CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 1:3. To the flesh.—σάρξ denotes a living being in distinction from the dead, which is κρέας. It denotes also body as distinguished from mind (Stuart). Our Lord.—Supreme Ruler of the Church.
Romans 1:4. Declared to be the Son of God, etc.—Endowed with power by sending the Spirit after His resurrection and exaltation.
Romans 1:6. Called of Jesus.—κλητός refers to the external and internal call. Partakers of Christ by the call.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 1:3-6
A short biography.—Some of our modern biographies are prolix, and are not warranted by either the nature of the persons whose lives are depicted or the calls made upon readers in the present day. Solomon must have said prophetically, “Of making of books there is no end.” Who reads right through the ponderous volumes which assume to describe the life-course of a man whose name will not be handed down to a distant future? It is true that the man made a stir in his sphere, but almost before the extended biography is completed the commotion has subsided. The divine Man had a short biography. How much is told and compressed in the four gospels? The extended lives of Christ written in modern days are great tributes to the intellect and industry of their authors, as well as to the influence that the Christ still wields after the lapse of eighteen centuries; but they do not make us speak, walk, and dwell with the living Christ in the land of Palestine, as do the graphic narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The shortest biography is that given by St. Paul in these four verses. How much we here learn of the Saviour’s greatness!
I. Christ was great in lineage.—Man was made in the image and likeness of God, and has thus a noble origin. But Christ is noblest of the sons of men. He was begotten of God before all worlds, being the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person. As to the origin of His human nature He was great, for, though “according to the flesh,” He was not brought into this world by the ordinary processes of generation. Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger, but the place of birth will not either demean the noble or exalt the ignoble. Jesus as to His human nature possessed a noble origin, for kings were His noble ancestors, and kings the best that Israel could boast. He was of the seed of David. Patriarchs gave splendour to the ancestral train. The riches of time and the splendours of eternity combine to give dignity to the compound nature of the God-man.
II. Christ was great in person.—Declared to be the Son of God with power. There is here set forth an unknowable Christ. If we study the personality of the Saviour as here set forth, as well as in the four gospels, we must come to the conclusion that He is more than human, and this must be admitted by the deniers of His divinity. Here then we get something more than human; and what is that something? For our part we cannot rest satisfied with a something which has no definition. He must be to us either supernatural, and therefore divine, or else be rejected. The divinity of Jesus Christ is both an article of our creed and commends itself to our reason. He rises far above the littleness of our nature, and we can believe in an unknowable Christ. Why, even going no higher than that of regarding Jesus as a superior human being He is unknowable, for He is allowed to be something more than human, and therefore is lifted out of the sphere of our knowledge. The vastness of His love, the extent of His self-sacrifice, and His all-consuming zeal for the glory of God are beyond the measures of our experience. His love passeth knowledge, and thus He is unknowable. So that whether we accept a human or divine Christ, if we accept the Christ of Paul, if we accept the Christ of the four gospels, we have to do with an unknowable Saviour. And such a Saviour is the one to command our adoration. A knowable Christ is a Christ reduced to our level and robbed of His greatness. We believe in the essential divinity of Jesus Christ, and accept without reserve the statement that He was declared to be the Son of God with power.
III. Christ was great in titles.—Boast we of titles of honour, of marks of distinction? The carpenter’s Son from the village of Nazareth, who had not where to lay His weary head, and was obliged to beg for a little water to quench His thirst, has titles which overtop the proudest names worn by the sons of man. The Son of God. How much does that imply? God has many sons. All are His sons by creation; some by adoption. Patriarchs are the eldest sons of God in time; the prophets are God’s sons, whose bright pathway glows with divine visions; the apostles are God’s sons, heralding forth with clarion peals the good time coming for a sin-stricken race; the martyrs are God’s sons, staining the earth with their seminal blood, enriching humanity, and reaching forth to grasp the martyr’s crown. Towering above all is the sonship of Jesus. He is the Son of God as no other was or could be. The very name Jesus is attractive. Do we ever tire as we sing, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds”? Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. Christ, the anointed. One man is anointed to be a prophet, another to be a priest, another a king. Jesus is anointed to combine in His one person the threefold offices. Man is anointed by his fellow. This Man of Nazareth was anointed by God. Is that a mere picture? If so, Matthew was gifted with the creative faculty in the highest degree: “And Jesus went up straightway out of the water; and, lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, our ruler, the ruler of all things in heaven and in earth. He has the keys of Hades and of death.
