Bible Commentaries

II

The Introduction

Romans 1:8-15

8First [of all],³⁹ I thank my God through Jesus Christ for [concerning]⁴⁰ you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world [in all the world]. 9For God is my witness, whom I serve with [in] my spirit in the gospel of his Song of Solomon, that [how, ὡς]⁴¹ without ceasing I make mention of you [how unceasingly 10 I remember you;] always in my prayers; Making request, [; always asking in my prayers,]⁴² if by any means now at length [if haply now at last]⁴³ I might have a prosperous journey [I may be prospered]⁴⁴ by the will of God to come unto you 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you [share with you, μεταδῶ] some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established [in order that ye may be strengthened];⁴⁵ 12That is, that I may be comforted together with you, by the mutual faith both of you and me [among you by each other’s faith, both 13 yours and mine].⁴⁶ Now [But] I would not⁴⁷ have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes [often] I purposed to come unto you (but was let⁴⁸ [hindered] hitherto)⁴⁹ that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles [the rest of the Gentiles]. 14I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise [Both to Greeks and to Barbarians; 15both to wise and to unwise, I am debtor]. Song of Solomon,⁵⁰ as much as in me is [as far as lies in me], I am ready,⁵¹ to preach the gospel to you [also] that [who] are at Rome also [omit also].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Second Section.—The connecting link in the form of doxology, and the transition of the author to his designed argument in the fundamental topic. The praise of the faith of the Roman Christians known all over the world, and the desire and purpose of the Apostle to visit them.

Romans 1:8. First of all, I thank.—De Wette: “In all his Epistles, with the exception of Galatians, 1 Timothy, and Titus,⁵² the Apostle pursues the natural course of first placing himself, so to speak, in relation with his readers; and his first point of contact with them is gratitude for their participation in Christianity.” [So also Alford in loc]. Comp. also 1 Thessalonians 1:2; 2 Thessalonians 1:3; 1 Corinthians 1:4. This means more definitely that the Apostle, in his epistles, with thanksgiving to God, seizes the point of connection for his subsequent argument; and this point of connection is in general a recognition of what has been already attained, but it takes its peculiar form from the condition of the different churches. Köllner calls this, captatio benevolentiœ. Tholuck: The Apostle opens his way to the hearts of the church by a declaration of his love. [Words-worth: “As usual, the Apostle begins with a sentiment by which he expresses his gratitude to God, and conciliates the good will of those to whom he writes.”—P. S.] According to Tholuck [De Wette] and Meyer, we would properly expect an εἶτα δέ [or ἔπειτα] after πρῶτον μέν, but not in point of fact, since the πρῶτον marks the emphasis of the following introductory word.—My God. Not only the expression of genuine feeling (De Wette), but also of the thought that God has shown Himself as the God of his apostolic call, by opening before him a path in Rome for the cause of Christ ( Acts 28:15). [The language of personal application, with a corresponding sense of personal obligation: the God who, with all His blessings and promises, belongs to me, as I belong to Him, and am bound to serve Him. Comp. Acts 27:23 : τοῦ θεοῦ οὗ εἰμι, ᾧ καὶ λατρεύω, 1 Corinthians 1:4; Philippians 1:3; Philippians 4:19; Philemon 1:4.—P. S.]—Through Jesus Christ. [Not to be connected with μου (Koppe, Glöckler), but with εὐχαριστῶ.—P. S.] Comp. Romans 7:25; Colossians 3:17; Hebrews 13:15; 1 Peter 2:5. Origen: Christ, as the mediator of the prayer, also presents the thanksgiving. [“Velut per pontificem magnum: opportet enim scire eum qui vult offerre sacrificium Deo, quod per manus Pontificis debet offerre.” So also Calvin, who refers to Hebrews 13:15, Bengel, Olshausen, and Hodge, who justly says that it is the clear doctrine of the Bible that, in all our approaches to God in prayer or praise, we must come in the name of Christ as the ground of our acceptance.—P. S.] Meyer objects to this view as not justified by Paul’s usual method, and explains that he renders thanks for what has come to pass by Christ. [Similarly Alford.] But what is meant by giving thanks for every thing in the name of Jesus Christ? ( Ephesians 5:20.) The thanksgiving, as well as prayer, must be sanctified by the spiritual communion with Christ, and thus come before God; by this means, all selfish interests, and all human and passionate joy at the obtained results are excluded.—For you all. The περί and ὑπέρ were often confounded or changed by the copyists; therefore the Recepta has ὑπέο here. Here, as at the beginning of Romans 1:7, the Apostle emphasizes the fact that he has in view all the believers in Rome, and will not appeal to or favor any partisan tendency.—That your faith is spoken of. Mention is made of it, and it has become famous among Christians in the whole world (see Romans 10:18; Romans 16:19). The expression, which has the outward appearance of being hyperbolical, acquires its complete significance chiefly in consequence of the powerful position of the metropolis of Rome, by the weight which Christianity gained in all the world by the conquest of this central home of the world, and by the Apostle’s views of the future of this apostolic station. See the quotations from Grotius and Calvin in Tholuck. [Meyer: “ἐν ὅλω τῷ κόσμῳ—a popular hyperbole, but admirably suited to the position of the congregation in the metropolis of the world, to which the eyes of all were directed.” Remember the adage: Orbis in urbe continetur.—P. S.]

Romans 1:9. For God is my witness. The for establishes the foregoing. Here, therefore, the thanksgiving through Christ is also explained ( Philippians 1:3; Colossians 1:3; 1 Thessalonians 1:2). The sense of the solemn asseveration is: My declaration is before the face of God. The free asseverations of this character arise in the Apostle’s case from the inner character of his work and the loftiness of his position. He cannot adduce earthly witnesses of the peculiarity of the facts which he has to assure; they are of heavenly origin, and he calls on God as their witness: that is, his whole knowledge of God, and his apostolic conscience, must be pledged. Pareus: “Ignotus ad ignotos scribens jurat.” Against this, Meyer quotes Philippians 1:18 [and 2 Corinthians 1:23.—P. S.] as decisive. The necessities for such strong expressions of the fervent man were indeed very different; but one species of them is that adduced by Pareus. The general constraint of the Apostle to let his readers sometimes look into the sanctity of his inner life, is secured by the solemn asseveration against all danger of profanation. Meyer adduces as a motive “the strange fact that Hebrews, the Apostle to the Gentiles, had not yet become active in the church at Rome, although it belonged to his school.” [Bengel: “A pious asseveration respecting a matter necessary and hidden from men, especially from those who were remote and unknown.” Alford: “There could be no other witness to his practice in his secret prayers, but God: and as the assertion of a habit of incessantly praying for the Roman Christians, whom he had never seen, might seem to savor of an exaggerated expression of affection, he solemnly appeals to this only possible testimony. To the Ephesians, Philippians (see, however, Philippians 1:8), Colossians, Thessalonians, he gives the same assurance, but without the asseveration. The thus calling God to witness is no uncommon practice with Paul; see ref. in E. V.” The Apostle’s frequent appeal to God ( 2 Corinthians 1:23; 2 Corinthians 11:31; Philippians 1:8; 1 Thessalonians 2:5; 1 Thessalonians 2:10; Galatians 1:20) is a devout recognition of God’s omniscience, and hence an act of worship. It disproves the literal interpretation of Matthew 5:33 ff, which prohibits perjury, and all useless and thoughtless swearing. Comp. Tholuck, Die Berpredigt, p 263 ff. (3d ed.).—P. S.]

Whom I serve in my spirit. The idea of the real service of God, which so powerfully pervades the Epistle to the Romans, first appears with the λατρεύω (see Romans 1:21; Romans 2:22; Romans 3:25; Romans 5:2; Romans 12:1; Romans 15:16; Romans 16:25-27; comp. Acts 7:7). As such a λατρεύων, he stands before God. But he serves Him in his spirit; that is, his priesthood is not merely external, but the living service of God by a spiritually awakened, vital, and steadfast consciousness.⁵³ Grotius and Reiche have found in the λατρ. an antithetical relation to the Jewish λατρεὶα in the law. Meyer thinks such an idea farfetched. But we are rather of the opinion that the Apostle is still thinking of all external character of worship, and especially that of the heathen Romans. [Umbreit, approvingly quoted by Alford: “The Apostle means that he is an intelligent, true priest of his God, not in the temple, but in his spirit; not at the altar, but at the gospel of His Son.” λατρεύειν (עָבַד) and λειτουργεῖν (שֵרֵת) are used in the Septuagint of the ministrations of the Jewish priesthood in the temple (comp. Luke 1:23; Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 9:21), and in the New Testament applied to the Christian ministry, and to worship generally ( Matthew 4:10; Philippians 2:17). The words ᾧλατρεύω, &c, give additional force to his solemn asseveration, and attest its sincerity.—P. S.]—In the gospel of his Son. (Genitive of the object.) His spirit is the temple, the sphere of his service; the gospel of the Son of God in the great work of evangelization, is the substance and form of his service of God.—How without ceasing. Meyer: ὡς does not stand for ὅτι (as it is usually taken, even by Fritzsche), but expresses the mode (the degree). This thanking without ceasing is not only more precisely defined, but more exactly conditioned by what follows.

Romans 1:10. Always in my prayers. His spiritual longing and striving are directed toward Rome; therefore he is ever (and everywhere. Bretschneider: Ubicumque locorum et quovis tempore. Luther: in all places) praying with his mind fixed on Rome. The thought is thus defined, if, with Tischendorf, we place a comma after προσευχῶν μον. We prefer this view to that of Meyer: Always asking in my prayers. [Comp. here my Textual Note in defence of Meyer’s punctuation.—P. S.] There was, during his prayers, an unceasing remembrance of the Romans (the ἐπί is the determination of the time or the occasion), and this became a specific and urgent prayer.—If haply now at last I. The expression declares at the same time the earnestness of the petition, and humble resignation.—Might have a prosperous journey [better: may be prospered.—P. S.] Meyer: “The active εὐοδοῦν seldom has the exact signification, to lead well, expeditum iter prœbere; … but the passive never means via recta incedere, expeditum iter habere, but always [even in Proverbs 17:8] metaphorically, prospero successu gaudere. [Meyer then quotes a number of passages.—P. S.] Therefore the explanation, which anyhow gives a trivial idea, prospero itinereutar (Vulgate, and others), must be rejected.” [So also Alford.] Nevertheless, the choice of the word was suited to the allusion that the prosperity which the Apostle desired would consist in a successful journey to Rome; and we have sought to express this in the translation (Wohlfahrt). The affair is a subject of his prayerful solicitude, for it is not from selfishness, but only in accordance with God’s will that he will come to Rome. (Schott connects the ἐν τ. θελ. τ. θεοῦ not with ἐλθεῖν, but with εὐοδωθήσομαι; but then the word would not seem to have been well chosen.)

Romans 1:11. For I long to see you, Ἐπιποθέω. Fritzsche: simply cupio. [Not valde or ardenter cupio; comp. 2 Corinthians 5:2; for ἐπί does not intensify, but simply expresses the direction of the πόθος, which itself means strong desire. So also De Wette, Meyer, and Alford.—P. S.] Schott, πόθον ἔχω ἐπί. According to Schott, the see you, ἰδεῖν ὑμᾶς, would indicate that Paul did not design to stay in Rome. But yet it constitutes an antithesis to the Epistle now about to be written.—Some spiritual gift, χάρισμα πνευματικόν. De Wette: χάρισμα is simply a gift, without special reference to Divine grace. [De Wette understands by it the παράκλησις, Romans 1:12, and is followed by Alford.—P. S.] But the word must be explained by Paul’s use of language, especially by 1 Corinthians 12:4. The specific gift of Paul consists in his being the Apostle to the Gentiles; and without doubt this expression means not only that the Roman Church is to receive a general spiritual blessing from him, but shall also share in this special spiritual gift. [But such specific reference seems to be excluded by τι, nor was the apostolate of the Gentiles strictly communicable to a congregation. Hence I prefer, with Tholuck, Olshausen, and Philippi, to give χάρισμα a more general application: spiritual invigoration of the whole Christian life, πίστις, ἀγάπη, ἐλπίς, γνῶσις, &c. So Hodge: “Any increase of knowledge, of grace, or of power.”—P. S.] The adjective πνευματικόν, especially in connection with χάρισμα, can only denote a spiritual quality of the gift which proceeds from the communion of the divine Spirit. [“Springing from the Spirit of God, and imparted to the spirit of man;” Alford]. The following explanations are one-sided: Miraculous gifts (Bengel, &c.); gifts of the human spiritual life (Köllner, &c.). The τι, some, expresses not only the Apostle’s modesty (Meyer), but an acknowledgment that the Romans were already in the faith, together with an intimation that something was still wanting in them.—In order that ye may be strengthened (see Romans 16:25). This is the object of the charismatic communication. [Paul uses the passive στηριχθῆναι, since he is simply the instrument through which God Himself strengthens and invigorates the spiritual life in man; comp. Romans 16:25 : τῶ δυναμένῳ ὑμᾶς στηρίξαι, and 2 Thessalonians 2:17.—P. S.]

Romans 1:12. That is, that I may be comforted together with you, &c. The connection of the two objects serves to explain one as well as the other. The Apostle wishes that the Romans be strengthened by him (the choice of the passive is not merely an expression of modesty, but also of the information that the matter is not of human choice, but that the blessing must come from the Lord), not only in their faith in general, but also in their particular calling as Roman Christians in their central relation to the world. And the result there-from will be, that the Apostle will be encouraged and aided in his universal apostleship. The addition, that is, &c, is therefore not a sancta adulatio (Erasmus), nor a safeguard against the appearance of presumption (Meyer),⁵⁴ but the statement of his whole purpose. This purpose is not to seek comfort and consolation among them, as the συμπαρα κληθῆναι (ἅπαξ λεγόμενον in the New Testament) is explained by many, in harmony with the Peshito and Vulgate; but he will find Christian encouragement among them when they are strengthened (Meyer). Yet this is not only “in general,” but with a view to his Western mission. The συμ does not include the readers (Fritzsche), but is related as a termination to the στηριχθῆναι of the Romans. This can be seen by the following: By our common (reciprocal) faith, both yours and mine. This is a brief form of expression (Reiche, Van Hengel, and others, supply the ἐν αλλήλοις with an ἐνεργουμένης). He declares the fact that the communion of faith should serve for the reciprocal promotion of the faith. Fritzsche and Schott miss ἐμέ, but this is implied in the words of the first person in Romans 1:11.

[So does Alford.] But the Apostle seems to intimate here (according to Romans 1:20-21) that he must prepare the church at Rome, as a church already existing, for his visit (by sending out his friends in advance). Meyer’s remark is odd: “Therefore hindered neither by the devil ( 1 Thessalonians 2:18), nor by the Holy Ghost ( Acts 16:6); ” for his general hinderance is specified in these terms.—That I might have some fruit. Harvest-fruit, as a laborer. The figure is frequent ( Philippians 1:22) [ John 4:36; John 15:16; Colossians 1:6. The “fruit” is not the result of Paul’s labor, or his reward, but the good works of the Roman Christians who have been planted to bring forth fruit to God. This fruit the Apostle expected to gather and to present to God. Alford.—P. S.]. The choice of the expression is evidently a new evidence of his delicacy and modesty. We cannot urge that σχῶ is the antithesis of have (Meyer: gehabt hätte) and obtain (Köllner).—Among you also. The καί intensifies the comparison, in lively expression. The expression, ἔθνη, is used here to indicate definitely the Gentiles; first, because the Romans, as Romans, are Gentiles, from whom the remaining Gentiles are distinguished as such; then, because he has hitherto labored as the Apostle to the Gentiles. See the Exeg. Note on Romans 1:14. Schott: “There runs, from Romans 1:11-13, this thought: The Apostle Paul, in preparing himself for apostolic preaching in the midst of the Western Gentile world, regards it necessary to secure the Roman Church as a point of support and departure—so to speak, as a base of operations.” While this opinion is correct enough as far as the definiteness of his aim is concerned, the Apostle was far from regarding Rome merely as the means for an end, without first having chiefly in view the purpose of edifying the Roman Church for its own sake.

