Paul. — The Jews did not scruple to take Greek or Roman names, or to alter their own so as to be like them. Some hold that he took the name of Paul upon the conversion of Sergius Paulus the Roman governor, Acts 13:12.

A servant. — Δουλος does not always mean a slave; but sometimes, as with us, a servant. So the master in the parable is represented as ordering the servant, δουλος , indebted to him to be sold to pay the debt; which would have been of no advantage had he been already the absolute property of his lord. It is not therefore, as some suppose, in the oriental sense that St. Paul calls himself the δουλος of Jesus Christ, and that Christians are called δουλοι ; and it is not without reason that the translation, “Paul, a SLAVE of Jesus Christ,” would sound offensively. Not that all Christians are not the absolute property of Christ as purchased by him; but they are his also by rational and affectionate choice; and there is a manliness and a freeness in the spirit in which they serve him, which is inconsistent with the idea of slavery. Indeed St, Paul, being a Jew, was not likely to use the term slave in the oriental sense; for no Hebrew was allowed to be held in perpetual bondage, which was a state regarded with the utmost abhorrence as a condition of degradation. He would not, therefore, as Macknight assumes, use it as “a name of honour.”

Called to be an apostle. — St. Paul in his epistle not only asserts his apostleship, as do other apostles in their epistles, but usually with some emphatic addition. His general formula is, “by the will of God:” here it is, called to be an apostle, that is, called specially, not when the twelve were called, nor in the same manner: but in a manner so remarkable, so miraculous indeed, called by our Lord himself in his glory, as to stamp his mission with the strongest authority. It was the more necessary for St. Paul to keep his apostolic character and authority prominently before the Churches, because the corrupting teachers of the perpetual obligation of Judaism, and those who wished to bring the Gentile believers under the yoke of the law, endeavoured to lower the authority of this great champion of Gentile liberty, and probably because he was not of the original number of the apostles chosen during the life of our Lord. That his apostleship was sometimes questioned by these perverse men, is certain; and on what other ground, it is difficult to conceive.

Separated unto the Gospel of God. — Here too he has respect to his vocation to the apostleship. He was then set apart by Christ himself for the special service of his truth; and from that time considered himself as wholly dedicated to that one work. And it is in this that the true ordination and separation of ministers consists. They are henceforward to be men of one business; separated from worldly pursuits and the worldly spirit, that they may give themselves up wholly to the ministry of the word. No other distinction by which they are separated from the rest of mankind is of any value without this. It is true that St. Paul sometimes made tents after he was an apostle; but not for his own benefit, but that he might not be burdensome to the Churches; and only from necessity, subordinating that, as well as every thing else, to his great work. As a Pharisee, he had been professedly a separated man, ( ברשׁ? separavit,) but he was so truly, and in a higher sense. The Gospel is here called the Gospel of God, not because God and his gracious purposes to men are the subjects which it reveals, but because of its DIVINE AUTHORITY. The subject is declared in verse 3. It is the Gospel of God concerning his Son Jesus Christ.

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Verse 2

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Which was promised afore, &c. — To the Jew this point, being established was a conclusive argument. If the Christian system were the subject of the ancient prophetic promises of God made to all their fathers, and expatiated upon and repeated by all their prophets in succession, then the objection drawn from the supposed contrariety of the new doctrine to the old, was at once removed. Nothing was lost to the believing Jew but types and shadows, for which he obtained the great substance and end of the law for righteousness; and the exact accomplishment of the ancient revelations in the Gospel established and harmonized the divine authority of both. To the Gentile this was a cogent argument. To him it could be shown that the principles of Christ’s religion had existed, and had been gradually developed through successive revelations, all recorded in a series of sacred books of undoubted antiquity, all preserved with the utmost care; and in the hands of the Jewish people, — men who generally were agreed to reject, and in the most malignant spirit to persecute Christianity, — so that their treatment of Christ and his religion was a sufficient guarantee that they had not interpolated these sacred books in their favour. The attention of reflecting Gentiles would, no doubt, in the first place, be attracted by the miracles wrought by the first preachers; but the evidence from ancient promises and prophecies would come in mightily to confirm their faith. The prophets here mentioned are the inspired writers of the Old Testament, including also the fathers, as the patriarchs, the revelations, and promises to whom those writers record.

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Verse 4

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Declared to be the Son of God with power. — Οριζω signifies to fix limits, and mark boundaries; and hence it is used for showing things to be what they really are. Our Lord is here said to have been declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection. That is, this was a declaration of this fact by evidence of the most powerful kind; and by that was confirmed and established. That our Lord was not constituted the Son of God by the resurrection, is clear from the fact that he had previously assumed that character, and was believed in as such by his disciples: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Whatever therefore was the import of that high title, — and in previous notes it has been proved to refer immediately to his Deity, — it was confirmed to our Lord by the irresistible proof of his resurrection from the dead; which, by establishing this, rendered all his other claims forever indisputable, and exhibited him before the world as an infallible TEACHER, a Divine SACRIFICE, the all- meritorious INTERCESSOR, and the almighty REDEEMER of men. The clause, according to the Spirit of holiness, has been taken in two views; either “according to his holy, spiritual nature,” in which sense it declares that Christ is the Son of God as to his divinity; or “according to the Holy Spirit” in his miraculous operations, in raising him from the dead, and in the Church as the consequence of his resurrection and ascension. These are the only two interpretations which are worthy consideration, several others which have been advanced being evidently forced and erroneous. The question between the two leading interpretations seems to be determined by the apparent antithesis which the apostle adopts, and that manifestly for the purpose of making the strongest distinction between the two clauses, κατα σαρκα , according to the flesh, and κατα πνευμα αγιωσυνης according to the Spirit of holiness. Our Lord was the Son of David according to the flesh, or human nature; but he was the Son of God, according to the Spirit of holiness, which stands in direct opposition and contrast to the flesh, or human nature of Christ.

Now the operations of the Holy Ghost, however they might demonstrate the truth of Christ’s claims, and among the rest that of being the Son of God, in a sense which implied the Divinity of that relation, cannot be placed in contrast with his flesh or human nature. As in respect of, or according to the flesh, he was the Son of David, so in respect of, or according to something else, which was essential to himself, he was the Son of God; of which Sonship the resurrection from the dead was the proof. The operation of the Holy Ghost was indeed connected with the resurrection, and his pentecostal effusion was its consequence; and by all these he was declared to be the Son or God: but that which declared, defined, and marked him out with its powerful evidence as having the peculiar relation of a Son of God, in that higher nature which thus stands distinguished from the human, is manifestly distinct from that on which that relation itself rested. It is objected that the Spirit of holiness is an unusual phrase by which to designate the divine nature of the Son; to which it may be replied, that it is equally singular if considered as used of the third person of the trinity, who is constantly called the Holy Spirit, but not the Spirit of holiness.

“Holiness” is used in several passages of the Old Testament for the divine Majesty; and we shall see reason to conclude, when we come to the passage, that in the Epistle to the Hebrews St. Paul designates the higher and superior nature of Christ, “the eternal Spirit.” That is certainly the only true interpretation which preserves the antithesis between the Divine and human nature of Christ in the two clauses, according to the flesh and according to the Spirit of holiness, which would otherwise be lost; but the doctrine of the Divine Sonship of Christ is plainly enough asserted in this passage, independent of the clause in question. For let it be remarked that the apostle is speaking of what Christ is personally and essentially; for the authority of his official claims depends upon the truth of his personal ones, and if he be a Divine person he is every thing beside which he claimed to be. He is therefore considered by the apostle, distinctly in his two natures, as the Son of David, and as the Son of God, which, with the Jews everywhere, at Rome or Jerusalem, implied Divinity. To prove that he was the Son of David, no evidence was necessary but the Jewish genealogies; to prove him Divine, or, what was the same thing, the Son of God, as he himself professed before the Jewish council, — which condemned him on that very account as a blasphemer, — evidence of the strongest kind was necessary, and it was given in his resurrection from the dead.

