CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 15:15.—Paul writes boldly, confidently, familiarly, in this part of his epistle, or to a part of the Gentiles, to refresh the memory, and because of the special gift given to him of God.
Romans 15:16.—St. Paul pictures himself as the officiating priest; the Gentile world is the offering to be presented and consecrated. The whole process of sanctification is an adorning of the sacrifice which is to be consecrated to God.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 15:14-16
A gracious man’s greatness.—It is not given to every gracious man to be great as was St. Paul; but the man who is endowed by grace is ennobled by the endowment. Each gracious man is by grace raised to a higher platform. Let each seek to be true to his gifts, study great examples, and thus in his measure he will become great. St. Paul is a pattern.
I. The gracious man is great in gentleness.—How gentle at times can be some of the strongest natures! St. Paul was gentle, and he here uses an apologetic tone. He frankly recognises the good of others. Goodness, knowledge, ability, are the qualities he acknowledges. Goodness before knowledge in the apostle’s mental criterion. Goodness and knowledge make a man able to admonish. Goodness must keep pace with knowledge if the man is to be a successful admonisher.
II. The gracious man is great in boldness.—If we note some gracious men timid and shrinking, we must take into account original temperament. Gentle women have been made courageous by grace. Some men who are afraid of putting pen to paper, lest they should give an advantage to him who wishes that his adversary had written a book, are prompted by grace to write boldly. St. Paul writes boldly through the inspiring influence of the grace of God. St. Paul writes boldly so that he may put in mind. We need to be constantly put in mind. Children at school must have wearisome repetition. In the spiritual school we are all children, and the divine lessons must be repeated. Day unto day, day after day, must moral speech be uttered.
III. The gracious man is great in office.—“The minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.” The true preacher’s office is the greatest in the universe. By some the editor’s office is applauded. But too often he is only the echo of public opinion. He is the cunning man who puts into words what the public has been unconsciously thinking. If the editor be inspired by grace, he may become a priestly minister, and do good work. However, we still hold that the preacher’s office is the greater. Though it is sometimes scoffingly said that the greatest miracle of Christianity is that it has survived the pulpit, we believe that it is a high position—nobler than the editor’s chair, mightier than a throne, that is if the pulpit be occupied by men who are full of goodness, of knowledge, and of ability to admonish. The preacher does priestly work. He offers up the gospel as his sacrifice. He stands between the immensities of time and eternity, and directs men to high thoughts.
IV. The gracious man is great in purpose.—His design is that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable. He speaks and prays so that the Gentiles may offer themselves as sacrifices. We need more of this priestly work. He speaks and prays that he may be the offerer. The gracious man is benevolent. How many offer up their fellows as a sacrifice on the altar of mammon, and the sacrificed are not benefited! But every soul offered up as an acceptable sacrifice to God is itself divinely and eternally enriched.
V. The gracious man is great in co-operation.—The preacher occupies a difficult and responsible position. The voices of the day are proclaiming the decadence of the pulpit. The sneering dilettanti ask, Why these prosy sermons? Pleasure-loving minds declare that it is time to do away with pulpit-droning and sermonic platitudes. Even the professing soldiers of Jesus Christ say that they want no hermitical Peters to preach the gospel crusade against the world, the flesh, and all manner of iniquities. And the preacher seems like to stand alone, to be as a solitary voice “of one crying in the wilderness.” But not alone, for the Holy Ghost is the companion, inspirer, and co-worker of and with every true preacher. Sanctified by the Holy Ghost, the good work will proceed. The persecutions of the past did not prevent its progress. The damning smiles, courteous sneers, and polite bowing into obscurity of the present will not stay the triumphant march of the ministry of the gospel of God. Let preachers have faith. Let them feel the greatness of their office and the glory of its saving purpose. Let them pray so that they themselves may be filled with all goodness, knowledge, and ability to admonish and minister the gospel of God.