Romans 1:14. To Greeks and to Barbarians. What is the desire of his heart and his effort, is at the same time his calling and the duty of his office. His apostleship belongs to the whole Gentile world, and for this reason incidentally also to the Jews. Therefore, in consequence of the existing unity of Grecian and Roman culture, the Greeks and the Romans are combined under the term Greeks, in antithesis to the Song of Solomon -called Barbarians (Cicero, De Fin. ii. Romans 15 : Non solum Grœcia et Italia, sed etiam omnis barbaria), just as the term wise comprehends Jews and Greeks ( 1 Corinthians 1:26), and the unwise those barbarian nations who stood lowest in intellectual culture.⁵⁵ The antithesis of Greeks and Barbarians means, according to the original Greek usage, Greeks and non-Greeks—the latter as uncultivated Barbarians in a national sense. It is in this sense that the present passage is interpreted by Reiche and others. But at a time when Greek was written in Rome, and to Rome, the word undoubtedly indicated an historical antithesis of culture, according to the expression quoted from Cicero; and Paul, with his refined feeling, could hardly have chosen the word in the former restricted sense. (Ambrosiaster, and others.) Meyer objects that the Romans were nowhere enumerated as Hellenes. But this is certainly the case in Romans 1:16, where the Hellene represents heathendom in general. Comp. Romans 2:9-10; Romans 10:12; and the many antitheses of a similar character in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the other Pauline Epistles. Therefore Meyer’s statement is unsatisfactory, that Paul would only express his Gentile-apostolic obligation in its universality, and that he does this in double merismat c form, as well according to nationality as according to the degree of culture. The sense certainly is, that he is pledged to all Gentiles. In this relation, he is ὀφειλέτης in the sense of indebtedness, which he assumed at his call. See 1 Corinthians 9:10.⁵⁶

Romans 1:15. Song of Solomon, as far as lies in me, I am ready. So far as it depends on him, he is not only willing, but determined; his inclination corresponds to his indebtedness (πρόθυμον = προθυμία). τὸ κατ̓ ἐμέ is variously explained1. Οὕτως, τὸ κατ̓ ἐμὲ: πρὸθυμον (sc. προθυμία ἔστι). 2. Οὕτως τὸ (κατ̓ ἐμὲ) πρόθυμον. 3. Οὕτως τὸ κατ̓ ἐμἑ πρόθυμον (= τὸ πρόθυμόν μου). 4. Ούτως: τὸ κατ̓ ἐμὲ πρὸθυμον. De Wette and also Meyer [in the third edition of1859, but not in the fourth.—P. S.] are fur the first: As far as I am concerned, there is readiness. [This explanation connects τὸ with κατ̓ ἐμέ, and takes πρόθυμον as the predicate and a substantive = προθυμία.—P. S.] Reiche [Calvin, Philippi, Van Hengel, and Meyer, in the fourth edition of1865, where he gives up his former view.—P. S.] are for the second: And so am I—as far as lies in me—ready. Fritzsche is for the third: My readiness, or desire, is. [κατ̓ ἐμέ in this case is taken us a mere periphrase for ἐμοῦ, but it has an emphasis, and expresses Paul’s sense of dependence on a higher will.—P. S.] Tholuck is for the fourth: Song of Solomon, for my part, I am ready. [Tholuck, though not very decidedly, follows Beza (Quidquid in me situm Esther, id promptum est), Grotius, Bengel, and Rückert, and takes τό κατ̓ ἐμέ as the subject of the sentence = ἐγώ, and πρόθυμον as an adjective and as the predicate: I am ready. But Meyer objects that τὸ κατ̓ ἐμέ is never used as a periphrase for the personal pronoun; τὰ ὑμέτερα for ὑμεῖς, and τὰ ἐμὰ for ἐγώ not being parallel.—P. S.] I think the explanation of Reiche the correct one.⁵⁷ For further particulars, see De Wette, Tholuck, and Meyer. Theodore Schott explains the οὕτως, under such circumstances, and translates thus: Under such circumstances it is my present inclination. But Paul has not at all spoken of circumstances. He asserts that οὕτως, used absolutely, never means itaque, but always “under this condition, these circumstances.” But as the circumstances may be attending, so they may be causative; comp. Romans 5:12.—To you also who are in Rome. Schott thinks that by these words are meant, not the Christians in Rome, but the Gentile inhabitants of Rome! The natural conclusion from this view would be, that his Epistle also must have been designed for the Gentiles in Rome. Certainly he had in view from the start, besides the Christians, those Gentiles also who were yet to be converted, [τοῖς ἐν ̔Ρώμη is emphatically added, since Rome, the “caput et theatrum orbis terrarum,” could least of all be excluded from that general apostolic commission. Bengel and Meyer.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The point of connection ( Romans 1:8). Every Pauline Epistle has its definite point of connection. Song of Solomon, too, has every apostolic sermon of Peter, Paul, and John. And this is as much a vital law for proper Christian preaching, as for missions. See the connecting point in Acts 17. The doxological character of this section. Without gratitude for what is given, there is no real continuance, still less any real progress. Gratitude must also be sanctified by working in Christ.

2. Asseverations, prayers, proofs of the Apostle’s prayer. See the Exeg. Notes.

3. The difference between the longing of the Apostle for Rome, and the longing of the modern world for Rome. If the Pauline Christianity of the Evangelical Church were not so much paralyzed by the indifference of humanitarianism, by the hatred and ignorance of rationalism, and by the morbid literalism of confessionalism and sectarianism, it would be able to wield the weapons of the Spirit as heroically against mediæval Papal Rome—which is now besieged at so many points—as Paul, the poor tent-maker, combatted pagan, imperial Rome. Still, the gospel of God will triumph in the end.

4. The great missionary thought of the Apostle ( Romans 1:11-12). See the Exeg. Notes. Romans 1:12 : The Popes do not write thus to the Romans.

5. The impediments ( Romans 1:13). Although the Apostle knew well that on the absolute height of faith all impediments are only means of advancement for believers ( Romans 8:28), he yet speaks of impediments with a truly human feeling. But each of these impediments marks a point where he surrenders to God his desire to pass beyond those sacred limits through which an enthusiast would have violently broken.

6. How Paul subsequently attained the object of his wishes, though not according to human purposes, but according to the counsel of God; first as a prisoner, and last as a martyr.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

How the Apostle introduces himself to the Church at Rome: 1. As remembering it in prayer ( Romans 1:8-10); 2. as desiring its personal acquaintance ( Romans 1:11-12); 3. as previously prevented from visiting it and fulfilling his obligation ( Romans 1:13-15).—The truly Christian manner of introducing one’s self to strange people.—Praise without flattery ( Romans 1:8).—Under what circumstances can we call on God to witness? 1. When we are conscious that we serve Him; 2. when the matter in hand is sacred ( Romans 1:9).—We cannot always do what we would ( Romans 1:11-13).—For what purpose should Christian friends visit each other? 1. To give; 2. to receive ( Romans 1:11-12).—Paul a debtor to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, to the wise and the unwise: 1. In what did his obligation consist? 2. when did he acknowledge it? 3. how did he desire to discharge it? ( Romans 1:14-15).—The obligation of Christians to the heathen ( Romans 1:14).

Starke: We have greater occasion to thank God for spiritual than for temporal blessings ( Romans 1:8).—We must not always be brief in prayer, but we must continue until the heart becomes warmed ( Romans 1:10).—Complete sovereignty over auditors does not belong to any teacher or preacher ( Romans 1:13).—Quesnel: Thankfulness is one of the most excellent, but one of the most neglected duties. Preachers must supply this deficiency on the part of their flocks ( Romans 1:8).—The oath may be allowed, if God’s honor requires it ( Romans 1:9).—Cramer: The presence and living voice of teachers can accomplish more than the mere reading of their writings. Therefore Christians should not think that they have done enough, when they read God’s word in sermons at home; but, whenever they can, they should hear their instructors personally, and industriously attend public worship ( Romans 1:11).—Osiandri Bibl.: We should do no less than our calling directs; but we should not include therein any thing that does not belong to it, lest we trespass on the office of another ( Romans 1:15).

Lisco, on Romans 1:9-12 : The fruits of the (apostolical) sense of gratitude: (a.) Continual remembrance of the Roman Christians in prayer; (b.) prayer that, by the will of God ( Romans 1:10), an open way might be made for his personal acquaintance with the church.

Heubner, on Romans 1:8 : 1. There is an extended Christian celebrity in the estimation of others; yet it must not be sought nor circulated designedly, but come of itself; 2. we learn that Christian churches should take knowledge of each other. Metropolitan cities can exert an important influence on the whole country. So with Rome at that time.—On Romans 1:9 : Sacred fidelity to one’s calling is true service of God.

Lange: The justification of praise: 1. So far as it corresponds to the truth; 2. is embraced in thanksgiving; 3. is sanctified as an incitement to greater success.—The estimation of good human conduct is not ignored by the exclusion of the merit of works, but secured against profanation.—Rome formerly a celebrated congregation of believers.—The different phases of Rome in universal history.—The apostolical longing for Rome: 1. An image of the longing of Christ ( Luke 12:49); 2. a life-picture of human destination.—The sanctification of longing.—The proper estimate of impediments in life: 1. We should distinguish between imaginary and real hinderances; 2. we should not become discouraged by them, but we should not stubbornly force our way through them; 3. we should overcome them by prayer; 4. we should transform them into helps. (The Epistle to the Romans, besides other blessings, arose from the Apostle’s hinderances.)

[Burkitt: From the Apostle’s longing to see the Romans, learn: 1. That the establishment in faith and holiness is needed by the holiest and best Christians; 2. that the presence of the ministers of Christ with their people is necessary for their establishment; 3. that the Apostle desired to be personally present with the Church and saints at Rome for his own benefit as well as for their advantage.—Henry: Romans 1:8. The faith of the Roman Christians came to be talked of because of the prominence of Rome. That city being very conspicuous, every thing done there was talked of. Thus, they who have many eyes upon them need to walk very circumspectly; for, whether they do good or evil, it will certainly be reported. How is the purity of Rome departed! The Epistle to the Romans is an argument against them.—Scott: The most of us must own with shame that we are not so earnest or particular, even in our narrow circles, as Paul was in respect to his most extensive connections and multiplied engagements. We ought to long for opportunities of usefulness, as worldly men do for a prosperous trade, or occasions of distinguishing themselves and acquiring celebrity.—Clarke: Romans 1:9. Paul presents the spiritual worship of God in opposition to the external. Our religion is not one of ceremonies, but one in which the life and power of the eternal Spirit are acknowledged and experienced.—Barnes: 1. One effect of religion is, to produce the desire of the communion of saints2. nothing is better fitted to produce growth in grace than such communion; 3. the firm faith of young converts is very much calculated to excite the feeling and strengthen the hope of Christian ministers; 4. the Apostle did not disdain to be taught by the humblest Christians.—J. F. H.]

Footnotes

III

The Fundamental Theme

Romans 1:16-17

16For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ⁵⁸ [omit Christ]: for it is the power of God [God’s power] unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first,⁵⁹ and also to the Greek 17 For therein is the righteousness of God [God’s righteousness] revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just [The righteous] shall live by [of] faith ( Habakkuk 24).⁶⁰

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Third Section.—The fundamental theme. The joy of the Apostle to proclaim the gospel of Christ, since it is a power of God for Jews and Gentiles as a revelation of the righteousness of God—a righteousness by and for the faith.

Romans 1:16. For I am not ashamed [not even in the metropolis of the heathen world.—P. S.]. Evidently, this general declaration refers not merely to Romans 1:15, but also to Romans 1:14. There could be no difficulty to the Apostle to preach to the believers in Rome; but it was difficult to preach to the whole Gentile world, especially to its wise men, who were so much inclined to despise the gospel as foolishness. And finally, it was particularly difficult to preach to the Gentiles in the proud metropolis of Rome, the central seat of the culture and pride of the ancient world. It is plain from Romans 1:15, you that, are at Rome, that he would not confine himself to the congregation of Christians in Rome. The designation of his disposition is exact in relation to that pride of wisdom which everywhere opposed him, as he had experienced particularly in Athens and Corinth. He is not afraid of the threats of the world; he does not avoid the offence of the Jews; nor is he ashamed in view of the contempt of the Greeks and of the wise men. And this is not only expressive of his real joy in general, but of his Christian enthusiasm, by which he could glory in the cross of Christ ( Romans 5:2; Galatians 6:14). [I am not ashamed, is an answer, by anticipation, to an objection which was readily suggested by the word Rome, with all its associations of idolatry, worldly power, pride, pomp, corruption, decay, and approaching persecution of Christians. Tacitus, the heathen historian, says of Rome, that there cuncta undiquc atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque (Annal. Romans 15:44). See Chrysostom, Alford, Wordsworth, Hodge in loc. Meyer explains the term more with reference to the past experiences of Paul in other heathen cities, as Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and to the general character of the religion of the cross ( 1 Corinthians 1:18). It is true that human nature, as such, in its carnal pride, is apt to be ashamed of the gospel. But this carnal pride culminated at the time in Rome, and found a fit expression in the blasphemous worship of the emperors as present deities. That Paul has special reference to Rome, is also evident from his definition of the gospel as a power of God, which puts to shame the world-power of Rome (ῥώμη, strength). Dealing with the Greeks, who excelled in Wisdom of Solomon, he defines the gospel to be the wisdom of God, which turns the wisdom of this world into folly. When afterwards a prisoner in Rome, Paul was not ashamed of his bonds ( 2 Timothy 1:12), in which he felt more free, mighty, and happy than the emperor on the throne.—P. S.].

Of the gospel of Christ. Here, also, we can not separate the concrete unity of the gospel and its promulgation.

For it is a power of God.⁶¹ The for announces the reason: it is the highest manifestation of the power of God—the highest manifestation of the compassionate love and grace of God; it is the blessing of salvation for faith throughout the world. The power of God. This cannot apply to the preaching of the gospel alone, but to the objective gospel itself, which combines with evangelization for complete operation. The question whether there is a metonyme⁶² here (see Tholuck), becomes important only when that unity is dissolved. The gospel, in the objective sense, implies: 1. The revelation of God in Christ; 2. redemption by Christ; 3. the victory, the glory, and the kingdom of Christ; 4. the presentation of this salvation through the medium of the Church in word and sacrament, under the operation of the Holy Spirit.⁶³

Unto salvation. Both the negative and positive sides of the idea of the σωτηρία must be elucidated, the former denoting redemption, the latter adoption. The operation of σωτηρία reaches from the depths of hell to heaven. When man is truly delivered, he is always delivered from the depths of hell, and raised to the heights of heaven; because he is saved from the condemnation of his conscience, and from the judgment of wrath, and is made a participant of salvation through the righteousness of faith which leads to righteousness of life. The expression, blessedness, denotes the highest effect and the highest aim of the σωτηρία. Comp. Acts 4:12; Acts 13:26; Romans 10:1. The opposite is ἀπώλεια, θάνατος, and similar terms.

To every one that believeth. De Wette: “The παντί is opposed to Jewish particularism, and the πιστεύοντι to Jewish legalism.”⁶⁴ The highest operation of God’s power is not at all a fatalistic or mechanical operation; it is a personal dealing of love, and presupposes personal relations. For as it cannot be said, on the one hand, that faith completes objective salvation, so we cannot say, on the other, that it is a compulsory operation of salvation. It is the condition of the efficacy of salvation ( John 3:16, &c.; see Genesis 15), the causa apprehendens.

To the Jew first. This priority is economical, as it rests upon the Old Testament revelation of God, and the faith of Abraham ( Romans 4:9); and as such it is: 1. The genetic priority. “Salvation is of the Jews” [ John 4:22]. 2. The historical priority (Chrysostom, and others). 3. A legal priority (as to form) of the nearest claim to the gospel in accordance with the direction given to the apostles, Acts 1:8 (Calov, De Wette, Tholuck). But notwithstanding all this, the Jew had no real right to the gospel, since salvation, 1. is not a product of Judaism, but of free grace; 2. faith is older than Judaism (chap4); 3. faith itself is the reality and substance of which Judaism was only the symbol.⁶⁵

And also to the Greek. The Ἔλλην is here the representative of all who are not Jews. [Jew and Greek here refer not to the national distinction, as Greek and Barbarian, Romans 1:14, but to the religious antagonism of the world at the time, so that Greek is equivalent to Gentile. Ἔλλ. κ. Βάρβ. is the Greek, Ἰουδ. κ.̓́ Ελλ. the Jewish, designation of all mankind; comp. Acts 14:1; 1 Corinthians 10:32.—P. S.]

Romans 1:17. For therein is the righteousness of God. Proof of the previous proposition. The δν́ναμις θεοῦ εἰς σωτηρίαν is ἀποκάλυψις of the δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ, &c.

