Romans 1

The Chronological order, adopted in the common arrangement of the canon, has been chosen without reference to chronology. It proceeds apparently on consideration of the relative length and importance of the Epistles, giving, however, to Paul the preference. After his thirteen was placed the Epistle to the Hebrews, as being, if not by him, an appendix by some hand almost guided by his. Then followed the “Catholic” Epistles—then the Revelation. This plan has the advantage of something like system, and is, perhaps, for convenience of reference, the best. A.

According to the probable order of time, six were written before Paul’s first Roman imprisonment, viz.:

1. THESSALONIANS, from Corinth, A. D. 52. 2 THESSALONIANS, from Corinth, A. D. 53. 1 CORINTHIANS, from Ephesus, A. D. 57. 2 CORINTHIANS, from Macedonia, A. D. 57. GALATIANS, from Corinth, A. D. 57. ROMANS, from Corinth, A. D. 58.

Four were written during the first Roman imprisonment (Acts 28), viz.:

Three were written after the imprisonment recorded in Acts 28, probably as follows:

1. TIMOTHY, from Macedonia, A. D. 67. TITUS, from Ephesus, A. D. 67. 2 TIMOTHY, from Rome, A. D. 68. B.

1. PAUL, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, 2 (which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) concerning his Son 3 Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and 4 declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resur- 5 rection from the dead: by whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to 6 the faith among all nations, for his name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus 7 Christ: to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace 8 from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus 9 Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I 10 make mention of you always in my prayers; making request, if by any means now at length 11 I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see 12 you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. 13 Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other 14 Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to 15 the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.

THE Gospel is as old as the first promise. For, from the beginning, man’s sinfulness, atonement through vicarious suffering, God’s free and righteous mercy, the efficacy of prayer, the necessity of holiness—all were revealed. But now these truths are set forth with new proofs, are enforced by new motives, amid stronger light and for a wider audience. The Gospel is a THREE-fold message—of forgiveness through our Lord, of personal holiness through the renewing and ever-gracious help of the Spirit, of blessedness, amid all earthly changes, for those who love and serve God. Forgiveness, holiness, blessedness! What more can we need? The Gospel is a TWO-fold message—Christ’s work for us, in living, and dying, and pleading, and reigning; and Christ’s work in us, beginning in grace and ending in glory. The

Gospel is a SINGLE message—of Christ as crucified—the concentrated revelation of the divine holiness and love, the Redeemer and Comforter, the pattern and the sanctifier of us all. This Gospel—threefold, twofold, single—Christ came to found, even more than to teach. Yet it is the gospel he taught, as it is the gospel his apostles taught. And so mighty did it prove that the most successful preacher of the apostolic age resolved, from experience as well as from direct inspiration, to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ as crucified. The Jews deemed it no “sign,” no embodiment of power, and the Greeks deemed it foolishness; but he found it to be power and wisdom; nay, more, the power of God and the wisdom of God. J. A.

At some time during his stay at Corinth for the winter 57–58, he probably wrote the Epistle to the Galatians. The great subject which the fickleness of the Galatian Church had brought into prominence had been much before his mind. “Ye are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus”; this wrought, and was kept fermenting by the Divine Spirit in his thoughts, and, as centuries after in him who was to enforce the great doctrine in ages of corruption, so now in the ear of the Apostle of the Gentiles, “The just shall live by faith,” was ever sounding. Coincident with this engrossing of his thoughts by this one great theme, came news from the now growing and important Church in the metropolis of the world; news that in it, as so often elsewhere, the Jew and Gentile elements were not in Christian accord; that questions of precedence and questions of observance wanted settling among them. What more natural than that the apostle should regard the tidings thus brought as furnishing an opportunity for laying forth the great doctrine of “Life by Faith” for the Church of God? He had long been intending to visit the Roman Church. It was of necessity the most important Christian community in the world. It would be sure to receive the greatest future accessions; it had the advantage of the greatest publicity, and the widest ventilation, for any truth delivered to it. An occasion then having arisen for a letter to explain and settle the misconceptions which had grown up among the Romans, what wonder if the great apostle availed himself of it to lay forth to them the whole dispensation of God’s grace to Jew and Gentile? Phoebe, a deaconess of the Church at Cenchrea, the port of Corinth, was traveling to Rome. She had won, by her acts of beneficence to the Church and to himself, the apostle’s approval and esteem. She therefore (for we can hardly otherwise understand chapter 16: 1, 2) becomes the bearer of the Epistle. The letter was most probably sent from Corinth in the spring of A. D. 58. Three years after, in the beginning of A. D. 61, the apostle arrived a prisoner at Rome. A. (Read page 143.)