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Verse 5

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Grace and apostleship. — Grace includes the personal salvation of St. Paul and his spiritual endowments. The GRACE comes first, then the OFFICE; for no man was ever by Christ sent forth as his minister, without previous experience of that grace which bringeth salvation. Nor is the case of Judas an exception, since there is just the same reason to conclude that, in the first stage of his apostleship, he was as sincere and enlightened as the rest. Those who would restrict grace here to miraculous gifts, do not appear to consider the superior importance of that effectual religious influence by which the heart of man is renewed “in knowledge and true holiness,” to the office of the ministry in all its stages, not excluding, however all necessary qualifications. The word may indeed be taken in its primary sense of favour; as when St. Paul says, “Unto me who am the least of all saints is this GRACE given, that I should preach,” &c. But this favour necessarily implies personal reconciliation with God, and the communication of Divine hallowing influence, without which man can neither fully know nor effectually teach the truths of Christianity.

The apostleship was one of those offices which did not descend to a future age. Its nature indicated its temporary character. — The apostles were to lay the FOUNDATION of the Christian Church, and appoint those who were to build upon it. They had, as eye witnesses, to testify the resurrection of Christ, which was the great demonstrative fact of the truth of Christianity; and to qualify him for this, St. Paul had a vision of Christ in his glory. They were also to work miracles in the name of Christ, and thus to establish the truth of the facts and doctrines of which they were made the teachers. They too had an authority which no other ministers possessed. Under special inspiration they explained the doctrines of Christ, laid down the terms of man’s salvation, promulged the Christian law, and whatever things they thus “bound” or “loosed” on earth, that is, declared obligatory or otherwise upon men, were “bound” and “loosed” in heaven; so that God, in his moral government, deals with men according to the principles and rules they laid down in their preaching, and embodied in their writings, for the guidance of all future ages. This authority was peculiar to the apostles only, and given to them by an express act of Christ.

For obedience to the faith. — The end of the Christian ministry is to produce a true, firm faith in Christ; which is called the obedience to the faith, or rather the obedience of faith, because to believe is enforced by God’s command. Christianity does not therefore stand on the same ground as systems of human opinion and man’s wisdom, which no one is bound to believe, and from the rejection of which no evil, in the way of penalty, would result. Faith in Christ is the grand law of the new dispensation, and it is enforced under the highest sanctions. “He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.” No respect is here paid to the principle of the mental innocence of infidelity. That may apply to unauthorized systems; but he that made man, and knows man’s heart, has arranged the evidence of Christianity. To those who regard it seriously and honestly, it is sufficiently powerful to command entire faith; and when that does not follow, the fault is not in the weakness of the evidence, but in the state of the hearts of those who remain either in entire unbelief, or with whom faith is nominal and inoperative. They are therefore justly charged with criminality. They not only put away from them that salvation which God has connected with faith, but manifest a slight and contempt of the most stupendous displays of the Divine mercy, which places them under direct and eternal malediction.

For his name. — The preposition υπερ is best taken here in the sense of on account of; and the name of Christ, for the honour of Christ. The Gospel was preached to bring all nations to the obedience of faith, on account of the name or glorious honour of Christ, who is appointed the universal Saviour and King, to whose NAME “every knee” is ultimately to “bow.”

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Verse 6

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

The called of Jesus Christ. — “Calling” has reference to those parables of our Lord in which the Gospel is represented under the figure of a royal feast to which numerous guests are invited. Those who accept the invitation, and are received by the Master of the feast, are denominated THE CALLED, or invited, by way of eminence; and thus, rather than from military levies, or any other custom, was the term brought into the common theological language of the early Church. The great invitation to the free participation of evangelical blessings, was, under the authority and in the name of Christ, made by the apostles and first preachers to all nations, without distinction; and those who embraced it were eminently the called of Christ Jesus.

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Verse 7

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

To all that be in Rome, &c. — To all the Christians in Rome. These were probably, for the most part, converted Jews, whose piety, zeal, and influence had, however, brought over many Gentiles. We have no account of the planting of this celebrated Church. From St. Paul expressing his desire to visit them for many years, it is plain that it existed at a very early period; and from its faith being so generally spoken of among Christians everywhere with admiration, that it had long acquired a noticeable maturity and stability. “The faith” might be taken back to Rome by some Jew or proselyte present at the day of pentecost, and there “pricked to the heart” under Peter’s sermon, and then, by baptism, added to the Church. Or, the dispersion of Christians and their preachers, which took place on the death of Stephen, might lead some to settle in Rome. The intercourse between Judea and the capital of the world was so constant, that Christian Jews, at the earliest period, must have visited it.

Beloved of God, &c. — These expressions show the interesting relations in which every true Church stands to God; relations which no other association of men, however composed, or however dignified, can claim; and it affords a most powerful motive to a renunciation of the spirit, example, and sinful society of the world, and to confess Christ by visible fellowship with his true disciples. They are beloved of God, being his adopted children; the called, invited and received at the board of their Sovereign; saints, persons washed and sanctified from common and unholy uses to the peculiar service of God, and to offer to him as his priests the spiritual gifts and sacrifices of prayer, praise, and the obedient subordination of all their active powers to his sole will. This is the character of a true Church, and of the true members of which it is composed. And though indeed similar terms are applied collectively to the Jewish nation, who were, in a peculiar sense, his people and Church, it does not clearly appear that St. Paul applied these terms to a Christian Church, because they were originally applied to the Jewish. They so naturally arose out of the state into which Christianity had brought the members individually, and were so descriptive of it, that none so fit could have been adopted. But if they were indeed transferred from the Jewish to the Christian Church, they must from necessity have been used in a far stricter and special sense.

The reason of this is, that the Jewish Church was founded upon natural descent from Abraham; the Christian Church is composed only of believers, who have undergone a moral change of nature, and who continue its members only so long as they remain vitally united to Christ, and bring forth the fruits of righteousness. There is indeed a visible Church connected with this, into which all children are introduced by baptism, and out of which those do not ordinarily pass who, by sins against the laws of Christ, cut themselves off from that true, invisible Church, the names of whose members are written in heaven; but to be in this Church is a state of PRIVILEGE, not necessarily a state of SALVATION. The apostles evidently contemplated the Churches to which they wrote, as for the most part at least composed of persons who “knew the grace of God in truth,” and had been reconciled to God, and regenerated by his Spirit. — Hence the description of a Church collectively was no more than a description of what was taken to be the state of its individual members, at least so many of them as gave a character to the whole society. For as unquestionably the apostles had views so just of Christianity, the grand remedy of the moral evils of human nature, that they thought they laboured wholly in vain unless “they turned men from darkness to light, and the power of Satan unto God,” and unless through the Gospel published by them, they “obtained forgiveness of sins, and an inheritance among the sanctified” or hallowed ones; so they never could call those beloved of God, who had never been reconciled to God, nor those saints who had not been actually washed from their sins. Nor can there be any perversion of the New Testament more guilty and fatal than that which would teach us to estimate the effect intended to be produced by Christianity upon the hearts of men, by the force which such terms as beloved of God, or chosen people, or God’s sanctified, or the redeemed of the Lord, possess when applied collectively and nationally to the Jews. Such terms in the New Testament must have the force not of the old, but of the new dispensation: the shadow was in the former, the substance in the latter; and let no one deceive himself, for he that is in Christ IS A NEW CREATURE; as this epistle will fully unfold in its subsequent parts.

Grace to you and peace. — All spiritual blessings are summed up in these terms; in this, St. Paul’s favourite form of benediction. Grace is that special favour of God which he bears to those who are reconciled to him through the death of his Son, and adopted into his family, with all the benefits consequent upon it, — the gift of the Holy Spirit, the special care and protection of God, and the joyful hope of eternal life. Peace was the usual form of eastern salutation; but it is here raised in its import. It is not a wish or prayer for temporal blessings; but that rich satisfaction and sweet tranquillity of mind which arises from inward intercourse and communion with God as our Father and Friend, and from those abiding manifestations of his gracious presence, with which the true disciple is favoured.