[Preliminary Philological Remarks on δικαιοσύνη and the Cognate Terms.—These are of primary importance in Paul’s Epistles, especially the Romans and Galatians. Their root, according to Aristotle (Eth. Nic. v2), is δίχα = twofold; hence δικάζειν, to divide into two equal parts, to judge; δικαστής, Judges, dispenser of justice. Others derive them from δίκη (the daughter of Zeus and Themis), custom, right, judgment. At all events, the fundamental idea of δικαιοσύνη is an even relation between two or more parts where each has its due, or conformity to law and custom, a normal moral condition. According to Homer, he is δικαιότατος who best fulfils his duties to God and men. Plato develops the idea of righteousness in his Polieia, and identifies it with moral goodness. In the Bible, the will of God, as expressed in the written law, and more fully in the perfect life of Christ, is the standard both of morals and religion, which are always viewed as essentially connected. God Himself is righteous—i.e, absolutely perfect in Himself, and in all His dealings with His creatures, and requires man to aim at this perfection ( Matthew 5:48). Accordingly, we may define the several terms (referring to the dictionaries and concordances for passages) as follows:

δίκαιος, צַדּיק, conform to the law, inwardly as well as outwardly, holy, perfect. It is used in the absolute sense of God, in a relative sense of man, also of things. Du Cange: “Δίκαιος dicitur vel de re vel de persona, in qua nee abundat aliquid nec deficit, quœ muneri suo par Esther, numeris suis absoluta.”

δικαιοσύνη, צְרָקָה, justitia, the normal, moral and religious condition. If used of man, it means conformity to the holy will and law of God, godliness, or true piety toward God, and virtue toward man. If used of God, it is one of His moral attributes, essentially identical with His holiness and goodness, as manifested in His dealings with His creatures, especially with men.

δικαιόω (λογίζειν εἰς δικαιοσύνην), הִצְדִּיק, justificare, to put right with the law, i.e, to declare or pronounce one righteous, and to treat him accordingly. Etymologically, the word ought to mean, to make just (since the verbs in όω, derived from adjectives of the second declension, signify, to make a person or thing what the primitive denotes, as τυφλόω, δουλόω, ὀρθόω, φανερόω, τελειόω=τυφλόν, &c, ποιεῖν). But in Hebrew and Hellenistic, and often also in classical usage, it has a forensic sense, to which, however, when used of God, the objective state of things, either preceding or succeeding, must correspond, for God’s judgment can never err, and His declaration is always effective. More of this, ad Romans 2:13 and Romans 3:21-31. Now for the particular explanation of δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ in our passage.

δικαίωσις (λογισμὸς τῆς δικαιοσύνης) justificatio, the act of putting a man right with the law, or into the state of δικαιοσύνη.

δικαίωμα, a righteous decree, judgment, ordinance.—P. S.]

In view of the widely divergent explanations, it is necessary to make close distinctions. The righteousness of God, understood absolutely in its complete New Testament Revelation, or ἀποκάλυψις, cannot apply immediately to righteousness before God (ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ), in which case the genitive is taken objectively in a wider relation (thus Luther, Fritzsche, Baur, Philippi). For this righteousness of faith presupposes justification. Nor can the word of itself denote the act of justification, even if we connect with it the result, the righteousness of faith, the genitive being taken in this case subjectively⁶⁶ in this sense: “the rightness which proceeds from God, the right relation in which man is placed by a judicial act of God” (Meyer, after Chrysostom, Bengel, De Wette, and others).⁶⁷ For the justification presupposes the atonement ( Romans 3:25), and the atonement is founded on the exercise of God’s righteousness. To this exercise the Apostle evidently refers in Romans 3:25-26, and he therefore does it here also in the theme, which, from its very nature, must encompass the whole idea of the Epistle. Absolute righteousness, like absolute grace and truth, is first revealed in Christianity. It is the righteousness which not only institutes the law of the letter, and requires righteousness in man, and, in its character of Judges, pronounces sentence and kills, but which at last reveals itself in union with love, or as grace in the form of righteousness, and produces righteousness in man. It accomplishes all this: 1. As law-giving—that is, establishing the right—it institutes the law of the Spirit; that is, it reveals it in the life of Christ as the personal power of the atonement2. In the power and suffering of this personal righteousness, it satisfies the demands of the righteousness of the law, and thus changes the symbolical ἱλαστήριον into a real one. The atonement3. It communicates to believers the work and efficacy of Christ’s righteousness, by the spirit of His righteousness, as a gift of grace and principle of the new life in creative, operative justification.

Or briefly: The righteousness of God is the self-communication of the righteousness which proceeds from God, which becomes personal righteousness in the person of Christ, which, in His passion as propitiation, satisfies the righteousness of the law (in harmony with the requirement of conscience), and, by the act of justification, applies the atonement to the believer for the sanctification of his life.

As the δόξα, which avails before God, can be none other than the δόξα, which proceeds from God, and became personal in Christ, so can the righteousness which avails before God be none other than a righteousness which comes from God. It is the δικαιοσύνη ἐκ θεοῦ, in opposition to the δικ. ἡ ἐμή, Philippians 3:9; and therefore the δικαιοσύνη ἐνώπιον θεοῦ, Romans 3:21, in opposition to the δικαιοσύνη ἐκ τοῦ νόμου, Romans 10:5. Therefore it is God’s righteousness also in this sense, that man can never make out of it a righteousness of his own, though the Divine justification becomes the principle of his new life. Tholuck likewise allows a combination of the objective and subjective meanings, but decidedly rejects the interpretation of δικαιοσύνη, as an attribute of God, which he considers incompatible with the prophetic passage adduced. But this quotation does not explain righteousness, but faith. The statement of Tholuck, that Hofmann (Schriftbeweis, i625 f.) describes the δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ as an attribute of God, is not exact; he declares it only as a righteousness existing on the part of God.⁶⁸ We go so far as to understand by righteousness here a synthesis of righteousness and of love—a synthesis which, as grace according to its different relations under the supremacy of righteousness, and as the grace that establishes the new and the absolute right of the Spirit, is called righteousness, but which, under the supremacy of love, as the fountain of the new life, is called love. This impartial righteousness is revealed to believers as grace, and to unbelievers as wrath. When Tholuck says that δικ. is not the righteousness of God in fulfilment of the promises (Ambrose), nor retributive justice (Origen), nor the essential righteousness which belongs to God (as Osiander once taught, and recently Hofmann), nor the goodness of God (Morus), nor impartiality toward Jews and Gentiles (Semler), he has collected into one all the disjecta membra of the central idea, that the δικαιοσύνη (from δίχα, a relation between two, according to the Aristotelian derivation of the word), establishes, maintains, and restores the relation between the personal God and the personal world according to their respective character (for the protection of personality). The omission of the article does not justify us in reading here, a righteousness of God; being inseparably connected with θεοῦ, it means rather the proper righteousness of God (see Winer’s Gramm.).⁶⁹

[Upon the whole, I agree with this interpretation. The majority of evangelical commentators restrict the δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ to God’s justifying righteousness; some even ungrammatically identity it with justification (δικαίωσις), or God’s “method of justification.” The fundamental idea of the Epistle as set forth in the theme, every expression used in Romans 1:16-17, and the contrast presented in Romans 1:18, point to a more comprehensive meaning, answering to the definition of the gospel as “the power of God unto salvation,” full and final, from “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” This implies a righteousness imputable as well as imputable, or sanctifying as well as justifying—a righteousness inherent in God, and manifested in Christ, which, by a living union with Christ, is to become the personal property and higher nature of the believer, so that, at the final judgment, no trace of unrighteousness will remain. Wordsworth (an Anglican) and Forbes (a Scotch Presbyterian LL.D.) independently arrive substantially at the same view with Lange. Wordsworth in loco says: “This significant phrase, the righteousness of God, is not to be lowered, weakened, and impaired, so as to mean only the method of justification by which God acquits and justifies mankind. But it is the very righteousness of God Himself, which is both imputed and imparted to men in Jesus Christ ‘the Righteous’ ( John 2:1), who is ‘the Lord our righteousness’ ( Jeremiah 23:6; Jeremiah 33:16), and who, being God from everlasting, and having also taken the nature of man, is made righteousness to us ( 1 Corinthians 1:30), and does effectually, by His incarnation, and by our incorporation into Him, justify us believing on Him, and making Him ours by faith, so that we may not only be acquitted by God, but may become the righteousness of God in Him ( 2 Corinthians 5:21).” Forbes, in a long and able dissertation (Anal. Com, p 102 ff.), combines here the three Scripture meanings of δικαιοσύνη, when used of God, viz.: “1. God’s retributive righteousness or justice (now manifested in God’s condemnation of sin, shown in giving His Son to die for man’s sin on the cross—to induce thereby the believer to concur cordially in its condemnation in himself); 2. God’s justifying righteousness (now manifested in Christ’s exhibiting in the character of man a perfect righteousness—imputable to and appropriable by the believer, for his pardon and acceptance with God); 3. God’s sanctifying, righteousness (also manifested in Christ as “the Lord our righteousness,” changing the believer’s heart the moment he is united by faith to Christ, and progressively mortifying within him all sin, and imparting eventually to him universal righteousness—appropriable in like manner through faith by the believer).” For further information, comp. the Exeg. Notes on chaps. Romans 2:13, and Romans 3:21-31; Doctrinal and Ethical on Romans 3:21-31, No5; also the following works: Winzer, Progr. de voce. δίκαιος, δικαιοσύνη et δικαιοῦν in P. ad Rom. Ephesians, Leipzig, 1831; Rauwenhoff, Disquisitio de loco Paulino, qui est de δικαιώσει, Lugd. Bat, 1852; Lipsius, Die Paulinische Rechtfertigungslehre, mit Vorwort von Liebner (who differs from Lipsius), Leipzig, 1853 (220 pp.);⁷⁰ Schmid, Biblische Theologie, Stuttg, 1853, vol. ii. p 331 ff.; Wieseler, Com. on Galatians 2:16, Gött, 1859, p176 ff. (who very learnedly and ably defends the orthodox Protestant view); Hodge, on Romans, 3:20 (new ed, Philad, 1866, p126 ff.); Forbes, on Romans (Edinb, 1868), pp102–144. The doctrinal treatises on justification by faith will be mentioned below, ad Romans 3:21-31, Doctrinal and Ethical, No5, pp138 f.—P. S.]

Is revealed [ἀποκαλύπτεται is being revealed; the present tense marks the continuous, progressive revelation of righteousness.—P. S.]. The αποκαλύπτειν is distinguished from the φανεροῦν by being God’s Revelation, which proceeds from God, and addresses itself to the inward spiritual world ( Galatians 1:16); while the φανεροῦν denotes the same revelation as manifested in the outward life from the inward spiritual world ( John 2:11). The revelation of wrath is also an ἀποκάυψις ( Romans 1:18), although the wrath is revealed in external manifestation; for it is only by the conscience, that the facts connected therewith are first recognized as the phenomena of wrath, and it is only in the light of the New Testament truth that they are recognized completely. ἐν αὐτῷ. The gospel is the medium.

From faith to faith. [It is connected with the verb ἀποκαλύπτεται by De Wette, Meyer, Tholuck (ed5), Alford; with the noun δικαιοσύνη (sc. οὐσα or γενομένη) by Bengel, Philippi, Hodge, Forbes. The former agrees better with the position of the words, and with εἰς πίστιν, the latter with ἐκ πίστεως, comp. Romans 9:30; Romans 10:6.—P. S.] The idea of faith appears here in accordance with the comprehensive idea of righteousness, and therefore as a hearty, trustful self-surrender (to rest and lean upon, הֶאֱמִיו), which includes both knowledge and belief, assent and surrender, appropriation and application. [Faith is neither the efficient cause nor the objective ground of justification, but the instrumental cause and subjective condition; as eating is the condition of nourishment. As the nourishing power is in the food, which, however, must be received and digested before it can be of any use, so the saving power is in Christ’s person and work, but becomes personally available, and is made our own, only by the appropriating organ of faith. This appropriation and assimilation must be continually renewed; hence ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν.—P. S.] The distinction between from faith and to faith is variously explained. Origen refers it to Old Testament and New Testament faith.⁷¹ Œcumenius [Olshausen, De Wette, Alford, Philippi]: ἀπὀ πἱστεως εἰς πιστεύοντα [for the believer; comp. Romans 3:22, where the δικ. θεοῦ is said to be εἰς πἀντας τοὺς πιστεύοντας.—P. S.]. Theophylact, and others: For the promotion of faith. Luther: From weak to strong faith.⁷² Baumgarten-Crusius: From faith as conviction to faith as sentiment. De Wette: 1. Faith as conditional; 2. faith as receptive. For other meanings, see Tholuck (also the view of Zwingli, that the second πίστις means the faithfulness of God). [Meyer: The revelation of righteousness proceeds from faith and aims at faith, ut fides habeatur (similarly Fritzsche, Tholuck). Bengel and Hodge connect ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πὶστιν with δικαιοσύνη, and take it as intensive, like the phrase, “death unto death,” “life unto life,” so as to mean fidem meram, entirely of faith, without any works. Ewald understands ἐκ πὶστεως of Divine faith (?), εἰς πίστιν of human faith, which must meet the former.—P. S.] It may be asked, if the key to the passage may not be sought in Romans 3:22, since the second half of that chapter is in general a commentary on this passage. Comp. Hebrews 12:2 : “The author and finisher of our faith.” At all events, the Apostle acknowledges, like the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the difference between a degree of faith which receives the revelation prophetically and apostolically, in order to proclaim it, and a more general degree of faith, which, through the agency of preaching, extends into the world. Comp. Hebrews 11:1 ff.

As it is written. The same quotation from Habakkuk 2:4 is found in Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38. The Apostle will here (as in Romans 1:2 and chaps4,10) prove the harmony of the gospel with the Old Testament. The passage in the Prophet Habakkuk declares: The just shall live by his confidence, his faith ( Isaiah 28:16). Therefore the most of the elder expositors, and some of the recent ones (Philippi, and others), thus explained the maxim of the Apostle: The just shall live by his faith. But according to Beza, Meyer [Hodge], and others, the Apostle’s expression must be construed thus: The man who is justified by faith, shall live. Meyer properly says: Paul had a good reason to put this meaning into the prophetic expression: since the just man, if he would live by faith, must have been justified by faith. We read in Habakkuk two concrete definitions: “Behold, puffed up [חִנֵּה עֻפְּלָה], not upright is his soul [his life] within him [לֹא־יָשְׁרָה נַפְשׁוֹ בּוֹ]. But the just man, he shall live by his faith.” That is, as the puffed-up soul is puffed up because it is not upright, and has no sound life, so is it the mark of the just man that he acquires his life by faith. The additional profundity which the New Testament gives to this Old Testament expression, does therefore not really change even the expression, much less the sense. [I prefer the connection of ἐκ πίοτεως with ζήσεται, which is more agreeable to the Hebrew (although the other is favored by the Masoretic accentuation), and this is adopted also by Tholuck, De Wette, Philippi, Delitzsch (ad Habakkuk 2:4), Ewald, Forbes. See Textual Note 3 above. The sense, however, is not essentially altered. The emphasis lies, at all events, on πίστις, which is, of course, living faith. ζήσεται is to be taken in the full sense of the ζωὴ αἰώνιος, as revealed in Christ. The Apostle, as Delitzsch remarks, puts no forced meaning into the words of the prophet, but simply places them into the light of the New Testament. Habakkuk ends where Paul begins.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The fundamental theme. The joyfulness of the Apostle in anticipation of preaching the gospel without shame even in Rome, the central seat of the conceit of human wisdom. The source of this cheerfulness: The gospel is the power of God, &c. The heroic spirit of faith, philanthropy, and hope, elevates him above all hesitation. But how far is the gospel a power of God? See Romans 1:17, and the Exeg. Notes thereon. Especially on the righteousness of God, and the two fundamental forms of faith (the faith which has established preaching, and the faith which is established by preaching).

2. St. Bernard: Justus ex fide sua vivet, utique si vivat et ipsa: aliter quomodo vitam dabit, si ipsa sit mortua (The just man shall live by his faith, if his faith itself live; otherwise how shall that which is itself death, give life?).—P. S.]

