But God commendeth his love, &c.— St. Paul gives them here another evidence of the love of God towards them.—The ground they had to glory in the hopes of eternal salvation is the death of Christ for them while they were yet in their unconverted Gentile state, which he describes by calling them, Romans 5:6. ασθενεις, without strength;— ασεβεις, ungodly; αμαρτωλοι, sinners; Romans 5:8.: and εχθροι, enemies; Romans 5:10. These four epithets are given to them as Gentiles, they being used by St. Paul as the proper attributes of the unconverted Heathen world, considered in contradistinction to the Jewish nation. What St. Paul says of the Gentiles in other places will clear this. The helpless condition of the Gentile world, in the state of Gentilism, signified here by ασθενεις, without strength, he terms, Colossians 2:13 dead in sin; a state surely, if any, of utter weakness. And hence he says to the Romans converted to the Lord Jesus Christ; yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and yourselves as instruments of righteousness unto God, ch. Romans 6:13. How he describes ασεβειαν, ungodliness, mentioned ch. Romans 1:18 as the state of the Gentiles in general, we may see Romans 1:21; Romans 1:23. That he thought the title αμαρτωλοι, sinners, belonged peculiarly to the Gentiles, in contradistinction to the Jews, he puts past doubt in these words, We who are Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, Galatians 2:15. See also ch. Romans 6:17-22. And as for εχθροι, enemies, you have the Gentiles in general before their conversion to Christianity so called, Colossians 1:21.
If it were remembered that St. Paul, all along through the eleven first Chapter s of this epistle, speaks nationally of the Jews and Gentiles as it is visible he does, and not personally of single men, there would be less difficulty and fewer mistakes in understanding this epistle. This one place that we are upon, is a sufficient instance of it. For if by these terms here we shall understand him to denote all men personally, Jews as well as Gentiles, before they are savingly ingrafted into Jesus Christ, we shall make his discourse disjointed, and his sense mightily perplexed, if at all consi
That there were same among the Heathen as holy in their lives, and as far from enmity to God as some among the Jews, cannot be questioned. Nay, that many of them were worshippers of the true God, if we could doubt of it, is manifest out of the Acts of the Apostles: but yet St. Paul, in the places above quoted, pronounces them all together, ασεβεις and αθεοι, ungodly and without God (for that by these two terms applied to the same persons, he means the same, that is to say, such as did not acknowledge and worship the true God, seems plain). He therefore uses the terms ungodly and sinners of the Gentiles, as nationally belonging to them in contradistinction to the people of the Jews, who were the people of God, while the other were the provinces of the kingdom of Satan: not but that there were sinners, heinous sinners among the Jews; but the nation, considered as one body and society of men, disowned and declared against and opposed itself to those crimes and impurities which are mentioned by St. Paul, ch. Romans 1:24, &c. as woven into the religious andpoliticconstitutions of the Gentiles. There they had their full scope and swing, had allowance, countenance, and protection. The idolatrous nations had by their religions, laws, and forms of government, made themselves the open votaries and were the professed subjects of devils. So St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:20-21 truly calls the gods which they worshipped and paid their homage to. And suitably hereunto, their religious observances, it is well known, were not without great impurities, which were of right charged upon them, when they had a place in their sacred offices, and had the recommendation of religion to give them credit. The rest of the vices in St. Paul's black list, which were not warmed at their altars and fostered in their temples, were yet by the connivance of the law cherished in their private houses, made a part of the uncondemned actions of common life, and had the countenance of custom to authorize them, even in the best regulated and most civilized governments of the Heathens. On the contrary, the frame of the Jewish commonwealth was founded on the acknowledgment and worship of the only true invisible God, and their laws required an extra-ordinary purity of life and strictness of manners.