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Verse 8

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Through Jesus Christ. — This is to be specially noted as an example of the presentation of an act of thanksgiving to God, THROUGH Jesus Christ. It shows the light in which the apostle regarded the mediation of Jesus Christ; and all acts of prayer and praise are to have respect to him as the MERITORIOUS CAUSE of their acceptance on the part of God.

Your faith is spoken of, &c. — Not merely their belief in Christ’s mission, and in Christianity, as of Divine authority; for without such belief they could not have been even nominally Christians; but their faith as a vital, actuating principle, producing love, zeal, and obedience to the whole will of Christ. As Christians from every part were in the habit of going to Rome, so on their return they published, with joyful admiration, the excellent spirit and example of the Church in that city, in which they would naturally feel the deepest interest, as being planted in the very seat of idolatry, and under the immediate cognizance of the imperial government. Thus its faith was spoken of, or honourably declared through the world, or Roman empire, in toto orbe Romano.

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Verse 9

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

For God is my witness, &c. — In calling God to witness to that great affection he had for the Church at Rome, whom he had never seen in the flesh, and his strong desire to have visited them, he conciliated them to receive that more perfect instruction in certain doctrines, somewhat offensive to the Jewish part of the members, which the epistle contains; and he probably meets a tacit objection, as to his apparent neglect of the Gentiles of the metropolis of the world, when he professed himself, in a peculiar sense, called to be the apostle of the Gentiles. He insists so strongly upon his frequent purposes and ardent desire to exercise his ministry in Rome, that we must suppose that he had been exposed to some imputation for not having already made that great city the scene of his labours. That he made mention of them in his prayers without ceasing proved how great an interest he felt in their welfare, though they had not been the fruits of his own ministry; and that he had been let or hindered in fulfilling the purpose of visiting them, and that, by indispensable engagements in his great work, and the appointments of the Holy Spirit, under which he acted, was a reason for his absence which admitted of no objection. Some interpreters have considered this as an instance of that dexterous courtesy by which St. Paul often succeeded in setting himself in a favourable position before his auditors or readers. Much of this contemptible criticism has been applied to his epistles; but art is subsequent to nature, and, at best, ill imitates it. Here all is truth and feeling, and not artifice; and the simple declaration of two truths, — his constant prayers for them, and his constant desires to visit them, — effected infinitely more than a laboured apology, into which he would no doubt have run had he been practising the art of the rhetorician.

Whom I serve with my spirit. — To serve with the spirit, is usually taken to signify, to serve with zeal and earnestness, ex toto animo; but it rather expresses the spiritual service in which St. Paul was engaged, and to which he had consecrated all his faculties.

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Verse 10

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

By the will of God. — The prayer that he might have a prosperous journey to them, that the opportunity might favourably open, and the journey itself be safe and crowned with good success, was made in submission to the will of God, to which we are thus taught to subordinate all our purposes and plans, even when they excite in us the strongest desires. St. Paul was let or hindered, verse 13, by that very will of God, in dutiful subjection to which he had made the request. The apostles were not in their own hands; and that peculiar guidance of the Holy Spirit, as to their labours, under which they were placed, appears to have been often vouchsafed by sudden and unlooked-for impulses, changing their places and counterventing their most deliberate purposes. This is one of the proofs that they were under that inspiration which they professed. A fanatic turns those impressions which he fancies to be from God, into the channel of his own will and inclination. The apostles had learned not “to live to themselves, but to Christ,” and to acknowledge, that in a work which respected the deep and comprehensive designs of God’s mercy to the world, not even spiritual and experienced men were, of themselves, competent judges either of TIME or PLACE. St. Paul was indeed permitted to visit Rome, but at a future time; and his journey was not to be that prosperous journey which he requested, but a journey of perils and suffering; he was indeed to enter Rome as an “ambassador,” but an “ambassadors in bonds.” So differently, in the mode, does God bring about those purposes and plans of ours which he is pleased to accomplish.

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Verse 11

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Some spiritual gift. — The commentators who would interpret this of miraculous gifts, do not consider,

1. That the impartation of miraculous gifts does not appear to have so distinguished St. Paul’s ministry, at any time, that he should be anxious to take a journey to Rome for this purpose.

2. That St. Paul, in no place of his epistles, attaches so much importance to these gifts, as to make it reasonable to suppose that the great object of his desire to visit Rome, was to communicate them to the Church there. Generally he rather labours to repress that excessive admiration of them, into which the first Christians too frequently fell.

3. That for any thing that appears to the contrary, other apostles and evangelists could have communicated extraordinary gifts; or indeed they might “fall,” as we know they did, upon believers, without any human medium; but to St. Paul alone of all the apostles, the great office was assigned of explaining the precise constitution of the Christian Church, as it respects the liberty of the Gentiles from the law of Moses, and the cessation of the obligation of certain parts of that institution. His ministry was essential to a right understanding of some of these difficult and controverted points; but not at all to the impartation of the full measure of miraculous endowments.

4. The phrase some spiritual gift, if so interpreted, would intimate that some one gift in particular was necessary to the perfection of a primitive Church. Of this we have no intimation; nor can it be proved but that Churches might exist in those early times in a state of completeness and efficiency without having had imparted to any of their members any such gift at all; miraculous powers being confined, as to them, to the apostles or evangelists who first raised them up. We may therefore conclude more reasonably, that the spiritual gift, χαρισμα πνευματικον , was not, in the proper sense, miraculous, but truly spiritual, as relating to the soul; and that it was to be imparted through his teaching them, according to that superior “knowledge which he had in the mystery of Christ;” and this view is supported by the intention he proposed, to the end that ye may be established, which is opposed to that wavering of mind which is produced, not by any doubt as to the Divine authority of Christianity, which miracles might remove, but by erroneous or defective views of its doctrines, the remedy of which was more perfect instruction. This is farther confirmed by verse 12, That I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. — The full knowledge of the important truths he wished them to understand, would produce an equal faith in them and in him. The knowledge being mutual, the faith would be mutual also, which would issue in their being comforted together. The reason, then, why St. Paul so earnestly wished to visit the Roman Christians was, that he might make them sharers of that more perfect knowledge of various branches of evangelical truth with which he had been endued; impress upon them all those motives to constancy and perseverance which such truths contained; and also that by his public ministry he might have FRUIT in Rome as among other Gentiles. — That spiritual gift which he was desirous of imparting to them by personal teaching, seems, in consequence of the Divine appointment hindering his purpose, to have been communicated through this important epistle; a writing equally adapted to the instruction of both the Jews and Gentiles, of which the Roman Church was composed, and of standing, unaltered value and efficiency to all classes of men to this day.

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Verses 14-15

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians. — The Greeks usually called all other people barbarians; a word indeed not so harsh in its meaning with them as with us, yet nevertheless implying political and intellectual culture in a lower degree than they assumed to themselves. — It is probable, however, that the Romans were, in St. Paul’s age, included in the term Greeks, as having long become a refined and cultivated people; and a term implying the reproach of inferiority not being likely to be used in current language, such as St. Paul here employs, with reference to the lords of the Greeks themselves. The context, indeed, proves that St. Paul includes the Romans in it, as well as in the term wise that follows; for his argument is, that being a debtor to all men, he was ready to preach, not only in places distant from the seat of empire, and less cultivated and discerning, but at Rome also; to the Greeks, to those instructed in the Greek philosophy and arts, as were the Romans; and to the wise, for Rome was crowded with sophists and professors of philosophy, both Greeks and Romans; as well as to the unwise.

St. Paul calls himself a debtor with reference to his office. He, like all other ministers, acted under a commission to “preach the Gospel to every creature;” and being especially raised up for the service of the Gentiles, he was under special obligation to fulfil his ministry among them universally, whatever might be their rank and nation. His charity to the souls included in so vast a city as that of Rome, and his sense of duty, made him ready προθυμος , anxiously desirous, to preach the Gospel to the Romans also.