3. “If the subject of the Epistle is to be stated in few words, these should be chosen: τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, δύναμις Θεοῦ εἰς σωτηρίαν παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι. This expresses it better than merely ‘justification by faith,’ which is, in fact, only a subordinate part of the great theme—only the condition necessitated by man’s sinfulness for his entering the state of salvation: whereas the argument extends beyond this, to the death unto sin and life unto God and carrying forward of the sanctifying work of the Spirit, from its first fruits even to its completion;” Alford. Forbes (Anal. Com, p7.) likewise denies that justification by faith, especially if presented in a bare, forensic form, is the leading doctrine of the Epistle. “The grand truth here enunciated is the warm, living reality of a personal union with Christ (contrasted with the previous union with Adam), by which, in place of the sin unto death communicated by the first head of humanity, Christ’s righteousness and life are communicated to the believer, and become the inward quickening mover of every thought, feeling, and action. Thus is the distinction preserved, yet the indissoluble connection clearly evinced, between justification and sanctification, as being but two aspects of one and the same union of the believer with Christ—just as the dying branch ingrafted into the living vine is then only reckoned, and may justly be declared to be, a sound, living branch, when the union has taken place—because the assurance is then given of its being made so finally and fully, the vital juices of the vine having already begun to circulate within it.”—P. S.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Whence is it that many are ashamed of the gospel of Christ? Either, 1. They do not know it fully; or, 2. if they know it, they have not the courage to confess it.—Why do we not need to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ? Because, 1. It is of Divine origin; 2. of Divine import; 3. of Divine operation.—He who is ashamed of the gospel, is also ashamed of the Lord. True shame comes from God, false shame from the devil. Shame and shame.—Christianity the universal religion.—The shades of the law vanish; the stars of Greece grow pale at the rising sun of the gospel.—The righteousness which God approves is the chief import of the gospel.—The fundamental thought of the Epistle to the Romans is also the fundamental thought of the Reformation.

Luther: The power of God is such a force as to elevate man from sin to righteousness, from death to life, from hell to heaven, from the kingdom of the devil to the kingdom of God; and gives him eternal salvation.

Starke: As the gospel is a power of God, he denies it who constantly appeals to his weakness, and presents it in opposition to the gospel.—Though the gospel is the power of God, no one will be compelled to be saved, but every one possesses his own freedom to resist, and is therefore responsible.—Hedinger: Who would be ashamed of medicine when he is sick? or of light when he is blind, and would like to see? Wo to those who are ashamed of the words and office of Christ!

Lange: Many a person is not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; but yet, if he is ashamed to follow Christ, he is in reality ashamed of the gospel itself in its true application and appropriation.—Faith is like a bucket, by which we draw grace for grace from that fulness of Jesus which contains the gospel.

Spener: Faith in Christ, confidence in the grace of God in Christ, is the beginning of our salvation, and will remain its instrument to the end. Therefore, faith must always endure and increase, and will thus grow from faith to faith—from one degree of light and power to another.

Bengel: No one need be ashamed of what is mighty and Divine ( Romans 1:16).

Gerlach: There is something in the gospel of which the natural man is ashamed; therefore the Apostle confesses that this shame is conquered in his own case.—The effective power of God is not merely in the gospel, but it is the gospel itself. It is not merely a strength, from God, but it is His own strength. He works in and through the gospel.

Lisco: The gospel is a power of God; that is, a power in which He operates Himself. Therefore it is a holy, mighty, creative force, capable of saving all who believe it. On our part, faith is the condition that we must fulfil, the way to which we must conform, in order to obtain real salvation and deliverance from temporal and eternal destruction by the gospel.

Heubner: The danger of being ashamed of the gospel is easily incurred. Yet it is a shame which is very reprehensible; for, 1. It is a miserable weakness and want of principle to be ashamed of what is best; 2. It is the grossest contempt of God to place the world higher and fear it more than Him; and, 3. it is the meanest ingratitude toward God.

Fr. A. Wolff: The more the world boasts of its unbelief, the less should true Christians be ashamed of their faith. This is required: 1. For the honor of the truth; 2. the conversion of unbelievers; 3. the salvation of our own souls.

J. P. Lange: How sad the contrast between the false shame of Christians and the boldness and shamelessness of the world.—Who should be ashamed of the gospel? i.e, 1. Of God’s power and honor; 2. of the deliverance of men for their final salvation; 3. of the grand task of uniting Jews and Greeks (the law and culture) into a higher life.—The twofold confirmatory power of the gospel: 1. The first for: its Divine operation ( Romans 1:16); 2. the second for: its Divine import ( Romans 1:17).—The threefold for ( Romans 1:16-17), or the three grounds of joyous, evangelizing activity.—The righteousness of faith: 1. Very old (Habakkuk); 2. eternally new (Paul, Luther); 3. always confirmed by true life.

[Burkitt: The power of the gospel is not from the preachers of the gospel; therefore do not idolize them. But they are God’s instruments, and their words are the organ of the Spirit’s power; therefore do not think meanly of them—A justified man lives a more holy, useful, and excellent life than all others; but the life that a justified man lives is always one of faith.—Henry (condensed): The reason why the Apostle made such a bold profession was, that sinners might be saved and believers edified.—Macknight: The Apostle insinuates with great propriety that the gospel is not an institution like the heathen mysteries, which were concealed from all but the initiated. The precepts of the gospel, being honorable in themselves and beneficial to society, cannot be too openly published.—Hodge: The salvation of men, including the pardon of their sins and the moral renovation of their hearts, can be effected by the gospel alone.—The power of the gospel does not lie in its pure theism, or perfect moral code, but in the cross—in the doctrine of justification by faith in a crucified Redeemer.—Whether we be wise or unwise, orthodox or heterodox, unless we are believers, and receive “the righteousness which is of God” as the ground of acceptance, we have no share in the salvation of the gospel.—Sermons on Romans 1:16, by B. Whichcote, John Owen, Bishop Ward, G. Esty, J. Erskine, Bishop Gilbert, Isaac Watts, Bishop Stillingfleet, Zollikofer, E. Brackenbury, Geo. Burder, W. E. Channing, R. McCheyne, and Thomas Arnold.—J. F. H.]

Footnotes:

[Cod. Sin. likewise omits τοῦ Χριστοῦ, as do nearly all the critical editors, Mill, Bengel, Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Alford, Wordsworth, &c. The words are found in the Complutensian Text and in Elzevir, and are defended by Wetstoin and Matthaei.—P. S.]

59] Romans 1:17.—The πρῶτον is left out by Codd. B. and G. [not A, as Lange has it]; probably because it had an offensive appearance. [MSS. א. A. C. D. K. L. have it Tischendorf, Meyer, Alford, and others retain it. Lachmann puts it in brackets.—P. S.]

60] Romans 1:17.—[This is a free translation of the Hebrew ( Habakkuk 2:4): וְצַדִּיק בֶּאֶמוּנָ־ו̇ יִחְיֶה, lit, the righteous shall live in (by) his faithfulness. The Masoretic accentuation, however, connects the first two words: The righteous in his faith, shall live. The Hebrew אֶמוּנָה and the Christian πίστις both rest on the fundamental idea of trust in God. Paul follows in his rendering the Septuagint, but properly omits the μου which these insert: ὁ δίκαιος μου ἐκ πίστεωςζήσεται. Vulgate: justus in fide sua vivet. Most commentators connect ἐκ πίστεως with the verb ζήσεται. But Dr. Lange, with Beza and Meyer, connects ἐκ πίστεως with ὁ δίκαιος, and translates: He that righteous by faith, shall live. See the Exeg. Notes.—P. S.]

61][To δύναμις θεοῦ, comp. 1 Corinthians 1:24, where Christ is called θεοῦ δύναμις and θεοῦ σοΦία.—P. S.]

62][i.e, here rei per instrumentum effectæ pro instrumento, as if we say, the knife cuts, while it is the hand of man that cuts with the knife. So it is the Holy Spirit that operates through the gospel as the instrumentality.—P. S.]

63][δύναμις θεοῦ is not to be resolved into divine power (Jowett), but the gospel is a power in and through which God Himself works efficaciously, i.e, so as to save the sinner by rousing him to repentance, faith, and obedience. θεοῦ is gen. autoris or rather possessivus. Comp. 1 Corinthians 1:18. Alford explains: “The bare substantive δύναμις hero (and 1 Corinthians 1:24) carries a superlative sense: the highest and holiest vehicle of the divine power, the δύναμις κατ̓ ὲξοχήν.” Umbreit remarks that the law is never called God’s power, but a light or teaching, in which man must walk.—P. S.]

64][Or rather: every one, implies the universality; that believeth, the subjective condition, of the gospel salvation; faith being the apprehending and appropriating organ. Paul says not: to every one who is circumcised, or baptized, or obeys the law, but, to every one that believeth. Without faith, sacraments and good works avail nothing. But true saving faith is of course a living faith, including knowledge of the truth, assent to the truth, and trust or confidence in Christ; it submits to all the ordinances of Christ, and necessarily produces good works.—P. S.]

65][Alford: “Not that the Jew had any preference under the gospel; only he inherits and has a precedence.” Wordsworth: “First, in having a prior claim, as the covenanted people of God: first, therefore, in the season of its offer, but not in the condition of its recipients after its acceptance.” Dr. Hodge refers πρῶτον merely to the priority in time, which is not sufficient.—P. S.]

66][Or as genitive of origin and procession. See Meyer.—P. S.]

67][So also Alford: “God’s righteousness—not His attribute of righteousness, ‘the righteousness of God,’ but righteousness flowing from and acceptable to Him.” He then subjoins De Wette’s note. Hodge: “The righteousness which God gives, and which He approves.” He also quotes the remark of De Wette: “All interpretations which overlook the idea of imputation, as is done in the explanations given by the Romanists, and also in that of Grotius, are false.” M. Stuart confounds δικαιοσύνη with δικαίωσις, and explains: “δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ is the justification which God bestows, or the justification of which God is the author.”—P. S.]

68][Hofmann says, l. c, p. Romans 626: “Einerseits bezeichnet δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ eine Gerechtigkeit, welche Gottes ist; andererseits muss nach dem Zusammenhange etwas gemeint sein, das uns zu Theil wird.” He takes the word to mean, not an attribute of God, but a righteousness which God has established, and which constitutes the subject of the gospel preaching, and makes it a power of God unto salvation to every believer. Hence the apostolic office is called ὴ διακονια τῆς δικαιοσύνης. in opposition to the διακονία τῆς κατακρίσεως, 2 Corinthians 3:9.—P. S.]

69][Seventh ed. by Lünemann, § 19, No26, p118. The article is often omitted before such substantives as are followed by a genitive of possession, e.g, εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ, Romans 1:20; ἐπὶ πρόσωπον αύτῶν, Matthew 17:6; νοῦν κυρίου, 1 Corinthians 2:16, &c.—P. S.]

70][Lipsius says, p22, without proof: “The general Greek significance of the word δικαιόω remains justum facere, and must therefore have the preference before justum habere.” To this Dr. Liebner, and Wieseler, on Galatians 2:16, p179, justly object. Lipsius admits, however, that δικαιόω in Paul means justum habere, only not always, nor exclusively.—P. S.]

71][So also Chrysostom and Theodoret. A modification of this view is Tertullian’s: Ex fide legis in fidem evangelii.—P. S.]

72][This is only a modification of the preceding explanation, and is substantially held also by Erasmus, Melanchthon, Calvin, Beza, Wordsworth, Forbes. The sense is: Beginning and ending with faith from one degree of faith to another; faith is a vital principle and constant growth, receiving grace for grace, going from strength to strength, till it is transformed from glory to glory. Development is the law of spiritual as well as physical life; but in all the stages of growth of Christian life, the vital principle is the same; hence ἐκ πίστεως εὶς πίστιν, from or out of faith as the root, unto faith as the blossom and fruit; faith, as Bengel says, the prora et puppis, the fore-deck and hind-deck of a ship—i.e, all in all. Comp. ἀπὸ δόξης εὶς δόξαν, “from glory to glory,” 2 Corinthians 3:18, and “from strength to strength,” Psalm 84:7.—P. S.]

PART FIRST

The Doctrine of Justification by Faith as the Restoration of the true Glorification of God

CHAPTERS1–11

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FIRST DIVISION

SIN AND GRACE IN THEIR FIRST ANTITHESIS, THE REALLY RELIGIOUS AND MORAL LIFE. THE ACTUAL ENTRANCE OF CORRUPTION AND SALVATION. GOD’S WRATH AT ALL HUMAN UNRIGHTEOUSNESS; THAT is, THE WORLD’S REAL CORRUPTION MATURING FOR DEATH, AND HASTENED BY THE JUDGMENT OF GOD; AND THE OPPOSING JUSTIFICATION OF SINNERS THROUGH THE MERCY-SEAT, OR PARDON IN CHRIST IN RESPONSE TO FAITH. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF FAITH

Romans 1:18 to Romans 5:11

First Section.—The beginning of all the real corruption of the world, and of the Gentiles in particular, together with the judgment pronounced on it. The neglect of the general revelation of God in creation by the neglect of the real worship of God in thanksgiving and praise ( Romans 1:18-21).

Second Section.—The development of Gentile corruption under God’s judicial abandonment (the departure of His Spirit, and the decree of ripeness for judgment). From arbitrary symbolism to the worship of images and beasts; from theoretical to practical corruption; from natural to unnatural and abominable sins, to the completion of all kinds of crimes and iniquities, and to the demoniacal lust of evil, and even of evil maxims ( Romans 1:22-32).

18For the wrath of God [God’s wrath] is revealed [in opposition to that revelation of God’s righteousness, Romans 1:17] from heaven against all ungodliness [godlessness] and unrighteousness [iniquity] of men, who hold [hold back]73 the truth in unrighteousness; 19Because74 that which may be known [which is known]75 of God is manifest in them;76 for God hath shewed [God manifested]77 it unto [to] them 20 For the invisible things of him [his unseen attributes] from the creation of the world are [are, since the creation of the world,]78 clearly seen,79 being understood by the things that are made [by means of his works], even his eternal power and Godhead [Divinity,80 θειότης, notθεότης]; so that81 they are without excuse21[inexcusable, ἀναπολογήτους]. Because that, when they knew God [because, knowing God, or, although they knew God, διότι γνόντες τὸν θεόν], they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful [they did not glorify him as God, nor give thanks to him as God]; but became vain in their imaginations [thoughts], and their foolish heart was darkened.

22, 23Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed [exchanged] the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man [for a likeness of an image of corruptible man], and to [of] birds, and fourfooted beasts [quadrupeds], and creeping things [reptiles].

24Wherefore God also82 gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts [God delivered them over, in the lusts of their hearts, to uncleanness], to dishonor their own bodies between themselves [so that their 25 bodies were dishonored among them].83 Who changed [They who exchanged]84 the truth of God into [for] a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more26[rather] than the Creator,85 who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up [delivered them over] unto [to] vile affections [shameful passions]:86 for even their women did change [exchanged] the natural, use into27[for] that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust [lustful excitement] one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly [working the (well known) indecency, τὴν αἰοχημοσύνην], and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet [the due reward of their error].

28And even as they did not like [And as they did not deem it worthy, orworth while, οὐχ ἐδοχίμασαν] to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate [worthless, ἀδόκιμον]87 mind, to do those things which are not convenient29[becoming];88 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,89 wickedness [malice], covetousness, maliciousness [badness]; full of envy, murder, 30debate [strife, ἔριδος], deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters [slanderers], haters of God,90 despiteful [insolent], proud, boasters, inventors of evil things31[villanies], disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant-breakers32[truce-breakers], without natural affection, implacable,91 unmerciful: Who, knowing [although they well know] the judgment [just decree] of God, that they which [who] commit [practice, πράσσοντες] such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them [approve of those who practise them, συνευδοκοῦσιν τοῖς πράσσουσιν].

General Remarks.—The whole section, in its progress to the end of the chapter, relates more particularly to the heathen world (Tholuck, Meyer). Yet it describes the corruption in its original form as a general corruption of humanity. The antithesis: Heathendom and Judaism was a subsequent development. Romans 1:24, with its causality in Romans 1:22-23, constitutes the more definite beginning of heathenism. Tholuck recommends the treatise of Adam, Exercitationes Exegeticœ, 1712, pp501–738, on the section Romans 1:18-32. Tholuck remarks: “What the Apostle says of the relations of the Gentile world, and afterwards of the Jews, to God, naturally applies to their universality, but to individuals only in a greater or less degree.” We add: So that a relative opposition is embraced within the general judgment (see Romans 2:6 ff.).