“He everywhere hath sway,
All things serve His might;
His every act pure blessing is,
His path unsullied light.”
IV. Christ was great in character.—The spirit of holiness infused the divine nature into the human and raised the human from the dead. The spirit of holiness dwelling in Christ speaks of the immaculate purity of His nature. He was completely good. When we speak of ordinary men and say they are good, the word is not positive but comparative. But Jesus was positively good. Here is no need for comparison. He alone was good—so good that He alone could pay the price of sin. He was good in thought, in word, and in deed. Those who moved near Jesus in private found Him good. His friends adored His goodness; His enemies were forced to declare, I find no fault in Him. His goodness declared Him the Son of God.
V. Christ was great in death.—Other men see corruption, but He of whom David spoke and of whom Paul wrote saw no corruption. Whatever beauty attaches to an ordinary man in his life is removed by the touch of death. There is no beauty in the tomb:
“Youth and hope and beauty’s bloom
Are blossoms gathered for the tomb.”
Jesus Christ saw no corruption. His body rose from the new tomb just as it had been laid there by Joseph of Arimathæa. By divine power the resurrection was accomplished. Jesus led captivity captive. By death He conquered death. The resurrection of Christ is a fact of history. The very story put into the mouth of the Roman soldiers was self-defeating and strongest evidence of the truth of the Resurrection. Was Paul a fool? Some moderns seem to think he was. Honest estimates of Paul surely cannot fall so low as to believe that he would calmly write to people about an event as having recently taken place which was only a cunningly devised fable.
VI. Christ was great in ability.—We here refer not to His power of working miracles, but to the power flowing out of Himself by which men received grace and apostleship. What grace in such men as St. Paul! Grace still from Christ for all receptive natures. From His fulness men and women receive grace upon grace. Let us believe not in a dead but a living Christ. He has gifts of grace still to bestow. We too may receive grace. This grace rightly received will make us obedient to the faith. Obedience is the best test. This ability creates a large number of followers. The obedient ones to the faith are to be found among all nations. Already in the centre of the world’s greatness, in the heart of corruption, are found many called of Jesus Christ. All nations are not yet obedient to the faith. The movement is slow but sure. The nations must come. All roads lead to Rome. All modern movements, all the march and play of present events, lead to Jesus Christ; for in Him shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. God has blessed Him for ever, that He may for ever rain blessings upon mankind. Sometimes it is said “for ever” is a long word, but it is not too long to express the enduring nature of the Saviour’s blessedness. Let us love the Saviour as Paul did, and our love will by its creative force call into existence other loves, and the bright light of a universally pervading love will finally dispel all the gloom, all the darkness, all the discords of humanity.
Romans 1:3-4. Christ’s divinity proved by His resurrection.—Where the construction of the text lies so that we cannot otherwise reach the full sense of it without making our way through doubts and ambiguities, philosophical discourses are necessary in dispensing the word. The present exercise, therefore, consists of two parts:—
I. An explication of the words.—For the scheme of the Greek carries a very different face from our translation, which difference renders the sense of them very disputable. The explication is comprised in the resolution of these four inquiries:
1. Whether the translation rightly renders it that Christ was “declared to be the Son of God,” since the original admits of a different signification;
