Kitabı oku: «St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. II», sayfa 7

3. 'Overthrow not for meat's sake the work of God.' 'It is good not to eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth.' 'Wherefore, if meat maketh my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore, that I make not my brother to stumble¹⁵⁸.' Here is the right principle of 'total abstinence' which does not deny the legitimate use of what it yet permanently abandons for love's sake. St. Paul would have Timothy use a little wine when it was for his health's sake, but when health was not in question, he would have all men ask, not how much liberty in this or that is lawful for them, but how they can avoid causing offence – how they can do most good. This principle admits of application in many directions. For instance, it may be very hard to determine why certain minor forms of gambling are wrong, or whether they are positively wrong. But St. Paul would have the other question asked – Can it be denied that the best way to avoid leading my brother into one of the most common dangers of our time, is to keep altogether free from a habit which in any case can do no good to body or mind?

4. Here, as in x. 7, St. Paul touches upon the descent into Hades, and indicates the purpose of it. 'For this end Christ died, that He might be Lord of the dead.' It might have been imagined that the dim realms of the dead were outside the jurisdiction of Christ – that the dead have no king – that the kingdom of redemption does not include them. To obviate such an idea, to show the universality of His realm, Christ went down among the dead.

5. In many places of the New Testament there is mention of the thanksgiving before food – the Christian's 'saying grace.' Whether he eat flesh or vegetables he 'giveth God thanks¹⁵⁹.' And the word used is the word which, in its substantive form, is 'eucharist.' And indeed there is meaning in this. The thankful reception by the Christian of the ordinary bread of his daily life as coming from God, touched his common meals with something of the glory of divine communion; and the eucharist in its turn is the common blessing and breaking of the bread, raised by the Holy Spirit to a higher power and consecrated to become the vehicle of the bread of life¹⁶⁰.

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

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

To be told he must not use his normal liberty, must not eat his usual meal or drink his usual cup of wine, because it might scandalize some Christian with the ascetic prejudices of an Essene, or even induce him to do the same against his own conscience – to be told this was annoying to a man who held the 'strong' Christian conviction that all kinds of food were indifferently allowable. The weak scruple of his brother Christian had become an annoying burden of self-denial and self-restraint laid on himself. But this, St. Paul says, is how Christian strength – whether it be the moral strength of clear convictions, or any other sort of faculty¹⁶¹ – must show itself, in readiness to suffer on account of other people's deficiencies, in not resenting the restraints they lay on us, in not expecting to do as we please, but being ready to accommodate ourselves to our neighbour's tastes where it is for his good. That is what our great example did. Plainly His whole human life was putting Himself under the restraints which our weaknesses and narrownesses and slownesses laid on Him. The righteous man in the psalm complains that he has to bear all the reproaches of God which impatient and rebellious Israelites might utter; and that is the picture of Christ bearing our infirmities. (The reproaches which fell on Him were for the very largeness of His love; 'because He received sinners,' and because He received them on the Sabbaths as well as on other days. They were reproaches of God, like Jonah's, because He was too forbearing, too generous.)

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

Here is the central requirement, then, which a catholic church lays on them. It is to be unselfishly inclusive, to welcome into fellowship people who are not naturally to their taste. Our Lord did not scrutinize us men, but received us, of whatever sort we were, that God might be glorified in human brotherhood. He vindicated the truth of God by fulfilling the covenant of circumcision: first, to confirm the promises given to the fathers of Israel¹⁶²; and, secondly, to enlarge the compass of Israel, so that the Gentiles too might share its blessings, out of God's pure mercy apart from any promises. And this also – the fellowship of Jew and Gentile – was matter of ancient prediction by psalmist and prophet. The Roman Christians must not therefore let themselves be discouraged because they have a difficult task to fulfil. And the apostle prays that God, the inspirer of hope, may fill them with such a rich sense of the blessings of believing in Him, that His Spirit, dwelling in them, may make hope to abound in their hearts.

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

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

And again he saith,

 
Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with his people.
 