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

First Section, Romans 1:18-21

Romans 1:18. For God’s wrath is revealed. The ἀποχάλυψις of the ὀργὴ θεοῦ, as the revelation which was historically earlier, is contrasted with the revelation of the righteousness of God from faith. It is therewith intimated that that righteousness denotes grace, or justifying righteousness; but that the ὀργὴ θεοῦ is an exercise of penal righteousness which precedes it.⁹² The wrath of God, as an emotion of God, is His personal displeasure at sin as ἀσέβεια, as conscious transgression, as apostasy, as unbelief, and therefore as the limitation of His personal revelation in the world. It is a displeasure which is revealed by such decrees of penal justice as death and the terrors of death, especially in retribution for obstructions placed in the way of the divine life ( Exodus 4:14; Exodus 4:24; Psalm 90:7-8), by a decree of blindness in retribution for the hinderances to His truth (the present passages; Isaiah 6:10; Romans 9.; 2 Corinthians 3:14; Matthew 13:14; John 12:40; Acts 28:26), by the abandonment to the lusts of the flesh in retribution for the general resistance to His Spirit ( Ephesians 2:3), and finally, by a decree of reprobation and condemnation in retribution for the hinderances to salvation by apostasy and unbelief ( Matthew 3:7; Matthew 22:13; John 3:36; Romans 5:9). Comp. my article, Zorn Gottes, in Herzog’s

Realencyklopædie. This ὀργὴ θεοῦ has its ἀποκάλυψις immediately, so far as it is declared to the conscience of man as God’s decree from heaven; but it becomes especially an ἀποκάλυψις by the witness of the law, and is perfected in the light of the gospel. It is revealed in a real manner from heaven, as a message from the height of the holy, supernatural world, and from the throne of Divine government. And it is revealed in an ideal way by the light of righteousness, which, like a flame of wrath from the kingdom of the Spirit, shines down into the realm of consciously guilty human life, and explains its dark fate. The older writers understood by ὀργή, punishment alone, taking metonymically the operation for the cause [metonymia causœ pro effectu = κόλασις, τιμωρία]. But we must unite both. The opposite of ὀργή is not merely ἀγάπη (Tholuck), but ἔλεος (see my Positive Dogmatik, p109). According to De Wette [and Alford], wrath is only an anthropopathic conception of the righteousness of God in punishment; but by this interpretation its procession ἀπ ̓ αὐρανοῦ is obliterated. The internal ἀποχάλυψις of wrath involves its external φανέρωσις, but it is one-sided to confine it to the punishment which God has determined for the heathen world (De Wette), or the wretched condition of the world at that time (Köllner), or to the manifestation of the punishment in the conscience (Tholuck), or in the gospel (Grotius). From the beginning, the deeds of wrath have ever succeeded the ἀσέβεια in its opposition to God’s government and revelation. But the complete ἀποκάλυψις thereof does not appear before the New Testament ἀποκάλυψις of grace. The reason of this is, that the world’s guilt reaches its climax in the crucifixion and death of Christ. The ἀσέβεια—the rebellion of unbelief to the revelation of the divine light and life ( Romans 2:4-5; Romans 8:6-7)—sums up the whole idea of sin which incurs the guilt of God’s wrath. The idea of the ὀργή itself is God’s abandonment of man to the judgment of death. And the idea of the ἀποκἀλυψις of this ὀργή is the entire revelation of the judgment of God in the corruption of the world amid the light of the gospel, for the conscience of humanity, especially the body of believers. The idea of the οὐρανός is the heavenly world in its ideal laws, which lie also at the foundation of the earthly world, and react against all abnormal conduct with punishment and death. The present, ἀποκαλύπτεται, must be emphasized; it is neither merely a historical reference to the misery of the old world (Köllner, and others), nor (with Chrysostom, and others) a reference to the future day of wrath. It means, rather, a progressive revelation of the judgment in opposition to which the progressive revelation of the righteousness of salvation in the gospel acquires its perfect significance and clearness. The ἀπ ̓ οὐρανοῦ certainly refers chiefly to ἀποκαλύπγτεται, but it is indirectly declared thereby that the ὀργὴ θεοῦ is from heaven, although, as a judgment immanent in life itself, it breaks forth from its internal state, or is caused by it. Special interpretations of the ὀργή: The religion of the Old Testament (Bengel); storms and natural disasters (Pelagius); external and internal necessities of the times (Baumgarten-Crusius).

Against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. The ἀσέβεια [godlessness, impiety] is the fundamental form of personal misconduct toward God; but the word is more especially significant in that it describes ungodliness as the absence of reverence for God. See Romans 1:21. The ἀδικία [unrighteousness, iniquity] is the correspondent fundamental form of misconduct toward God’s law in life, and therefore not toward our neighbor alone. Theophylact, Tholuck, and many others: Profanitas in Deum, injuria in proximnm. [So Hodge: ἀσέβεια, impiety toward God; ἀδικία, injustice toward men.—P. S.] Meyer, on the contrary: Irreligiousness and immorality, which is supported by the following description. [Ἀσέβεια is the fountain of ἀδικία, but both act and react upon each other.—P. S.]—Of men. Antithesis of ὀργὴ θεοῦ. The word signifies, first, the universality of guilt; second, the weakness of man’s enmity against Almighty God.

Who hold back the truth. Description of the obstructions which, as the wicked reaction against the revelation of God, cause the reaction of Divine displeasure in the form of the ὀργή. The truth is the revelation of God in its most general sense, as the unity and harmony of all the single Divine acts of Revelation, with a special reference here to the natural revelation of God ( Romans 1:19-20); although the doctrines of the gospel (of which Ammon explains ἀλήθεια) must not be excluded from the general idea, nor must the natural knowledge of God be substituted for the revelation of God. The κατέχειν (to grasp, to hold, here with the accessory idea of holding back) strikingly denotes hinderance, keeping back (Meyer, improperly, keeping down); as is the case with καταλαμβάνειν in John 1:5.⁹³ An odd explanation is this: “Who possess the truth with unrighteousness; that is, sin against, better knowledge” (Michaelis, Koppe, Baur).—In unrighteousness. Not adverbial (Reiche, et al.), but instrumental (Meyer).⁹⁴ The word must be understood here in the wide sense, according to which all sin is ἀδικία. See 1 John 3:4. The sentence must be understood, however, in its general force, though with special reference already to the Gentiles. The history of this κατέχειν is the history of the kingdom of darkness in humanity, which is consummated in the ἀντικεὶμενος, 2 Thessalonians 2:8; comp. especially also 2 Thessalonians 1:8. According to De Wette, the κατέχειν operates so as not to let the truth come to appearance and development. But it also so operates as to pervert the individual elements of the truth into distortions, errors, and strong delusions, and thereby calls down the wrath of God. We must observe how decidedly the Apostle here views the ἀπιστία ethically as ἀπεὶθεια; and how he derives the errors of unbelief from unrighteousness, and from misconduct toward the ethical laws of the inner life.

Romans 1:19. Because that which is known of God.⁹⁵ The διότι in Romans 1:19 may be regarded as an explanation of the statement in Romans 1:18, with special reference to the holding back of the truth of God; the διότι in Romans 1:21 as the explanation of the preceding ἀναπολογήτους εἶναι; and the διὸ in Romans 1:24, as well as the διὰ τοῦτο in Romans 1:26, as the explanation of the revelation of God’s wrath. Though the διότι of Romans 1:19 is not to be regarded exactly the same as γάρ, it does not serve specially as a proof of the motive for Divine wrath. For more particular information, see Tholuck and Meyer.⁹⁶

The knowledge of God.⁹⁷ Tholuck distinguishes three meanings of γνωστόν: 1. That which is known of God (Itala, Vulg, De Wette [Meyer, Philippi, Alford, Wordsworth.—P. S.]); 2. what may be known (Photius, and many others; Rückert); 3. knowledge [ = γνῶσις. Fritzsche, Tholuck, Hodge.—P. S.]. He shows that γνωστός, according to the classical use of the language, means, what may be known; while γνωτός means, what is known. But in the Septuagint and New Testament the signification, known, is undoubted. Nevertheless, many expositors, from the time of Origen down to the present [Theophylact, Œcumenius, Erasmus, Calvin, Beza, Grotius, Ewald], have pronounced in favor of the translation, what may be known. But this signification does not make good sense, since it is difficult to distinguish between what may, and what may not be known of God, and since every thing that may be known of God was by no means revealed at the beginning to the nations (see Meyer). We understand what is known of God concretely as knowledge [Kenntniss, γνῶσις], notitia dei—which should become true knowledge [Erkenntniss, ἐπίγνωσις] by living appropriation. Luther has made the untenable distinction, that the reason of man can know that God is, but cannot know who or what He is. Tholuck justly remarks that the Apostle immediately afterward speaks of a certain knowledge of the nature of God. [The book of nature is a παιδευτήριον θεογνωσὶας, as Basil (Hexaëmeron, i.) calls it, a school of the general knowledge of God, and there is no nation on earth which is entirely destitute of this knowledge.—P. S.]

Is manifest among them.⁹⁸ Erasmus, Grotius, Köllner, and Baumgarten-Crusius, adopt this explanation.⁹⁹ On the contrary, Tholuck, Meyer, and De Wette—with reference to Romans 2:15; Galatians 1:16—strongly advocate Calvin’s interpretation, cordibus insculptum. [So also Beza: “In ipsorum animis, quia hœc Dei notitia recondita est in intimis mentis penetralibus;” and Hodge: “It is not of a mere external revelation of which the Apostle is speaking, but of that evidence of the being and perfection of God which every man has in the constitution of his own nature, and in virtue of which he is competent to apprehend the manifestations of God in His works.”—P. S.] But ἀποκαλύψαι stands in Galatians 1:16; and in Romans 2:15, the question is God’s manifestation by conscience, and not by creation. De Wette says: If the knowledge of God had been something common among them, it would not have been suppressed (κατεχόμενον).¹⁰⁰ But this is not conclusive. We could say with more propriety: If there had been no general knowledge of God among them, there would have been no common guilt. We must admit, however, that among them presupposes in them, or the existence of a knowledge of God in their hearts.—God manifested it to them. This was not first of all ἀποκάλυψις, but φανέρωσις—manifestation through creation. And thus there arose from individuals a manifest knowledge of God—a φανερόν. The reference of this φανερόν to the gnosis of the philosophers (Erasmus, Grotius) is too contracted. But there was a tradition of the knowledge of God among men which preceded the development of heathenism. (It is hardly worth while to mention the explanation of Luther, Koppe, Flatt, that ἐν αὐτοῖς is the mere dative.) [There is a threefold revelation of God: 1. An internal revelation to the reason and conscience of every man (comp. Romans 2:15; John 1:9); 2. an external revelation in the creation, which proclaims God’s power, Wisdom of Solomon, and goodness ( Romans 1:20); 3. a special Revelation, through the Holy Scriptures, and in the person and work of Christ, which confirms and completes the other Revelation, and exhibits the justice, holiness, and love of God. The first two are here intended.—P. S.]

Romans 1:20. For his invisible attributes [τά, ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ]. Explanation of the declaration: “God manifested it to them.” Meyer: “That may not be seen of Him (sein Unschaubares), the invisible attributes which constitute His essence, not actiones Dei invisibiles.” (Theodoret and Fritzsche: In relation to both creation and providence.) The pictures of creation, however, are also permanent actiones, and so far providence is at least indicated. [The ἀόρατα is subsequently explained by δύναμις, and θειότης, and the τέ, followed by καί, as Tholuck remarks, does not annex a new idea (and also), but it partitions the ἀόρατα into the two ideas of δύναμις and θειότης. Paul has in view simply some of the Divine attributes, not the whole Divine being (which would rather require to τὸ ἀόρατον); the pagan knowledge of God is only partial and fragmentary, though sufficient to leave those who possess it without excuse.—P. S.]

From the time of the creation of the world. Not out of the creation (Luther, and others). This idea is contained in τοῖς ποιήμ. (De Wette). κτίσις, moreover, is here equal to καταβολή, (Fritzsche).—Being understood by the things that are made.¹⁰¹ An oxymoron, Arist, De mundo C. [vi.]: [πάσῃ θνητῇ φύσει γενόμενος] ἀθεώρητος ἀπ̓ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων θεωρεῖται ὁθεός.¹⁰² Meyer thus paraphrases the νοούμενα καθορᾶται: It is beheld by being perceived with the reason. We might ask: Should the sentence read, The invisible becomes visible by knowledge, as the means; or, it becomes visible as something known, perceptible to the reason? The latter thought is preferable here, since it is better adapted to the participle, and presupposes the import of the power, the thought-life of man. Philippi also limits himself to the middle form: “The invisible is seen; an oxymoron which is explained and qualified by the addition of νοούμενα. It is not seen by the bodily eye, but by the eye of the Spirit, the νοῦς, the reason.” Our view is favored by the original sense of καθορᾷν, a conception which passes through looking down and looking over into looking at.—By the things that are made [ by and in (his) works, τοῖς ποιήμασιν, instrumental dative.—P. S.]. These are therefore signs of the attributes of God. Schneckenburger (after Episcopius, and others) includes among them the government of God in history. But the conception of מעֲשֶׂה, creature, is against this view. Baumgarten-Crusius, following the Syriac and other versions, takes ποιήμασι, in an ablative sense—by the creature—which is quite untenable.—His eternal power and divinity. [ἀΐδιος, from ἀδί, ever-enduring, eternal, belongs to both nouns. Here is the germ of the physicotheological argument for the existence of God, as in Romans 1:19 the ontological argument is intimated.—P. S.] Here, as in the Creed [I believe in God the Father Almighty], omnipotence serves as the representative of the attributes of God. Tholuck: “In the contemplation of nature, the first thing which strikes man with overpowering weight is the impression of an infinite, supernatural omnipotence (Book of Wisdom of Solomon 13:4). All religion has its root in the feeling of dependence on supernatural powers (?). To the patriarchs God first revealed Himself as שַׁדַּי, as the Almighty; Exodus 6:3” ( Genesis 17:1).¹⁰³—And his Divinity. θειότης, from θεῖος, is the summary of the divinities, or divine excellencies, and must be distinguished from θεότης, the term which denotes the Divine Being itself. The omnipotence is completed by the remaining Divine attributes, through which it really becomes omnipotence in the full ethical as well as metaphysical sense. It is onesided if Schneckenburger refers it only to God’s goodness. Reiche’s thought is better, that wisdom and goodness are chiefly meant.

So that they are without excuse. Meyer does not regard the εἰς as expressing a consequence—as most commentators do [Vulg.: Ita ut sint inexcusabiles; Chrysostom, Luther, Reiche, De Wette, Fritzsche, Tholuck, Philippi, Ewald, Alford, Words worth, Hodge]—but a purpose (in harmony with Calvin, Beza, and others): In order that they may be without excuse. But this rendering leads to a monstrous view of the purpose of the creation of the world. It is too fatalistic even for the conception of predestination, which it was once designed to support. Meyer urges in its defence that εἰς, in the Epistle to the Romans, when used with τό and the infinitive, has always a teleological sense, against which [De Wette and] Tholuck (p67) protest. Then he insists that the results must also be determined beforehand. But this would be a kind of predestination which is self-contradictory: Predestinated—to have no excuse; that is, predestinated for guilt. The other explanation implies by no means a sufficientia religionis naturalis ad salutem, but it permits the possibility of another form of the course of development from Adam to Christ. [The object here is to show man’s guilt, not God’s sovereignty. Comp. on εἰς τό the Textual Note¹⁰⁴. Hodge: “Paul does not here teach that it is the design of God, in revealing Himself to men, to render their opposition inexcusable, but rather, since this revelation has been made, they have in fact no apology for their ignorance and neglect of God. Though the revelation of God in His works is sufficient to render men inexcusable, it does not follow that it is sufficient to Lead men, blinded by sin, to a saving knowledge of Himself.” Wordsworth: “It can hardly be thought that the conviction, confusion, and condemnation of men was any part of the Divine plan in creation, although it followed as a consequence from it.”—P. S.]

Romans 1:21. Because, although they knew God, &c. The διότι explains first of all how far they are without excuse; then, indirectly, how their guilt of holding back the truth in unrighteousness commenced. Incorrect construction: cum cognoscere potuissent (Œcumenius, Flatt).¹⁰⁵ Meyer has no ground for opposing the solution of the participle γνόντες into the sentence: although they knew God (not, perceived Him). The contradiction between knowing God and the designated neglect of Him is obvious indeed; but herein precisely consists the inexcusableness. The ignorance (ἄγνοια) of the Gentile world, Ephesians 4:18, &c, is improperly regarded by Tholuck as an apparent contradiction; for the Gentile world was not such at the outset, and its ignorance is the result and punishment of its great sin of neglect. They lost even their imperfect knowledge (γνῶσις), because they did not raise it to full knowledge (ἐπίγνωσις) through the labor of the heart, [τὸν θεόν, the one true God, in opposition to the false θεοί whom the heathen worshipped.—P. S.]