The history of the Roman community is most remarkable. It grew up in silence, founded by some unknown teachers, probably of those who were present in Jerusalem at the first publication of Christianity by the apostles. During the reign of Claudius, it had made so much progress as to excite open tumults and dissensions among the Jewish population of Rome; these animosities rose to such a height, that the attention of the government was aroused, and both parties expelled from the city. With some of these exiles, Aquila and Priscilla, Paul formed an intimate connection during his first visit at Corinth; from them he received information of the extraordinary progress of the faith in Rome. The Jews seem quietly to have crept back to their old quarters when the rigor with which the imperial edict was at first executed had insensibly relaxed; and from these persons on their return to the capital, and most likely from other Roman Christians who may have taken refuge in Corinth, or in other cities where Paul had founded Christian communities, the more perfect knowledge of the higher Christianity, taught by the Apostle of the Gentiles, would be conveyed to Rome. So complete, indeed, does he appear to consider the first establishment of Christianity in Rome, that he merely proposes to take that city on his way to a more remote region, that of Spain. The manner in which he recounts in the last chapter the names of the more distinguished Roman converts implies both that the community was numerous and that the name of Paul was held in high estimation by its leading members. It is evident that Christianity had advanced already beyond the Jewish population, and the question of necessary conformity to the Mosaic law was strongly agitated. It is therefore the main scope of this celebrated Epistle to annul for ever this claim of the Mosaic law to a perpetual authority, to show Christianity as a part of the providential design in the moral history of man, while Judaism was but a temporary institution, unequal to, as it was unintended for, the great end of revealing the immortality of mankind, altogether repealed by this more wide and universal system, which comprehends in its beneficent purposes the whole human race. Milman.

It seems probable that the Church was composed of Jews and Gentiles in nearly equal proportions. This fact will account for the general character of this Epistle, so unlike that of the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians, though written at nearly the same time. The Gospel had to contend in Rome, not specially with Judaism, nor specially with heathenism, but with both together. The letter, evidently, was not written to answer any doubts, or to settle any existing controversies then rife at Rome. It has no special character or application, thus differing widely from the other Epistles just referred to. There is only one instance of special application to the Church of the metropolis. The injunction (13: 1) of obedience to temporal rulers would most fitly be laid upon a Church brought face to face with the imperial government, and the more so as Rome had been the scene of frequent disturbances, on the part of either Jews or Christians, arising out of a feverish and restless anticipation of Messiah’s coming. In the Epistles to the Corinthians and to the Galatians, recently written, we see the attitude of the gospel toward the Gentile and the Jewish world respectively. They are direct and special, evoked by present emergencies, and are full of personal applications. The Epistle to the Romans is the summary of what he had written before, the result of his dealing with the two antagonistic forms of error, the gathering together of the fragmentary teaching in the Corinthian and Galatian letters, in a general form. J. B. L.

Throughout the discussion, constant reference is made to law and justice; and this is characteristic of the Epistle. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians, he gave prominence to wisdom, for the Greeks sought after wisdom. But Rome was the city of imperial law, and the great seat of jurisprudence and government. It was therefore fitting that to Jews and Gentiles residing there, should be addressed this demonstration of the position of mankind, as transgressors condemned by divine law and justice, and unable by deeds to justify themselves. The world centered at ancient Rome; and in a letter sent to Rome was the whole world proved and pronounced to have “been guilty before God.” D. F.

