Chapter V: Part 5

It was essential, as has been said, that men whose prejudices and instincts were different should live in the same church and eat at the same love feast. This would require a large-hearted and unselfish self-control. Formerly, as in Syria and Palestine, it was the Jews who occupied the position of vantage in the Christian communities, and were not disposed to tolerate the ways of the Gentiles. Now the tables are turned, and the Gentiles are in the majority. The danger is now that those whose instincts are Gentile should bear hardly upon the minority whose prejudices are more or less Jewish. Such St. Paul anticipates, or knows from Priscilla and Aquila, will be the danger among the Roman Christians. Formerly Judaic narrowness had been a formidable danger. It had developed a most perilous heresy, and St. Paul had dealt with it as a deadly poison. Now what remained {160} of Jewish feeling was a weakness to be generously borne with. It affords St. Paul an opportunity of falling back on the general principle, that the measure of Christian strength and full-grown manhood is the readiness to bear the weaknesses of others.

To be told he must not use his normal liberty, must not eat his usual meal or drink his usual cup of wine, because it might scandalize some Christian with the ascetic prejudices of an Essene, or even induce him to do the same against his own conscience--to be told this was annoying to a man who held the 'strong' Christian conviction that all kinds of food were indifferently allowable. The weak scruple of his brother Christian had become an annoying burden of self-denial and self-restraint laid on himself. But this, St. Paul says, is how Christian strength--whether it be the moral strength of clear convictions, or any other sort of faculty[1]--must show itself, in readiness to suffer on account of other people's deficiencies, in not resenting the restraints they lay on us, in not expecting to do as we please, but being {161} ready to accommodate ourselves to our neighbour's tastes where it is for his good. That is what our great example did. Plainly His whole human life was putting Himself under the restraints which our weaknesses and narrownesses and slownesses laid on Him. The righteous man in the psalm complains that he has to bear all the reproaches of God which impatient and rebellious Israelites might utter; and that is the picture of Christ bearing our infirmities. (The reproaches which fell on Him were for the very largeness of His love; 'because He received sinners,' and because He received them on the Sabbaths as well as on other days. They were reproaches of God, like Jonah's, because He was too forbearing, too generous.)

Then St. Paul pauses a moment to justify his use of the Psalms. These ancient scriptures did not fulfil their purpose in their own time, or for the old covenant. God intended them for Christians. Their teaching is what they need. The burdens of life are so many, its requirements upon their patience so constant, that they find it hard to maintain their hope. Yet what is the Old Testament so full of? Lessons of endurance and words of encouragement. The encouragement and endurance then, which they gain from {162} the Old Testament, are to help them to maintain Christian hope. They must not lose heart. The end is a great one: it is the maintenance of a united spirit in the Church, such as Christ can approve, such as can express itself in a really unanimous adoration of Him whom Christ recognized as His God and Father. May the God who inspires endurance and encouragement, grant them not to fail in this great end!

Here is the central requirement, then, which a catholic church lays on them. It is to be unselfishly inclusive, to welcome into fellowship people who are not naturally to their taste. Our Lord did not scrutinize us men, but received us, of whatever sort we were, that God might be glorified in human brotherhood. He vindicated the truth of God by fulfilling the covenant of circumcision: first, to confirm the promises given to the fathers of Israel[2]; and, secondly, to enlarge the compass of Israel, so that the Gentiles too might share its blessings, out of God's pure mercy apart from any promises. And this also--the fellowship of Jew and Gentile--was matter of ancient prediction by psalmist {163} and prophet. The Roman Christians must not therefore let themselves be discouraged because they have a difficult task to fulfil. And the apostle prays that God, the inspirer of hope, may fill them with such a rich sense of the blessings of believing in Him, that His Spirit, dwelling in them, may make hope to abound in their hearts.

Now we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbour for that which is good, unto edifying. For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell upon me. For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the scriptures we might have hope. Now the God of patience and of comfort grant you to be of the same mind one with another according to Christ Jesus: that with one accord ye may with one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive ye one another, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God. For I say that Christ hath been made a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, that he might confirm the promises _given_ unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy; as it is written,

Therefore will I give praise unto thee among the Gentiles,
And sing unto thy name.

And again he saith,

Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people.

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And again,

Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles;
And let all the peoples praise him.

And again, Isaiah saith,

There shall be the root of Jesse,
And he that ariseth to rule over the Gentiles;
On him shall the Gentiles hope.

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Ghost.

