangerous
teachers, spoken of here so abruptly and so urgently by St Paul? It is
easier to ask the question than to answer it. Some expositors have
sought a solution in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters, and have
found in an extreme school of theoretical "liberty" these men of
"pious language and specious pleas." But to us this seems impossible.
Almost explicitly, in those chapters, he identifies himself _in
principle_ with "the capable"; certainly there is not a whisper of
horror as regards their principle, and nothing but a friendly while
unreserved reproof for the uncharity of their practice. Here he has in
his mind men whose purposes and whose teachings are nothing but evil;
who are to be--not indeed persecuted but--avoided; not met in
conference, but solemnly refused a further hearing. In our view, the
case was one of embryo _Gnosticism_. The Romans, so we take it, were
troubled by teachers who used the language of Christianity, saying
much of "Redemption," and of "Emancipation," and something of
"Christ," and of "the Spirit"; but all the while they meant a thing
totally different from the Gospel of the Cross. They meant by
redemption and freedom, the liberation of spirit from matter. They
meant by Christ and the Spirit, mere links in a chain of phantom
beings, supposed to span the gulf between the Absolute Unknowable
Existence and the finite World. And their morality too often tended to
the tenet that as matter was hopelessly evil, and spirit the
unfortunate prisoner in matter, the material body had nothing to do
with its unwilling, and pure, Inhabitant: let the body go its own evil
way, and work out its base desires.

Our sketch is taken from developed Gnosticism, such as it is known to
have been a generation or two later than St Paul. But it is more than
likely that such errors were present, in essence, all through the
Apostolic age. And it is easy to see how they could from the first
disguise themselves in the special terminology of the Gospel of
liberty and of the Spirit.

Such things may look to us, after eighteen hundred years, only like
fossils of the old rocks. They are indeed fossil specimens--but of
existing species. The atmosphere of the Christian world is still
infected, from time to time--perhaps more now than a few generations
ago, whatever that fact may mean--with unwholesome subtleties, in
which the purest forms of truth are indescribably manipulated into the
deadliest related error; a mischief sure to betray itself, however,
(where the man tempted to parley with it is at once wakeful and
humble,) by some fatal flaw of pride, or of untruthfulness, or of an
uncleanness however subtle. And for the believer so tempted, under
common circumstances, there is still, as of old, no counsel more
weighty than St Paul's counsel here. If he would deal with such snares
in the right way, he must "_turn away from them_." He must turn away
to the Christ of history. He must occupy himself anew with the
primeval Gospel of pardon, holiness, and heaven.

       *       *       *       *       *

Is the Letter to be closed here at last? Not quite yet; not until one
and then another of the gathered circle has committed his greetings to
it. And first comes up the dear Timotheus, the man nearest of all to
the strong heart of the Apostle. We seem to see him alive before us,
so much has St Paul, in one Epistle and another, but above all in his
dying Letter to Timotheus himself, contributed to a portrait. He is
many years younger than his leader and Christian father. His face,
full of thought, feeling, and devotion, is rather earnest than strong.
But it has the strength of patience, and of absolute sincerity, and of
rest in Christ. Timotheus repays the affection of Paul with unwavering
fidelity. And he will be true to the end to his Lord and Redeemer,
through whatever tears and agonies of sensibility. Then Lucius will
speak, perhaps the Cyrenian of Antioch (Acts xiii. 1); and Jason,
perhaps the convert of Thessalonica (Acts xvii. 5); and Sosipater,
perhaps the Berean Sopater of Acts xx. 4; three blood-relations of the
Apostle, who was not left utterly alone of human affinities, though he
had laid them all at his Master's feet. Then the faithful Tertius
claims the well-earned privilege of writing one sentence for himself.
And Gaius modestly requests his salutation, and Erastus, the man of
civic dignity and large affairs. He has found no discord between the
tenure of a great secular office and the life of Christ; but to-day he
is just a brother with brethren, named side by side with the Quartus
whose only title is that beautiful one, "_the brother_," "our fellow
in the family of God." So the gathered friends speak each in his turn
to the Christians of the City; we listen as the names are given:

[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =There greets you Timotheus my fellow-worker, and
Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipatrus, my kinsmen.=

[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =There greets you I, Tertius, who wrote the
Epistle in the Lord;= he had been simply Paul's conscious pen, but
also he had willingly drawn the strokes as being one with Christ, and
as working in His cause.

[Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =There greets you Gaius, host of me and of the
whole Church;= universal welcomer to his door of all who love his
beloved Lord, and now particularly of all at Corinth who need his
Lord's Apostle.