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Verse 16

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. — At Rome, of course, the Gospel, like every new system of philosophy, would come under the notice both of the intelligent and inquiring who abounded in that city, and the scrutiny of a jealous government itself. The sophists were skeptics or infidels; they therefore would subject all the supernatural pretensions of the preachers of this new religion to a severe test. But even the skeptical and the infidels were most strenuous advocates for upholding the popular superstition, as an instrument for managing the minds of the lower classes and maintaining the peace of society; and were equally jealous with the most superstitious of any thing which could tend to alienate the minds of any considerable portion of men from the religion of their ancestors. Neither, therefore, from the skeptical nor the superstitious could Christianity expect any favour. Nevertheless, says St. Paul, I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; he hesitated not to put it to the severest tests, and to expose it to the most piercing scrutiny, with entire confidence that he should not be confounded or made ashamed by the result. Persecuted it might be, but not disproved; and contemptuously slighted by some, but by others it would be received through the force of its evidence; and he knew that it would erect monuments of its own Divinity in the moral changes produced in individuals, and ultimately in society. The ground of this confidence in the Gospel, no doubt, embraced more particulars than are stated. St. Paul would naturally advert to the character of Christ, that summary of all high and commanding proofs in itself; to the evidence of miracles and prophecy; to its internal excellence; to the vast and varied range of its revealed truth; but he fixes upon ONE only, — its moral efficacy, — and with that he confronts every system of human invention.

Its character is power, a power producing effects mercifully superhuman, and therefore the power of God, and this power of God directed to one grand end affectingly illustrative of the Divine benevolence, the salvation of men; a term in which St. Paul always includes their deliverance from sin, in its POWER and its CONSEQUENCE; of course the remission of sins by pardon, and the deliverance of the heart and affections, the springs of action in man, from its influence and pollution; the consequent restoration of man to the Divine favour and image, and to immortality and changeless blessedness. The Gospel had power to effect this, — that was the ground of the apostle’s confidence; and not only as to a few persons more favourably circumstanced than others to receive, to retain, and to improve moral impressions, but to every one that believeth to the Jew first, and also to the Greek; in which words he refers to the actual proof of the fact from experience. These mighty moral changes had taken place in the Jew first, because the Gospel had been first proposed to Jews and received by them; but not less was its efficacy marked among the Greeks who had been made “fellow heirs” with them, and partakers of the same benefit, without distinction or limitation. Wherever the medicine had been received, there the cure had infallibly followed.

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Verse 17

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

For thereto the righteousness of God, &c. — This may be considered as the commencement of the leading subject of this epistle, the justification of guilty men before God. For the mention of this subject leads him to prove the necessity of such an interposition of the Divine mercy from the corrupt and condemned condition of all men, both Gentiles and Jews, on which he dwells in the concluding part of this and in the next chapter, with such force of argument, and such strength of language, unveiling both the crimes of mankind, and the depraved principles from which they flow, and bringing in as by a verdict “the whole world guilty before God.”

The phrase, the righteousness of God, has had as many senses attached to it as men have differed in their views of justification. Hence it is taken for freedom from the punishment of sin; for probity, for benignity, for righteousness by faith, and finally, as by Wahl and others; for the mode of obtaining righteousness or justification which God has exhibited in the Gospel, ratio divini favoris consequendi. The last is the true view of the apostle’s meaning, as will appear from his general argument. Man is under a law which connects life with obedience, death with transgression. The innocent, when brought before the bar, claim justification in their own right; they have never sinned, and are not therefore liable to punishment; but if the guilty are justified, that is, treated as righteous persons through an act of forgiveness, — which will appear to be the sense in which St. Paul uses the term justification when applied to the guilty, — they must be justified, or placed in this condition of righteous persons, through some special appointment of God. That appointment does not in the Gospel rest upon an act of God’s prerogative; but upon his having devised and accepted a SATISFACTION for sin, so that under a condition the remission of sin and the happy consequences of that act of grace, are mercifully offered to the acceptance of men in the Gospel. For this reason, that authorized and attested method of justifying the ungodly, which is contained in this Divine religion, is called the RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. It stands opposed to “our own righteousness,” that which fallen men vainly fancy they can themselves attain to by efforts of their own: and it is that to which God hath set his seal as the only rule or method of reconciliation to himself, so that the guilty may escape the merited and actually denounced condemnation of his law. It is necessary to hold this simple and clear view of the subject steadily before us, in order to escape those darkening and perplexing comments by which unenlightened men on the one hand, and systematizing divines on the other, have often obscured so plain a subject.

Revealed from faith to faith. — That great subject, the method of man’s justification, is said, to be revealed in the Gospel, not that it was a new doctrine, for from the beginning, up to Abel, the truly penitent were justified by faith in the grand propitiation for sin appointed by God; but because it was fully uncovered, as the word signifies, brought from under the veil of the types of the law, and the religious superstitions and gross ignorance of heathenism, and placed in its full lustre and evidence before the whole world. From faith to faith, may be understood as an intensive expression, like τη ανομια εις την ανομιαν , Romans 6:19, “to iniquity unto iniquity,” that is, entire and absolute iniquity; or as implying progression from one degree of iniquity to the greatest. The sense under this view will be, as Locke and Seiler have it, “wholly by faith,” or from one degree or measure of faith to another; intimating that the doctrine has a progressive evidence, calling into exercise a higher and a still higher faith, and imparting the fulness of its benefits accordingly. This is an important truth; for Christianity has a germinant evidence in all its parts, and in none so much as in that most glorious portion of it which indeed constitutes its very essence, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;” the mystery of which is continually opening to the faithful; but in the text εκ πιστεως may be connected with the righteousness of God, a similar order of words frequently occurring. The meaning then will be, that the righteousness of God by, or through faith, God’s method of justifying men by the instrumentality of faith in Christ, is revealed εις πιστιν , to faith, or, in order to faith, so that, by this means, the grace designed for all upon their believing, may be by all attained.

This sense is clear and satisfactory. Rosenmuller and Schleusner interpret εις πιστιν , “to those who have faith,” but erroneously; the end of the revelation being to produce faith in all to whom the publication of this good news of salvation might reach. The apostle does not here bring the quotation out of Habakkuk 2:4, as a prophecy fulfilled in the Gospel; nor, on the other hand, is it a mere ornament, as we use classical quotations. It is manifestly employed to give strength to the argument, and must therefore have some connection with it. That connection lies in the conformity of the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith, with the principles admitted by the saints of the Old Testament, and acted upon in the moral government of God. Whoever turns to the Prophet Habakkuk will observe that the passage is not, as some commentators have represented it, a declaration that those who believed God’s word as to the invasion of the Chaldeans, and submitted to them, should live. The words have no such meaning; but stand in a connection which obliges us to a very different interpretation. The prophet had had a vision of the destruction of the Babylonian power. This was accompanied with an intimation that the event would be delayed; yet “though the vision tarry, wait for it,” wait for its accomplishment in steadfast faith; which leads to a general observation, applicable to all the revelations of God; that the souls of men, “not upright,” lift themselves up against God, in proud rejection of his testimony; but that “the just shall live by his faith,” that is, it shall be life and salvation. So the just have always lived by faith in the revelations of God; and so says the apostle, as this is a standing rule of God’s moral government, those who believe the revelation of God’s method of justifying men by faith shall live by it. Those who render the passage, The just by faith, shall live, forget that this is not Old Testament language; and nothing is gained by it.

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Verse 18

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. — Critics have differed as to the connection of these words with the preceding. Some regard γαρ as having an inchoative form, as marking the commencement of St. Paul’s argument with the Gentiles, drawn from their sinful condition, and consequent need of pardon. Others think that there is an implied contrast between the Gospel and the law of nature, the former proclaiming salvation, the latter denouncing wrath against offenders. But the usual force of the particle is best retained, and it marks the connection to be, that the Gospel is the more worthy to be published and embraced as the power of God unto salvation, because of the actual and extreme danger of men as sinners. In the Gospel there is a revelation of a divinely appointed method of pardon; and the necessity and value of this is grounded upon another and previous revelation of the wrath of God against all ungodliness, &c. That revelation of the judicial vengeance of God against sin was contained in the traditional law of the Gentiles, sometimes called natural law, confirmed and illustrated by the course of God’s moral government, and by the books of the Old Testament, so that both Gentiles and Jews had the means of knowing that the wages of sin is death, and indeed generally acknowledged it. This point the apostle does not therefore proceed to prove. The testimony of tradition, however perverted, the voice of conscience, the fact of man’s subjection to suffering and death, and the obvious connection of every species of sin with misery, were all witnesses to the Gentiles of the penal danger to which sin exposed them; and as to the Jews, their own law fulminated its curse against every transgression. The apostle therefore assumes that it will be granted by both, that the supreme Lawgiver has connected misery and death with sin; and he therefore goes on to prove that both Gentiles and Jews were actually guilty and under condemnation, and on this ground builds the grand doctrinal position of the early part Of this epistle, that we are “justified freely by the grace of God, through the redemption which is in, or by, Jesus Christ.”