1. The connexion of thought in this passage is undoubtedly somewhat obscure. But we know to-day, as well as ever, how difficult it is to bear with what is disagreeable to us in others, with what seem to us their deficiencies, without breaking real Christian brotherhood and co-operation. And we know also that where we are possessed by an enthusiasm for brotherhood such as inspired the early Christians, the divisions which small differences tend to produce are peculiarly discouraging, because they suggest that real brotherhood is impossible where men are so differently constituted. We ought not, therefore, to be at a loss to see why St. Paul should pass so easily from speaking of divisions among Christians to speak of the grounds of patience and encouragement and hope. The Christian hope is--in substantial part--the hope {165} of a really catholic church--a real brotherhood among people of different races, classes, tastes, and habits; and it is this great hope which, even in St. Paul's day, was continually suffering discouragement and continually needed reinforcing. And the reinforcement must be 'supernatural.' It is the divine love of the Spirit possessing us which alone can give it vigour. When we are full of the divine consolation, then it is that we are least inclined to be critical, and most disposed 'to receive one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.' For this is the thought we are to have constantly in view, when we find people 'aggravating'--Christ received us, and made the best of those whom 'God gave him,' in spite of the infinite annoyances which we men, even the apostles, caused Him; He dealt with us with infinite patience; He made us welcome; He 'received us.'

In fact, the reason why the connexion of thought in this passage seems obscure to us, is probably in part that we have ceased to think of the real fellowship of the naturally unlike--fellowship in all that makes up human life--as a necessary part of the Christian religion. But to St. Paul there was no Christianity without the reality of catholic brotherhood.

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2. St. Paul here, as in writing to the Corinthians[3], shows himself specially anxious that Gentile Christians should not think they could make light of the Old Testament, or imagine that 'Christ was the end of the law' in any such sense as would make the books of the old covenant superfluous under the new. Their value, he insists, remains permanent. When he is writing to the Corinthians, he finds it in the moral warnings--the warnings of divine judgement upon the chosen people--of which the history is full. In this epistle he is thinking chiefly of the lessons of 'endurance' and divine 'encouragements,' which histories and prophets provide. In his epistle to Timothy[4] he thinks of the books as instruments by the use of which the minister or representative of God may become fully educated and equipped for all the purposes of moral supervision and discipline. They can thus educate and equip him, St. Paul {167} teaches, because they were originally written under the influence of a divine inspiration; but it is only when faith has finally attained its true object in Jesus Christ that their real meaning becomes apparent. And this last principle is implied in almost all his use of the Old Testament.

It is a comfort to perceive that none of the elements of permanent value, which St. Paul discerns in the Old Testament, are the least likely to be affected by reasonable criticism of its documents. Its history, critically read, does not become less truly pregnant with moral warnings or lessons of endurance. The encouragements of the prophets are in no respect reduced in force when they are brought into right relation to their own times. The whole library of books is, at least, as capable of educating and equipping the minister of Christ as ever. Their inspiration is still obvious, when it is interpreted candidly in view of all the facts. And still they can only be rightly regarded when they are looked upon as various elements in a progress which has Christ for its goal.

In his use of particular passages in the Old Testament St. Paul here shows himself as free as ever, but with the same fundamental {168} adherence to the true tendency of the Old Testament as a whole. In quoting Ps. lxix. 9 (ver. 3) he is seeing in the afflicted righteous man a type of Christ. This psalm is constantly cited in the New Testament with the same reference[5]. It has been supposed[6] that St. Paul here adopts a cry addressed _to God_ by the righteous sufferer in the psalm, and represents it as addressed by Christ _to his brother man_. 'The reproaches aimed at thee, my despised brother, have fallen upon me.' But, as I have tried to show in the analysis above, this supposition is not needed. Christ is represented appealing to God for succour, because He utterly refuses to take the line of self-pleasing; but bears all that men's impatience of God lays upon Him--all their 'wild and weak complaining.' And it is suggestive to remember, with Origen, that it was Christ's 'receiving of sinners and eating with them,' receiving them on the Sabbath as well as other days, that chiefly brought on Him the reproaches of men. This was probably in St. Paul's mind.

In Ps. xviii. 49 (quoted ver. 9) the victorious {169} king declares that he will praise God for his victory 'among the nations.' St. Paul applies this to Christ, whose victory among the nations means their redemption--their becoming His people.

In Deut. xxxii. 43 (ver. 10) 'the nations are invited to congratulate Israel on possessing a God like Jehovah, who will effectually take up His people's cause. Such an invitation addressed to the nations (cf. Isa. xlii. 10-12; Ps. xlvii. 2, lxvii. 1-7, &c.) involves implicitly the prophetic truth that God's dealings with Israel have indirectly an interest and importance for the world at large[7].' This is still more plainly implied in Ps. cxvii. 1 (ver. 11).

Isa. xi. 10 (ver. 12) is quoted from the Greek Bible, which is paraphrastic; but the Hebrew also asserts that the messianic king of David's line is to be a 'signal to the nations,' and that they are to 'resort to him' as to an oracle or place of refuge[8].

[1] We are all 'strong' in some respect, Origen remarks, so that 'ye that are strong bear the infirmities of the weak' comes to be as broad a precept as 'bear ye one another's burdens.'

[2] Cf. Gal. iv. 4, 5: 'Christ, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them which were under the law, that we (Jews and Gentiles) might receive the adoption of sons.'

[3] 1 Cor. x. ii: 'These things happened unto them (the Jews in the Wilderness) by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.'

[4] 2 Tim. iii. 15-17. 'Sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Every scripture inspired by God _is_ also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work.'

