For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil.
For your obedience - your tractableness, or readiness to be led (as the close of the verse seems to show is the meaning here),
Is come abroad unto all. (The supplement "men" had better have been left out.)
I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple - `harmless,' as in Matthew 10:16, from which the warning is taken,
Concerning evil, х eis (G1519)] - rather, 'unto evil' (as in the former clause): q.d., 'Your reputation among the churches for subjection to the teaching ye have received is to me sufficient ground of confidence in you; but ye need the serpent's wisdom to discriminate between transparent truth and plausible error, with that guileless simplicity which instinctively cleaves to the one and rejects the other.'
Encouragement and Benediction (Romans 16:20)