1-7. These words are the beginning and end of the long superscription which opens the series of Apostolic Epistles. That superscription forms a close and living union with the preceding book, in which we have known Paul the servant of Jesus Christ, his calling to be an apostle, his separation to the gospel of God, and have left him at its close testifying to that gospel in Rome itself. Here the apostle seems to stand before us as he did in the previous history, firmly holding his ground in the prophetic and historic line of the old covenant, and from that standing-point opening the dispensation of the Spirit, which has its source and its pledge in the resurrection, and claiming “all nations” for the “obedience of faith.” T. D. B.—It would seem as if the apostle had before his mind the metropolitan majesty of the imperial city of Rome, and set against it the majesty of the great revelation of the Son of God, the fulfillment of the world-long promise, the temple of the indwelling Spirit poured out upon mankind, the first-born from the dead. He looked upon all the world obedient to the sway of Rome, and he thought upon that wider and grander obedience of faith which should bring under its sway all nations of the earth. There is not a grander thing in literature than this opening of the Epistle to the Romans. A.

2-4. The original and peculiar glory of the Bible is its revelation of the Messiah. Deity must be presented, and not merely in some of his attributes, nor yet as a shadowy form on the distant clouds of his own glory, but as a well-defined personality. God in man, thinking, feeling, speaking, acting in human relations, proposing the recovery of the lost to an immortality of holiness, solving the mighty problem of remitting Law’s penalty while adding sanction to its claims, gathering from the apparent weakness of death the resurrection forces of eternal life, and out of the mists of the tomb clothing his redeemed ones with the garments of glory. The Bible utters thoughts that could originate only in Jehovah’s breast, pencils the ideal of the man who is his fellow, and reveals the clear impressions of the mold into which was cast the life of Jesus of Nazareth, who at its close was “declared to be the Son of God, with power according to the Spirit of Holiness by the resurrection from the dead.” T. D. A.—Nothing speaks more decisively for the divinity of Christ than these juxtapositions of Christ with the eternal God, which run through the whole language of Scripture, and the derivation of purely divine influences from him also. Ols.

14. We might say, he is debtor to God, to Christ, to the Cross. But these are not now in his mind. It is to Greek and Jew, wise and unwise, men of all nations, the whole fallen world, that he feels himself a debtor. It was when Paul became possessed of the unsearchable riches of Christ that he felt himself a debtor to the world. To God himself he can not pay this debt directly, but he can indirectly, by pouring out the God-given treasure upon others. His debt directly is to God; but then, indirectly, it is to the world. Thus the Christian man feels his debt—his obligation to the world because of his obligation to God. Bonar.—When human knowledge and life are spreading out into ever wider circuits, the Christian ministry must seek to show itself a debtor to men of every class and character, and must endeavor to prove that there is no department of thought or action which can not be touched by that gospel which is the manifold wisdom of God. The more we study the way of God’s commandments, the more shall we find it as broad as his other works, and increasingly rich to meet all the developments of human nature. Ker.

If Paul felt himself “a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians,” what has the Church now become to the whole unchristianized world? A debtor indeed, involved in a debt which she will never have done paying till the last of an unconverted race shall, under her leading, have come home to God. When we call on her members for their silver and their gold—ay, for their whole bodies and souls—we do not call on them for charity; we call on them to aid in the payment of a simple debt—a debt which we moet righteously owe. The particular church which will not engage in sending the gospel to the heathen, which perseveringly holds back from this work of debt-paying, can not live. Its very spirit, and the measures which that spirit dictates, will, even at home, shut it out from quickening, life-sustaining influences. It will die. J. S. S.

PAUL’S doctrine, like his life, centers in the great antithesis of the want of salvation before Christ and the supply of salvation in Christ. Before Christ and out of Christ is, with him, the reign of sin and death; after Christ and in Christ, the reign of right, cousness and life. There he sees the killing letter; here the life-giving Spirit. There, bondage and curse; here, freedom and blessed sonship. There, a powerless struggle between flesh and spirit and a cry for redemption; here, no condemnation, but wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, and the inseparable communion of the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Hence he opposes no error so decidedly and vehemently as the Judaizing, which would degrade Christianity to the former level of bondage and death.

