ROMAN5, 1, 817. "First, 1
thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of
throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom Iserve with my spirit
in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in
my prayers; making request if by any means now at length I might have a aA
prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see you,
that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be
established; that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual
faith both of you and me. Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that
often-times I purposed to come unto you, (but was let hitherto,) that I might
have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am a debtor
both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise.
So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at
Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of
God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to
the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to
faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith." IT
does not require much in the way of exposition to set forth the meaning of
these verses. Tht spiritual gift, mentioned in the 11th verse, is one of those
gifts by the Holy Ghost, which the apostles had it in their power to transmit
to their disciples- a power which seems to have signalized them above all the
Christians of that period. Many could speak tongues and work miracles; but they
could not make others either speak tongues or work miracles. The gifts
themselves it was competent for them to have, but not the faculty of
communicating them. This seems to have been the peculiar prerogative of
apostles- which Simon Magus desired to have, but could not purchase. It was
thus, perhaps, that an apostolical visit was necessary for the introduction of
these powers into any church or congregation of Christians; and, if so, we
would infer that the season of miracles must have passed away with those
Christians, who had been in personal contact with, and were the immediate
descendants of the apostles of our Lord. They left the gift of miracles behind
them - but if they did not leave the power of transmitting this gift behind
them, it might have disappeared with the dying away of all those men on whom
they had actually laid their hands.
In the 14th verse, the phrase I
am debtor,' may be turned into the phrase - I am bound or I am under
obligation, laid upon me by the duties of my office, to preach both to Greeks
and IBarbarians, both to the wise and the unwise.' "
Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel" - a
necessity is laid upon me.
The only other phrase that requires
explanation, and about which indeed there is a difference of interpretation, is
in the 17th verse - from faith to faith. There is one sense assigned to this
expression, very consistent certainly with the general truth of the gospel -
but which can scarcely be admitted in this place, save by that kind of hurried
acquiescence, which is too often rendered on the part of those, who like no
better way of disposing of a passage than to get over it easily. The
righteousness of God is certainly that, in which He hath appointed us sinners
to appear before Him; and which is the only righteousness that He will accept
of at our hands, as our meritorious title to His favour and friendship. Now it
is very true, that this righteousness becomes ours wholly by faith, that by
faith it is received on our part, and by faith it is retained on our part; and
that neither works before faith, nor works after it, have any part in our
justification - and that, therefore, it is not by passing onwards from faith to
works that we further the concern of our justifying righteousness before God;
but only by holding fast the beginning of our confidence even unto the end, and
not casting it away; and if there be any lack in our faith, perfecting that
which is lacking therein - so that it may hold true of us, as it did of the
primitive Christians, of whom it was recorded that their faith groweth
exceedingly. And with these views in their mind, do some hold, that the
righteousness of God being revealed from faith to faith, signifies that as it
is made known and discerned at first in the act of our believing, so the
revelation of it becomes more distinct and manifest, just as the faith becomes
stronger - the things to be discerned being seen in greater brightness and evi-
8 dence, as the organ of discernment grows in clearness and power - not, so
they, from faith unto works, but from faith to faith - marking what is very
true, that our righteousness before God, regarded as the giver of a perfect and
incommutable law, is wholly by faith.
Notwithstanding however of all
the undoubted truth and principle which stand associated with this
interpretation, we think that there are others more simple and obvious. Paul
had already spoken of a transmission of faith from himself to those whom he was
addressing, and of a constant mutual faith between himself and them; and he
tells us elsewhere of faith coming by hearing, and asks how can people believe
unless preachers be sent; and he announces his determination to preach the
gospel to those who are in Rome also; and professes his own faith in the
gospel, under the affirmation that he is not ashamed of it; and declares its
great subject to be the righteousness of God, revealed, as some are disposed to
understand it, from the faith of the preacher to the faith of the hearers.
Others would have it to mean that this righteousness is revealed by the
faithfulness of God, to the faith of men.
But to our mind the best
interpretation is obtained by conjoining the term righteousness with the phrase
in question. For therein is revealed, the righteousness of God from faith, to
faith. We shall thus have revealed in the gospel the righteousness from of or
by faith; and the gift of which is to faith. This is quite at one with the
affirmation of a subsequent passage, that "
the
righteousness which is by faith of Jesus Christ is unto all and upon all that
believe," or the righteousness which is by faith is unto those who
have the faith. As it is written the righteous live, or hold that life which
was forfeited under the law and is restored to them. under the gospel, by
faith.
We now offer the following paraphrase.
First I thank my
God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is in the mouths of all.