They glorified him not as God. According to His divinity ( John 4:24). They were not wanting in worship, but in worship suitable to God. Melanchthon refers δοξάζειν to theoretical, and εὐχαριστεῖν to practical conduct toward God (as recognition and reverence); but Tholuck very justly rejects such an interpretation, and regards δοξάζειν as the general term for worship, and εὐχ, as the special designation of that species in which the feeling of dependence exhibits itself in the most tender and truly human way. In our opinion, the former denotes rather all worship, so far as it should be preëminently the glorification of God; the latter denotes the same worship as the grateful recognition of the Divine government for human welfare.¹⁰⁶

But became vain [ἐματαιώθησαν]. They became idle, foolish, in devising vanities ( Isaiah 44:9), vain idols, μάταια ( Acts 14:15). [ματαιότης, חֶבִל, vanitas, is a characteristic term for idol-worship; Deuteronomy 32:21; 2 Kings 17:5; Jeremiah 2:5; Acts 14:15.—P. S.] “As man, so his God.” The axiom may also be reversed: As his God, so man himself ( Psalm 115:8); They that make them are like unto them. The human mind is made dumb, wooden, and stone-like, by dumb, wooden, and stone idols (comp. Acts 17:29). But that vanity began in the inward life.—In their imaginations [thoughts, reasonings, speculations, διαλογισμοῖς], Tholuck: “We can scarcely coincide with the Vulgate, Fritzsche, Meyer, and Philippi, in translating διαλογισμοί simply by cogitata. But since the word is used usually malo sensu, and the antithesis is more expressive, we may translate it, with Luther: ‘In their imagining;’ Beza: rationibus suis. We need not think exclusively of the reasonings and conclusions of the philosophers (Philippi).” Mythology was complete with its growth of ideals and images long before philosophy proper was conceived.

And their foolish heart was darkened. The supposition that “foolish” (ἀσύνετος) is used proleptically in the sense that their heart was darkened so as to lose its understanding (De Wette), is not only unnecessary (Tholuck), but altogether irrelevant (Meyer: “because it destroys the climax”).¹⁰⁷ Positive darkness was the result of the negative neglect of the heart to regard the Divine tokens, and to weigh them understandingly. The καρδία, the centre of life, is first, darkened; then the διάνοια, the developed thought-life ( Ephesians 4:18), Tholuck: In this section the Apostle coincides so fully in word and thought, with the Book of Wisdom of Solomon, chaps13–15, that Nitzsch regards it “almost impossible” to ascribe perfect originality to him. Yet he himself admits that the fundamental thought—the tracing of idolatry back to sin—was unknown to the Alexandrine author, &c. (comp. Nitzsch, Deutsche Zeitschrift, 1850, p387; Bleek, Stud, und Kritiken, 1853, p340).

Second Section, Romans 1:22-31

Romans 1:22. Professing themselves [i.e, while, not became, they professed themselves, φάσκοντες, or pretended] to be wise. De Wette: “This is referred by many, and also by Tholuck, to the philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome. But these were above idolatry, and, besides, were later than the origin of idolatry,” &c.¹⁰⁸ The latter remark requires special attention. The question here is concerning the very ancient origin of heathendom, as characterized by the far-fetched ingenuities of symbolical mythicism. Nor could Paul have had in thought merely the pride of Grecian wisdom. But in contemplating it, he could also judge concerning the origin of heathenism. Comp. 1 Corinthians 1:19-25; 1 Corinthians 3:19. Calvin: “Neque enim id proprie in philosophos competit, etc, sed œque commune est gentium ordinumque omnium. Nemo enim fuit, qui non voluerit Dei majestatem sub captum suum includere, ac talem Deum facere, qualem percipere posset suopte sensu.”—They became fools. Not, they have by this means shown themselves to be fools (Köllner), which weakens the thought. [Their folly was in proportion to their, boast of wisdom. There can be no greater folly than to worship a beast rather than God. Wordsworth in loc.: “Intelligence is no safeguard against superstition. Knowledge puffeth up ( 1 Corinthians 8:1). It often engenders pride, and pride is punished by God with spiritual blindness, which is the mother of idolatry.”—P. S.]

Romans 1:23. And exchanged, &c. They have abandoned the real δόξα [כְּבוֹר יְהוָֹה]—the contemplation of God’s glory—which was communicated to them through the spiritual contemplation of the creation, which was manifested to the Israelites in the Shekinah in the exalted moments of vision, and which was finally communicated to Christians in the righteousness of Christ for faith. They exchanged this glory for their religious images—that is, for vanity, folly, and darkness. “The ἐν cannot be taken for εἰς (Reiche [E. V.]), but is instrumental” (Meyer). It denotes the external element of their exchange. [The verb ἀλλάσσειν, when it means to exchange, is usually construed with τί τινος or ἀντἱ τινος, permutare rem per rem or re, but in the LXX. with ἐν, after the Hebrew הֵמִיר בְּ, as in Psalm 106:20 : ἠλλάξαντο τήν δόξαν αὐτὼν ἐν ὁμοιώματι μόσχου, κ.τ.λ. Tholuck quotes also Sophocles, Antig, 1:936, for the same construction. The contrast of ἀφθἁρτου and φθαρτοῦ sets forth the folly of such an exchange.—P. S.] Grotius: ὁμοίωμα εἰκόνος, figura, quœ apparet in simulacro. Meyer quotes Revelation 9:7 in favor of this view. But the expression seems to indicate that the worship of images proceeded from an arbitrary, self-created symbolism. They believed that they wisely expressed and maintained the δόξα of God in the symbol or likeness of a human image. For this purpose they naturally made use of the image of the external and therefore perishable form of man. This was specially the case among the Greeks. There were also the Egyptian images of beasts: of birds —the bird Ibis; of four-footed beasts—the Apis, the dog and the cat; and of creeping things—the crocodile and the serpent. Tholuck: The Egyptian worship was at that time domesticated at Rome;¹⁰⁹ and the expression of Paul relates as well to the adoration of the symbol, generally practised by the cultivated classes, as to the adoration of the image itself, as a real idol, which prevailed among the great masses (see Tholuck). [The common people saw in the idols the gods themselves, the cultivated heathen, symbolical representations, or, at best, only the organs through which the gods operated. A similar difference of a gross and a more refined superstition is found in the Roman Catholic Church with regard to the images of saints. The Scriptures make no account of this distinction, and denounce all image-worshippers as idolaters.—P. S.] The Apostle traces the downward tendency of heathendom, by passing, first, from the likeness to the image, and, second, from the image of man to the images of creeping animals. [Wordsworth: “καὶ—καὶ—καί—observe this repetition, marking successive stages of their moral and intellectual degradation: ending in the transmutation of the living God of heaven into the likeness of unclean reptiles crawling upon the earth!”—P. S.]

Romans 1:24. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness. The Apostle evidently distinguishes two degrees of this abandonment; Romans 1:24 and Romans 1:26. As the unnatural sins of lust are not mentioned before Romans 1:26, so may we understand Romans 1:24 as referring to the natural forms of sensuality. But lewdness is the sin common to both degrees of corruption. That the Apostle should regard sins of lust as the immediate result of religious apostasy, rests: 1. On the Hebrew idea of whoredom, according to which religious whoredom—that is, idolatry—leads to moral whoredom as its most immediate result ( Numbers 25; Ezekiel 23); just as, reversely, moral unchastity leads to religious lewdness ( Song of Solomon, Henry IV. [of France]). The heathen forms of worship are therefore connected in various ways with the practice of lust, or they are even the worship of lust2. On the ethical law, that moral principles stand in reciprocal connection with religious principles. The image of corruptible man is an image of the natural man, who, like Jupiter, indulges in love intrigues. The image of the bull likewise indicates the deification of the generative power of nature.

Wherefore God gave them up [παρέδωκεν, delivered them over]. The abandonment must not be regarded, with the Greek expositors [since Origen], as a mere permission¹¹⁰ (συγχώρησις—see Chrysostom’s remarks, quoted by Tholuck [who dissents from him]), nor, on the other hand, as referring to a Divine predestination of abandonment to the judgment of condemnation. (Tholuck, the editor of Calvin’s Commentaries, calls this the Calvinistic view, according to which God is the effective author of sin;—but this he could certainly not prove from Calvin’s exposition of the present passage.) The abandonment is rather the first stage in the exercise of punitive authority (see my Positive Dogmatics, p468). God executed this punishment on a grand scale in the origin and growth of heathendom. He allowed the Gentiles to walk in their own ways ( Acts 14:16; Psalm 81:13; Psalm 147:20). The permittere in this punishment becomes an effective operation by God’s withdrawal of His Spirit; which measure His holiness requires.¹¹¹ Paul has already said that this withdrawal is retributive; but he now makes it especially prominent: in the lusts of their hearts, ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, &c. The ἐν must not be understood as instrumental [by or through] (Erasmus [E. V.], and others), nor like εἰς (Piscat, Estius, and others) [but signifies the element or moral condition in which they were already when God, by a judicial Acts, delivered them over to a still worse condition.—P. S.]. The negative punitive judgment becomes positive in this, that they can no longer control the lusts of their heart after God’s Spirit is withdrawn from them. It is in harmony with God’s righteousness that sin should be punished by sin.—To uncleanness. The sins of thought and heart became sins of deed. The expression filthiness (Unflätherei, Meyer) seems too strong for the beginning of the development of uncleanness. In Galatians 5:19 (to which Meyer refers), the description passes from the grosser to the more subtle forms.

So that their bodies were dishonored. De Wette and Tholuck [Meyer, Alford, al.] maintain that ἀτιμάζεαθαι does not occur in the middle (Erasmus, Luther [E. V.]), but only in the passive voice. The bodies were already dishonored by natural lewdness, by which they lost their dignity as temples of God, and were degraded into instruments of sensual lust (and not merely “woman;” Tholuck). See 1 Corinthians 6:16.—Between themselves. Three explanations: 1. The ἐν is instrumental (Theophylact, Köllner). Then the moral subject is wanting2. The ἐν αὐτοῖς has a reciprocal signification equal to ἐν ἀλλήλοις, reciprocally (Erasmus, De Wette, Tholuck, and others). Meyer: One dishonors the other. This construction is favored by the reciprocal sexual intercourse which disappears in the unnatural lewdness described in Romans 1:26. 3. Reflexive (Vulgate, Luther, Calvin, and others). Tholuck remarks on this, that to themselves does not give clear sense. Comp, on the contrary, 1 Corinthians 6:16. We may adopt the second explanation, and yet the third need not be given up—namely, that in natural lewdness not only does one dishonor the other, but each dishonors himself.

Romans 1:25. They who exchanged the truth of God. According to Meyer and Tholuck, Paul returns expressly to the cause of the abandonment. But by this they overlook the definite progress of thought—namely, the argument for the abandonment of the second degree which follows in Romans 1:26. As a punishment of the heathen for squandering the δόξα of God for the paltry sum of images, their own bodies have lost their δόξα. But they are further charged with bartering the truth of God for the lie of idolatry, since they have served the creature παρὰ τὸν κτίσαντα. Therefore God gave them up to a lie of sexual lust, to a lust παρὰ φύσιν. It is from this parallel, which the commentators have overlooked, that exact exegetical definitions on this passage arise.—They who exchanged, Οἵτινες, Quippe qui. The expression denotes them as the same, but characterizes them more fully. The sense is, they exchanged for (sie tauschten um), μετήλλαξαν, which is not merely “more emphatic” (Meyer) than ἤλλαξαν. It includes, with the exchange, a very strong conception of change, of variation.—The truth of God. Explanations: 1. The truth revealed to the Gentiles (Camerarius, Reiche, and others). 2. θεοῦ is genit. object.; therefore the true knowledge of God (Piscat, Usteri. [Alford: the true notion of Him as the Creator]). 3. θεοῦ is genit. subject.; the truth or reality of God, the true Divine essence, according to the analogy τὴν δόξαν τοῦ θεοῦ (Tholuck, Meyer). Tholuck (with Theophylact, Luther, and others) takes it exactly as ἀληθινὸς θεός [and ψεῦδος for οἱ ψευδεῖς θεοί. So also Hodge: a periphrase for the true God—P. S.]. The δόξα of God is God’s revelation in glory, and so is God’s truth the φανέρωσις (see Romans 1:19) of his essential truth in the truthful relations of creation. The name of God is the revelation of His nature; not His nature in and of itself. But this revelation divides itself into the δόξα when we have in view the whole majesty of His name, and into the ἀλήθεια when we look at the real harmony of its antitheses. They have forsaken the general manifestation of this truth of God. They have, indeed, utterly squandered it for the gain of a mere lie—for the lying idols. [ψεῦδος = שֶׁקֶר, is used emphatically for idols in the Scriptures; Jeremiah 13:25; Jeremiah 16:19; Isaiah 28:15; Isaiah 44:20; because the heathen gods do not even exist, and yet they are worshipped in the place of the only true God, who is the Cause of all existence, and the Author of all truth.—P. S.] Idols are lies not simply as dii imaginarii (Grotius). They are embodied lies. Man must make them, and they pretend to represent Him who made man ( Isaiah 40:19-20). They have mouths, but they speak not; eyes have they, but they see not ( Psalm 115:5; Psalm 135:16; Wisdom of Solomon 15:15). The worshipper of idols has a dark consciousness of this contradiction. Even his worship is mendacious. Tholuck quotes Philo, De Vita Mosis, i3 [where it is said of the Israelites who had made the golden calf], Moses wondered ὅσον ψεῦδος ἀνθ̓ ὅσης ἀληθεἱας ὑπηλλάξαντο. Comp. also Isaiah 44:20; Jeremiah 3:10; Jeremiah 13:25; Jeremiah 16:19.—And worshipped. Σεβάζομαι [only once in the N. T.] denotes religious reverence in general; λατρεύω denotes worship [with sacrifice, and other acts and rites]. The conception of the σεβ. passes from fear and reverence to worship. Of kindred but not of identical character is the distinction of Theophylact, and others: internal and external worship.—The creature rather than the Creator. [κτίσει, any created being or thing, belongs to both verbs, but is conformed to λατρεύω as the nearest, while σεβάζομαι would require the accusative.—P. S.] The παρὰ τὸν κτίσαντα has been interpreted in three ways: 1. More than the Creator [in the relative sense], (Vulgate, Erasmus, Luther [E. V, Grotius], and others); 2. against the Creator [contra creatorem; comp. παρὰ φύσιν, Romans 1:26], (Hammond, Fritzsche, and others); 3. In the sense of comparison [and exclusion], prœ creators, prœterito, or relicto creatore (Hilarius, Theophylact, Beza, Tholuck, Meyer [Olshausen, De Wette, Philippi, Alford, Wordsworth, Hodge], and others). The third explanation is correct in the sense that it includes the second: Passing by one with the disregard and rejection of the same (see Luke 18:14). The παρὰ φύσιν in Romans 1:26 perfectly corresponds to this rendering. In both cases, the statement must not be understood absolutely; otherwise heathendom would have been the negation of all religion, and unnatural lust the negation of all propagation of the human race. It denotes the outbreaking sovereignty of a religious vice, which is completed in a sensual one. [Wordsworth derives from this text an argument against the Arians, who assert Christ to be a creature, and yet profess to worship Him; and against those who pay religious worship to any creature, since no one is to be worshipped, according to the Scriptures, who is not God by nature, and since there is no middle between Creator and creature.—P. S.]

Who is blessed forever. Tholuck: “The doxology is added to the name of God by Jews and Mohammedans when they must state something that is unworthy of Him, as though the writer would remove all suspicion of any share in the statement,” &c. It is more natural to seek the explanation of this custom in the indignation of religious feeling, and in its confidence that God is exalted above the profanation of His name.¹¹² Tholuck informs us that an Arabian writer added, after every heresy which he mentioned: “God is exalted above all that they say!” The Apostle’s expression, at all events, must not be regarded as a mere form, but as candid emotion (Meyer); which yet does not exclude the thought indicated above (Chrysostom, Grotius).—εὐλογητός, בָּרדּךְ.¹¹³ Who is blessed, with reference to all future eternity, is likewise an expression of the confident expectation that he shall be blessed (Meyer therefore rejects, without good reason, the explanation of Fritzsche: celebrandus).

Romans 1:26. For this cause God gave them up. The διὰ τοῦτο refers specifically to Romans 1:25, and takes its place with the διό of Romans 1:24 and the διότι of Romans 1:21 as a subdivision under Romans 1:18.