Much as Paul insists, however, on the absolute newness of Christianity and its infinite elevation, not only above heathenism, but also above Judaism, he still forgets not its historical and religious connection with the Old Testament. He represents the way as positively prepared for the Christian religion by the Old Testament revelation. He calls the law a schoolmaster to lead to Christ, and describes the gospel as promised before by the prophets. There is, therefore, a connecting link between the Jew Saul and the Christian Paul, between the two stages of his religious experience and views. This link is the idea of righteousness, which forms the center and fundamental principle of his system of faith and morals. While a Pharisee, he had striven with all his might after righteousness in the way of obedience to the law of Moses. Even his persecution of Christ, whom he took for a revolutionary opponent of the Old Testament religion, proceeded from this honest effort. But in faith in the very One he persecuted he found righteousness, and with it peace and salvation. After his conversion he saw this to be absolutely impossible without faith in Christ and the renewal of the whole man. Now he learned that all men, Jews as well as Gentiles, are by nature without righteousness, and can be made righteous and be saved only through the merits of Jesus Christ. If he had previously laid the chief stress on the law and on works, he now laid it all on free grace, and on living faith, which appropriates Christ and his atoning death. Hence he may justly be called the apostle of faith, or of the righteousness of faith.

Paul accordingly distinguishes two kinds of righteousness: 1. Man’s own righteousness, or the righteousness of the law, also called righteousness of works, which man strives after, but in reality can never attain, by his natural power, and which is therefore altogether imaginary. The ground of this impossibility of a self-righteousness, which would stand before God and establish a claim to salvation, is not in the law—for this is good, holy, spiritual—but in the corruption of man, in his carnal nature, which must be regenerated and renewed by the grace of God, before it can perform anything truly good. 2. The righteousness of God or from God, i. e., the righteousness which comes from God and is acceptable to him; or the righteousness of faith, i. e., the righteousness which springs from faith in Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour; is vitally apprehended by faith, and is imputed and given to the believer by God, without merit, without the deeds of the law, in free grace. The righteousness of faith also, being of this character, necessarily excludes all boasting, and yields the glory to God alone.

The divine act, by which man comes into possession of this righteousness, is denoted by the expressions: justification, to justify, to count for righteousness. This Pauline doctrine of justification is evidently founded on the notion of a judicial process. The holy and just God is the judge; the law of God, the accuser; the sinner or transgressor of the law, the accused; conscience, the witness; Christ the advocate and substitute for the accused; the atoning death and the merits of Christ, the price of reredemption; faith, the instrument, the spiritual hand of the penitent sinner, by which these merits are appropriated. The justification itself is (1) negative, the judicial sentence of God, in which he pronounces the sinner, for the sake of Christ, free from the curse of the law, from the guilt and punishment of transgression—in other words, the forgiveness of sins, pardon; (2) positive, the imputation and actual communication of the righteousness of Christ to the penitent, believing sinner. The communication on the part of God and appropriation on the part of man take place by means of faith, which is wrought by the Holy Ghost in the Church through the word and the sacraments, and is not, indeed, the objective ground, the efficient cause, yet the indispensable subjective condition and instrumental cause, of justification; since, renouncing all merit of its own, it lays vital hold on the grace of God and the merits of Christ, and receives them into itself. By faith the man is raised out of his sinful state, united with Christ, and wrought more and more into His holy being, so that the old man no longer lives, but Christ lives and moves in him. Of course such a faith is absolutely inseparable from love and good works. An antinomian disjunction of faith from its fruits, as also of justification from sanctification, is a radical and most dangerous abuse of Paul’s doctrine, which he himself repelled with horror.