For God whom I serve with my whole heart, in the business that He has committed
to me of forwarding His Son's gospel, can testify that I never cease to make
mention of you in all my prayers - making request, if it now be possible in any
way, that I may at length, after unlooked for delay, have with His will a
prosperous journey to you at Rome. For I long to see you, that I may in person
and as a sign of my apostleship, impart to you some gift of the Holy Ghost, in
order to confirm your minds in the faith of this gospel. Or rather, that I may
be comforted, as well as you be con firmed, by the exercises and the sympathies
of our mutual faith. Now you must know, brethren, that it has been long my
purpose to come to you, but have hitherto been prevented, that I might have
some effects of my ministry among you also, even as among the other nations
where I have laboured. I have not yet visited the seat of philosophy, nor come
into contact with its refined and literary people. But I count myself as much
bound to declare the gospel to Greeks, or to men of Attic cultivation and
acquirement, as to rude and ignorant barbarians - as much to the learned in
this world s wisdom, as to the unlearned. So that, as far as it lies with me, I
am quite in readiness to preach the gospel even to you who are at Rome.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ - and, in the work of
declaring it, am as ready to face the contempt and the self-sufficiency of
science, as to go round with it among those more docile and acquiescing tribes
of our species, who have less of fancied wisdom in themselves with which to
confront it. For it is the power of God unto the salvation of all who believe.
It is that, which, however judged and despised as a weak instrument by the men
of this world, it is that to which He, by His power, gives effect for the
recovery of that life which all men had forfeited and lost by sin - and which
can only be restored by a righteousness which. will do away the whole effect of
this sin. Whoso ever believeth in the gospel shall be saved, by having this
life rendered back to him, whether he be Jew or Greek. For the gospel makes
known the righteousness appointed by God - a righteousness by faith, and which
is unto all who have faith - as it is written that the righteous, and those
only are those who have that righteousness which God will accept, have it unto
spiritual life here and unto eternal life hereafter by faith.'
It will not
be our general practice to embarrass you with many interpretations of the same
passage; and we do it at present, only for the purpose of ushering in the
following observation. There do occur a few ambiguous phrases in Scripture; and
this is quite consistent with such a state of revelation there, as that the
great and essential truths which are unto salvation shall stand as clearly and
as legibly on the face of the evangelical record, as if written with a
sun-beam. And whereas there may enter into your minds a feeling of insecurity,
when you behold men of scholarship at variance about the meaning of one of
those doubtful expressions, we call you to remark how much the controversy
between them, is, in many instances, restricted merely to what the subject of
the expression is, and not to what the doctrine of the Bible is upon that
subject.
Thus controversialists may all be at one about the scriptural
doctrine on every given topic, though they may not be at one as to the question
- what is the topic which in this particular clause is here adverted to. The
first class of interpreters, about the meaning of the ambiguous phrase in the
17th verse of this chapters may think that it relates to the doctrine of our
justification being wholly of faith; and that it retains this as its alone
footing, throughout the whole course of an advanced Christian, as he makes
progress both in faith and in the works of righteousness; and they may not
think that it relates to the topic assigned, either by the second or third
class of interpreters; and yet they may be entirely at one with both, in the
judgment and understanding they have on each of the topics - concurring with
the second in the general truth that a frequent and established way for the
propagation of faith in the world, is by its passing from him who speaks to him
who listens, and who in the act of listening becomes a believer - and
concurring also with the third in their general principle, that the
righteousness appointed by God for a sinner to appear in His presence, is
constituted, not by working but by believing, and that it is transferred as a
possession unto all who believe.
They, one and all of them, may have
the same mind upon the same topics - because shone upon in the same way, by the
light of many other express and undoubted testimonies about these topics, which
lie up and down in the Bible; and the only question of disputation between them
may be, which of these particular topics happens to be the theme of the apostle
in the passage before us - a very subordinate question, you will observe, to
that more vital and essential one, which relates to the meaning of an article
of faith - a question about which there may be varieties of sentiment among
men, who are substantially at one in all that relates to the doctrines of
Christianity. And we think that it ought to quell your apprehensions, and to
reduce the estimate you may have previously made of those controversies among
good men, which some would represent as quite endless and inextricable, when
you are thus made to understand, that, in a very great number of cases they
refer, not to what the whole amount of the Bible testimony is about this one or
that other portion of the theological creed - hut to what the jositiou is which
is specially taken or adverted to in some of the incidental or sub-ordinate
passages.
There is nothing to alarm or to unsettle in those lesser
diversities which we are now alluding to. Nay it ought rather to establish your
confidence, when you see that these diversities are held by the very men who
hold the great principles of Christianity in common - by men who, in thus
dissenting from each other on particular passages, evince that to each of them
there belongs the habit of independent thinking - and who thus stamp the value
of so many distinct and independent testimonies, on those great doctrines which
they have received from the light of many passages, and by which they are
united in the profession of one Faith and one Lord and one Baptism.