And again,

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

And again, Isaiah saith,

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

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

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

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

2. St. Paul here, as in writing to the Corinthians¹⁶³, shows himself specially anxious that Gentile Christians should not think they could make light of the Old Testament, or imagine that 'Christ was the end of the law' in any such sense as would make the books of the old covenant superfluous under the new. Their value, he insists, remains permanent. When he is writing to the Corinthians, he finds it in the moral warnings – the warnings of divine judgement upon the chosen people – of which the history is full. In this epistle he is thinking chiefly of the lessons of 'endurance' and divine 'encouragements,' which histories and prophets provide. In his epistle to Timothy¹⁶⁴ he thinks of the books as instruments by the use of which the minister or representative of God may become fully educated and equipped for all the purposes of moral supervision and discipline. They can thus educate and equip him, St. Paul teaches, because they were originally written under the influence of a divine inspiration; but it is only when faith has finally attained its true object in Jesus Christ that their real meaning becomes apparent. And this last principle is implied in almost all his use of the Old Testament.

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

In his use of particular passages in the Old Testament St. Paul here shows himself as free as ever, but with the same fundamental adherence to the true tendency of the Old Testament as a whole. In quoting Ps. lxix. 9 (ver. 3) he is seeing in the afflicted righteous man a type of Christ. This psalm is constantly cited in the New Testament with the same reference¹⁶⁵. It has been supposed¹⁶⁶ that St. Paul here adopts a cry addressed to God by the righteous sufferer in the psalm, and represents it as addressed by Christ to his brother man. 'The reproaches aimed at thee, my despised brother, have fallen upon me.' But, as I have tried to show in the analysis above, this supposition is not needed. Christ is represented appealing to God for succour, because He utterly refuses to take the line of self-pleasing; but bears all that men's impatience of God lays upon Him – all their 'wild and weak complaining.' And it is suggestive to remember, with Origen, that it was Christ's 'receiving of sinners and eating with them,' receiving them on the Sabbath as well as other days, that chiefly brought on Him the reproaches of men. This was probably in St. Paul's mind.

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

In Deut. xxxii. 43 (ver. 10) 'the nations are invited to congratulate Israel on possessing a God like Jehovah, who will effectually take up His people's cause. Such an invitation addressed to the nations (cf. Isa. xlii. 10-12; Ps. xlvii. 2, lxvii. 1-7, &c.) involves implicitly the prophetic truth that God's dealings with Israel have indirectly an interest and importance for the world at large¹⁶⁷.' This is still more plainly implied in Ps. cxvii. 1 (ver. 11).

Isa. xi. 10 (ver. 12) is quoted from the Greek Bible, which is paraphrastic; but the Hebrew also asserts that the messianic king of David's line is to be a 'signal to the nations,' and that they are to 'resort to him' as to an oracle or place of refuge¹⁶⁸.

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

The long letter is almost ended. St. Paul has developed the meaning of the revelation of the divine righteousness. He has vindicated the ways of God to the Jews. He has drawn out sufficiently the moral conclusions from God's mercy to mankind. Now he has only to secure again his good terms with the Roman Christians – which he does with the same tact and the same anxiety as at the beginning¹⁶⁹, – to explain his movements, to send his greetings to individuals, and to bid farewell.

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

St. Paul is very anxious not to be understood as if, while giving the Christians at Rome these exhortations which we have just been reading, he stood in any doubt himself of their goodness of heart and full grasp of Christian principles, or of their fitness to admonish one another. He has only been bold to put them in mind of what they already knew, because of the priestly commission on behalf of his Lord towards all the Gentiles, which the divine grace has bestowed upon him as apostle of the Gentiles. The gospel entrusted to him requires him as a priest to prepare and offer sacrifice; and the sacrifice which he is to prepare, which the consecration of the indwelling Spirit alone can make acceptable, is that of the whole Gentile world. The extent to which this great charge laid upon him has been fulfilled, gives him good reason for boasting as he stands before God – not in himself, but in Christ Jesus. His work has been a pioneer's work. He has made it his ambition purely to lay foundations. Taking words of Isaiah¹⁷⁰ for his motto, he had resolved to go nowhere where any other had been before him to make Christ known. But in that free and open area of a yet unevangelized world, Christ had worked through him to bring the Gentiles to His obedience, and had accompanied his preaching with evidences of miraculous power and with the strong manifestations of the Spirit. So that in the result the work of proclaiming the gospel had been accomplished, starting from Jerusalem, in an extending circuit¹⁷¹ or irregular progress, as far as Illyria.