That the Gentiles were styled εχθροι, enemies, in a political or national sense, is plain from Ephesians 2 where they are called, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant. Abraham, on the other side, was called the friend of God, that is to say, one in covenant with him, and his professed subject who owned God to the world: and so were his posterity, the people of the Jews, while the rest of the world were under revolt, and lived in open rebellion against him, Isaiah 41:8. And here in this epistle St. Paul expressly teaches, that when the nation of the Jews, by rejecting of the Messiah, put themselves out of the peculiar kingdom of God, and were cast off from being any longer the peculiar people of God, they became enemies, and the Gentile world were reconciled. See ch. Romans 11:15. Hence St. Paul, who was the Apostle of the Gentiles, calls his performing that office the ministry of reconciliation, 2 Corinthians 5:18. And here in this chapter, Romans 5:1 the privilege which they receive by theaccepting of the covenant of grace in Jesus Christ, he tells them is this, that they have peace with God, that is to say, are no longer incorporated with his enemies, and of the party of the open rebels against him in the kingdom of Satan, being returned to their natural allegiance in their owning the one true supreme God, in submitting to the kingdom that he had set up in his Son, and being received by him as his subjects and children. Suitably hereunto, St. James, speaking of the conversion of the Gentiles, says of it, that God did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. Acts 15:14 and Romans 5:19 he calls the converts, those who from among the Gentiles are turned to God.
Besides what is to be found in other parts of St. Paul's epistles to justify the taking of these words here, as applied nationally to the Gentiles, in contradistinction to the children of Israel, that which St. Paul says, Romans 5:10-11 makes it necessary to understand them so. We, says he, when we were enemies were reconciled to God, and so we now glory in him, as our God. We here must unavoidably be spoken in the name of the Gentiles, as is plain not only by the whole tenor of this epistle, but from this passage of glorying in God, which he mentions as a privilege now of the unbelieving Gentiles, surpassing that of the Jews, whom he had taken notice of before, ch. Romans 2:17 as being forward to glory in God as their peculiar right, though with no great advantage to themselves. But the Gentiles who were reconciled now to God by Christ's death, and taken into covenant with God, as many as received the Gospel, had a new and better title to this glorying than the Jews. Those who now are reconciled, and glory in God as their God, he says, were enemies. The Jews, who had the same corrupt nature common to them with the rest of mankind, are no where that I know called εχθροι, enemies, or ασεβεις, ungodly, while they publicly owned him for their God, and professed to be his people. But the heathens were deemed enemies, for being aliens to the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise. There were never but two kingdoms in the world, that of God, and that of the devil; these were opposite, and therefore the subjects of the latter could not but be in the state of enemies, and fall under that denomination. The revolt from God was universal, and the nations of the earth had given themselves up to idolatry, when God called Abraham, and took him into covenant with himself, as he did afterwards the whole nation of the Israelites; whereby they were re-admitted into his kingdom, came under his protection, and were his people and subjects, and no longer enemies; whilst all the rest of the nations remained in the state of rebellion, the professed subjects of other gods, who were usurpers upon God's right, and enemies of his kingdom. And indeed if the epithets given by St. Paul to the heathens, as mentioned above, be not taken as spoken of the Gentile world in this political and trulyevangelical sense, but in the ordinary systematical notion applied to all mankind, as belonging universally to every man personally, whether by profession Gentile, Jew, or Christian, before he be actually regenerated by a saving faith and an effectual thorough conversion, the illative particle wherefore in the beginning of Romans 5:12 will hardly connect it and what follows to the foregoing part of this chapter. But the first eleven verses must be taken for a parenthesis, and then the therefore in the beginning of this 5th chapter, which joins it to the 4th with a very clear connection, will be wholly insignificant, and, after all, the sense of the 12th verse will but ill connect with the end of the 4th chapter, notwithstanding the wherefore which is taken to bring them in as an inference. Whereas these first eleven verses being supposed to be spoken of the Gentiles, makes them not only of a piece with St. Paul's design in the foregoing and following Chapter s, but the thread of the whole discourse goes on very smooth, and the inferences (ushered in with therefore in the first verse, and with wherefore in the 12th verse) are very easy, clear, and natural, from the immediately preceding verses. That of the first verse may be seen in what we have already said, and that of the 12th verse in short stands thus: "We Gentiles have by Christ received the reconciliation, which we cannot doubt to be intended for us as well as for the Jews, since sin and death entered into the world by Adam, the common father of us all. And as by the disobedience of that one, condemnation of death came upon all; so by the obedience of One, justification to life came upon all."