In this comprehensive moral contrast between false self-righteousness, which works death, and the true righteousness of God, which is life and salvation, Paul’s whole system centers. It may, therefore, be best presented in two sections. The first part treats of the want of righteousness, or the condition of man before and out of Christ. This is the reign of the first, natural, earthly Adam, or the reign of sin and death, appearing partly in unguided heathenism, partly in the disciplinary institution of legal Judaism; though in the latter case connected with divine promises and significant types and anticipations of the future. The larger, positive section has to do with the gospel, the absolute religion of liberty and divine sonship—setting forth the true righteousness as offered in Christ and appropriated by faith. This is the reign of the second, spiritual, heavenly Adam, or of grace and life.

This plan is not one arbitrarily forced upon the doctrinal system of the Gentile apostle, but lies clear enough on its surface in this, his most methodical and systematic epistle. Here, after the introduction, he first states the essence of Christianity by saying that “it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1: 16, 17). This is the theme, the leading thought of the Epistle. In unfolding this the apostle first proves that all men, not only the Gentiles (1: 19, 32), but also the Jews (2: 1-3, 20), are by nature destitute of righteousness, and therefore of salvation and life, and are sinners worthy of condemnation. Then from chapter 3: 21 onward he shows that Christ has fulfilled righteousness and procured life and salvation; that these are imparted to us through firm, living faith; that this faith gives the most troubled conscience peace, and reveals itself in a holy life of love and gratitude. P. S.

Every proof that could be made to consist with the rules of evidence establishes the truth of the Christian religion. The subject of the Christian religion

16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to 17 every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the 18 righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by 19 faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighte- 20ousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; because that which may be known 21 of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things 22 of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that 23 are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because 24 that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but 25 became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing them- 26 selves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an 27 image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 28 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to 29 dishonor their own bodies between themselves: who changed the truth of God into a lie, 30 and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. 31 Amen. 32 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change 33 the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the 34 natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working 35 that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which 36 was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them 37 over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with 38 all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness: full of envy, 39 murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despitful, proud, 40 boosters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant- 41 breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment 42 of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but 43 have pleasure in them that do them.

Man had degraded God, says the apostle, and God degraded man. Man can only degrade God in his conceptions of Him. He may think meanly and poorly of God, instead of investing Him in his ideas with every perfection. And this is just what took place. Man might have learned from Nature (for Nature is a revelation of God to a rational creature) the lesson of God’s eternal power and Godhead, had he been so minded; His magnificence, wisdom, benevolence, are written in no obscure characters on the whole frame of the universe. But man could not, rather he would not, rise to those lofty conceptions of God’s character which Nature, studied with a simple and docile heart, furnishes. Man would not think of God as a Being infinitely raised above even the noblest works of His hands; he confounded Him with the creatures that were derived from him, and allowed the religious instinct—the instinct of worship—to fasten upon them instead of the Creator. In a word, idolatry (or the surrounding the creature with the attributes of the Creator) is the original, fundamental sin of man—the point of departure from which man started on his downward course until he reached the lowest depths of wickedness. Man debased God in his conceptions of Him. And God, as the meet recompense of such dishonor done Him, really and actually debased man by abandoning him to the dominion of vices, the very mention of which freezes the blood of an upright man. E. M. G.

17. The words “the just,” or “the righteous shall live by faith,” might also be understood, “the righteous by faith,” “those that are righteous by faith,” “shall live.” A.—I noticed how the words are connected together, “the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” I saw the apostle’s meaning, that by the gospel is made known that righteousness which avails with God, in which God, out of mere mercy, makes us righteous through faith. On this I felt as if I was wholly born anew. The precious Scripture now appeared quite another thing to me. I ran quickly through the whole Bible, and collected all that it says on the subject. And thus, as I had hated the expression, “God’s righteousness,” I began dearly to love it as the gladdest word in Scripture; and that passage became to me the very gate of heaven. Luther.—Like a nail in a sure place this saying sticks in Luther’s memory. He wanders through the convent, he trudges it to Rome, he crawls up Pilate’s staircase, but still the sentence is sounding in his ear. Through seas of anguish and dismay he buffets his laboring path, no ray to guide him but this tiny spark, till all at once at that little spark Luther’s soul is kindled, and the Reformation-beacon flames. Hamilton.