A
controversy about the doctrine of a particular passage is one thing. A
controversy about the truth of a particular doctrine is another. The one
implies a difference of understanding, about the sense of one passage. The
other may imply a difference of understanding, about the general voice and
testimony of Scripture as made up of many passages.
Let us now pass on
from our exposition of the meaning of words, to our application of the matter
that is conveyed by them. And here we have only time to advert to the affection
and the strenuousness with which the apostolic mind of Paul gave itself up to
apostolic business - how he rebukes by his example those who make the work of
winning souls to Christ a light and superficial concern - how his whole man
seems to have been engrossed by it - making it a matter of gratitude when he
heard of its prosperity - making it a matter of prayer when he desired its
furtherance - making it a matter of active personal exertion when it required
his presence or his labour. To this work he gave himself wholly; and, by adding
prayer to the ministry of the word, teaches us how much the effect of this
ministry is due to those special infiuences, which are called down from Heaven
by the urgency of special applications sent up from believers in the world.
There is one trait of his mind, which frequently breaks out in his
communications with his own converts. He is sometimes obliged to affirm his
apostolic superiority over them, or to say something which implies it.
But it is evident how much he recoils from such an assumption; and how
it sets him to the expressions and the expedients of delicacy, with a view to
soften the disparity between himself and his disciples; and how he likes to
address them in the terms of equal and friendly companionship - dropping upon
all possible occasions the character of the teacher in that of the
fellow-Christian; and never feeling so comfortable in his intercourse with
them, as when he places himself on the level of their common hopes and common
sympathies and common infirmities. It is altogether, we apprehend, such a
movement of humility on the part of Paul, that lies at the transition from the
eleventh verse which signalizes him above the whole church, to the twelfth
which brings him down to a participation of the same faith and the same comfort
with them all.
We shall not at present, bring forth any remark on a
phrase, which occurs frequently in this epistle, the righteousness of God
- for we shall have a freer and a fuller opportunity of doing so afterwards.
But let us not pass over the intrepidity of Paul, in the open and public avowal
of his Christianity. We call it intrepidity, though he speaks not here of
having to encounter violence, but only of having to encounter shame. For, in
truth, it is often a higher effort and evidence of intrepidity, to front
disgrace, than it is to front danger. There is many a man who would march up to
the cannon's mouth for the honour of his country - yet would not face the laugh
of his companions for the honour of his Saviour.
We doubt not that
there are individuals here present, who if Turkish armada were wafted on the
wings of conquest to our shores, and the ensigns of Mahomet were proudly to
wave over the fallen faith of our ancestors, and they were plied with all the
devices of eastern cruelty to abjure the name of Christian, and do homage to
the false prophet - there are individuals here, whose courage would bear them
in triumph through such a scene of persecuting violence; and yet whose courage
fails them every day, in the softer scenes of their social and domestic
history. The man who under the excitements of a formal and furious persecution,
were brave enough to be a dying witness to the truth as it is in Jesus,
crouches into all the timidity of silence under the omnipotency of fashion; and
ashamed of the Saviour and His words, recoils in daily and familiar
conversation from the avowals of a living witness for His name. There is as
much of the truly heroic in not being ashamed of the profession of the gospel,
as in not being afraid of it. Paul was neither: and yet when we think of what
he once was in literature; and how aware he must have been of the loftiness of
its contempt for the doctrine of a crucified Saviour; and that in Rome the
whole power and bitterness of its derisions were awaiting him; and that the
main weapon with which he had to confront it was such an argument as looked to
be foolishness to the wisdom of this world - we doubt not that the disdain
inflicted by philosophy, was naturally as formidable to the mind of this
apostle, as the death inflicted by the arm of bloody violence. So that even
now, and\ in an age when Christianity has no penalties and no proscriptions to
keep her down, still, if all that deserves the name of Christianity be exploded
from conversation - if a visible embarrassment run through a company, when its
piety or its doctrine is introduced among them - if, among beings rapidly
moving towards immortality, any serious allusion to the concerns of immortality
statnps an oddity on the character of him who brings it forward - if, through a
tacit but firm compact which regulates the intercourse of this world, the
gospel is as effectually banished from the ordinary converse of society, as by
the edicts of tyranny the profession of it was banished in the days of Claudius
from Rome:- then he who would walk in his Christian integrity among the men of
this lukewarm and degenerate age - he who would do all and say all in the name
of Jesus - he who, in obedience to his Bible, would season with grace and with
that which is to the use of edifying the whole tenor of his communications -
he, in short, who, rising above that meagre and mitigated Christianity, which
is as remote as Paganism from the real Christianity of the New Testament,
would, out of the abundance of his heart, without shrinking and without shame,
speak of the things which pertain to the kingdom of God - he will find that
there are trials still, which, to some temperaments, are as fierce and as fiery
as any in the days of martyrdom; and that, however in some select and peculiar
walk he may find a few to sympathise with him, yet many are the families and
many are the circles of companionship, where the persecution of contempt calls
for determination as strenuous, and for firmness as manly, as ever in the most
intolerant ages of our church did the persecution of direct and personal
violence.