[5] Cf. above, xi. 9; in the Gospels, Matt. xxvii. 34; John ii. 17; xix. 28; also Acts i. 20.

[6] See _S. and H. in loc._

[7] Driver, _in loc._

[8] Cheyne, _in loc._

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DIVISION VI. CHAPTERS XV. 14-XVI. 27.

_Conclusion._

The long letter is almost ended. St. Paul has developed the meaning of the revelation of the divine righteousness. He has vindicated the ways of God to the Jews. He has drawn out sufficiently the moral conclusions from God's mercy to mankind. Now he has only to secure again his good terms with the Roman Christians--which he does with the same tact and the same anxiety as at the beginning[1],--to explain his movements, to send his greetings to individuals, and to bid farewell.

[1] Vol. i. p. 53.

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DIVISION VI. Sec. 1. CHAPTER XV. 14-33.

_His excuse for writing and his hope of coming._

St. Paul is very anxious not to be understood as if, while giving the Christians at Rome these exhortations which we have just been reading, he stood in any doubt himself of their goodness of heart and full grasp of Christian principles, or of their fitness to admonish one another. He has only been bold to put them in mind of what they already knew, because of the priestly commission on behalf of his Lord towards all the Gentiles, which the divine grace has bestowed upon him as apostle of the Gentiles. The gospel entrusted to him requires him as a priest to prepare and offer sacrifice; and the sacrifice which he is to prepare, which the consecration of the indwelling Spirit alone can make acceptable, is that of the whole Gentile world. The extent to which this great charge laid upon him has been fulfilled, gives him good reason for {172} boasting as he stands before God--not in himself, but in Christ Jesus. His work has been a pioneer's work. He has made it his ambition purely to lay foundations. Taking words of Isaiah[1] for his motto, he had resolved to go nowhere where any other had been before him to make Christ known. But in that free and open area of a yet unevangelized world, Christ had worked through him to bring the Gentiles to His obedience, and had accompanied his preaching with evidences of miraculous power and with the strong manifestations of the Spirit. So that in the result the work of proclaiming the gospel had been accomplished, starting from Jerusalem, in an extending circuit[2] or irregular progress, as far as Illyria.

This world-wide mission would give St. Paul his title to visit Rome[3]. But its very greatness has hitherto hindered him. Now however he is hoping to satisfy the desire that has so long possessed him, and to pay them a visit of some length on his way to Spain. That is to say, he hopes to come to them when the task is over {173} which is immediately occupying him. The good will of the churches in Macedonia and Achaia has shown itself in a collection of money for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. This is really the payment of a debt to those to whom they owe their fellowship in Christ's salvation. When then St. Paul has handed over this collection, and secured to its recipients this fruit of his mission, he hopes to pass to Spain by way of Rome; and again, as in his introduction[4], he expresses his confidence that at Rome, as elsewhere, the fullness of the rich gifts of Christ will accompany his coming.

Meanwhile he makes his urgent request, by their allegiance to Christ and their fellowship in the spirit of love, that they will join with him in wrestling with God in prayer for the success of his present undertaking--that he may escape the danger to which he is exposed from the hostility of the unbelieving Jews, and that the gift, as ministered by him, may not prove unacceptable to the Jerusalem church; so that he may get happily to Rome and find repose there with them. And he prays for the blessing of the God of peace upon all of them.

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And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. But I write the more boldly unto you in some measure, as putting you again in remembrance, because of the grace that was given me of God, that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles, ministering[5] the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. I have therefore my glorying in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to God. For I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Ghost; so that from Jerusalem, and round about even unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ; yea, making it my aim so to preach the gospel, not where Christ was _already_ named, that I might not build upon another man's foundation; but, as it is written,

They shall see, to whom no tidings of him came,
And they who have not heard shall understand.

Wherefore also I was hindered these many times from coming to you: but now, having no more any place in these regions, and having these many years a longing to come unto you, whensoever I go unto Spain (for I hope to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first in some measure I shall have been satisfied with your company)--but now, _I say_, I go unto Jerusalem, ministering unto the saints. For it hath been the good pleasure of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints that are at Jerusalem. Yea, it hath been their good pleasure; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been {175} made partakers of their spiritual things, they owe it _to them_ also to minister unto them in carnal things. When therefore I have accomplished this, and have sealed to them this fruit, I will go on by you unto Spain. And I know that, when I come unto you, I shall come in the fulness of the blessing of Christ.

Now I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; that I may be delivered from them that are disobedient in Judaea, and _that_ my ministration which _I have_ for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints; that I may come unto you in joy through the will of God, and together with you find rest. Now the God of peace be with you all. Amen.