Joy should be large.—With peace is associated joy—just the natural consequence of the state which I have endeavoured to describe. Peace passes into joy by an almost imperceptible and easy transition. Joy, indeed, may without impropriety be regarded as peace in a higher degree. Peace is not a state of cold and insensible tranquillity; it is rich enjoyment. We are creatures of sensibility and emotion, and whatever sets us right only gives to those sensibilities a richer experience. The very same things which impart peace excite joy. To be assured that all we had at one time reason to fear has been for ever removed, to have the inward testimony of our consciences to our godly sincerity in the divine service, to be conscious of a freedom from the reigning power of sin, to know that the blessed God looks upon us with approval, and that we are so under His guidance and care that nothing can happen to us but for our good, and to have the hope of heaven as our final rest, is fitted in its very nature when realised to fill us with joy unspeakable and full of glory. To have any adequate apprehension of these things, and to be assured on good grounds that they are true of us without gladness and elation of heart, is impossible. It would argue a destitution of the most ordinary sensibilities of human nature. It is possible, indeed, and sometimes happens, that, through the pressure of unusual trials, our attention may be diverted from the consideration of what we really are as partakers of the blessings of redemption—we may be in temporary “heaviness through manifold temptations”; but we have only to recall and realise what by grace is true of us to rise superior to our sorrow, and to feel the exhilarating influence of that hidden joy which a sense of our condition as the objects of God’s love is fitted to awaken. Present distress may be more pressing, but while it may suspend, it never can destroy the joy which naturally flows from an assurance of our interest in these blessings. You will notice further that the object of the prayer is that they “may be filled with all joy and peace,”—not merely that they may have this happy state of mind in some degree, but in a high degree; not simply that it should be their occasional state, that they may have special seasons of divine enjoyment, but that it should be their habitual and permanent condition. Nothing short of this can meet the energy of the apostle’s language To be filled with anything is to have as much of it as we have room to receive It supposes completeness of quantity in possession as well as permanency of supply. It may be asked, Is this possible? Has it ever been realised in any degree commensurate to what the strength of the apostle’s language would seem to imply? We may reply by asking, Is there anything in the supposed state which the fulness of the God of hope cannot furnish? We are not, indeed, to imagine that the excited state of feeling which great joy supposes should be continuous. This the feebleness of our nature is incapable of sustaining. It would produce injurious exhaustion. Still, the joy and the peace may be large and habitual, yielding a settled satisfaction and enjoyment, and ready for those exuberant expressions which special occasions may demand. When this is the case we have just the condition which the apostle’s language expresses. That this is the possible state we can have no reason to question. Indeed, we can hardly doubt that it was verified in Paul’s own experience. Trials he had, and they were both numerous and distressing. It is impossible to peruse his history without finding abundant evidence of the heavy afflictions which he endured. But we have proof just as unmistakable of the holy joy and abundant peace by which he was refreshed and sustained. He who, when smarting from the scourge and painfully confined in the stocks in a loathsome dungeon, could sing praises to God with a full heart must have been a happy man. He who, amidst disappointments and anxieties he experienced, could exclaim, “Thanks be unto God, who always causeth us to triumph in Christ,” must have had a joy in God superior to all his afflictions. This is the attainment at which every one of us should aim. It is the exalted privilege which the gospel places within our reach, and which we should seek to realise. To be satisfied with a doubtful, low condition, and to regard it as all we are warranted to expect, is to do injustice to the gospel, and to inflict injury on ourselves.—J. Kelly.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 15:14-16
“The offering up of the Gentiles.”—First, then, what are we to understand by the “offering up of the Gentiles”? Generally it may be replied that this is a figure of the conversion of the world borrowed from the ritual of the Old Testament. The whole language of the text is sacrificial. Besides the allusion in the word translated “offering up,” which is currently applied in the New Testament and in the Septuagint to sacrifice, there are two other allusions which in our version are disguised; for when Paul calls himself a “minister” of Jesus Christ, he means “a priestly minister”; and when he speaks of “ministering” the gospel of God, he uses a different word still, which denotes “a ministry of sacrifice.” Thus there are no less than three distinct sacrificial expressions, which conspire to show with what vividness the apostle realised the conversion of the Gentiles under the emblem of a great oblation or hecatomb presented to God. This offering of the Gentiles may be looked at in two lights—as their own act, and as the act of the pre-existing Christian Church. They are their own sacrifice, and they are our sacrifice. What is implied in each of these aspects of the truth? First, in regard to themselves, it is implied that they shall abandon their false ideas of sacrifice and act upon the Christian, so as truly to dedicate themselves to God. The whole Christian life, inspired by gratitude and love, is a sacrifice of praise offered continually. All gifts and labours are sacrifices; martyrdom is a sacrifice; and death itself is but the last offering up—the sacrificial flame ascending to its native heaven. Again, in regard to others, it is implied that the act of sacrifice shall be performed by the pre-existing Christian Church. There is a sense in which men may be not only priests to offer up themselves, but priests to offer up others. And this priesthood of conversion, if I may so call it, is a universal priesthood. This sacrificial ministry is a part of Christianity; and each of us, missionaries, ministers, and private Christians, is invested with it, and bears his share in its labours and dignities. What a majestic continuation is this of the Levitical priesthood, in the only sense in which it can be continued! We hear much in our times of the priesthood of literature; but how poor is it to the priesthood of conversion, more especially when, as in too many cases, it is a priesthood of atheism, or at best erects its altar to an unknown God! The direct causes or