St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. II

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Gore Charles. St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. II

PREFACE

THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS

DIVISION IV. CHAPTERS IX-XI. The theodicy or justification of God for His dealings with the Jews

DIVISION IV. § 1. CHAPTER IX. 1-13. The present rejection of Israelites no breach of a divine promise

DIVISION IV. § 2. CHAPTER IX. 14-29. God's liberty in showing mercy and judgement always retained and asserted

DIVISION IV. § 3. CHAPTER IX. 30-X. 21. Lack of faith the reason of Israel's rejection

DIVISION IV. § 4. CHAPTER XI. 1-12. God's judgement on Israel neither universal nor final

DIVISION IV. § 567. CHAPTER XI. 13-36. God's present purpose for the Jews through the Gentiles: and so for all humanity

DIVISION V. CHAPTERS XII-XV. 13. Practical Exhortation

DIVISION V. § i. CHAPTER XII. 1-2. Self-surrender in response to God

DIVISION V. § 2. CHAPTER XII. 3-21. The community spirit

DIVISION V. § 3. CHAPTER XIII. 1-7. The Christians and the imperial power

DIVISION V. § 4. CHAPTER XIII. 8-10. The summary debt

DIVISION V. § 5. CHAPTER XIII. 11-14. The approach of the day

DIVISION V. § 6. CHAPTER XIV. 1-23. Mutual toleration

DIVISION V. § 7. CHAPTER XV. 1-13. Unselfish forbearance and inclusiveness

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

DIVISION VI. § 1. CHAPTER XV. 14-33. His excuse for writing and his hope of coming

DIVISION VI. § 2. CHAPTER XVI. 1-2. A commendation

DIVISION VI. § 3. CHAPTER XVI. 3-16. Personal greetings

DIVISION VI. § 4. CHAPTER XVI. 17-20. Final warning

DIVISION VI. § 5. CHAPTER XVI. 21-23. Salutations from St. Paul's companions

DIVISION VI. § 6. CHAPTER XVI. 25-27. Final Doxology

APPENDED NOTES

NOTE A. See vol. i. p. 59

NOTE B. See vol. i. p. 103

NOTE C. See vol. i. p. 129

NOTE D. See vol. i. pp. 143 ff

NOTE E. See vol. i. p. 196

NOTE F. See vol. i. p. 215

NOTE G. See vol. ii. p. 136

NOTE H. See vol. ii. p. 147

NOTE I. See vol. ii. p. 179

Отрывок из книги

St. Paul has concluded his great exposition of the meaning of 'the gospel': that in it is the disclosure of a divine righteousness into which all mankind – Jews and Gentiles on the same level of need and sin – are to be freely admitted by simply believing in Jesus. The believer in Jesus first welcomes the absolute and unmerited forgiveness of his sins, which his redeemer has won for him, and thus acquitted passes into the spiritual strength and joy and fellowship of the new life, the life of the redeemed humanity, lived in Jesus Christ, the second Adam or head of our race. The contemplation of the present moral freedom, and the glorious future prospect, of this catholic body – the elect of God in Jesus Christ – has in the eighth chapter filled the apostle's language with the glow of an enthusiasm almost unparalleled in all the compass of his epistles. And he is intending to pass on to interpret to the representatives of this church of Christ at Rome some of the moral obligations which follow most clearly from the consideration of what their faith really means. This ethical division of the epistle begins with chapter xii. The interval (ix-xi) is occupied with a discussion which is an episode, in the sense that the epistle might be read without it and no feeling of a broken unity would force itself upon us. None the less the discussion not only confronts and silences an obvious objection to St. Paul's teaching, but also brings out ideas about the meaning of the divine election, and the responsibility involved in it, which are vital and necessary for the true understanding of the 'free grace of God.' For these chapters serve really to safeguard the all-important sense of our human responsibility under the rich and unmerited conditions of divine privilege in which we find ourselves.

St. Paul's argument so far has involved an obvious conclusion. God's elect are no longer the Jews in particular. On the contrary, the Jews in bulk have lost their position and become apostates in rejecting the Christ. This result in the first place cuts St. Paul to the heart, for his religious patriotism was peculiarly intense. But in the second place it furnishes an objection in the mouth of the Jew against St. Paul's whole message. For if God had really rejected His chosen people, He had broken His word in so doing. God had pledged Himself to Israel: the Old Testament scriptures were full of passages which might be quoted to this effect. Thus —

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What has been already said will have been enough to guard against the main sources of mistake in reading this section. St. Paul might have much to say about God's righteousness in general, and large ways of vindicating it. But here he holds fast to the single aspect of righteousness according to which it means that God has been true to the original principles of His covenant. The God who chose Abraham and Moses is the God who is now, and rightly on His own declared principles of government, rejecting the greater part of the people of Abraham and Moses. This – faithfulness to His own declared principles – is what St. Paul here means by His righteousness. And as it was God's declared principle to retain His own liberty to show mercy on men according to His free will, inside or outside the chosen people, so on the other hand He retained His liberty to exhibit His judgement of hardening according to His will inside or outside the chosen people. He who brought Pharaoh the Egyptian upon the stage of history36, as an example of hardening judgement, is within His right in doing the same now with (the mass of) the people of His choice. The liberty asserted for God is wholly consistent with His being found, in fact, to have 'hardened' those only who have deserved hardening by their own wilfulness. It was for such a moral cause that God hardened the hearts of the Jews, that 'seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not hear37.' We can feel no doubt that some similar moral cause underlay the hardening of Pharaoh. But this is not St. Paul's present point. All his argument is directed to asserting God's liberty to show mercy or harden, irrespectively of considerations of race, when and where He in His sovereign moral will chooses.

We should notice that St. Paul's method is here, as elsewhere, what is called ideal or abstract, in the sense that he makes abstraction of a particular point of view; and, apparently indifferent to being misunderstood, substantiates his argument upon the particular aspect which he has taken apart from the whole matter in hand, till it is done with, and then other points can be taken in their turn. And he does not, as a modern writer would do, painfully correlate the various aspects of the subject38.

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