1. St. Paul has a habit of representing those he writes to in the best light[6]. But the words 'full of goodness,' 'filled with all knowledge,' 'able to admonish,' are no idle compliments. It is not too much to suggest that St. Paul, as he sees the high part which the church of the capital must play in the world, perceives also, in what he hears of the Roman Christians, evidences of the spirit which will enable them to fulfil it. And history verifies the apostle's anticipation. The letter of the Roman church to the Corinthians, which passes under Clement's name, and was written some forty years after {176} this letter of St. Paul's, is the very embodiment of the spirit of goodness, knowledge, and power to admonish. The princely generosity of the Roman church in all directions was proverbial in the second century[7]. If it did not become as distinguished as Alexandria in theological science, it did become a chief centre of theological orthodoxy and government. And the repeated evidences we gain that rigorists, from Hippolytus to Novatian, were so dissatisfied with the policy of the Roman bishops as to separate themselves from their communion, give us good reason to believe that the internal policy of this church was, within just limits, liberal and tolerant.

2. St. Paul here describes his apostolic commission in priestly language. 'The sacrificial terminology is far more marked in the original than it can be in a translation[8].' The word for 'minister of Christ Jesus' is a technical word for priest in the Greek Old Testament[9]. The word translated 'ministering' means 'offering sacrifice.' (That which St. Paul describes {177} himself as offering in sacrifice is not the gospel, as our translation might imply: the gospel assigns the sphere of the sacrifice[10], but the sacrifice he has to offer is that of the Gentile world, in Christ, consecrated to be a fit sacrifice by the Spirit.) The phrase also, 'in things pertaining to God' (cf. Hebr. ii. 17), is appropriate to the priest as he stands before God. 'But this is all symbolical language,' it is said. That depends on what we take as the standard of reality in the sacrificing priesthood. If Christ is the standard of priesthood, and His method of making sacrifice the standard method, then St. Paul's account of his priestliness is not appreciably metaphorical, except so far as metaphor belongs to all earthly expressions of heavenly realities; it is rather true to say that the Jewish or heathen priest, with his material victims, was but the dim shadow of a true priest.

The point is that the true Christian idea of sacrifice makes the substance of it to be always persons returning to God the life He gave them. If we must offer sacrifices of money and fruits of the earth, that is because we cannot offer ourselves without our bodies[11], or our bodies {178} without the material supplies on which they depend. 'All things come of God, and of His own do we give Him.' And all our labour and prayer for others must be an offering of them, or a preparation to offer them[12], to God; which again is only our assisting them to offer themselves. And all this offering in sacrifice of ourselves and others is rendered possible by the one effectual sacrifice, through which alone we and all men have access to the Father. It takes place 'in Christ Jesus,' who, 'through eternal Spirit offered _himself_ without spot to God.' There, at the head of all, is the sacrifice of the person, and that person the Son of Man, who can take up into His very life and sacrifice even all mankind. Throughout it is a sacrifice of persons, or of things only as appertaining to persons. This is the fundamental Christian idea, and this at the bottom necessarily forbids us to separate the thing offered from the person offering, the victim from the priest. The priest is the victim, for what he offers is himself.

It is this idea of sacrifice which is realized in the eucharist. The eucharist is the central sacrifice of the Christian body. It is to start {179} with a presentation of material things, bread and wine of the fruits of the earth, with alms and other offerings it may be: and these oblations are accompanied with prayers and symbolic rites. But all is done that both by word and act the One Sacrifice may be commemorated and pleaded. The outward rite but finds its meaning and justification in that--the sacrifice of the Person. Again we can only take part in it with any spiritual reality by becoming ourselves sharers of His sacrifice--ourselves the sacrifice we offer. 'And here,' we cry, 'we offer and present unto Thee ourselves.' We men, St. Augustine does not scruple to say, are the body of Christ, which is offered in that sacrifice[13]. And a quite new light is shed on intercessory prayer, in the eucharist and in the rest of life, when we view it as St. Paul would have us view it, as a presenting in sacrifice before God those for whom we pray, according to the true idea of them which the sanctification of the Spirit would make possible and actual. And a quite new light is shed upon all work for others, when we regard it as the preparing of such a sacrifice for the Holy Spirit to consecrate.

From a different point of view St. Paul's {180} conception of his mission as the priest of the Gentile world, might well suggest reflections to the Church of England. If a Christian nation in the providence of God is to overrun the world and possess the nations not yet Christian, it goes with a mission entrusted to it by God. Its mission may be expressed, according to St. Paul's idea, as that of evangelizing the world, but also as that of preparing the heathen nations to be offered to God. It is the return of all humanity to Himself that God desires, and we are to be the ministers of this perfected offering. It strikes us with profound humiliation to realize how 'far fetched' St. Paul's idea would appear to-day to the mass of our nation, which, more than any other, is called by circumstances to an apostolate of the world.