=There greets you Erastus, the Treasurer of the City, and Quartus=
(_Kouartos_), =the brother.[270]=

       *       *       *       *       *

Here, as we seem to discern the scene, there is indeed a pause, and
what might look like an end. Tertius lays down the pen. The circle of
friends breaks up, and Paul is left alone--alone with his unseen Lord,
and with that long, silent Letter; his own, yet not his own. He takes
it in his hands, to read, to ponder, to believe, to call up again the
Roman converts so dear, so far away, and to commit them again for
faith, and for life, to Christ and to His Father. He sees them beset
by the encircling masses of pagan idolatry and vice, and by the
embittered Judaism which meets them at every turn. He sees them
hindered by their own mutual prejudices and mistakes, for they are
sinners still. Lastly, he sees them approached by this serpentine
delusion of an unhallowed mysticism, which would substitute the
thought of matter for that of sin, and reverie for faith, and an
unknowable Somewhat, inaccessible to the finite, for the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then he sees this astonishing
GOSPEL, whose glorious outline and argument he has been caused to
draw, as it was never drawn before, on those papyrus pages; the Truth
of God, not of man; veiled so long, promised so long, known at last;
the Gospel which displays the sinner's peace, the believer's life, the
radiant boundless future of the saints, and, in all and above all, the
eternal Love of the Father and the Son.

In this Gospel, "_his_ Gospel," he sees manifested afresh his GOD. And
he adores Him afresh, and commits to Him afresh these dear ones of the
Roman Mission.

He must give them one word more, to express his overrunning heart. He
must speak to them of HIM who is Almighty for them against the complex
might of evil. He must speak of that Gospel in whose lines the
almighty grace will run. It is the Gospel of Paul, but also and first
the "_proclamation made by Jesus Christ_" of Himself as our Salvation.
It is the Secret "_hushed_" throughout the long æons of the past, but
now spoken out indeed; the Message which the Lord of Ages, choosing
His hour aright, now imperially commands to be announced to the
Nations, that they may submit to it and live. It is the vast
Fulfilment of those mysterious Scriptures which are now the
credentials, and the watchword, of its preachers. It is the supreme
expression of the sole and eternal Wisdom; clear to the intellect of
the heaven-taught child; more unfathomable, even to the heavenly
watchers, than Creation itself. To the God of this Gospel he must now
entrust the Romans, in the glowing words in which he worships HIM
through the Son in whom He is seen and praised. To this God--while the
very language is broken by its own force--he must give glory
everlasting, for His Gospel, and for Himself.

He takes the papers, and the pen. With dim eyes, and in large,
laborious letters,[271] and forgetting at the close, in the intensity
of his soul, to make perfect the grammatical connexion, he inscribes,
in the twilight, this most wonderful of Doxologies. Let us watch him
to its close, and then in silence leave him before his Lord, and ours:

[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =But to Him who is able to establish you,
according to my Gospel, and the proclamation of,= made by, =Jesus
Christ, true to (κατὰ) (the) unveiling of (the) Secret hushed in
silence during ages of times,= [Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =but manifested
now, and through (the) prophetic Scriptures, according to the edict of
the God of Ages, for faith's obedience, published among all the
Nations=--[Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =to God Only Wise, through Jesus
Christ--to whom be the glory unto the ages of the ages. Amen.=

[259] See on προστάτις below.

[260] See 1 Cor. xvi. 19.

[261] Pp. 171-178 (eighth edition).

[262] Lit., "_did prove_": it is the epistolary aorist.

[263] Read Πρίσκαν not Πρίσκιλλαν.

[264] By the late Dean Howson, in Smith's _Bible Dictionary_.

[265] So certainly read, not Ἀχαΐας.

[266] Reading ὑμᾶς.

[267] The perfect, γέγονασι, γέγοναν, imports the permanence of
their blessed position, up to the date.

[268] See above, p. 425, on this allusion, and on _Herodion_, and on
"_Narcissus' people_."

[269] In our short Commentary on the Epistle in _The Cambridge Bible_
we advocate a rather different view of these verses in detail. But the
main reference seems to us to be what it then seemed.

[270] Ver. 24 is probably to be omitted, as an insertion after date.

[271] Gal. vi. 11: "See with _what great letters_ I have written to
you, _in autograph_!" It has been remarked that this great Doxology
bears a literary likeness to other passages which he probably wrote
with his own hand.


