[244]Observe that St Paul utterly repudiates the thought of "pleasing" (ἀρέσκειν) where it means aservile and really compromisingdeference to human opinion (Gal. i. 10).[245]The noble wordὑπομονή, as we have remarked already, is rarely if evermerelypassive in New Testament usage.[246]So read, notἡμᾶς. The point of the mention here of "you" is manifest.[247]Readingγὰρnotδέ, and omittingἸησοῦνjust afterwards.[248]Γεγενῆσθαι, the perfect. But perhaps readγενέσθαι.[249]In the received Hebrew Text the wordאת, "with," is absent, and the rendering may be, in paraphrase, either, "Ye Nations, congratulate His people," or "Rejoice ye Nations, who are His people." Either the great Rabbi-Apostle readאת, or he gave the essence of the Mosaic words, not their form, (using the Lxx. rendering as his form,) to convey the thought of the loving sympathy, before God, of Israel and the Nations.
[244]Observe that St Paul utterly repudiates the thought of "pleasing" (ἀρέσκειν) where it means aservile and really compromisingdeference to human opinion (Gal. i. 10).
[245]The noble wordὑπομονή, as we have remarked already, is rarely if evermerelypassive in New Testament usage.
[246]So read, notἡμᾶς. The point of the mention here of "you" is manifest.
[247]Readingγὰρnotδέ, and omittingἸησοῦνjust afterwards.
[248]Γεγενῆσθαι, the perfect. But perhaps readγενέσθαι.
[249]In the received Hebrew Text the wordאת, "with," is absent, and the rendering may be, in paraphrase, either, "Ye Nations, congratulate His people," or "Rejoice ye Nations, who are His people." Either the great Rabbi-Apostle readאת, or he gave the essence of the Mosaic words, not their form, (using the Lxx. rendering as his form,) to convey the thought of the loving sympathy, before God, of Israel and the Nations.
ROMAN CHRISTIANITY: ST PAUL'S COMMISSION:HIS INTENDED ITINERARY: HE ASKS FOR PRAYER
Romansxv. 14-33
THE Epistle hastens to its close. As to its instructions, doctrinal or moral, they are now practically written. The Way of Salvation lies extended, in its radiant outline, before the Romans, and ourselves. The Way of Obedience, in some of its main tracks, has been drawn firmly on the field of life. Little remains but the Missionary's last words about persons and plans, and then the great task is done.
He will say a warm, gracious word about the spiritual state of the Roman believers. He will justify, with a noble courtesy, his own authoritative attitude as their counsellor. He will talk a little of his hoped for and now seemingly approaching visit, and matters in connexion with it. He will greet the individuals whom he knows, and commend the bearer of the Letter, and add last messages from his friends. Then Phœbe may receive her charge, and go on her way.
Ver. 14.
But I am sure, my brethren, quite on my own part(καὶ αὐτὸς ἐγώ),about you, that you are, yourselves,irrespective of my influence,brimming with goodness,with high Christian qualities in general,filled with all knowledge, competent in fact(καὶ)to admonishone another.Is this flattery, interested and insincere? Is it weakness, easily persuaded into a false optimism? Surely not; for the speaker here is the man who has spoken straight to the souls of these same people about sin, and judgment, and holiness; about the holiness of these everyday charities which some of them (so he has said plainly enough) had been violating. But a truly great heart always loves to praise where it can, and, discerningly, to think and say the best. He who is Truth itself said of His imperfect, His disappointing followers, as He spoke of them in their hearing to His Father, "They have kept Thy word"; "I am glorified in them" (John xvii. 6, 10). So here his Servant does not indeed give the Romans a formal certificate of perfection, but he does rejoice to know, and to say, that their community is Christian in a high degree, and that in a certain sense they have not needed information about Justification by Faith, nor about principles of love and liberty in their intercourse. In essence, all has been in their cognizance already; an assurance which could not have been entertained in regard of every Mission, certainly. He has written not as to children, giving them an alphabet, but as to men, developing facts into science.
Ver. 15.Ver. 16.