And let it be remarked too, that, in becoming a Christian
now, the same transition is to be made from one style of sentiment to another,
which was made by the apostle. It is as much the effort of nature, as it ever
was of a corrupt and ignorant Judaism, to seek to establish a righteousness of
its own; and, in passing from a state of nature to that of grace, there must
still be a renouncing of that riohteousness, and a transference of our trust
and of our entire dependence to another.
Now, in the act of making that
passage, there is also the very same encounter with this world's ridicule and
observation, which the apostle had to brave; and which, on the strength of
right and resolute principle, the apostle overcame. The man who hopes to get to
heaven by a good life, and who professes himself to be secure on the strength
of his many virtues and his many decencies, and who dislikes both the mystery
and the seriousness which stand associated with the doctrine of salvation by
faith alone - such a man has no more Christianity, than what he may easily and
familiarly show - and in sporting such sentiments, even among the most giddy
and unthinking of this world's generations, he will neither disgrace himself by
singularity, nor be resisted as the author of any invasion whatever on time
general style and spirit of this world's companies. But should he pass from
this condition, which is neither more nor less than that of a Pharisee in
disguise; and, struck by a sense of spiritual nakedness, flee for refuge to
another righteousness than his own; and seek for justification by faith; a
privilege which is rendered to faith ; and profess now, that he hopes to get to
heaven by the obedience unto death which has been rendered for him by the great
Mediator - such a style of utterance as this, would serve greatly more to
peeuliarize a man among the conversations of society - and these are the words
of Christ of which he is greatly apt to be more ashamed.
A temptation
meets him here, which no doubt met the apostle, when his Christianity first
came to be known among those fellow-students who had been trained along with
him at the feet of Gamaliel; and it is at that point when, for the Jewish
principle of self-righteousness he adopts the evangelical principle of
justification by faith - it is then that he becomes more an outcast than
before, from the toleration and the sympathy of unconverted men.
Let
the same consideration uphold such that up held the mind of the apostle. All
that you possibly can do, for the purpose of substantiating a claim upon
Heaven, is but the weakness of man, idly straining after a salvation which he
will miss. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ; and, however simple the expedient,
the power and the promise of God are on the side of your obtaining salvation
which will certainly be accomplished. The Syrian was affronted when told to dip
himself in Jordan for the cure of his leprosy; and to many in like manner is it
a subject of offence, when told to wash out their sins in the blood of the
atonement - calling on the name of the Lord. But the same power which gave
efficacy to the one expedient, gives efficacy to the other; and in such a way
too, as to invest that method of salvation which looks meanness and foolishness
to the natural eye - to invest it with the solemn venerable imposing character
of God's asserted majesty, of God's proclaimed and vindicated righteousness.
And here let us remark the whole import of the term salvation. The
power of God in this achievement of it was put forth in something more than in
bowing down the Divinity upon our world, and there causing it to sustain the
burden of the world's atonement - in something more than the conflicts of the
garden or the agonies of the cross - in something more than the resurrection of
the crucified Saviour from His tomb - in something more than the consequent
expunging of every believer's name from the book of condemnation, and the
inscribing of it in the book of life. There is a power put forth on the person
of believers. There is the working of a mighty power to usward who believe.
There is the achievement of a spiritual resurrection upon every one of them. By
the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, the power of which is applied to every
soul that has faith, there is a cleansing of that soul from its moral and
spiritual leprosy. And hence a connection between two things, which to the
world's eye looks incomprehensible - a connection between faith, which it might
be feared would have led to indolent security on the one hand, and a most
thorough substantial pervading reformation of heart and conduct on the other.
The expedient does not appear a likely one to the eye of nature. But the power
of God stamps an efficacy upon it; and He has multiplied in ahh ages of the
church the living examples of marked and illustrious virtue in the person of
believers; and has held them forth to the world as trophies of the power of the
gospel; and has put to silence the gainsayers; and afforded matter of glory to
the friends of the truth; and upheld them in the principle and purpose not to
be ashamed of it.
We conclude with that awful denunciation of the Saviour.
"
He who is ashamed of me before this evil and
adulterous generation, of him will I be ashamed before my holy
angels." In the last clause
the just
shall live by faith" - we are apt to conceive of justice as a
personal and inherent attribute. In the original, the term for just has the
same root with the term for righteousness - and this strengthens our impression
of the true meaning here, which is, that they who are righteous with the
righteousness of God, mentioned in the same verse, and who in virtue of being
so have a title and a security for life, hold that life by faith.
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Lecture 4
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