3. St. Paul speaks, here and in many places elsewhere, of his grounds for 'glorying,' or rather 'boasting[14],' in what Christ has wrought through him, and of his 'being ambitious' to preach only where no one had been before him[15]. And in reading such passages the question {181} sometimes arises in Christian minds--was there, after all, a strain of egotism unsubdued in St. Paul's character? Now no doubt, unlike other apostles whose writings remain in the New Testament, St. Paul had that sort of passionately personal and individual nature which easily passes into spiritual egotism. This at least is discernible in his epistles. It is also true that the necessity which lay so long upon him of vindicating his own apostolic authority, makes it necessary for him at times to talk about himself and his experiences and his personal methods in a way that to some minds suggests egotism; and there is no obligation upon us to maintain that St. Paul was perfect. But we only understand these passages aright when we remember that there runs through them all a conscious irony. The basis of St. Paul's whole theology was the denial of any possible ground for a man to boast in himself. 'Where is boasting? it is excluded.' 'He that boasteth, let him boast in the Lord.' It is Christ who 'leads St. Paul in' His 'triumph.' What he boasts of is not his own, but Christ's. Of course, this sort of language very easily admits of self-deception. St. Paul shows himself conscious of its danger[16]. But there can {182} be no question of the vehement sincerity of St. Paul in repudiating any homage to himself which seemed to put him in the place of Christ, or to substitute the teacher for his message[17]. And where his personal gifts of intellect might most easily have shone, he had determined to abjure all 'the wisdom of men' in the method of his preaching[18]. It is remarkable again that as soon as ever the real peril from Judaism was over in the Church, St. Paul drops his anti-Judaistic polemic, and all that brings the personal element into prominence. He is absolutely free from the charge of pursuing his advantage so as to magnify a personal victory. The more thoroughly we grow to know St. Paul, the more, I think, we feel that his profession is true that he will 'boast' only 'in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ'; and that truly the world, with all its personal ambitions, had been for him nailed to the cross and killed[19].

But what exactly was it that St. Paul had to 'boast' that Christ had wrought through him?

He had, he says, accomplished the preaching of the gospel in an irregular circuit from Jerusalem to Illyria. After he had made a beginning of Christian preaching at Damascus, he {183} had, in fact, shared the apostolic preaching at Jerusalem (Acts ix. 29), but his own special work began at Tarsus, or rather at Antioch. After that he had 'fulfilled the proclamation of the gospel,' so far, that is to say, as it belonged to the apostolic office, by founding churches in a gradually enlarging circuit, especially in the chief centres, as the narrative of the Acts shows us, till travelling by the Egnatian way he would have come within sight of the Illyrian mountains at Thessalonica[20]. He may even have entered Illyria when the Acts vaguely describes him as going to Macedonia and then 'passing through those parts[21]'; but the expression in this epistle does not require this. It is sufficient that the border of Illyria, through which the Egnatian way led to Rome, had been so far his nearest point to the capital.

St. Paul certainly implies that Rome was included in his province of work, and that he owed them a yet unpaid debt[22]. This must surely mean, according to St. Paul's principle, that no other of the greater apostles had yet evangelized them or founded the church there[23]. {184} Rome was no other man's foundation. But none the less, the elements of a church had collected there. The gospel was being preached there by 'apostles' from among his own circle. And St. Paul, for this reason, does not contemplate any permanent stay with the Romans, but regards Rome only as a place where he can rest and refresh himself, as well as supply deficiencies in the spiritual equipment of the church there, before he passes further west to the untouched region of Spain. St. Paul, we see plainly enough, had no power to foresee the future. But after the long residence at Rome during his first captivity, which he did not the least anticipate, did he, we ask, actually get to Spain? There is certainly no good reason to say he did not, for his movements are, in the main, unknown to us in the last period of his life; and on the other hand in Clement's letter to the Corinthians, written within the first century, he is said to have passed before his martyrdom to 'the limits of the west'--the extreme west--which is certainly most naturally interpreted of Spain[24].

4. St. Paul speaks of having wrought 'signs and wonders.' The two words are habitually {185} combined in the New Testament. The word 'wonders' describes the miraculous and astonishing character of the events, while 'signs' indicates that moral witness and significance which distinguishes Christian miracles from vulgar portents. We read of St. Paul working miracles in the Acts. What he says here, and elsewhere[25], implies that they were frequently worked, and especially at Corinth, where no such events are recorded in the history. What it is important for us to recognize is, that St. Paul so plainly and repeatedly appeals, in the face of those who could bear witness, to the fact that he himself had power given to him to work miracles, as if it were indisputable.

5. St. Paul tells us that he had it specially laid upon him by the apostles of the circumcision that he was to 'remember the poor,' i.e. the poor Christians at Jerusalem; where poverty was specially rife, because, as we should gather, the wealthier Jews had held aloof from Christianity[26]. And this, he adds, was the very thing he himself was zealous to do[27]. How much it was in his mind, both the Acts and his own epistles bear witness. We hear much in {186} the epistles to the Corinthians[28] of the collection made in the churches of Macedonia and Achaia. Not only was this expression of Gentile good will intended to conciliate the half-alienated and suspicious Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, but the acceptance of the gift at St. Paul's hands, as the fruit of his own labour, was to diminish their suspicion of himself. St. Paul was at pains to prevent any suspicion attaching to his administration of this bounty, and at every point we perceive how much trouble he took about the matter. But, hopeful and zealous as he was about this work of charity, he did not underrate its dangers. His urgent request for the Roman Christians' prayers in this passage, and his readiness to meet his death, if need be, at Jerusalem, as expressed in the narrative of the Acts, show us that he knew the danger he was incurring from the fierce hostility of the Jerusalem Jews.