2. What is imported by the term “with power”;
3. What is intended by the following words—“according to the spirit of holiness”;
4. How those words, “by the resurrection from the dead,” are to be understood.
II. An accommodation of the words to the present occasion, which is in showing:
1. How Christ’s resurrection may be a proper argument to prove His divinity and eternal sonship;
2. That it is the greatest and principal of all others. For this we may observe, that it is not only true but more clear and evident than the other arguments for the proof of the truth of Christ’s doctrine, when we consider them as they are generally reducible to these three:
(1) the nature of the thing taught by Him;
(2) the fulfilling of prophecies in His person;
(3) the miracles and wonderful works which He did in the time of His life. And though these were undoubtedly high proofs of Christ’s doctrine, yet His resurrection had a vast pre-eminence over them upon two accounts:
1. That all the miracles He did, supposing His resurrection had not followed, would not have had sufficient efficacy to have proved Him to be the Messias. But His resurrection alone, without relation to His preceding miracles, had been a full proof of the truth of His doctrine, which appears upon these two accounts:
(1) that, considered absolutely in inself, it did outweigh all the rest of His works put together;
(2) that it had a more intimate and near connection with His doctrine than any of the rest.
2. Because of the general opinion and judgment that the world had of both.
The Jews and unbelievers never attempted to assign any causes of the Resurrection besides the power of God, so as by that means to destroy the miraculousness of it; though they constantly took exceptions to Christ’s other miracles, still resolving them into some cause short of a divine power, which exceptions may be reduced to these two heads:
1. The great difficulty of discerning when an action is really a miracle;
2. Supposing an action is known to be a miracle, it is as difficult to know whether it proves the truth of the doctrine of that person that does it or not. But neither of these exceptions takes place against the Resurrection; for
(1) though we cannot assign the determinate point where the power of nature ends, yet there are some actions that at first appearance so vastly transcend it that there can be no suspicion that they proceed from any power but a divine;
(2) should God suffer a miracle to be done by an impostor, yet there was no necessity hence to gather that God did it to confirm the words of that impostor, for God may do a miracle when and where He pleases.—South.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 1:4; Romans 1:6
“Declared” the right word.—That the word rendered “declared” has in this case that meaning may be argued:
1. From its etymology. It comes from a word signifying “limit” or “boundary,” and literally means “to set limits to,” “to define”; and such in usage is its frequent signification. “To define” is nearly related both to “appointing” and to “warning,” “declaring,” “exhibiting a person or thing in its true nature.” In the New Testament, indeed, the word, as in common Greek, is used generally to express the former idea—namely, that of constituting or appointing; but the sense which our version gives it is in many cases involved in the other.
2. The Greek commentators Chrysostom and Theodoret both so explain the word. So does the Syriac Version.
3. This explanation supposes the word to be used in a popular and general sense, but does not assign to it a new meaning.
4. Reference may be made to that familiar biblical usage according to which words are used declaratively. Thus to make guilty is to pronounce to be guilty, to make just is to pronounce to be just, to make unclean is to declare to be unclean. Hence, admitting that the words literally mean “made the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead,” they may, with the strictest regard to usage, be interpreted “exhibited as made,” “declared to be.”
5. The necessity of the place requires this interpretation, because it is not true that Christ was made the Son of God by His resurrection, since He was such before that event.
6. The passage, unless thus explained, is inconsistent with other declarations of the sacred writers, which speak of Christ’s resurrection as the evidence of what He was, but not as making Him either Son or King. The words “with power “may either be connected adjectively with the preceding phrase and the meaning be “the powerful Son of God,” or, which is preferable, adverbially with the word “declared”—“He was powerfully,” that is, “clearly declared to be the Son of God.” As when the sun shines out in his power he is seen and felt in all his glory, so Christ, when He arose from the dead, was recognised at once as the Son of God.—Hodge.
Christ’s resurrection a sign of power.—But you will here naturally reply, How can this be a proper proof of that? How can His resurrection, which supposes Him to have been dead, prove Him to be such a one as existed from all eternity, and so could not die? Is the grave a medium to demonstrate a person incorruptible? or death to enforce that he is immortal? I answer that this argumentation is so far very right, and that the resurrection, considered only in a bare relation to the person rising from the dead, proves Him only to be a wonderful man, but is so far from proving Him the eternal Son of God that it rather proves the contrary. But then, if we consider it with the relation to the doctrine of that person affirming Himself to be thus the Son of God, and as the seal set to the truth of that doctrine by an omnipotent hand and an unfailing veracity, why thus it is an infallible argument to prove the real being of all those things that were asserted by that person. Christ’s resurrection therefore proved Him to be the eternal Son of God, consequentially—that is, as it was an irrefragable confirmation of the truth of that doctrine which had declared Him to be so.