This world-wide mission would give St. Paul his title to visit Rome¹⁷². But its very greatness has hitherto hindered him. Now however he is hoping to satisfy the desire that has so long possessed him, and to pay them a visit of some length on his way to Spain. That is to say, he hopes to come to them when the task is over which is immediately occupying him. The good will of the churches in Macedonia and Achaia has shown itself in a collection of money for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. This is really the payment of a debt to those to whom they owe their fellowship in Christ's salvation. When then St. Paul has handed over this collection, and secured to its recipients this fruit of his mission, he hopes to pass to Spain by way of Rome; and again, as in his introduction¹⁷³, he expresses his confidence that at Rome, as elsewhere, the fullness of the rich gifts of Christ will accompany his coming.

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

And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. But I write the more boldly unto you in some measure, as putting you again in remembrance, because of the grace that was given me of God, that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles, ministering¹⁷⁴ the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. I have therefore my glorying in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to God. For I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Ghost; so that from Jerusalem, and round about even unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ; yea, making it my aim so to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, that I might not build upon another man's foundation; but, as it is written,

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

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

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

1. St. Paul has a habit of representing those he writes to in the best light¹⁷⁵. But the words 'full of goodness,' 'filled with all knowledge,' 'able to admonish,' are no idle compliments. It is not too much to suggest that St. Paul, as he sees the high part which the church of the capital must play in the world, perceives also, in what he hears of the Roman Christians, evidences of the spirit which will enable them to fulfil it. And history verifies the apostle's anticipation. The letter of the Roman church to the Corinthians, which passes under Clement's name, and was written some forty years after this letter of St. Paul's, is the very embodiment of the spirit of goodness, knowledge, and power to admonish. The princely generosity of the Roman church in all directions was proverbial in the second century¹⁷⁶. If it did not become as distinguished as Alexandria in theological science, it did become a chief centre of theological orthodoxy and government. And the repeated evidences we gain that rigorists, from Hippolytus to Novatian, were so dissatisfied with the policy of the Roman bishops as to separate themselves from their communion, give us good reason to believe that the internal policy of this church was, within just limits, liberal and tolerant.

2. St. Paul here describes his apostolic commission in priestly language. 'The sacrificial terminology is far more marked in the original than it can be in a translation¹⁷⁷.' The word for 'minister of Christ Jesus' is a technical word for priest in the Greek Old Testament¹⁷⁸. The word translated 'ministering' means 'offering sacrifice.' (That which St. Paul describes himself as offering in sacrifice is not the gospel, as our translation might imply: the gospel assigns the sphere of the sacrifice¹⁷⁹, but the sacrifice he has to offer is that of the Gentile world, in Christ, consecrated to be a fit sacrifice by the Spirit.) The phrase also, 'in things pertaining to God' (cf. Hebr. ii. 17), is appropriate to the priest as he stands before God. 'But this is all symbolical language,' it is said. That depends on what we take as the standard of reality in the sacrificing priesthood. If Christ is the standard of priesthood, and His method of making sacrifice the standard method, then St. Paul's account of his priestliness is not appreciably metaphorical, except so far as metaphor belongs to all earthly expressions of heavenly realities; it is rather true to say that the Jewish or heathen priest, with his material victims, was but the dim shadow of a true priest.

The point is that the true Christian idea of sacrifice makes the substance of it to be always persons returning to God the life He gave them. If we must offer sacrifices of money and fruits of the earth, that is because we cannot offer ourselves without our bodies¹⁸⁰, or our bodies without the material supplies on which they depend. 'All things come of God, and of His own do we give Him.' And all our labour and prayer for others must be an offering of them, or a preparation to offer them¹⁸¹, to God; which again is only our assisting them to offer themselves. And all this offering in sacrifice of ourselves and others is rendered possible by the one effectual sacrifice, through which alone we and all men have access to the Father. It takes place 'in Christ Jesus,' who, 'through eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God.' There, at the head of all, is the sacrifice of the person, and that person the Son of Man, who can take up into His very life and sacrifice even all mankind. Throughout it is a sacrifice of persons, or of things only as appertaining to persons. This is the fundamental Christian idea, and this at the bottom necessarily forbids us to separate the thing offered from the person offering, the victim from the priest. The priest is the victim, for what he offers is himself.