Ungodliness and unrighteousness. — These two terms express all possible human offences. Ungodliness comprehends all sins against God; unrighteousness, all offences against men. The one includes all forgetfulness of God, or contempt of him, or false worship, — all atheism, practical or speculative, all idolatry, superstition, and rebellion against his authority; the other, all injustice and uncharitableness. The words are not, however, used distinctively; and ασεβεια is sometimes used of sin in general.

Who hold the truth in unrighteousness. — This may be taken in the sense of restraining the truth by unrighteousness, without going along with those who think that those wicked magistrates and philosophers were intended who, though they knew better than the populace, in many respects, yet encouraged the popular superstition, from political motives. There is much truth in the fact; but the apostle is speaking too generally to allow us to think that he had any respect to this particular, and indeed very partial case. What he means to say evidently is, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven, not against ungodly and unrighteous men who had no means of knowing the difference between right and wrong, but those who had the truth, but restrained or hindered it in its moral influence upon them by their wilful and resolute unrighteousness. This view is fully confirmed by the succeeding verse. Another objection to the former opinion is, that it confines what follows to the magistrates and philosophers of the Gentiles; whereas, it is obvious that the apostle speaks of the Gentiles in general, as indeed his argument required. For it would have answered no purpose to prove the guilt of politicians and sages only, when it was necessary to show that “the whole world was guilty before God.”

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Verse 19

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

That which may be known of God. — Not certainly all that is humanly knowable respecting God, cognoscibile Dei; for the Gospel is a far brighter manifestation of God than any which the most favoured times of paganism could boast. To γνωστον is evidently used for η γνωσις , the knowledge of God; for St. Paul often uses neuter adjectives for substantives. This was manifest among them; for God had showed it to them. The original traditions from the patriarchs respecting God had been all along confirmed and attested by the visible works of God; so that the idea of God, his nature and government, being transmitted from age to age, serious and reflecting minds might have been established in these truths and might have pursued them to profitable moral conclusions. Human reason was never left to acquire, for the first time, the knowledge of the existence of God from his works; but that doctrine being already in the world, the works of God made their constant appeal to the reason of man, presented to it an evidence of the most convincing kind, and opened courses of ennobling and sanctifying thought which, if they had taken the least delight in them, would have preserved men from all the degrading polytheism which followed.

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Verse 20

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

For the invisible things, &c. — By this expression is meant the invisible attributes of God, and consequently his invisible self. The statues of the supposed heathen deities attempted to make visible their various attributes, by emblematical devices and symbolical sculptures. Here the apostle, by asserting the invisibility of God, declares, in fact, his ineffable and indescribable majesty, which is not to be represented by any human device, but to have its only proper manifestation in the glorious and magnificent works of his own hand. By these the invisible God, in his attributes, is seen by his attentive creatures. The apostle says, τα αορατα , the invisible things or properties of God, because his essence is undiscovered and undiscoverable. We know him only by the perfections which he is pleased to manifest. There may be perfections which he has never manifested to us, and which we are in no state of preparation mentally to apprehend, even in the feeblest manner. The essence of even created minds is hidden from us; much more the essence of God; that in which all these properties of glory and majesty unite.

From the creation of the world. — This is equivalent to the created world. Some choose to render it, SINCE the creation, that is, from the time of the creation; alleging that απο is the preposition used. But απο is used to express the cause or instrument, and is then properly rendered, by means of; and there seems no reason why St. Paul should put it into his argument that God had been manifest by his works ever since the creation, because it was sufficient for his purpose to show that they were clearly so at that moment, and, if then, of course in all preceding ages, The use too of the present tense, καθοραται , are clearly seen, shows that he was speaking of the time when he wrote.

Being understood by the things that are made. — The apostle shows how he uses the term clearly or distinctly SEEN, by means of the works of creation. Not that these works were parts of God, as many of the heathen thought, and as the pantheistic systems of the eastern world now teach, so that God might be seen IN them, but BY them as instruments and witnesses. These, he says, these invisible things are understood, νοουμενα , mentally seen or apprehended, — mente animoque cernuntur, as Rosenmuller renders it, — by the things that are made, and which are indubitable proofs of the wisdom and power of their Maker, though he is invisible. Some include in the τα ποιηματα all the operations of God in his moral government, and the previous dispensation of grace; and it is certain that the word used is wide enough in its meaning to comprehend them. The argument, however, rather binds us to take it in its stricter sense of the creation and preservation of those things which are visible in the frame and constitution of the world. But it by no means follows from this, that the apostle intended to teach that the principles of God’s moral government, his will, and our duties and hopes, in a word, all that has been termed natural religion, is to be learned by the study of physics, and that the visible world is a sufficient book for man. The apostle knew well that both among Gentiles and Jews from the earliest ages, there had been communications of moral truth in direct revelations, and traditions of those revelations; that the world had never been without moral laws, or without promises of redemption: and what he knew to be fact, universally acknowledged by those to whom he writes, he assumes; and considers, therefore, that what proves the existence of that God, made known, as to his will and designs, in these early and widely diffused revelations, gave authority also to all the truth which had ever been connected with the doctrine. He assumes, in fact, what we see assumed throughout the Scriptures, that God communicated the knowledge of himself and his will originally to mankind; that this knowledge, though disregarded and darkened, was never wholly lost; that the visible creation was a standing testimony to it as existing, not the means of first revealing it, nor of recovering it through a process of reasoning, if, in any instance, entirely lost.

Eternal power and Godhead. — The first impression made upon the mind, by a general survey of creation, is power; power without limits, power which we know operates undeviatingly and unweariedly from age to age, and stands therefore as a mighty confirmation of the original doctrine always connected with the idea of God — his eternity. Power, however, comprehends other attributes. — That power which we see in creation is not blind might; but the might of intelligence and of goodness, all which may be included in THE ENERGY of God: but as these are separate attributes, they naturally lead us up to the Being whose attributes they are; and to the distinctive general character of that Being; that which distinguishes him from all others; that which marks him as the supreme, the eternal ONE: which distinctive character is expressed by the apostle, by Θειοτης , Godhead, or Divinity, from Θειος , the same as Θεος , God. Το Θειον is often used by Greek writers for the Divine Being, the Deity.

So that they are without excuse. — They were inexcusable for their ignorance, which was the result of criminal inattention to the testimonies of God, with which they were surrounded; and for their superstitions and idolatries, which were wilful perversions and wicked corruptions of the truths they knew, through the grossness of the imagination produced by immoral habits and vicious principles, fatal to spirituality of mind in religion, and therefore destructive of its true character. They were without excuse, because neither their ignorance of God, nor their errors or idolatries, resulted from any necessity, but were the objects of their free choice.