6. This passage about the collection[29], coupled with the allusion to Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, at the beginning of the next chapter, and the allusion to the Corinthian Gaius as St. Paul's host[30], enable us to fix the occasion of {187} the writing of this epistle exactly at the moment recorded in Acts xx. 3--the end of his three months' residence in Greece. We also gather from the Acts[31], as well as from this epistle, that it was his intention at that period, when he had paid his visit to Jerusalem, to go to Rome. Once more we know from the Acts[32] that Sosipater and Timothy were with him at this point, and they join in the greetings of the epistle[33]. So that all the indications taken together fix with wonderful accuracy the exact point when the epistle was written[34].

7. We do well to note the word used by St. Paul in asking the Roman Christians' prayers. He begs them to 'strive together' with him in their prayers. This word is a derivative of that which describes our Lord's 'agony' in prayer; and Origen's comment upon it is this: 'Hardly any one can pray without some idle and alien thought coming into his mind, and leading off and interrupting the intended direction of his mind to God.... And, therefore, prayer is a great striving (_agon_, wrestling), so that the fixed direction of the soul towards God may {188} be maintained, in spite of the enemies which interfere and seek to scatter the sense of prayer; so that one who prays may justly say, with St. Paul, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course."'

[1] lii. 15, according to the Greek.

[2] 'Round about,' literally 'in a circle,' as opposed to a straight course; cf. Mark vi. 6, 'round about the villages.'

[3] Cf. i. 13-16.

[4] i. 11.

[5] '_Ministering in sacrifice_' marg.

[6] Cf. the opening of 1 Cor., a letter which contains on the whole so much blame.

[7] Euseb. _H. E._ iv. 23.

[8] Sanday, _Conception of Priesthood_ (Longmans), p. 89.

[9] Like 'agape' (see above, p. 131, n. 2) so this word 'liturgus' appears to have been adopted in its priestly sense by the Greek translators of the Bible from the current Greek of Alexandria, cf. Deissmann, _Bibelstudien_, pp. 137 f.

[10] Cf. _S. and H. in loc._ 'Making sacrifice as a priest under the Gospel.'

[11] Cf. xii. x.

[12] Col. i. 28: 'Teaching every man ... that we may present every man,' i.e. present him in sacrifice.

[13] For his repeated statements see app. note I. p. 240.

[14] Cf. 1 Cor. ix. 15; xv. 31; 2 Cor. i. 14; vii. 4, 14; viii. 24; ix. 3; x. 8, 13; xi. 10, 16-xii. 9; Phil. ii. 16; 1 Thess. ii. 19. These passages are worth examining in connexion.

[15] Cf. 2 Cor. x. 15, 16.

[16] See 2 Cor. xi. 17; xii. 1.

[17] 1 Cor. i. 13 ff.

[18] 1 Cor. ii. 1-5.

[19] Gal. vi. 14.

[20] See _S. and H. in loc._

[21] Acts xx. 2.

[22] i. 14, 15.

[23] Not Peter therefore, though he was doubtless afterwards at Rome.

[24] _Ad Cor._ 5, see Lightfoot _in loc._

[25] 2 Cor. xii. 13.

[26] Cf. Jas. ii. 5, 6.

[27] Gal. ii. 10.

[28] 1 Cor. xvi. 1-4; 2 Cor. viii, ix.

[29] Cf. Acts xxiv. 17.

[30] Rom. xvi. 23. Cf. 1 Cor. i. 14, which shows us a Gaius at Corinth. Cf. the allusion to Erastus in the same verse, coupled with 2 Tim. iv. 20.

[31] Acts xix. 21.

[32] Acts xx. 4.

[33] Rom. xvi. 21.

[34] See further, on the purpose of the epistle, vol. i. pp. 4 ff.

{189}

DIVISION VI. Sec. 2. CHAPTER XVI. 1-2.

_A commendation._

One strong link among Christians of different towns, constraining them to remember that their brotherhood did not depend on physical nearness or personal acquaintance, lay in the 'letters of commendation' from one local church to another, which the Christian traveller carried with him. And here we have an example of such a letter given by St. Paul to the Corinthian deaconess, Phoebe, who was probably the bearer of his letter to the Roman Christians.

I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant[1] of the church that is at Cenchreae: that ye receive her in the Lord, worthily of the saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever matter she may have need of you: for she herself also hath been a succourer of many, and of mine own self.

The necessity of instructing women inquirers or catechumens, visiting them at their homes, preparing them for baptism, attending to their {190} unclothing and reclothing at the font, and looking after them afterwards, forced upon the Church the institution of an order of deaconesses, side by side with the deacons and for similar purposes. Pliny found these female officers among the Christians in Bithynia in the beginning of the second century, and there is no reason why already at this date the female order should not have existed[2]. 'Here we learn,' says Origen on this passage, 'that female ministers are recognized in the Church.'