It is this idea of sacrifice which is realized in the eucharist. The eucharist is the central sacrifice of the Christian body. It is to start with a presentation of material things, bread and wine of the fruits of the earth, with alms and other offerings it may be: and these oblations are accompanied with prayers and symbolic rites. But all is done that both by word and act the One Sacrifice may be commemorated and pleaded. The outward rite but finds its meaning and justification in that – the sacrifice of the Person. Again we can only take part in it with any spiritual reality by becoming ourselves sharers of His sacrifice – ourselves the sacrifice we offer. 'And here,' we cry, 'we offer and present unto Thee ourselves.' We men, St. Augustine does not scruple to say, are the body of Christ, which is offered in that sacrifice¹⁸². And a quite new light is shed on intercessory prayer, in the eucharist and in the rest of life, when we view it as St. Paul would have us view it, as a presenting in sacrifice before God those for whom we pray, according to the true idea of them which the sanctification of the Spirit would make possible and actual. And a quite new light is shed upon all work for others, when we regard it as the preparing of such a sacrifice for the Holy Spirit to consecrate.

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

3. St. Paul speaks, here and in many places elsewhere, of his grounds for 'glorying,' or rather 'boasting¹⁸³,' in what Christ has wrought through him, and of his 'being ambitious' to preach only where no one had been before him¹⁸⁴. And in reading such passages the question sometimes arises in Christian minds – was there, after all, a strain of egotism unsubdued in St. Paul's character? Now no doubt, unlike other apostles whose writings remain in the New Testament, St. Paul had that sort of passionately personal and individual nature which easily passes into spiritual egotism. This at least is discernible in his epistles. It is also true that the necessity which lay so long upon him of vindicating his own apostolic authority, makes it necessary for him at times to talk about himself and his experiences and his personal methods in a way that to some minds suggests egotism; and there is no obligation upon us to maintain that St. Paul was perfect. But we only understand these passages aright when we remember that there runs through them all a conscious irony. The basis of St. Paul's whole theology was the denial of any possible ground for a man to boast in himself. 'Where is boasting? it is excluded.' 'He that boasteth, let him boast in the Lord.' It is Christ who 'leads St. Paul in' His 'triumph.' What he boasts of is not his own, but Christ's. Of course, this sort of language very easily admits of self-deception. St. Paul shows himself conscious of its danger¹⁸⁵. But there can be no question of the vehement sincerity of St. Paul in repudiating any homage to himself which seemed to put him in the place of Christ, or to substitute the teacher for his message¹⁸⁶. And where his personal gifts of intellect might most easily have shone, he had determined to abjure all 'the wisdom of men' in the method of his preaching¹⁸⁷. It is remarkable again that as soon as ever the real peril from Judaism was over in the Church, St. Paul drops his anti-Judaistic polemic, and all that brings the personal element into prominence. He is absolutely free from the charge of pursuing his advantage so as to magnify a personal victory. The more thoroughly we grow to know St. Paul, the more, I think, we feel that his profession is true that he will 'boast' only 'in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ'; and that truly the world, with all its personal ambitions, had been for him nailed to the cross and killed¹⁸⁸.

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

He had, he says, accomplished the preaching of the gospel in an irregular circuit from Jerusalem to Illyria. After he had made a beginning of Christian preaching at Damascus, he had, in fact, shared the apostolic preaching at Jerusalem (Acts ix. 29), but his own special work began at Tarsus, or rather at Antioch. After that he had 'fulfilled the proclamation of the gospel,' so far, that is to say, as it belonged to the apostolic office, by founding churches in a gradually enlarging circuit, especially in the chief centres, as the narrative of the Acts shows us, till travelling by the Egnatian way he would have come within sight of the Illyrian mountains at Thessalonica¹⁸⁹. He may even have entered Illyria when the Acts vaguely describes him as going to Macedonia and then 'passing through those parts¹⁹⁰'; but the expression in this epistle does not require this. It is sufficient that the border of Illyria, through which the Egnatian way led to Rome, had been so far his nearest point to the capital.