The life and work of St. Paul

PIS*LE TO THE ROMANS, AND THEOLOGY OF ST. PAtTL. 459
being the longest and most solemnly emphatic of those found in any of his
Epistles. Had he adopted the ordinary method of his day, he would have
simply headed his letter with the words, "Paul, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to
the Roman Christians, greeting." 1 But he had discovered an original method of
giving to his first salutation a more significant and less conventional turn, and
of making it the vehicle for truths to which he desired from the first to arrest
attention. Thus, in one grand single sentence, of which the unity is not lost
in spite of digressions, amplifications, and parentheses, he tells the Roman
Christians of his solemn setting
2
apart, by grace, to the Apostolate ; of the
object and universality of that Apostolate ; of the truth that the Gospel is no
daring novelty, but the preordained fulfilment of a dispensation prophesied in
Scripture; 8 of Christ's descent from David, according to the flesh, and of his
establishment with power as the Son of God according to the spirit of holi-
ness* by the resurrection of the dead. 6
We ask, as we read the sentence, whether any one has ever compressed
more thoughts into fewer words, and whether any letter was ever written
which swept so vast an horizon in its few opening lines ? 8
He passes on to his customary thanksgiving " by Jesus Christ " for the
widely-rumoured faith of the Christians at Rome; 7 and solemnly assures
them how, in his unceasing prayers on their behalf, he supplicates God that
he may be enabled to visit them, because he yearns to see them, and impart to
them, for their stability, some spiritual
8
gift. Then, with infinite delicacy,
correcting an expression which, to strangers, might seem to savour of assumed
authority, ho explains that what he longs for is an interchange between them
9 10 for he wishes them to know that, though hin-
of mutual encouragement ;
dered hitherto, he has often planned to come to them, that he might reap
among them, as among all other Gentiles, some of the fruit of his ministry.
The Gospel has been entrusted to him, and he regards it as something due
from him, a debt which he has to pay to all Gentiles alike, whether Greeks or
non-Greeks, whether civilised or uncivilised. He is therefore eager, so far as
1 This is the earliest letter which he addresses to "the saints." His former letters
were all addressed "to the Church" or "Churches" (1, 2 Thess., 1, 2 Cor., Gal.). It
is also the first in which he calls himself " a slave of Jesus Christ."
-
a.ti>puT/j.fvos- Cf, Acts xiii. 2, a^opiourc.
3 ypcufial ayuu, not " sacred writings," but like Upa ypo^xaTa, a proper name for the
Scriptures, and therefore anarthrous.
4 The form of expression is of course antithetical, but it seems to me that Dr. Forbes,
in his Analytical Commentary, pushes this antithesis to most extravagant lengths.
s 1 7. In ver. 4, avaoTa