But with a certain boldness(τολμηρότερον)I have written[250]to you, here and there,[251]just as reminding you; because of the grace,the free gift of his commission and of the equipment for it,given me by our(τοῦ)God,given in order tomy being Christ Jesus' ministersentto the Nations, doing priest-work with the Gospel of God, that the oblation of the Nations,the oblation which is in fact the Nations self-laid upon the spiritual altar,may be acceptable, consecrated in the Holy Spirit.It is a startling and splendid passage of metaphor. Here once, in all the range of his writings (unless we except the few and affecting words of Phil. ii. 17), the Apostle presents himself to his converts as a sacrificial ministrant, a "priest" in the sense which usage (not etymology) has so long stamped on that English word as its more special sense. Never do the great Founders of the Church, and never does He who is its Foundation, use the termἱερεύς, sacrificing, mediating, priest, as a term to designate the Christian minister in any of his orders;never, if this passage is not to be reckoned in, with itsἱερουργεῖν, its "priest-work," as we have ventured to translate the Greek. In the distinctively sacerdotal Epistle, the Hebrews, the wordἱερεὺςcomes indeed into the foreground. But there it is absorbed intothe Lord. It is appropriated altogether to Him in His self-sacrificial Work once done, and in His heavenly Work now always doing, the work of mediatorial impartation, from His throne,[252]of the blessings which His great Offering won. One other Christian application of the sacrificial title we have in the Epistles: "Ye are a holy priesthood," "a royal priesthood" (1 Pet. ii. 5, 9). But who are "ye"? Not the consecrated pastorate, but the consecrated Christian company altogether. And what are the altar-sacrifices of that company? "Sacrificesspiritual"; "the praisesof Him who called them into His wonderful light" (1 Pet. ii. 5, 9). In the Christian Church, the pre-Levitical ideal of the old Israel reappears in its sacredreality. He who offered to the Church of Moses (Exod. xix. 6) to be one great priesthood, "a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation," found His favoured nation unready for the privilege, and so Levi representatively took the place alone. But now, in His new Israel, as all are sons in the Son, so all are priests in the Priest. And the sacred Ministry of that Israel, the Ministry which is His own divine institution, the gift (Eph. iv. 11) of the ascended Lord to His Church, is never once designated, as such, by the term which would have marked it as the analogue to Levi, or to Aaron.
Is this passage in any degree an exception? No; for it contains its own full inner evidence of its metaphorical cast. The "priest-working" here has regard, we find, not to a ritual, but to "the Gospel." "The oblation" is—the Nations. The hallowing Element, shed as it were upon the victims, is the Holy Ghost. Not in a material temple, and serving at no tangible altar, the Apostle brings his multitudinousconvertsas his holocaust to the Lord. The Spirit, at his preaching and on their believing, descends upon them; and they lay themselves "a living sacrifice" where the fire of love shall consume them, to His glory.
Ver. 17.
I have therefore my(readτὴν) right toexultation, in Christ Jesus,as His member and implement,as to what regards God;not in any respect as regards myself, apart from Him. And then he proceeds as if about to say, in evidence of that assertion, that he always declines to intrude on a brother Apostle's ground, and to claim as his own experience what was in the least degree another's; but that indeed through him, in sovereign grace, Godhasdone great things, far and wide. This he expresses thus, in energetic compressions of diction:
Ver. 18.Ver. 19.
For I will not dare to talk at all of things which Christ did not work out through me,(there is an emphasis on "me,")to effect obedience of (the) Nationsto His Gospel,by word and deed, in power of signs and wonders, in power of God's Spirit;a reference, strangely impressive by its very passingness, to the exercise of miracle-working gifts by the writer. This man, so strong in thought, so practical in counsel, so extremely unlikely to have been under an illusion about a large factor in his adult and intensely conscious experience, speaks direct from himself of his wonder-works. And the allusion, thus dropped by the way and left behind, is itself an evidence to the perfect mental balance of the witness; this was no enthusiast, intoxicated with ambitious spiritual visions, but a man put in trust with a mysterious yet sober treasure.So that from Jerusalem, and round aboutit (Acts xxvi. 20),as far as the Illyrianregion, the highland seabord which looks across the Adriatic to the long eastern side of Italy,I have fulfilled the Gospel of Christ,carried it practically everywhere,satisfied the ideaof so distributing it that it shall be accessible everywhere to the native races.
Ver. 20.toVer. 24.
Butthis I have donewith this ambition, to preach the Gospel not where Christ was already named, that I might not build on another man's foundation; butto act on the divine word,as it stands written(Isai. lii. 15),"They to whom no news was carried about Him, shall see; and those who have not heard, shall understand."Here was an "ambition" as far-sighted as it was noble. Would that the principle of it could have been better remembered in the history of Christendom, and not least in our ownage; a wasteful over-lapping of effort on effort, system on system, would not need now to be so much deplored.Thus as a fact(καὶ)I was hindered for the most part—hindrances were the rule, signals of opportunity the exception—in coming to you;you, whose City is no untrodden ground to messengers of Christ, and therefore not the ground which hada firstclaim on me.But now, as no longer having place in these regions,eastern Roman Europe yielding him no longer an unattempted and accessible district to enter,and having a home-sick feeling(ἐπιποθίαν: see above, i. 11)for coming to you, these many years whenever I may be journeying to Spain, [I will come to you[253]]. For I hope, on my journey through, to see the sight of you(θεάσασθαι, as if the view of so important a Church would be aspectacleindeed),and by you[254]to be escorted there, if first I may have my fill of you, however imperfectly(ἀπὸ μέρους).
As always, in the fine courtesy of pastoral love, he says more, and thinks more, of his own expected gain of refreshment and encouragement from them, than even of what he may have to impart to them. So he had thought, and so spoken, in his opening page (i. 11, 12); it is the same heart throughout.
How little did he realize the line and details of the destined fulfilment of that "home-sick feeling"! He was indeed to "see Rome," and for no passing "sight of the scene." For two long years of sorrows and joys, restraints and wonderful occasions, innumerable colloquies, and the writing of great Scriptures, he wasto "dwell in his own hired lodgings" there. But he did not see what lay between.
