Bible Commentaries

Romans 16:27

The Doxologies of Scripture.

I. There are two things included in a doxology—the expression of a wish and the performance of a duty. Their essential features are these: (1) They are always and exclusively addressed to God; (2) the mind of the writer fastens specially on some aspect of the Divine character, some attribute or group of attributes, as the foundation of His claim to universal and perpetual praise.

II. While the sacred writers no doubt recognised the proofs of Divine wisdom, furnished by the works of nature and the movements of Providence, their minds were habitually fastened on the method of salvation taught in Scripture as the grand and decisive proof by which all others are surpassed and superseded. It was through Christ, not only as the brightness of God's glory and the image of His person, but as a Saviour, a propitiation set forth by God Himself, a means devised and provided by Him for the accomplishment of what appeared impossible; it was through Christ, considered in this light, that the lustre of God's wisdom shone in dazzling brightness upon Paul and John and Peter. The simplest and most obvious explanation of the words "through Christ" is that Christ is the medium through which the Divine glory is and must be glorified. Not only does He share by right of His Divinity in all the Divine honours, not only by His mediation and atoning passion does He furnish the most luminous display of Divine wisdom; but as Head of the Church and as the Father of a spiritual seed, to whom that wisdom is and ever will be an object of adoring admiration; and as their everliving and prevailing Intercessor with the Father, He is the means, the instrument, the channel through which everlasting glory shall be given to the only wise God, who has established a Church, and caused the gospel to be preached for that very purpose, "that now, unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God; unto Him be glory in the Church by Jesus Christ, through all ages, world without end. Amen."

J. A. Alexander, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, p. 133.

Reference: 16—G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 213.