18. The origin of the atonement is to be sought in the righteous wrath of God against sin. Paul recognizes the wrath of God as the fundamental fact in which we are to seek for an explanation of that scheme. “Herein,” says he (that is, in the gospel), “is the righteousness of God revealed.” And then, commencing the explanation necessary to elucidate these words, he adds: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness” (sin against the first table) “and unrighteousness” (sin against the second table) “of men.” The idea is perfectly simple. God has given us a law, involving duty to himself and duty to our fellow-men—a law promulgated explicitly to the Jew, and graven in characters, not obliterated, yet dim and confused through the fall, on the hearts of all mankind. God is a Spirit, a searcher of the thoughts and intents of the heart; and, therefore, a mere outward observance of this law, in the letter of it, can never meet his requirements. All mankind have broken the law either literally or spiritually, or both; and, by the violation, God’s displeasure is incurred. E. M. G.

“The wrath of God is revealed from heaven.” This saying contains a deep and awful truth. God’s punishment is God’s wrath against sin; and is not merely the consequence of lifeless laws, but the expression of the feeling of a living spirit. It would be most perilous to do away with these words; for if the wrath of God be only a figure, his love must be but a figure too. F. W. R.—The revelation is given on purpose that we may avoid that wrath; for the wrath is future, and we are commanded to flee from it; and faith in it is requisite, before the experience of it, that we may flee from it. The most vivid images of Scripture are but faint and inadequate shadowings forth of the reality; they demonstrate and unveil it as far as possible, but they require belief. Our blessed Lord makes his appeal to our very senses, as far as it can be made. He takes the torture which is most terrible to us, that from which our sensitive nature shrinks back with the greatest horror and repugnance, and constructs a world out of it, and carries us into the midst of that world, as in the tremendous colloquy between Lazarus in heaven and the lost man in hell; so that we see the flames, we hear the wail of souls tormented, we observe the anguish of despair. G. B. C.

20. The apostle says that the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and Godhead, “are clearly seen from the creation of the world” (i. e., God’s creation of the world is the source from which true information respecting his lofty attributes may be gained), “so that they” (the Gentiles) “are without excuse,” because the lessons which they might have learned of God from Nature are quite sufficient to have condemned their idolatries. E. M. G.—Various as have been God’s dealings with the world, there is, after all, a terrible impartiality in his dispensations to his rational creatures. Wherever men possess reason and conscience, they possess in some measure the means of pleasing or displeasing him; whenever they can, in the lowest degree, conceive his law, they are bound to obey it. He can estimate every district and age of the world by the standards appropriate to each. And as He contemplates the vast prospect, Christian and heathen—as he beholds in the one division those to whom Christ was hidden, but who would perhaps have “received him gladly”; in the other those to whom Christ was revealed, but who despised and neglected the revelation—he doubtless can bring men to a level, balancing their opportunities against their actions to a degree wholly unattainable by our weak and perplexed vision. W. A. B.

21. A man may lose the good things of this life against his will; but, if he loses eternal blessings, he does so with his own consent. Aug.—The more carefully we observe the workings of our own wills, the surer will be our conviction that they can ruin themselves. We shall indeed find that they can not be forced or ruined from the outside. But if we watch the influence upon the will itself, of its own wrong decisions and its own yielding to temptations, we shall discover that the voluntary faculty may be ruined from within; may be made impotent to holiness by its own action; may surrender itself to appetite and selfishness with such an intensity and entirness that it becomes unable to convert itself and overcome its own wrong inclination. And yet there is no extraneous compulsion, from first to last, in the process. The man follows himself. He pursues his own inclinations. He has his own way, and does as he pleases. He loves what he inclines to love, and hates what he inclines to hate. Neither God, nor the world, nor Satan himself, forces him to do wrong. It is the most spontaneous of self-motion. But self-motion has consequences as much as any other motion. Because sin is a free act, it does not follow that it has no results, and leaves the will precisely as it found it. It is strictly true that man was not compelled to apostatize; but it is equally true that, if of his own will he did apostatize, he could not then and afterward be as he was before. He would lose knowledge; his understanding would become darkened. And he would lose spiritual power; his will would become impotent to holiness. Shedd.