Unto shameful passions. The ἀτιμία was already in Romans 1:24, but now it becomes a passion. Meyer: πάθη ἀτιμ., genit. qual. Since whoredom is also a shameful passion, the substantive must be retained: Passions of the shameful and degraded condition. There was first a departure from honor to simple dishonor; then still further downward, to a passionate course of dishonor, which might almost be described as passion for vileness. The unnatural sins of lust rest upon unnatural passions, and these spring from the root of the unnatural, lying deification of creatures and images. Man is for God in a religious sense, as the man and woman are for each other in a moral point of view: this is the natural condition, the truth of the relations ( Ephesians 5:25). Therefore the perversion of nature, unnaturalness, or the lie of the service of the creature and of the idols, is punished by the perversion of nature, unnaturalness, or the lie of sexual gratification. Tholuck praises the modest reticence of the Apostle in the expression, although his expression is clear enough. He also says: “The self-degradation and self-condemnation of man appears most strikingly in the peculiarly (?) Grecian sin of pederasty (ἀρσενοκοῖται, 1 Corinthians 6:9), which, at the time when Paul wrote, was largely practised also in Rome. After Xenophon, De Lacedœm. Republ, ii14, has mentioned that this vice was forbidden by Lycurgus, he adds, that this is not believed by some, ἐν πολλαῖς γὰρ τῶν πὁλεων οἱ νὸμοι οὐκ ἐναντιόῦνται ταῖς πρὸς τοὺς παῖδας ἐπιθυμίαις. Even the most distinguished men have incurred grave suspicions in this matter, some justly, others unjustly. Comp. Gessner, De pœderastia Socratis in vet. diss. Gott. ii. p125. Seneca, a contemporary of Paul, writes in Rome, Ep. 35: Transeo puerorum infelicium greges, quos post transacta convivia aliœ cubiculi contumeliœ exspectant; transeo agmina exoletorum per nationes coloresque descripta. The most hideous and yet the most accurate picture of Roman licentiousness at that time, is given by Petronius, a contemporary of the Apostle. Even women (called tribades) committed the same Outrage, which was called by a smoother term after a famous predecessor in the crime, “Sapphic Love.” [Seneca writes, Ep. 95: “Libidine vero ne maribus quidem cedunt, pati natœ; dii illas deœque male perdant, adeo perversum commentœ genus impudicitœ viros ineunt.”]¹¹⁴

For even their women. Θήλειαι and ἄρσενες, instead of γυναῖκες and ἄνδρες, on account of the sexual reference. Reiche says erroneously: In a contemptuous sense, for description of the bestial. The expression χρῆσις is euphemistic for usus venereus, and therefore we must not supply τοῦ ἄρσενος, or τῆς θηλείας (Fritzsche). Tholuck explains thus: The Apostle places the female sex first, because the abomination of the crime is most horrible in that sex, whose noblest ornament is modesty ( 1 Timothy 2:9) [similarly Hodge]. It may be observed, on the contrary, that the Apostle here generally passes from the less to the more abominable crime. He probably alludes, in Romans 1:26 (as Tholuck remarks), to the debauchery of the tribades (frictrices, “the Lesbian vice,” λεσβιάζειν), where women commit abuses with women, but perhaps he included the more secret sin of onanism. This appears from the antithesis in Romans 1:27 : Men with men. This sin is referred in a two-fold way to the deification of the creature: by μετήλλαξαν and by παρὰ φύσιν.

[Alford and Hodge likewise refer the πλάνη to their departure from God into idolatry.—P. S.]. But the πλάνη is certainly the godless aberration into unnaturalness—that is, into a lie against nature, and we must think of the punishment as proportionate thereto; therefore not only the absolute self-deception, but also the shameful perversion of the sexual character (a man in a horrible way “the woman of all men”). Therefore, in themselves, not through themselves (Tholuck); nor “reciprocally” (Meyer). Meyer erroneously excludes here from consideration the destructive results of debauchery.

Romans 1:28. And as they did not deem it worth while [οὐκ ἐδοκίμασαν] to retain God. A further and more general development of moral corruption, based on a further and more general unfolding of religious corruption. Καθώς. The comparison is at the same time causal—which Tholuck denies. On the correspondence between the darkening of knowledge and practical corruption, see the quotations from the heathen writers, in Tholuck [and Wetstein. Cicero says, De Nat. Deor. Romans 12 : “Haud scio, an, pietate adversus Deos sublata, fides etiam et societas, et una excellentissima virtus justitia tollatur.” The assertion of modern deists, rationalists, and infidels, that morality is independent of religion, is an idle delusion. The wise heathen knew better. Religion is the backbone of morality, and irreligion the mother of immorality and vice. He who is most true to God, is most true to himself and his fellow-men; and he who denies God, is not likely to recognize any binding obligation to man, except on purely selfish and utilitarian grounds. Immoral religionists and moral irreligionists are exceptions, and confirm the rule.—P. S.] The δοκιμάζειν = δόκιμον ἡγεῖσθαι [here, to think it worthy, or worth while; comp. 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 1 Corinthians 16:3].—To retain God in (their) knowledge [ἐν ἐπιγνώσει, Erkenntniss]. Tholuck makes the ἐπιγινώσκειν equal to the γινώσκειν in Romans 1:21. But here the question is concerning per ception—that is, the reception of knowledge into the inner life. Besides, the ἔχεσν ἐν ἐπιγνώσκει is stronger than γινωσκειν. Here again the punishment corresponds to the guilt; therefore the ἀδόκιμος νοῦς is not a mind incapable of judgment or discernment [judicii expers], (Beza, Piscat. [Bengel]), but the adjective is passive, according to the use of language: worthless (good-for-nothing) mind. [δόκιμος, from δέχομαι, receivable, worthy of reception; ἀδόκιμος, worthless, worthy of rejection. The heathen did not lose the moral faculty of discerning between right and wrong, good and bad, but in spite of it they practised the bad, and encouraged its practice in others ( Romans 1:32), thereby increasing their guilt. “It is the video meliora proboque, which makes the detoriora sequor so peculiarly criminal.”—P. S.] The οὐκ ἐδοκίμασαν and ἀδόκιμος νοῦς are a paronomasy. The νοῦς is the perceiving and deciding intelligence, and mediates all the impressions for moral self-determination and action.—Things which are not becoming. The μὴ καθήκοντα, in the technical sense of the philosophical schools, are things contrary to duty, or immoral; but in a more popular sense here, they are an expression of moral abhorrence.

Romans 1:29-32. Being filled with all unrighteousness. Tholuck: “The accusatives πεπληρωμένους, μεστούς, &c, depend on ποιεῖν, as Erasmus has already remarked: because their thoughts are so impure, they also commit unbecoming things.” [Some connect the following accusatives with αὐτούς of the preceding verse, so as to express the state in which, and the reason why, God abandoned them; but it is better to connect them with the subject of ποιεῖν, understood, so as to express the consequences of such abandonment, and the various forms of τὰ μὴ καθήκοντα which they practised, πᾶσα ἀδικια, all manner of immorality, is general; the following terms are specifications. Similar catalogues of sins: 2 Corinthians 12:20; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:3; 1 Timothy 1:9-10; 2 Timothy 3:2-4.—P. S.] De Wette remarks that the following catalogue of sins, like a similar one in Galatians 5:19, is unsystematic; though ἀδικία stands first, as the principal, conception. Likewise Tholuck (against Bengel’s and Glöckler’s attempts at classification) maintains that the Apostle states a “συναθροισμός [rhetorical accumulation] of manifestations of sin,” and cites the paronomasies φθόνου and φόνου, ἀσυνέτους and ἀσυνθέτους. But the paronomasies are no proof, and so we attempt the following construction:¹¹⁶

I. Vices. The chief vice, ἀδικία, unrighteousness, at the head. This is divided into πονηρία, malice [disposition to inflict evil], wickedness—bold form; and into πλεονεξὶα, avarice, covetousness; κακία, badness, malice—pusillanimous form. On the addition of πορνεία, to the above, see Textual Note [¹¹⁷]. The expression πεπληρωμένους means, that every wicked person had not merely one crime. By the vices are here meant permanent and cold traits of character, in distinction from deeds of impulse, in which the guilty persons appear as μεστοί, full and drunken.

II. Evil deeds, or criminal acts. The chief sin, φθόνος, envy, at the head; divided into φόνος, murder; ἔρις, strife, contention; δόλος, deceit, or fraud; κακοήθεια, malignity, treacherous conduct. The chief source is φθόνος; but in all these evil deeds they appear as drunken.

III. Wicked characters according to their deeds. ψιθυρισταί, whisperers, backbiters [one who slanders secretly]; καταλάλοι, slanderers, calumniators; θεοστυγεῖς, haters of God, despisers of God, scorning God (Gottverächter). Tholuck: Promethean characters. In the classic literature, and especially the tragic department, the word occurs only in the passive meaning; hated by God, hateful to God [see the quotations of Meyer in loc.]; but the context plainly declares in favor of the active rendering, which has been adopted by most commentators from Theodoret down to the present, and which alone is in harmony with the Christian spirit. Classic usage also favors the accessory thought: ungodly, wicked. ὑβρισταί, insolent, overbearing, those who perpetrate criminal ὕβρις; ὑπερήφανοι, those who are proud, self-conceited, those who conduct themselves arrogantly above others; ἀλαζόνες, boasters, who do not design, like the previous class, to crush others by the force of their greatness, but make a lying show of it; ἐφευρεταὶ κακῶν, inventors of villanies, or crimes, swindlers, and adventurers; γονεῦσιν ἀπειθεῖς, disobedient to parents; apostasy from the piety and affection due to parents is a fountain of corruption (see Malachi 4:6; Luke 1:17). [Hodge: “That such should be included in this fearful list, shows the light in which filial disobedience is regarded by the sacred writers.”—P. S.]

IV. ( Romans 1:31.) Wicked characters according to their sentiments, in leading psychological types. ἀσύνετοι, without understanding [or insight into moral things, blinded, besotted]; corrupted intelligence; ἀσύνθετοι, according to Philippi, and others, quarrelsome, implacable; according to Meyer, covenant-breakers [perfidious]; we construe the expression psychologically: unstable, unreliable—corrupted will. ἄστοργοι, destitute of affection, heartless; wanting even in natural feeling and natural love—corrupted feeling. (ἄσπονθοι, implacable, irreconcilable. Probably an insertion). ἀνελεήμονες, unmerciful, without pity and compassion: a totally corrupted state of feeling ( Matthew 25:31 ff.).

V. Wicked maxims ( Romans 1:32). Demoniacal pleasure in wickedness on the part of those who are conscious of the deadly guilt of sin (for example, heathen philosophers, magistrates, Judges, etc.); and who not only commit sins worthy of death, but also approve them in others by their endorsement and principles.—The οἳτινες announces a new element, a new degree. This degree was of course not reached or thoroughly accomplished by all, but the generality were guilty to this degree—a fact which is shown by the crucifixion of Christ. Grotius has alluded to the defence of many crimes by the philosophers [e.g, the defence of hatred, revenge, even pederasty and sodomy]; and Heumann [and Ewald] to lax criminal justice. The δικαίωμα of God in the knowledge of the Gentiles is in part the institution of law and in part God’s punitive dealing, so far as the latter is referred by the heathen conscience to Divine justice. [δικαὶωμα (comp. Luke 1:6; Romans 2:26; Romans 8:4; Revelation 15:5, in the Septuagint often for the Hebrew מִצְוָה,הֻקָּה,חֹק) is here the righteous decree or sentence of God as the Lawgiver and Judges, declaring what is right and wrong, and connecting death with sin, and life with righteousness. Meyer: Rechtsbestimmung; Lange: Rechtsurtheil; Alford: sentence; Wordsworth and Hodge: decree. This decree is inscribed not only on the revealed law of the Old Testament, but also on the conscience or moral sense of every man. The latter is here meant.—P. S.]

Romans 1:32. Are worthy of death. Photius: According to the Mosaic law. The Socinians: Civil punishment by death. Meyer: Eternal death, by which Paul has in mind the heathen notion of the state of punishment in Hades.¹¹⁸ Fritzsche and De Wette: The misery of sin, and similar results. But the meaning is the general idea of death in the Gentile consciousness of guilt, as the punishment of the most varied forms of sin. [Alford: θάνατος, a general term for the fatal consequence of sin; that such courses lead to ruin. Hodge: All evil inflicted for the satisfaction of justice. This passage shows that the judicial abandonment of God does not destroy the free agency or responsibility of men. The stream which carries them away is not without, but within; it is their own corrupt nature. Umbreit: Life and death are ever set over against one another in the Old and New Testaments, the one as including all good, the other as all evil.—P. S.] The πράσσειν is a stronger expression. [It brings out more clearly the idea of repetition and continuance of action than ποιεῖν.—P. S.]

The progress is very apparent from wicked passions to wicked acts; from these, to wicked characters, according to the positive methods of action; from these, to wicked characters in whom the inclination for what is good is extinguished; and from these, finally, to wicked maxims. This progress is also expressed by the change of the forms. The same sins are not described throughout these different categories. According to the fundamental conception of unrighteousness, the first category may be regarded as the general category. The second describes sins against our fellow-men in their individual relation; the third, those against human society; the fourth passes on to settle the character of self-corruption in its psychological forms of sentiment; and the fifth, to the complete demoniacal consciousness and approval of sin.

[This dark picture of heathen corruption (which does not exclude honorable exceptions; comp. Romans 2:14; Romans 2:26) is by no means overdrawn, and can be fully verified by testimonies from the first writers of the classical age of ancient Greece and Rome, such as Thucydides (3:82–84, on the moral state of Greece during the Peloponnesian war), Aristophanes, Horace, Catullus, Juvenal, Persius, Sallust, Seneca, Tacitus, Suetonius. Comp. my Church History, vol. i. p 302 ff, and the works quoted there. I shall only refer to a passage from Seneca, the philosopher and contemporary of Paul, De Ira, ii. Romans 8 : “All is full of crime and vice; there is more committed than can be healed by punishment. A monstrous prize contest of wickedness is going on. The desire to sin increases, and shame decreases day by day. … Vice is no longer practised secretly, but in open view. Vileness gains in every street and in every breast to such an extent, that innocence has become not only rare, but has ceased to exist.” It is true, the history of Christian countries often presents a similar picture of moral corruption (with the exception of those unnatural vices described Romans 1:26-27, which have almost disappeared, or greatly diminished within the pale of Christian civilization). Think of the state of the Latin Christians in the fifth century as described by the priest Salvianus, who charges them with every vice, and puts them, in a moral point of view, beneath the barbarians; of the condition of Catholic France under Louis14. and15.; and of the large capitals of Europe and America in our days. Yea, in some respects the most diabolical forms of sin are brought out by contrast under the Christian dispensation, and apostasy from Christianity is worse than heathenism (comp. 2 Timothy 3:1-9). But there remains this radical difference: the heathen corruptions were produced and sanctioned by the heathen mythology and idolatry; while Christian nations are corrupt in spite of and in direct opposition to Christianity, which raises the highest standard of virtue, and acts continually on the world as a purifying and sanctifying power.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The revelation of God’s salvation is at the same time a revelation of God’s wrath. One conception is eclipsed by the other. It is a vain delusion to imagine that we can separate the doctrine of redemption from that of wrath. The conception of wrath is the conception of the absolute and personal energy of the Divine government of love in punitive righteousness. Redeeming love is the absolute and personal energy of Divine righteousness in the saving exercise of love. Can a soul enjoy the experience of salvation by faith, without passing through an internal judgment, and feeling of Divine displeasure? For further information, see the Exeg. Notes; Tholuck, pp56, 57; Meyer, p49; the article Zorn Gottes, in Herzog’s Realencyklopädie [vol. xviii. p657 ff.], together with the literature on the subject enumerated there [especially the monograph on the Wrath of God by Ferdinand Weber, with prolegomena on the doctrine of the atonement by Franz Delitzsch, Erlangen, 1862.—P. S.]

2. The essential characteristic of all forms of unbelief consists in men’s holding back or hindering the truth in unrighteousness. “Modern culture” attempts to separate the ideas ἀπιστία and ἀπείθεια utterly from each other. But the biblical view will not allow such a separation. Unbelief is misconduct toward the moral claims within the horizon of the internal life. This misconduct has its degrees. The germ and principle is sin as transgression (παράβασις) in general. The definite determination is apostasy, which manifests itself also as opposition to Divine truth. Therefore the two fundamental forms of specific unbelief are: apostasy, and hostile attack. The third degree is hardness of heart. But the measure of power in human obstacles to the revelation of God is related to the power of Divine reaction against these obstacles, just as the power of man (as weakness) is related to the omnipotence of God.

3. The idea of the revelation of God by nature pervades the entire Bible. See Psalm 8, 19, 104, and others; Isaiah 40. According to Schneckenburger (Beiträge zur Einleitung in’s Neue Testament, 10th essay: Paul’s Natural Theology, and its Sources), Philo was Paul’s source. See thereon, Tholuck, p64. The pamphlet of Hebart also belongs here: Die natürliche Theologie des Apostels Paulus (Nürnb, 1860); likewise Zöckler’s Theologia Naturalis, or Entwurf einer systematischen Naturtheologie. [Frankfurt a. M, 1860, 2vols.] The latter has viewed natural theology in a more primitive than usual sense. We must bear in mind that natural theology, since the revelation of salvation, has assumed a different form from what it had before the revelation of salvation, and especially as the basis of the original revelation. The symbolical natural religion which prevailed down to Abraham is distinguished from the revelation of salvation herein, that God revealed Himself there specially by symbols and signs, but here by the Word. See also the article Raymond of Sabunde, in Herzog’s Real-encyklopädie [vol. xii. p571].