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Verse 21

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Because that, when they knew God. — That is, THOUGH they knew God; knew him indeed sufficiently to have preserved them from the baseness of idolatry, and have laid the foundation of trust in him, and the giving of honour and worship to him. Nor is this at all contrary to what the apostle says in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, that the world “by wisdom knew not God;” since it is certain that what they called wisdom, or philosophy, was one main cause of corrupting the original theology of the Gentile nations; and that its speculations only served to feed the grossest parts of idolatry. For instance, the early philosophic doctrine of pantheism, teaching that God is all things, and all things God, gave a sort of divinity to every part of nature, and rendered it more easy for men to bring themselves to deify its elements and all remarkable and powerful agents or principles. Yet although, as to all the civilized nations of antiquity, and many of the barbarous nations also, we have sufficient evidence that they knew and admitted the existence of one supreme and only true God, yet they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, nor offered to him thanksgiving. To glorify God is to worship him because of his own perfections and majesty; to give thanks to him is an act of worship founded upon the benefits we receive from him. In the former we celebrate his glories; in the latter, proclaim his goodness: the former is founded upon admiration, love, and trust; the latter springs from gratitude, and is the source and root of universal and constant obedience. The expression, did not glorify him AS GOD, is emphatic.

They were not ignorant of his existence; their poets and other writers sometimes said noble things respecting him; just as the idolaters of India speak in terms of highest honour of one supreme God at the present day, who, however, as they think, concerns not himself with them; and they, therefore, as to worship, wholly forget him. What we know of the idolatrous worship of civilized nations of the present day throws, indeed, great light upon the idolatry of more ancient times. The interposition of intermediate ideal beings, and the deification of creatures, have not among the people in India obliterated all knowledge of God; and, in their older sacred books, as in the writings of the Greeks, there are occasionally just and sublime things said of God, the traditions of better ages still keeping their hold upon the convictions of the mind. But these imaginary deities have wholly displaced the supreme God in their thoughts, and he is neither trusted in nor worshipped; the immediate government of the world is supposed to be in other hands, and all religious honour and service has been transferred to them. Throughout India not a temple is built to this very supreme God, whom all but those of the Budhist faith, who are atheists, acknowledge; and not a prayer is offered. — This seems to have been pretty nearly the fact, in the more civilized nations of antiquity, when St. Paul wrote. That they had knowledge of the true God, we have St. Paul’s testimony, as well as proofs in those extracts from numerous oriental, Greek, and Latin writers, which have been often brought to illustrate this subject; but that they erected a single temple to him, we have no satisfactory evidence. It is true that by the Ζευς or Jupiter of both Greeks and Romans was sometimes meant, though not usually nor popularly, the supreme God, the Jehovah of the Old Testament; but we have most satisfactory evidence, though of an incidental kind, even in inspired writ, that, by the Jupiter to whom temples were erected, and honours were regularly paid, this supreme Deity was not intended, but the Jupiter of the popular mythology.

For if any one of the temples at Athens, though it were of Jupiter himself, had been erected to the true God, though under a foreign name and some misconceptions of his true attributes, the Apostle Paul, who had been about the city observing the “devotions” of the inhabitants, would scarcely have been driven to the necessity of fixing upon a solitary “altar,” without a priesthood or regular service, an apparently neglected place of accidental offering, as the text of his sermon, because it contained an inscription “TO GOD UNKNOWN,” and was probably a relic of the piety of past days, in some individual acknowledging that there was a God of perfections above the knowledge of creatures, a God incomprehensible, who ought to be worshipped. Surely, if there had been a single temple in the whole city, or state, or even Greece itself, which had been dedicate to the same being as this isolated and neglected altar, he would have found in this an admission in favour of his argument much more powerful and convincing, and one which it is evident, from his quoting one of their poets, he would have been glad to avail himself of. The very fact, therefore, that they had no temples erected to the true God, no public service offered to him, proves the apostle’s words: they glorified him not AS GOD, as the immediate ruler of the world, as the giver of good, or the avenger of evil, or as possessing attributes to be acknowledged, adored, and imitated. To use the expressive language of the Old Testament, they wholly “forgat God,” and gave his glory to them which are no gods.

But became vain in their imaginations. — Εν τοις διαλογισμοις , in their thoughts and opinions. The word may indeed be taken for the reasonings of the philosophers; but we are to guard against those commentators who interpret the apostle as speaking principally of the heathen sages. He includes them, it is true, but, as his argument requires, in the mass of Gentiles, princes, magistrates, philosophers, priests, and people. The gross tendency to superstition in the mass, and the various doubtful or most erroneous speculations concerning the Divine nature among the pretended wine, and the artifice of priests to increase ceremonies, and visible objects of superstitious regard, for the sake of the gifts brought to their rival shrines, all produced opinions among the Gentiles generally in favour of idolatry; for of this St. Paul especially speaks. To become vain is, in the language of a Jew, to run into idolatry; and hence τα ματαια , vain, deceiving, disappointing, and therefore absurd and foolish things as objects of religious trust, is the term for idols, answering to the Hebrew הבל . And their foolish heart, their UNDISCERNING, UNINTELLIGENT heart was darkened. Having courted error rather than held fast the truth which existed among them, led by the evil state of their hearts, (for it is the corrupt condition of the affections which perverts the judgment in matters of religion,) that undiscerning heart became farther darkened, so as to invent, defend, and practise the most senseless idolatries that ever debased the human intellect and corrupted human manners.

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Verse 22

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Professing themselves wise. — With respect to the Greeks and Romans, whom St. Paul had more immediately in his eye, the word φασκοντες implies a degree of boasting. Not only did these philosophers exult over the supposed ignorance of other nations, not excepting the Jews; but the people, generally, accounted others as barbarians in comparison of themselves. But among the barbarous nations so called by them, that is, the civilized or semi-civilized orientals, whose territories comprised then as now the greater portion of the human race, precisely the same kind of philosophy which the Greeks called wisdom was known, and has been transmitted to the present day. All the various schools of Greece may be found in India; nor is this profession of wisdom confined to the more learned among the orientals; but various metaphysical systems which respect the Divine nature, the soul of man, the hopes of a future life, the principles of right or wrong, more or less subtle in logic or imaginative, are diffused through the mass of the population, who boast of them as wisdom, and employ them to resist the evidence of truth, and to support their gross and degrading idolatries. This profession of wisdom is not, therefore, by any means, as is done by some commentators, to be confined to the Greek and Roman philosophers; but has been diffused with paganism everywhere, except it may be with those who have at length gone down into the absolutely savage state: and even traces of metaphysical and misleading reasoning on a few points is sometimes found among them.

They became fools, &c. — This is a strong expression, but may be fully justified. For what folly could exceed the idolatries of the most celebrated, and, as to the knowledge of arts; the most cultivated of these nations, Chaldea, Egypt, Greece, Rome, &c., which consisted in worshipping and trusting in imaginary beings, of whose very existence they had no evidence, to whose number they were constantly adding, and whose characters were confessedly gross, faithless, and licentious? What can so truly be called sottishness of mind, an infatuation which deprives men of right reason, as the worship of images of men, beasts, and reptiles, whether the things themselves were considered sacred as the representatives of invisible and powerful beings? — and the whole of what is called superstition as distinct from idol worship, — the attaching of virtue, for good or for evil, (and that operating necessarily, unless counteracted by some other power quite as blind,) to charms, particular actions, times, flights of birds, appearances of the entrails of sacrifices, extraordinary natural phenomena, and innumerable other things, to the entire exclusion of the wise and intelligent government of one true God, the sole Maker and Governor of the world?

Nor was this confined to the vulgar only: the majority of the higher ranks were zealots in the respective religions of these countries, as appears from the stupendous temples erected everywhere for their celebration; while such as were generally skeptical often fell into atheistical or other errors, as far removed from reason as the folly which disgusted them; while the few who appear to have laid a faster hold of the floating traditions of truth, and spoke of one God as the Governor and Maker of all things, openly and constantly practised the established worship, as Socrates, Plato, and Cicero, and strenuously taught conformity to all the rites of this absurd and impure superstition. This brand of folly is thus fixed upon them all; nor is it at all relieved by alleging that many among them had a better secret doctrine, although they were to be blamed for not giving the public the benefit of it. For not to urge that if this were so, it did not effect the general state of society of which St. Paul speaks, — the number of those initiated into the mysteries in which only this secret and better doctrine is supposed to have been preserved, being both few, and they bound to secrecy; it may indeed be doubted, whether for many ages at least, the mysteries themselves revealed any such degree of truth as was of the least practical value. Whatever they might be in the commencement, they would partake of the common deterioration; and this is certain, that those initiated into their secrets did not stand forth as superior to others in any virtue.