22. The term spiritual folly includes not only those who are in the common sense of the term foolish, but a great many who are in the common sense of the terms prudent, sensible, thoughtful, and wise. It is but too evident that some of the ablest men who have ever lived upon earth have been in no less a degree spiritually fools. And thus it is not without much truth that Christian writers have dwelt upon the insufficiency of worldly wisdom, and have warned their readers to beware lest, while professing themselves to be wise, they should be accounted as fools in the sight of God. T. A.

23-32. Roman society was a living commentary upon the words of John, “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father.” The principle known to formal theology as “concupiscence,” and to popular language as active selfishness, was everywhere dominant. It was embodied in the whole social and political fabric of the empire. It was displayed in its triple form of unrestricted sensuality, unchecked covetousness, and unbounded self-assertion. As sensuality, it was preying upon the strength and manhood of the people. As covetousness, it was drying up the wealth of provinces and the sources of enterprise. As pride, it was everywhere in active conflict with personal and social liberty. But these effects, outward and political, were harmless compared with the degradation inflicted by unchecked self-worship upon the human soul within. When man is his own center, his own ideal, his own end, his own God; when the indulgence of passion, and the acquisition of income, and general self-assertion are leading and uncontrolled principles of action, the human character sinks to a point of degradation which language can shadow out, but which it can not describe. The Roman Christians must have recognized the society around them, the men and women with whom they had daily dealings as fellow citizens, in the dark and terrible touches of this first chapter. H. P. L.

This picture of the moral state of heathendom is not a whit overwrought. Its truth is confirmed by the astounding representations of the corruption of those times of the empire, which we find in the most celebrated and earnest-minded heathen writers. Wherever Tacitus, the greatest of Roman historians, looks, whether to heaven or upon earth, he sees nothing but black night and deeds of cruelty. He feels that the destruction of the world is near, when she must drink the cup of divine wrath to the dregs. The elder Pliny, too, lost in wonder at the works of nature, could enjoy no rest in contemplating them. He could find nothing certain, but that there was no certainty; and nothing more miserable than man. He could wish for no greater blessing than a speedy death; and this he found in the flames of Vesuvius (A. D. 79). P. S.—Paul’s terrible indictment is not more severe than the indignant assertions of Seneca. He compares society, where every one makes his profit by injuring somebody else, to the life of gladiators, who live together to fight each other. “All things,” he says, “are full of crimes and vices. More is perpetrated than can be removed by force. There is a struggle to see which will excel in iniquity. Daily the appetite for sin increases, the sense of shame diminishes. Casting away all respect for right and justice, lust hurries whithersoever it will. Crimes are no longer secret; they stalk before the eyes of men. Iniquity has so free a

course in public, it so dominates in all hearts, that innocence is not only rare—it does not exist at all. It is not a case of violations of law in individual cases, few in number. From all sides, as at a given signal, men rush together, confounding good and evil.” He then proceeds to specify, in a long catalogue, the forms of iniquity, some of them revolting and unnatural crimes, which exhibited themselves on every hand. G. P. F.—Such was the state of things in the days in which Christianity appeared. Pleasure mounted the throne, shame departed from the heart. Religion, long the fruitful source of unbelief, superstition, and immorality, could not offer a remedy. Even philosophy sat down perplexed. The human understanding had run through the circle in which, left to itself, it could move. A Cato and Cesar dared publicly confess that the belief in an eternal existence was fabulous, and that on yonder side of the grave neither sorrow nor joy was to be expected. The elder Pliny makes the undisguised declaration “that all inquiry after a higher truth may be denominated ridiculous, and that it is to be doubted which is more advantageous to mankind, the skepticism of some or the disgraceful religion of others, yea, that this alone is certain, that absolutely nothing certain exists, and that a more wretched as well as prouder creature than man does not exist.” Van O.