It is much disputed whether Christ’s resurrection is to be referred to His own power raising Himself from the dead or only to the power of the Father. Those who deny His eternal divinity allow only this latter, stiffly opposing the former. To give countenance to this their opposition they seem to make challenge to any one to produce but one place of Scripture where Christ is said to have raised Himself from the dead and they will yield the cause. To which I answer, Though this is nowhere affirmed in these very terms, representing it in præterito, as done, yet if Christ spoke the same thing in words importing the future the result is undoubtedly the same. And for this I desire to know what they will answer to that place where Christ, speaking of His body, says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Does not Christ personally appropriate the action to Himself and to His own power? Wherefore that exception is a vapour and a cavil, unbecoming a rational opponent. But I add that, as to the proof of the divinity of Christ’s person, it is not material whether His resurrection be stated upon His own power or the power of His Father, for both equally prove the same thing, though in a different manner. If Christ raised Himself, it directly proves that He was God, and so had a divine nature besides His human; for if He raised that, being dead, it must needs follow that He did it by virtue of a power inherent in another nature, which was some divine spirit. But, on the other hand, if the Father raised Him, yet still it proves Him to have been God, forasmuch as He always avouched Himself to be so, and the Father would not have exerted an infinite power to have confirmed a lie or verified the words of an impostor.
That all the miracles Christ did, supposing that His resurrection had not followed, would not have had sufficient efficacy to have proved Him to be the Messias. But His resurrection alone, taking it singly and by itself and without any relation to His precedent miracles, had been a full and undeniable proof of the truth of His doctrine and the divinity of His person. The former part of the assertion is clear from that of St. Paul: “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain;” “Ye are yet in your sins.” Now before Christ’s death all His miracles were actually done, and yet, notwithstanding all these, the apostle lays this supposition—that in case, then, He had not risen from the dead, the whole proof of the gospel had fallen to the ground and been buried with Him in the same grave.—South.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
Romans 1:3-6. The beauty of Christ shown to the faithful student and devout follower.—A sculptor once took a pupil to a statue on which much artistic skill bad been bestowed, and said to him, “Look! Do you see symmetry and expression and beauty there? Do you see accuracy of outline, delicacy of detail, harmony of design, and perfection of execution? Do you see all this? If not, look until you do, for all is there.” So we may say: Do you see in Christ all the glory and beauty which are described by the four evangelists and the apostles? Do you see a perfect humanity and a perfect divinity there? Do you see incarnate love? Do you see earth’s noble man, the God-man, heaven’s choicest treasure? If not, look till you do, for they are all there. Look by prayerfully reading the sacred books. Examine by the way of experience. Oh, taste and see that the Christ is gracious!
Romans 1:3-6. Love to Christ desired.—A Welsh clergyman, the late Rev. William Howells, minister of Long Acre Episcopal Church, once said in his pulpit that a simple-hearted, earnest Christian girl from his own country had preached Christ to him as he feared he never preached Him to his congregation. For to his question, “My dear child, do you love Christ?” she replied, “Love Christ? Yes, sir; my soul clings to Him as the limpet to the rock.”
“May we all enjoy this feeling;
In all need to Jesus go;
Prove His wounds each day more healing,
And Himself more fully know!”
Romans 1:4. Strong Son of God.—St. Paul says that Jesus was “the Son of God with power.” The expression is significant and appropriate, for strength was characteristic of the world’s Christ. And yet while we view the character drawn in the gospels, we must be struck with the fact that He was strong in love. Omnipotence was restrained; omniscience was kept in abeyance; but love never slept. He was strong in love as well when He denounced the Pharisees as when He wept at the graveside of a friend. He was indeed the incarnation of immortal love.
“Strong Son of God, immortal love.”