They are never alluded to in the New Testament as relieving, in any degree, the dark and corrupt state of the Gentile world.

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Verse 23

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

And changed the glory, &c. — God is here called incorruptible in contrast with, and in implied contempt of the deities of the heathen. All matter changes and decays, but God is THE SAME; all spirits depend upon him “who only hath immortality,” who only hath it in himself, who is the fountain of it to others, and can restrain the stream of life when he pleases and annihilate the highest and most powerful being he has created. But the deities of the heathen were not even spiritual substances, These invisible deities were imaginary; and therefore the apostle, in another place says, “An idol is nothing in the world;” they were truly corruptible things, as men, beasts, insects, or corruptible images of these corruptible things. The glory of the incorruptible God is a lofty expression. It must be equal to this vast attribute of incorruptibility itself. How many other great and boundless perfections are implied in this self-existence, this having life in himself, and being the fountain of it to every thing beside that lives throughout the universe, surpasses all human conception; but it is evident that all conceivable natural and moral perfection must be involved in it. Hence he was revealed from the first ages to the patriarchs of all nations, as eternal, all-sufficient, almighty, omnipresent, immutable, infinite in knowledge and in holiness, goodness and justice, infinitely perfect. These constituted those GLORIES in which he at one time stood revealed to the whole Gentile world; and which they darkened and voluntarily hid from themselves by their idolatry. Thus they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man; the sense of which is, not as Macknight and others take it, that they misrepresented the perfections of God by variously devised images, making the evil of heathen idolatry to consist in setting up images of men and beasts in their temples, as representations of the Deity. For the fact is, not that God was misrepresented, but displaced and neglected; so that he was not in any sense, as the apostle above says, “worshipped as God.”

The single verb must here be taken as its compound in verse 25: Who changed, exchanged, the truth of God, εν , with a lie, gave up one for the other; and so here they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God with images of men and beasts, took the one for the other, renounced the true God, and surrendered their trust and affections, by the most degrading infatuation that ever befell the human race, wholly to idols. There is a great difference between the Apostle Paul and many of his commentators and other writers. They choose to throw a somewhat softer shade over the idolatries of the heathen, and, by taking their images to be, in various ways, representatives of the Divinity himself, hold up their idolatrous systems rather as embodying the worship of the true God under mistaken forms, than as something wholly distinct from it. The apostle, however, does not take this view; nor do any of the writers of the Old and New Testament. They uniformly consider idolatry as the renunciation of the true God, and as the transfer of all honour and trust from him to OTHER objects. Whether in the first rise of idolatry, God and his operations might not be symbolized, and the grand evil be brought in under this pretence, it is scarcely worth while to inquire. For many ages the Gentile idolatry had remained in the state in which it was found by St. Paul, and he regards it as an entire renunciation of the true God. Nor does he sanction any distinction between the worship of the thing represented by the image, and the image itself, as many of those do who incline to palliate at least the “more elegant” idolatries of antiquity. The distinction is indeed futile; for although the image, before consecration, might be treated as common matter, yet after that ceremony the god or sacred being whom it was made to represent, was supposed to take possession of it, to be actually present with it, and mysteriously to identify it with himself; so that the regards of the worshipper went no higher than the image thus deified, so far at least as the mass of the people were concerned. We may add to this, that a great part of pagan idolatry was not even so refined as this; since many objects were considered as sacred in themselves, and as having power over the fortunes of men, for which no reason at all could be given by referring them to any distinct invisible demon; and the assumed sacredness rested on no better or more distinct ground than the power ascribed to charms and incantations.

And creeping things. — The crocodile and scarabœus in Egypt, and serpents almost everywhere. The worship of the serpent is a curious fact and has given rise to much elaborate investigation, both as to the extent and character of the practice, and the reason on which it might be founded. Nothing very satisfactory, as to the latter, has been elicited, beyond the general conclusion that it is a species of devil worship; and under this form probably the grand deceiver of the nations succeeded to transfer Divine honour to himself, and thus to revel in the degradation of mankind.

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Verse 24

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

God also gave them up to uncleanness. — To give up is more than simply to permit, as some render it. It implies a withdrawal of slighted means of instruction, and of the influences of the Holy Spirit, provoked to depart from men by their determined wickedness. By not renewing his revelations among them, as in the earliest ages; by raising up no prophets accredited from him with the power of working miracles; and “suffering them,” with little interposition, “to walk in their own ways,” — this awful judicial “giving up” of the heathen was marked. Still the light was not extinguished. God “left not himself without witness” among them, and by improving the knowledge they had they might have been led back to God.

Farther, they were given up to uncleanness, The connection of uncleanness with idolatry, from the earliest ages, is a striking fact, and it holds good in all places; and in many of the forms of the most ancient idolatry lewdness was an essential part of the religious rites. The fact seems to be, that though the origin of idolatry is involved in much obscurity; (and many writers have attempted to render it as respectable as possible;) that it sprang wholly from sensuality, and was from the first a wicked contrivance to bring religion over to the side of vice; and that, the restraint once broken down, it soon took the form of the most abominable pollutions. Hence idolatry, with reference to its demoralizing effect, is called, by God himself, “that abominable thing which I hate.” From a people so sensualized God withdrew his Spirit, and so gave them up that their sin might be their punishment. As to the shocking immoralities charged upon them by St. Paul, it is enough to say that in every particular his testimony is confirmed by their own historians, poets, and satirists; and the character of modern idolatry abundantly confirms this account of the ancient. The charges lay as well against their most illustrious princes, statesmen, warriors, and philosophers, as the meanest of the common people; and indeed the former exceeded the latter in every species of the most abominable impurities. It is enough to refer to the confirmation of St. Paul’s charges, without staining the page by the quotations at length.

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Verse 25

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

The truth of God into a lie. — Αληθεια του Θεου is here used for Θεος αληθινος , the true God, and ψευδος , a lie, equivalent to שׁ?קר , for an idol, as in Jeremiah 13:25. This was the wretched exchange they made, the true God for a false one, that is, no God at all; one to whom it was false to ascribe existence under that character, and all whose pretences to aid and bless must therefore be necessarily vanity and lies. A similar, though not so gross an exchange, do they make who forget God, and trust wholly for help and felicity in earthly things.

And worshipped and served, &c. — Worship relates to the verbal offering of praise and petitions, accompanied with reverential postures; service includes sacrifices, oblations, and ceremonies.

More than the Creator. — This is another proof that the apostle did not consider these idolaters as worshipping and serving the Creator in and by the creature, though imperfectly and erroneously; for whether we take the words παρα τον κτισαντα as signifying more than the Creator, or to the prejudice of the Creator, he is excluded from his rightful honour in the degree in which idolatry prevailed. The worship of idols took the place of the worship of God.

Who is blessed for ever. — This is the manner of the pious Jews, who could not allude to any dishonour done to God without taking occasion from it to proclaim his praises with renewed ardour, and to declare him blessed, that is, worthy of the sole blessing, homage, worship, love, and service of his creatures, for ever.

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Verse 27

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

That recompense of their error. — If πλανης , error, refers to idolatry generally, then the sense is, that it was fitly punished by these awful consequences upon the morals of society; so that it has proved the heaviest conceivable curse to all nations addicted to it. The kingdom given up to the basest idolatries was Egypt; and it has been for ages, in the language of prophecy, “the basest of kingdoms;” and other instances of national retribution as striking may be marked upon the page of history. Πλανης may, however, be taken more strictly for the guilt of the previously mentioned immoralities, and especially those in which there was the strongest deviation from the proper bounds and course of nature; and the recompense which was meet were those terrible and peculiar diseases by which God has been pleased to signalize his vengeance against such crimes in all ages.