prerequisites of the offering up of Gentiles: The first is the ministry of the gospel. This Paul puts into the foreground. The Christian sacrifice depends upon the propagation of the truth. All who take the Christian name are agreed as to this final triumph of Christianity through the simple display and publication of its truth to the ends of the earth. The other direct cause of the offering of the Gentiles is the sanctifying work of the Holy Ghost. A Christian advocate may seem to unsay all he has said in celebration of the ministry of truth when he passes on to exalt the ministration of the Spirit. This, however, can only be the effect of mistake on his part, or of misapprehension on the part of the hearer. The Bible does not encourage speculation as to the solitary efficiency of the word or of the Spirit, but teaches us to regard their natural and normal action as made up of the union of both. If the Spirit added to the power of the word, it would be possible to analyse the two forces; but the Spirit only develops it, and does not go beyond it, so that all is one mysterious, indivisible energy. The nations yield to truth, and not to more than truth; but the truth only comes out, and has real existence to the soul as truth, when the Spirit of God applies it. This supernatural force every Christian believes to be supplied by the agency of the Holy Ghost, so that the impossible becomes possible and the action of Christian truth is exalted to a kind of omnipotence. To all misgivings within the Church, to all scepticism without, as to the final conversion of the whole world to Christ, the Christian has one reply: “I believe in the Holy Ghost.” The missionary activity of the Church must repose upon true Christian doctrine. The Christian work, like every other, must spring from faith; and faith again is but another name for the intelligent and cordial apprehension of the truths of apostolic Christianity. The missionary activity of the Church must be supported by Christian example. We may easily deduce this principle from the second great text of the Epistle to the Romans—viz., the necessity and vital importance of a Christian morality. This is the substance of the apostolic exhortations, which begin with an appeal to those who acknowledge the mercies of God to present themselves to Him as a living sacrifice. The missionary activity of the Church must be promoted by Christian union. The Epistle to the Romans is the text-book of Christian union not less than of Christian doctrine and morality. The subject is actually expounded by the apostle in relation to missions. How prone are we all to forget the majestic amplitude of Christianity as the religion of the human race, which is only deformed by the attempt to confine and bandage it by the particular forms and institutions which have been generated in the history of sects, and even of nations! Yet is it a fact that there is a principle in the divine breast to which mortals may minister purest satisfaction, a satisfaction of which the “sweet-smelling savour” of all ancient offering and sacrifice was but the faintest emblem! “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” The return of moral beings to their great Original, with the light of reviving hope and loyalty breaking through the cloud of remorse and the tears of penitence, and the gleam of a new creation of the Spirit of God emerging from the dark and stormy chaos of sin—this is the joy of the Eternal, to which that of the first creation gives place, and which may be estimated by the infinite sacrifices which He has made to purchase such an offering from His fallen creatures. Infinite blessedness must be the result of infinite bounty; and the delight of God in the saving of each sinner, when each is saved by an unspeakable gift, must be itself unspeakable.—Dr. Cairns.
Men need reminding of duty.—Paul, in drawing towards the close of his epistle, seems, with the characteristic delicacy which breaks forth in many other passages, to feel that he must apologise for the freedom of his exhortations. The likest thing to it in any of the other apostles is when Peter tells the disciples to whom he writes that be addresses them, not to inform, as if they were ignorant persons, but to stir up their pure minds in the way of remembrance—and this though they already knew the things of which he was reminding them, and though they were established in the present truth. And so Paul, as if to soften the effect of his dictations—and this though his manner was the furthest possible from that of a dictator—tells his converts of his persuasion that they were filled with knowledge and goodness; and that, though he took it upon him to admonish them, he was sure, nevertheless, that they were able to admonish one another. The truth is, that neither the greatest knowledge nor the greatest goodness supersedes the necessity of our being often told the same things over again. Men might thoroughly know their duty, and yet stand constantly in need to be reminded of their duty. The great use of moral suasion is not that thereby people should be made to know, but should be led to consider. And thus our Sabbaths and other seasons of periodical instruction are of the greatest possible service, although there should be no dealing in novelties at all—though but to recall the sacred truths which are apt to be forgotten, and renew the good impressions which might else be dissipated among the urgencies, of the world. Whether then an apostle should write, or a minister should substantially present the same things, it ought not to be grievous, because it is safe. He speaks but as the helper of his congregation, and not as having dominion over them. He is but an instrument in the hands of the Holy Spirit, whose office it is, not merely to teach what is new, but to recall what is old—to bring all things to remembrance. It is true that they might already have received the gospel, and that in the gospel they stand; yet they shall have believed in vain, unless they keep in memory that which has been preached unto them. In keeping with this, Paul says in the fourteenth verse that he writes not to inform but to put in mind.—Dr. Chalmers.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 15
Romans 15:15. God of all grace and Mohammed.—He heads every surat or chapter (with the exception of one) of the Koran with the words Bismillahi, Arrahmani, Arruheemi, signifying, “In the name of the most merciful God.” Or, as some prefer, “In the name of the God of all grace.” Savary says, “This formula is expressly recommended in the Koran.” The Mohammedans pronounce it whenever they slaughter an animal, at the commencement of their reading, and of all important actions. It is with them that which the sign of the cross is with Christians. Gidab, one of their celebrated authors, says that when these words were sent down from heaven the clouds fled on the side of the east, the winds were lulled, the sea was moved, the animals erected their ears to listen, the devils were precipitated from the celestial spheres.