Phoebe is also called a succourer or 'patroness' of Christians, including St. Paul, which suggests a woman of wealth and influence. If so, we have here an example of wealth, not asserting itself but devoting itself to service, according to our Lord's teaching: 'He that is greatest among you shall be your servant (deacon)'; 'I am in the midst of you as he that serveth (the deacon)[3].' Such an one is to be received in a manner 'worthy of the saints,' the consecrated family of God, and to be allowed to lack nothing which the Roman Christians can supply her with.

[1] Or _deaconess_, as margin.

[2] See on this subject Deaconess Cecilia Robinson, _The Ministry of Deaconesses_ (Methuen, 1898), and Bernard, _Pastoral Epistles_, p. 59. With Lightfoot, he interprets 1 Tim. iii. 11 of deaconesses rather than of the wives of the deacons.

[3] Matt, xxiii. 11; Luke xxii. 37.

{191}

DIVISION VI. Sec. 3. CHAPTER XVI. 3-16.

_Personal greetings._

Then St. Paul, according to his custom, winds up his epistle with personal greetings. In this case they are sent to the individual Christians, among those who from various parts of the empire had collected at Rome, whose names his memory--so retentive of personal relationships--enabled him to recall.

Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus, who for my life laid down their own necks; unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles: and _salute_ the church that is in their house. Salute Epaenetus my beloved, who is the firstfruits of Asia unto Christ. Salute Mary, who bestowed much labour on you. Salute Andronicus and Junias[1], my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also have been in Christ before me. Salute Ampliatus my beloved in the Lord. Salute Urbanus our fellow-worker in Christ, and Stachys my beloved. Salute Apelles the approved in Christ. Salute them which are {192} of the _household_ of Aristobulus. Salute Herodion my kinsman. Salute them of the _household_ of Narcissus, which are in the Lord. Salute Tryphaena and Tryphosa, who labour in the Lord. Salute Persis the beloved, which laboured much in the Lord. Salute Rufus the chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine. Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brethren that are with them. Salute Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints that are with them. Salute one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ salute you.

1. Aquila, a Pontic Jew, had resided in Rome, doubtless in pursuit of his business as a tent-maker; but the edict of Claudius had compelled him to quit the capital in common with his brethren, and he had taken refuge at Corinth with his wife Prisca (as St. Paul calls her), or Priscilla (according to St. Luke[2]); and there, shortly after their arrival, St. Paul had found them, made their acquaintance, and combined with them in a common trade. To this was possibly due their conversion to Christianity. When St. Paul left Corinth, they accompanied him to Ephesus, and remained there when he left for Jerusalem; their influential position in the Christian community being indicated to us by their dealings with so important a teacher as {193} Apollos. When St. Paul had returned to Ephesus, and was writing his First Epistle to the Corinthians, their house was the centre for a Christian congregation[3]. It was possibly during the Ephesian disturbances that they risked their lives, or 'laid down their own necks' for St. Paul. Whether on account of this peril incurred, or for whatever reason, they returned, as they were now free to do, to Rome. The Epistle to the Romans follows the First Epistle to the Corinthians by not more than a year, and it finds Prisca and Aquila established at Rome, with a church meeting at their house. Probably they had been St. Paul's informants as to affairs among the Roman Christians. A good many years afterwards, when St. Paul was writing his Second Epistle to Timothy[4], we hear of them again at Ephesus. So much travelling as we find in their life was not unusual in the Roman empire, and perhaps least of all among the Jews.

The fact that Priscilla is generally mentioned before her husband, both by St. Paul and St. Luke[5], as if she were more important, combined with (1) a tradition which connects her with the {194} _titulus_ (or parish-church) _Priscae_ at Rome, (2) evidence connecting the _Coemeterium Priscillae_ with the Acilian gens,--has led some scholars to believe that Priscilla was a noble Roman lady married to a Jewish husband. But the evidence is not cogent, and it is more likely that both she and her husband owed their Roman names to being freedmen[6]. It was probably her prominence among the Christians which led to her name preceding that of her husband. We need only think of Phoebe and Priscilla to understand how influential women were in the earliest Christian churches.

'The church (which met) at their house' is a significant phrase[7]. The wealthier Christians, or those whose houses were commodious, turned them into churches, where the neighbouring Christians met for worship, love feast and eucharist. Several of the oldest churches {195} in Rome grew in this manner out of private houses.

2. St. Paul's brief characterizations of individuals are full of personal memory and tenderness--'my beloved, who is the firstfruits of Asia unto Christ[8],' 'who bestowed much labour on you,' 'my kinsmen (i.e. Jews) and fellow prisoners (on some occasion which we cannot fix, but which St. Paul remembers), who also were in Christ before me,' 'our fellow worker,' 'the man approved in Christ,' who has been tried and found not wanting, 'his mother and mine.' St. Paul, notwithstanding his wide ecclesiastical plans and theological labours, as he thought no pains too much to bestow on the details of his scheme for collecting Gentile money for the needs of poor Jews, so also never lets great designs obscure the memory of persons and their intricate relations to himself.