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Verse 28

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

As they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. — After all the attempts to improve this translation, it stands as an instance of forcible and truly English rendering, not to be mended. They did not like to retain the true knowledge of God by remembering what had been handed down respecting him from their fathers, and by teaching it to their children, and by public services and institutions endeavoring to preserve it. They neglected this because they had no liking to the subject, or, in other words, were averse to a truth so holy and reproving to their vices. Thus the infidelity and ignorance of men are again traced to the heart, its true source in all ages. Macknight renders, “And as they did not approve of holding God with acknowledgment,” that is, as he explains, the statesmen and philosophers did not approve of God being the object of the people’s acknowledgment; and preferred therefore to foster the popular idolatry. By this narrow interpretation was influenced by his unfounded notion, that St. Paul is speaking in this chapter, chiefly of the pagan legislators and philosophers. This is certainly contradicted, as above observed, both by the apostle’s argument and the internal evidence. It is of the mass of the Gentiles that he speaks; and of that mass it may most truly be said, that they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, or those great and hallowing thoughts, arising out of the true knowledge of God, could not have so entirely faded away. Noble as this subject of knowledge is, it is easily retained by all who delight in it; and the loss of it proves the disaffection of the heart toward it.

Gave them over to a reprobate mind. — The giving up here partly expresses the non-interposition of God to prevent the natural consequence of their love of error, which must be still more entangled and deepened error, and consequently sin; for religious errors, being embraced because they are favourable to vice, the vicious effects mature with their growth; and partly the judicial withdrawment of direct means of instruction and correction. Thus they were left to a reprobate, a bad, mind; for αδοκιμος is used of counterfeit silver, and land which yields nothing but thorns. It is not the intellectual so much as the moral quality of the mind that is here spoken of, as what follows sufficiently shows. There is no warrant therefore to render it “an unsearching, injudicious mind;” and much less to look in this passage for any countenance to Calvinistic reprobation.

Not convenient. — Things unsuitable to human nature, and which violate it: a meiosis.

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Verses 29-31

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

Being filled with all unrighteousness, &c. — Filled, not slightly or occasionally affected. Unrighteousness is here injustice: fornication, πορνεια , every species of uncleanness: wickedness, πονηρια appears to signify mischievous craft and subtlety, the kind of wickedness for which the devil is eminent, and hence called ο ωονηρος , “the wicked one:” covetousness, the excessive desire to have, either to spend or to hoard, and the gratification of the passion by appropriating the goods of others to their own use: maliciousness, κακια , an implacable and revengeful habit of mind: full, μεστους , another strong word to show how completely these evils had possession of their hearts, and how mature and rife they were in society: debate, εριδος , strife: deceit, δολου , craft: malignity, maliciousness before mentioned, and κακοηθειας , more properly signifies putting the worst construction upon any thing, and so being the more readily excited to acts of violence and revenge: whisperers, secret insinuators of calumny: backbiters, those who openly calumniate when the injured party is absent: haters of God, Koppe and others render “hated by God,” which sense the word admits; but this is scarcely a description of character; whereas in proportion as men become vicious, their hatred of God and true religion becomes conspicuous, they are hated for their very purity: despiteful, υβριστας , insolent in words and deeds: proud, treating with haughty contempt all those supposed to be beneath them: boasters, arrogating to themselves and their country the most honourable qualities, and ascribing their good fortune to their own merits: inventors of evil things, of new sins or modes of sinning, especially of unlawful pleasures, so that by some of their sensualists rewards were offered for the discovery of a new pleasure: disobedient to parents, to which there would be, from the mere force of natural instinct, many exceptions; but in every age, and among every people so corrupt in morals, this must have been the effect to a frightful extent: without understanding, ασυνετοι , a word which has cost interpreters some trouble, because deficiency of understanding cannot be well reckoned among the vices; but there is no need to run into strained meanings of the word, since, in its obvious signification, it is sufficiently expressive of the intention of the apostle.

A want of understanding, that is, of discernment and prudence, is one of the uniform and most marked effects of an entire abandonment to vicious habits; the judgment becomes inattentive to the nature and consequences of things, darkened and perverted on all moral subjects, so that “darkness is put for light and light for darkness, good for evil and evil for good:” this is not a misfortune, but an awfully vicious state of mind and characteristic therefore of the moral state of these enormous offenders. Covenant-breakers: without natural affection, where we may suppose he alludes to the exposure of infants, the frequent brutal treatment of near relations whom they were bound to cherish, and the neglect of parents in their old age: implacable, ασπονδος is one who refuses to join in those libations which were the tokens of peace and friendship; hence it signifies one who will enter into no agreement, who refuses to lay aside his quarrels, but maintains perpetual enmity with those who have offended him: unmerciful, remorseless, without pity; which was sufficiently proved by the sanguinary character of their wars, their slaughter of human beings for sport in their forums, and the reckless barbarities they inflicted upon their slaves.

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Verse 32

Watson - Exposition of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark

The judgment of God. — God’s judicial decision as contained in his law. — This law was never entirely obliterated among them; and therefore they are said to know the judgment, το δικαιωμα , of God, which doomed to death all committing such things. Nevertheless, in defiance of the threat, they not only practised them, but took delight in them that did so; each being recommended to the other by the very excess of his vices, so that not only was there no effort made to stay this downward course of corruption, but it was encouraged by the example and influence of all ranks.

The question which arises out of this description of the corrupt state of the Gentiles, is, For what purpose is it introduced? It could not be to give information to the Roman Christians themselves, who lived in the midst of all the abominations referred to, and were too well acquainted with the manner of their city; nor was the design to give information to future times, by a historical record of the manners of the age. The apostle does not write historically; and he knew well that in both Greek and Roman authors all these evils had been dwelt upon too fully and too frequently for the memory of them to be lost. This view of the pagan world is a part of his great argument. He lays it down that the Gospel is a Divine provision for man’s salvation; that every sinful man needs it, because “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness of men;” and that the whole Gentile world needed it, because they were all actually offenders, (of which the state of morals among them was a universal proof,) and as such worthy of death. This is the connection of this black catalogue of pagan immoralities with his argument. But it may be said, that the actual vices of the age when the apostle lived, an age confessedly of great degeneracy, could only prove the need of the people of that day of this saving institution; which is too narrow a ground on which to build an argument in favour of the universal necessity of the Gospel.

Certainly the apostle must be allowed to assume, that forgetting God, and setting up idolatries and superstitions, are crimes everywhere, and in all ages, and such as produce overt acts of immorality. And this is indisputable; so that the argument of the apostle as to the actual guilt and judicial danger of the Gentile world cannot be impaired by alleging that he only looked at the state of society in his own day. That is doubtless true; but he refers to it only as an obvious and mature manifestation of the effect of the departure of mankind from God. The same idolatries are traceable, by veritable history, up at least to near the time of Abraham, to the nations of Canaan, Egypt, Chaldea, &c. They mingle themselves with the highest antiquity, and exhibit themselves in similar immoralities, though varying in degree as to the grossest of them, in different ages. And if we contemplate the subsequent history of idolatry, wherever this rejection of the knowledge of the true God, and the introduction of false worship, has prevailed, — and it has prevailed UNIVERSALLY except where it has been displaced by the Gospel, — there it has originated nothing but vice, mental and sensual; and therefore it has placed all men everywhere under wrath, the δικαιωμα , or sentence, of God, of which the apostle speaks; and thus the argument as a universal one is established. The Greeks and Romans were under condemnation for these vices; these vices both comprehended and sprung from the sin of rejecting the knowledge of God, and the truths necessarily connected with it: but the Gentiles of every age, and everywhere, were proved, by the universal prevalence of idolatry, to have departed from God in like manner; they had therefore placed themselves under the polluting influence of the same errors, exhibited the same general character of vice, were in the same condemnation, objects of the same “revealed wrath of God;” and to them therefore the Gospel was both absolutely necessary as a dispensation of grace and mercy, and worthy of all acceptation from its evidence, suitableness, and glorious sufficiency.

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Bibliographical Information
"Commentary on Romans 1". "Watson's Exposition on Matthew, Mark, Luke & Romans". https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/rwc/romans-1.html.

Bible CommentariesRomans 1

Watson's Exposition on Matthew, Mark, Luke & RomansWatson's Expositions

Bible Commentaries
Romans 1