4. According to Paul, as according to all the Holy Scriptures, humanity has fallen from its original ideal height; but according to the majority of those who set themselves up as the advocates of “modern culture,” it has risen from a rough, beast-like state. Wherefore Reiche also (p157) has expressed the opinion that the Apostle has here expressed only a cotemporary opinion of the Jews. The testimony of history is against the view of “modern culture.” It proves the gradual decay of the Hindus, the Arabians, the Ethiopians, the Indians, and, finally, even of the Greco-Roman world, with all its relative glory.

5. It is improper to regard the description of the Apostle as a description only of the corruption of the heathen world. It shows us first how the Gentile world arose, and then what became of it; but it does not commence with a Gentile world. Therefore it goes back, fundamentally, to the genesis of sin in the fall of man; but then it shows how the fall of man in its second form (with the self-boasting of man after the flood) became the genesis of real heathendom. The corruption arose from the original symbolical religion which prevailed from Adam down to Abraham. For men magnified the simple symbolism of nature—which God had given—by their own arbitrary symbolizations, and then mythicized the symbols; that is, they deified them. Thus mythology arose from symbolism, and idolatry and then image-worship arose from the symbolical view of nature. Recent research has commenced to exhume from the ruins of myths the gold of the original symbolism. Comp. my treatise On the Relation between General and Ecclesiastical Symbolism, in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Christliche Wissenschaft, &c ., 1855, Nos4–6; and the recent writings on heathendom by Wuttke [Geschichte des Heidenthums, 1852ff.], Döllinger [Heidenthum und Judenthum, 1851], Stiefelhagen, Lasaulx, and others. [Schelling, Philosophie der Mythologie, 1857; Fabri, Die Entstehung des Heidenthums, 1859; Nägelsbach on the Homeric, and Post-Homeric Theology, 1840, 1857; Gladstone, Studies on Homer, 1858; W. S. Tyler, The Theology of the Greek Poets, 1867.—P. S.]

6. The description of the original form of natural religion does not justify the conclusion that the revelation of God in Christ would not have occurred under the presupposition of human righteousness. But it leads us to conclude that the progress from the one to the other would have been effected in the form of a historical continuity.

7. The explanation of Gentile corruption from the great peccatum omissionis. “They have not honored and thanked God” ( Romans 1:21); this is a penetrating glance which sheds its light also upon the first fall, as well as upon every genesis of sin. On the significance of this passage for the whole Epistle, see the Introduction and the Exeg. Notes.

8. God’s positive government, which impels evil through trial and temptation into the process of development from righteous judgment (sin punished by sin) and to righteous judgment ( Romans 11:32), corresponds with God’s negative abandonment, in which the first ground for the punishment is revealed, not only because God, as the Holy One, must withdraw His Spirit from the consciousness of sinful man, but also because He regards man in his freedom, and leaves him to its action (see my Positive Dogmatics, p468).

[Sin punished by sin. The Rabbinical tract, Pirke Aboth, 100:2, Romans 1:1, says: “Festina ad prœceptum leve tanquam ad grave, et fuge transgressionem; prœceptum enim trahit prœceptum, et transgressio transgressionem; quia merces prœcepti prœceptum Esther, et transgressionis transgressio.’ Seneca ( Ephesians 16): “The first and greatest punishment of any commission of sin is the sin itself which is committed.” De Wette, ad Romans 1:24 : “This view (that sin is punished by sin) is no mere Jewish doctrine, but it is universally true from the absolute standpoint of religion.” Schiller:

“This is the very curse of evil deed,

That of new evil it becomes the seed.”

But this judicial punishment of sin with sin does not make God the author of sin in any sense. Dr. South (Serm, ii. on 2 Thessalonians 2:11) says: “God may make one sin the punishment of another, though it still is to be remembered that it is one thing for God to give a man over to sin, and quite another for God to cause him to sin; the former importing in it no more than God’s providential ordering of a man’s circumstances, so that he shall find no check or hinderance in the course of his sin; but the latter implying also a positive efficiency toward the commission or production of a sinful act; which God never does, nor can do; but the other He both may, and, in a judicial way, very often does. … In all which God is not at all the author of sin, but only pursues the great work and righteous ends of His providence, in disposing of things or objects in themselves good or indifferent, toward the compassing of the same; howbeit, through the poison of men’s vicious affections, they are turned into the opportunities and fuel of sin, and made the occasion of their final destruction; Romans 9:17; Romans 9:22.” Dr. Hodge: “God often punishes one sin by abandoning the sinner to the commission of others. Paul repeats this idea three times, Romans 1:24; Romans 1:26; Romans 1:28. This judicial abandonment is consistent with the holiness of God and the free agency of man. God does not impel or entice to evil. He ceases to restrain. He says of the sinner, Let him alone; Romans 1:24-28.”—P. S.]

9. The deep truth in the proof of the connection between religious and moral corruption.

10. The intimate connection between the denial of the δόξα of God and the degradation of the δόξα of the human form by whoredom, and between the denial of the truth of God and the degradation of the true relations of human nature, as represented by Paul, has not been properly observed. See Exeg. Notes.

11. Other enumerations of sins and crimes in the Scriptures: see 2 Corinthians 12:20; Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3; 1 Timothy 1:9; 2 Timothy 3:2.

12. Sin reaches its climax in wicked maxims and principles. They are demoniacal in their character, and the intellectual side of the service of the devil, which may be known not only in its gross forms, but also in the subtle form of cowardly idolatry of what is base, and which in this shape is widely diffused. [Yet, even in the most reprobate sinner, the voice of conscience cannot be entirely extinguished (“knowing the judgment of God, “ Romans 1:32). It makes him uneasy and miserable on earth, and will be his condemnation in the other world.—P. S.]

13. While the Apostle has here described the dark side of heathendom, the second chapter shows that the whole of heathendom does not appear to him under this dark aspect. In the first chapter he describes the prevailing Antinomian tendency of heathendom, in opposition to the prevailing legalistic tendency of Judaism.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Romans 1:18-21

In what does the beginning of all the real sinful corruption of the world, and of the Gentiles in particular, consist? 1. In the neglect of the general manifestations of God by creation; 2. in neglect to worship God by praise and thanksgiving.—Against what will God’s wrath be sent from heaven? 1. Against all ungodliness; 2. against all unrighteousness of men who hold back the truth in unrighteousness ( Romans 1:18).

The revelation of wrath, and the revelation of love, as they, 1. Are opposed to each other; 2. are closely connected with each other.—The revelation of God in nature is a revelation of His invisible nature—that is, of His eternal power and Godhead ( Romans 1:19-20).—He who knows God, should praise and thank Him.—The knowledge and worship of God.—Neglect of the worship of God leads to obscuring the knowledge of God ( Romans 1:21).

Luther: Where there is no faith, reason falls from one depth to another, until it is totally blinded in its speculations, as is the case with all self-conceited and heated brains ( Romans 1:21).

Starke: Even after the fall, every man has a natural knowledge of the nature and works of God; yet this is not sufficient to lead him to salvation ( Romans 1:19).—God esteems our knowledge according to the means we have of obtaining it. Thus He demands more knowledge from the Jews than from the Gentiles, and still more from us Christians ( Romans 1:21).—As God is a living God, so must our knowledge of Him also be vital, and express itself in praise and thanks ( Romans 1:21).—Langii Op. Bibl.: Whoever denies the wrath of God, and describes God alone according to mere love, thereby obscures also the greatness of the grace and love of God, and leads others to despise this grace and love ( Romans 1:18).—Hedinger: God does not leave Himself without a witness among the heathen. All creatures eloquently testify to His might and wisdom ( Romans 1:20). From Quesnel: Hugo de Arca: Omnis creatura tribus vocibus nobis loquitur: prima est famulantis, accipe beneficium; secunda admonentis, redde debitum servitium; tertia comminantis, fuge supplicium ( Romans 1:20).

Bengel: Whatever is under heaven, and not under the gospel, is under the wrath ( Romans 1:18).—The heart of man conforms to its thoughts ( Romans 1:21).

Gerlach: The sin against which God’s wrath is directed shows itself in the double form of ungodliness and unrighteousness, according as man sins more directly against God, or against himself and his neighbor ( Romans 1:18).—As soon as man ceases to direct himself to the holy and gracious God, he worships only God’s power and beauty (?), and makes Nature his God ( Romans 1:21).

Heubner: The denial of God can never be excused, for man can know God ( Romans 1:19).

The Pericope for the 11 th Sunday after Trinity ( Romans 1:16-20).—Heubner: The joy of the Christian in the confession of faith: 1. Disposition; 2. necessity; 3. how are we fitted for it?—How shall we learn to estimate properly the value of the gospel? 1. When we experience its power in our own hearts; 2. when we perceive properly the wretched condition of the human race without Christianity—its religious as well as its moral condition; 3. when we learn the insufficiency of natural religion, which reveals God’s existence and power, but not His mercy toward sinners.—The relation of natural and revealed religion: 1. Harmony; 2. difference; 3. inferences.

Lange: For the wrath of God. Wrath a proof of the gospel: 1. Of its necessity; 2. its truth; 3. its glory.—On the difference between the knowledge and perception of God.—The general manifestation of God, or the relation between natural religion and revealed religion in its narrower sense.—The beginning of all sin is always at bottom a sin of neglect.—The two sides of piety: to praise God, and to thank Him.

[Tillotson: Romans 1:18-19. If it were only the wrath and displeasure of men that the sinner were exposed to, there might be reason enough for fear; but the wrath and vengeance of men bears no comparison with the wrath of God. Their arm is short, and their power small; they may shoot their most poisonous arrows at us, and at last kill us; but they cannot pursue us into the other world. But the wrath of God has none of these limits.—The fear of God’s wrath: Men may harden their foreheads, and conquer all sense of shame; but they cannot perfectly stifle and subdue their fears. They can hardly so extinguish the fear of hell, but that some sparks of that fire will ever and anon be flying about in their consciences.—South (sermon on Natural Religion without Revelation, sufficient to render a sinner inexcusable ( Romans 1:20): I heartily wish that all young persons would lodge this one observation deep in their minds: That God and nature have joined wisdom and virtue by such a near cognation, or, rather, such an inseparable connection, that a wise, prudent, and honorable old age is seldom or never found but as the reward and effect of a sober, virtuous, and well-spent youth.—Scott: Even to this day, if any nations seem to be sunk into so entire a stupidity as to have no notions of a God remaining among them, this still more clearly proves, not man’s want of rational powers, but his carnal enmity to God and religion, through which he becomes more and more the besotted and blind slave of Satan.—Clarke: Paul’s purpose is to show: 1. That all the heathen nations are utterly corrupt, and deserving of punishment; 2. that the Jews, notwithstanding the greatness of their privilege, were no better than the Gentiles.—Hodge: The folly and darkness of which the Apostle here speaks are expressive of want of Divine knowledge, which is but the effect and cause of moral depravity.—J. F. H.]

Romans 1:22-32

Abandonment of the Gentile world: 1. Why did God abandon them? a. Because they changed His glory into something transitory and corruptible; b. His truth into a lie2. In what respect did God abandon them? a. In pollution of the flesh and spirit; b. in utter hardness of heart ( Romans 1:22-32).—How dreadful to be abandoned by God! Because1. His Spirit departs; 2. sin becomes punishment.—Has Paul described the moral pollution of the Gentile world in too dark colors? No. For what the Apostle says is corroborated by witnesses from its very midst1. Of ancient times (Aristophanes, Horace, Juvenal); 2. of the present day (modern Hindu literature, &c).—He who would describe sin, must be strengthened by looking up to God ( Romans 1:25).—The heathen world of the present day is the same as that at the time of Paul, and therefore can be converted only by the same means (the gospel).—He who knows how to do good, and does not do it, sins ( Romans 1:32).—What men are hardened? Those who (1) know God’s righteousness, (2) yet do what deserves death, and (3) are not contented to have pleasure in those who do it ( Romans 1:32).

Luther: The real Epicureans are those who live as if there were no God; who boast much, and would have others boast of them that they are something extraordinary, when they really are not ( Romans 1:30).

Starke: It was a crime of pride, when they said, We are not so foolish ( Romans 1:22).—To consider one’s self wise and shrewd, and yet to possess foolish principia, is the greatest folly; especially when exhibited by the world’s wise men in published writings ( Romans 1:22).—The wisest and most learned are often also the most perverted.—It is absolutely unreasonable to worship God under the image of a beast; for what king, prince, and honorable man would permit himself to be represented in the form of an ox, or hog (!). How much less can God be treated thus ( Romans 1:23).—He who forsakes God, will be forsaken also by God ( Romans 1:24).—The most direct path to atheism, is to regard God unworthy to be known ( Romans 1:28).—Goodness goes gently, but evil goes violently, and will be host in the house. It foams and ferments like new wine ( Romans 1:29).—Hedinger: Sin is sometimes the punishment of sin ( Romans 1:24).—Osiander Bibl.: Teachers and preachers must be careful to speak of sins against God and nature in such a way that those sins be prevented and guarded against, rather than learned and committed ( Romans 1:26).—Cramer: Although the neglect to know God is regarded by the world as no sin, or, if a sin, the least of all, it is really a fountain of all sin, and, finally, of all the penalties consequent upon sin ( Romans 1:28).

Heubner: The ruin of the Gentile world is a warning for Christians: Apostasy from the word of God induces similar aberrations at all times—a new though more refined heathenism ( Romans 1:22).—God forsakes only those who will not hear Him ( Romans 1:24).—A wicked state of heart leads to absolute pleasure in wickedness itself ( Romans 1:32).

Besser: Unnaturalness follows from the deification of nature ( Romans 1:27).

Lange: The connection between religious and moral ruin is exhibited also in the world at the present time.—The barbarous disregard of the human person in all sexual sins, as often concealed beneath the most refined masks of culture, is closely connected with the irreligious disregard of the personality of God and man.—A fundamental sanctification of the sexual relations can arise only from the vital knowledge of the dignity of personal life.—Sin taking on the form of the devilish nature in wicked maxims.

[Scott: Religion moderates and regulates natural affections, but excess of depravity extinguishes them. It is a proof of more determined impiety for men to take pleasure in the company of the enemies of God, than to commit many crimes whilst the heart and conscience protest against them.—Clarke: We see what the world was, and what it would ever have been, had not God sent a divine revelation of His will, and established a public ministry to proclaim it. Were man left to the power and influence of his fallen nature, he would always be what the Apostle here describes as the condition of the Gentile world.—Comprehensive Comm.: No wickedness so heinous, but a reprobate mind will comply.

Hodge (condensed): 1. It is the very nature of sin to be inexcusable, and worthy of punishment; 2. as the works of God reveal His eternal power and Godhead, we should accustom ourselves to see in them the manifestations of His perfections; 3. the human intellect is as erring as the human heart; 4. as the light of nature is insufficient to lead the heathen to God and holiness, it is our obvious and urgent duty to send them the light of the Bible; 5. sins of uncleanness are peculiarly debasing and demoralizing; 6. to take pleasure in those who do good, makes us better; as to delight in those who do evil, is the surest way to become even more degraded than they are themselves.—Compare two sermons by R. South on The Heinous Guilt of Taking Pleasure in Other Men’s Sins; and sermon by C. Girdlestone on Pleasure in the Sight of Sin (Parochial Sermons).—J. F. H.]

[ Romans 1:32. South (Sermon on the text): That sin (which sympathizes with and patronizes the sinner) is a pitch beyond all other sins, and such an one as must nonplus the devil himself to proceed farther. It is the very extremity, the fulness, and the concluding period of sin; the last line and finishing stroke of the devil’s image, drawn upon the soul of man.—P. S.]

Third Section.—Gradual transition from the corruption of the Gentiles to that of the Jews. The universality of the corruption, and, with the universality of guilt, that worst corruption, the judgment of others. This judgment is likewise judged by the continuance of a universal antagonism, within the universal corruption, between pious, earnest men, and obstinate rebels, both among Gentiles and Jews, in view of the righteous, impartial government of God by virtue of the continuance of the universal legislation of God in the conscience. The revelation of the antagonism of loyal Gentiles and disloyal Jews on the day of the proclamation of the gospel.

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