3. Andronicus and Junias (or junianus) are 'of note among the apostles.' There are other indications that the term 'apostle' was not confined to the twelve. Not St. Paul only, but Barnabas also, and the Lord's brother, were included in it. Later, in the _Didache_, we find it used in a wide but somewhat dim sense, for the {196} chief teachers of the Church who were not settled in particular churches[9]. Nevertheless, this passage describing two men of unknown names as 'conspicuous among the apostles' is surprising. Probably the real requirement for sharing the title of apostle was to have received commission from the Lord (as 'other seventy' did besides the Twelve), and to have seen Him after His resurrection. These two--'early disciples' as St. Paul tells us--may have fulfilled these requirements. They were Jews like himself, who with him had laboured and suffered. They would be centres of authority among the Christians at Rome[10]: and possibly to the laying on of their hands other brethren at Rome who 'ruled' or 'taught' or 'ministered' owed their qualifying gift.

Chrysostom takes the second name to be a woman's--Junia; and expresses his astonishment at finding a woman thought worthy of the title of an apostle.

4. 'Them that are of the household of Aristobulus.' This Aristobulus was very probably the {197} grandson of Herod the Great, who lived and died at Rome in a private station, and whose 'household' would naturally include many Jews and orientals. The following name of a Jew suggests connexion with the Herods.

5. 'Rufus' may very likely be the son of Simon of Cyrene, whom St. Mark, writing probably at Rome, refers to as well known[11].

6. 'A holy kiss.' 'It was from this and similar words,' says Origen, 'that it has been handed down as a custom in the Church that after the prayer the brethren should welcome one another with a kiss.' He goes on to urge that this ritual kiss should be neither unchaste nor without real feeling.

7. 'All the churches of Christ salute you.' This unique phrase is probably used, as Dr. Hort suggests, to express how 'the church of Rome was an object of love and respect to Jewish and Gentile churches alike.'

[1] Or _Junia_ (a woman's name), as margin.

[2] See the readings of Rom. xvi. 3; 1 Cor. xvi. 19; 2 Tim. iv. 19 (in R. V. which is probably right); and of Acts xviii. 2, 18, 26.

[3] 1 Cor. xvi. 19.

[4] 2 Tim. iv. 19.

[5] Twice out of three mentions in each case.

[6] Perhaps both freedmen of the same member of the Acilian gens. For Priscus or Prisca (or Priscilla) was a favourite cognomen in the gens, and the nomen itself was commonly written Aquilius. This nomen a male slave, when freed, would have borne (besides his own name and his master's praenomen); and a female could have borne the cognomen Prisca or Priscilla. '[Greek] _Akulios_ could be corrupted into {Greek] _Akulas_, the Greek form of a different name Aquila.

[7] Cf. Acts xii. 12; Col. iv. 15; Philem. 2. See _S. and H. in loc._

[8] Cf. 1 Cor. xvi. 15.

[9] The term 'apostle' is also used in 2 Cor. viii. 23, Phil. ii. 25, apparently in the sense of messenger.

[10] Others, including Liddon, would translate 'highly esteemed among, i.e. _by_, the apostles' but this is not probable.

[11] Mark xv. 21.

{198}

DIVISION VI. Sec. 4. CHAPTER XVI. 17-20.

_Final warning._

Something occurred before the letter to the Romans was concluded and dispatched to make St. Paul insert a final warning against false teachers, who were causing divisions and perverting the gospel as all Christians had at first received it, in the interests of their personal aggrandizement. St. Paul makes a brief but vigorous appeal to the Romans to be true to their first obedience, and maintain their reputation unsullied.

Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which ye learned: and turn away from them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Christ, but their own belly; and by their smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts of the innocent. For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I rejoice therefore over you: but I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil. And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

{199}

This abrupt insertion strongly reminds us of the Epistle to the Galatians (see i. 7-9, vi. 13), and of the similar outburst in the Epistle to the Philippians (iii. 1-3). St. Paul believed that such Judaizing teaching was inconsistent with the fundamental Christian 'tradition.' He does not imply that Rome was already corrupted, but he scents danger.

{200}

DIVISION VI. Sec. 5. CHAPTER XVI. 21-23.

_Salutations from St. Paul's companions._

Timothy my fellow-worker saluteth you; and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. I Tertius, who write the epistle, salute you in the Lord. Gaius my host, and of the whole church, saluteth you. Erastus the treasurer of the city saluteth you, and Quartus the brother.

Most of these persons are very probably otherwise known to us. Leaving aside the well-known Timothy, we find a Lucius of Cyrene among the prophets in Acts xiii. 1[1]; a Jason at Thessalonica, as St. Paul's host, in Acts xvii. 5 ff; a Sopater (or Sosipater) of Beroea, Acts xx. 4. Gaius was one of the few whom St. Paul had baptized at Corinth (1 Cor. i. 14), and the Christian church, it appears, met at his house. Erastus, the treasurer of Corinth, is probably the man mentioned in 2 Tim. iv. 20.

[1] And closely associated with St. Paul.

{201}

DIVISION VI. Sec. 6. CHAPTER XVI. 25-27.

_Final Doxology._

Now to him that is able to stablish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations unto obedience of faith; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom[1] be the glory for ever. Amen.