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The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans

by H. C. G. Moule · English · Gutenberg #48858 · 783,181 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans

Author: H. C. G. Moule

Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll


        
Release date: May 2, 2015 [eBook #48858]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Colin Bell, Charlene Taylor and Chris Pinfield


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE EPISTLE OF ST PAUL TO THE ROMANS ***

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 

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