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In it we discover a firm grasp of Divine truth, marked expository
skill, a deeply spiritual and reverent manner of approaching
the subject. It is impossible to read this book without rising
with a clearer appreciation of the nature and extent of the Holy
Spirit's operations as set out in the words of our Lord and His
apostles."--_Record._

"Clear, thoughtful, and devout.... In every page we feel ourselves
under the guidance of a competent theologian, of one who knows the
best that has been written on the subject, and who brings an
independent mind to its study. The book is as remarkable for warmth of
feeling as it is for clearness and depth of thought, and we are
persuaded it will be widely read--at least, it deserves to
be."--_Aberdeen Free Press._

"A most valuable and thoughtful work."--_Ecclesiastical Chronicle._

"To the clergy generally, and to all engaged in expounding or
preaching the Word, this work will prove highly useful and suggestive,
supplying many original and beautiful thoughts."--_Church Advocate._

"We heartily commend these reverent, wise, and well-considered
chapters on a profoundly transcendent theme."--_Christian._

"It presents us with a clearly arranged _consensus_ of the principal
passages in the New Testament, expounds them with ripe Christian
wisdom, and applies them with force and skill which it is difficult to
resist. This is a book which every Christian worker ought to read,
mark, learn, and inwardly digest."--_Baptist Magazine._


Thirteenth Thousand. 12mo, cloth, red edges, 1_s._

LIFE IN CHRIST AND FOR CHRIST.

"The persuasive eloquence of these thoughtful pages will ensure for
the book a ready welcome."--_Record._

"The first four chapters of this little work bear a common title,
'Life in Christ, and Christ in Life.' They are the cream of the work,
and are as valuable as anything we have ever seen from the pen of Mr.
Moule."--_Rock._


Tenth Thousand (with full Indices). Fcap. 8vo, 2_s._ 6_d._

OUTLINES OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.

_One of the Volumes of the_ THEOLOGICAL EDUCATOR.

"Mr. Moule has attempted a very difficult task, and has at least
succeeded in condensing an immense mass of information into a small
compass. It is perhaps superfluous to say that his work is
characterised by great reverence from the first page to the last. At
every point the reader feels that he is reading a statement of a
theology which is the life of the writer. In the more strictly
theological part the summary is, as a rule, arranged and expressed
excellently."--_Guardian._

"Marked throughout by the most careful and critical knowledge of
Scripture, more particularly of the New Testament, and the most
patient weighing and comparison of parallel texts.... It forms an
admirable introduction to the subject, and seems in intellectual power
to even surpass any other of Mr. Moule's published writings."--_Record._

"The Author disclaims originality or exhaustiveness, but the work
shows a certain originality of the expository skill with which the
familiar doctrine is made clear, and it is so concisely written that a
divinity student who had mastered its contents might be fairly well
considered able to pass the examination for Orders. It is an admirable
text-book, and enhances the value of the series in which it
appears."--_Scotsman._

"We have read parts of it again and again, and it has been difficult
for us to bring ourselves down to any reasonable dimensions in
reviewing it, for it is emphatically a _multum in parvo_, and it is
not every day we are so pleased and satisfied with a volume."--_Rock._


LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW.




THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.

_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._


FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.

 Colossians.
   By A. MACLAREN, D.D.

 St. Mark.
   By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.

 Genesis.
   By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.

 1 Samuel.
   By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.

 2 Samuel.
   By the Same Author.

 Hebrews.
   By Principal T. C. EDWARDS, D.D.


SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.

 Galatians.
   By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.

 The Pastoral Epistles.
   By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.

 Isaiah I.-XXXIX.
   By G. A. SMITH, M.A. Vol. I

 The Book of Revelation.
   By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.

 1 Corinthians.
   By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.

 The Epistles of St. John.
   By Rt. Rev. W. ALEXANDER, D.D.


THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.

 Judges and Ruth.
   By Rev. R. A. WATSON, D.D.

 Jeremiah.
   By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.

 Isaiah XL.-LXVI.
   By G. A. SMITH, M.A. Vol. II.

 St. Matthew.
   By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.

 Exodus.
   By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.

 St. Luke.
   By Rev. H. BURTON, B.A.


FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.

 Ecclesiastes.
   By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.

 St. James and St. Jude.
   By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.

 Proverbs.
   By Rev. R. F. HORTON, M.A.

 Leviticus.
   By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.

 The Gospel of St. John.
   By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.

 The Acts of the Apostles.
   By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.


FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.

 The Psalms.
   By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.

 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
   By JAS. DENNEY, B.D.

 The Book of Job.
   By R. A. WATSON, D.D.

 Ephesians.
   By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.

 The Gospel of St. John.
   By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.

 The Acts of the Apostles.
   By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.


SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.

 Philippians.
   By Principal RAINY, D.D.

 1 Kings.
   By Ven. Archdeacon FARRAR, D.D.

 Joshua.
   By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.

 Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
   By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.

 The Psalms.
   By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.

 The Epistles of St. Peter.
   By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.


SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.

 Romans.
   By HANDLEY C. G. MOULE, M.A.

 2 Kings.
   By Ven. Archdeacon FARRAR, D.D.

 1 Chronicles.
   By Rev. Prof. BENNETT, M.A.

 2 Corinthians.
   By JAMES DENNEY, B.D.

 Numbers.
   By R. A. WATSON, D.D.

 The Psalms.
   By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.







End of Project Gutenberg's The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans, by Handley C. G. Moule