ROMANS

This epistle unfolds the gospel of God as the testimony of the righteousness of God, and connected with the testimony of His wrath from heaven: but in doing so it begins with the depravity of the Gentiles, the hypocrisy of moralisers, and the guilt of the Jews, concluding thus all under sin, and meeting all this guilt by the blood of Christ through faith; proving at the same time thereby the righteousness of God in bearing with the sins of the saints during the past time, and laying the present foundation of divine righteousness for the time to come.

From chapter 4 the apostle connects faith with the resurrection after Christ's deliverance for our offences. In chapter 5 he applies this to justification and peace in the assurance of God's love, and traces all up to Adam on one side, and to Christ on the other, as head, the law only coming in by the bye. In chapter 6 he applies it to a godly life, and in chapter 7 to the law; unfolding in chapter 8 the full liberty the Christian himself obtains by it, connected with the life and presence of the Spirit, God securing all by what He is for us, and how all this is made good to us through Christ, across all possible danger of separation from it. There are three parts in chapter 8: first, the Spirit as life, going on to the resurrection of the body (v. 1-11); then the Holy Ghost as a separate person, dwelling in us for joy, and sympathy with us in infirmities (v. 12-27); the third part (v. 28 to the end) being God for us - life, God in us, and God for us.

Note another thing. Except just for bringing in Christ's intercession, you never get His ascension in Romans, hence, not the unity of the body, which is only alluded to in its practical effects (chap. 12), but the relationship of the individual with God on the ground of grace reigning through righteousness - God's righteousness being very definitely brought out in contrast with man's, which has the law for its rule (this being useful to convict of transgression, lust, and powerlessness when we have a good will).

From chapter 9 to 11 inclusive, Paul reconciles special promises to the Jews with the no-difference doctrine of divine righteousness. In chapter 9, while professing his own love to the Jews, he uses (while recognising all their privileges) the absolute sovereignty of God proved in their own history by the exclusion of Ishmael and Esau though sons of Abraham and Isaac; confirming this by the witness that it was only the sovereign mercy of God which had spared them at Sinai: he uses, I say, this sovereign mercy to prove God's call of Gentiles as well as Jews, confirming this by quotations from Hosea. He then shews that the rejection of the Jews was foretold by prophets - that it is founded on a pretension to human righteousness. He contrasts, in chapter 10, the righteousness of the law with that of faith; shews the title of the Gentiles to the latter – the call involving preaching to them; and confirms this, as well as the rebellion of the Jews to the call, by their own scriptures.

In chapter 11 he raises the question, Is then Israel, finally and definitely, as a people, rejected? No. He gives three proofs - first, in his own person; second, that where there is the declaration that the Gentiles will be called, it is to provoke them (Israel) to jealousy, and therefore not finally to reject them; third, the positive declaration of scripture that the Redeemer would come to Zion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob. In connection with this, he puts the Gentiles, introduced on the principle of faith, upon their responsibility; shewing them that if they did not continue in God's goodness, they would be cut off from the tree of promise on the earth, as so many of the Jews then were, and that God could graft the Jews in again; this being the testimony to the wisdom of God, His having concluded all alike in unbelief, that all might be objects of mere mercy.

In the subsequent part we get exhortations. Only that in chapter 15 he resumes this doctrine, that Jesus Christ was "a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy."

In chapter 16: 26 substitute "prophetic scriptures" for "scriptures of the prophets."