For St Paul ordinarily, as always for us, it was true that "we know not what awaits us." For us, as for him, it is better "to walk with God in the dark, than to go alone in the light."
Did he ultimately visit Spain? We shall never know until perhaps we are permitted to ask him hereafter. It is not at all impossible that, released from his Roman prison, he first went westward and then—as at some time he certainly did—travelled to the Levant. But no tradition, however faint, connects St Paul with the great Peninsula which glories in her legend of St James. Is it irrelevant to remember thatin his Gospelhe has notably visited Spain in later ages? It was the Gospel of St Paul, the simple grandeur of his exposition of Justification by Faith, which in the sixteenth century laid hold on multitudes of the noblest of Spanish hearts, till it seemed as if not Germany, not England, bid fairer to become again a land of "truth in the light." The terrible Inquisition utterly crushed the springing harvest, at Valladolid, at Seville, and in that ghastly Quemadero at Madrid, which, five-and-twenty years ago, was excavated by accident, to reveal its deep strata of ashes, and charred bones, and all the débris of theAutos. But now again, in the mercy of God, and in happier hours, the New Testament is read in the towns of Spain, and in her highland villages, and churches are gathering around the holy light, spiritual descendants of the true, the primeval, Church of Rome. May "the God of hope fill them with all peace and joy in believing."
Ver. 25.toVer. 27.
But now I am journeying to Jerusalem,the journey whose course we know so well from Acts xx., xxi.,ministering to the saints,serving thepoor converts of the holy City as the collector and conveyer of alms for their necessities.For Macedonia and Achaia,the northern and southern Provinces of Roman Greece, finelypersonifiedin this vivid passage,thought good to make something of a(τινὰ)communication,a certain gift to be "shared" among the recipients,for the poor of the saints who live at Jerusalem;the place where poverty seemed specially, for whatever reason, to beset the converts."For they thought good!"yes; but there is a different side to the matter. Macedonia and Achaia are generous friends, but they have an obligation too:And debtors they are to them,to these poor people of the old City.For if in their spiritual things the Nations shared, they,these Nations,are in debt, as a fact,(καί,)in things carnal,things belonging to our "life in the flesh,"to minister to them;λειτουργῆσαι, to do them publicand religiousservice.
Ver. 28.Ver. 29.
When I have finished this then, and sealed this fruit to them,put them into ratified ownership of this "proceed" (καρπὸν) of Christian love,I will come away by your road(δι' ὑμῶν)to Spain.(Hemeans, "if the Lord will"; it is instructive to note that even St Paul does not make it a duty, with an almost superstitious iteration, always tosay so).Now I know that, coming to you, in the fulness of Christ's benediction[255]I shall come.He will come with his Lord's "benediction" on him, as His messenger to the Roman disciples; Christ will send him charged with heavenly messages, and attended with His own prospering presence. And this will be "in fulness"; witha rich overflow of saving truth, and heavenly power, and blissful fellowship.
Here he pauses, to ask them for that boon of which he is so covetous—intercessory prayer. He has been speaking with a kind and even sprightly pleasantry (there is no irreverence in the recognition) of those Personages, Macedonia and Achaia, and their gift, which is also their debt. He has spoken also of what we know from elsewhere (1 Cor. xvi. 1-4) to have been his own scrupulous purpose not only to collect the alms but to see them punctually delivered, above all suspicion of misuse. He has talked with cheerful confidence of "the road by Rome to Spain." But now he realizes what the visit to Jerusalem involves for himself. He has tasted in many places, and at many times, the bitter hatred felt for him in unbelieving Israel; a hatred the more bitter, probably, the more his astonishing activity and influence were felt in region after region. Now he is going to the central focus of the enmity; to the City of the Sanhedrin, and of the Zealots. And St Paul is no Stoic, indifferent to fear, lifted in an unnatural exaltation above circumstances, though he is ready to walk through them in the power of Christ. His heart anticipates the experiences of outrage and revilings, and the possible breaking up of all his missionary plans. He thinks too of prejudice within the Church, as well as of hatred from without; he is not at all sure that his cherished collection will not be coldly received, or even rejected, by the Judaists of the mother-church; whom yet he must and will call "saints." So he tells all to the Romans, with a generous and winning confidence in their sympathy, and begs their prayers, and above all sets them praying that he may not be disappointed of his longed-for visit to them. {417}
All was granted. He was welcomed by the Church. He was delivered from the fanatics, by the strong arm of the Empire. He did reach Rome, and he had holy joy there. Only, the Lord took His own way, a way they knew not, to answer Paul and his friends.
Ver. 30.toVer. 33.
But I appeal to you, brethren,—the "but" carries an implication that something lay in the way of the happy prospect just mentioned,—by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit,by that holy family affection inspired by the Holy One into the hearts which He has regenerated,[256]to wrestle along with me in your prayers on my behalf to our(τῷ)God; that I may be rescued from those who disobeythe Gospelin Judea, and that my ministration[257]which takes me to Jerusalem(ἡ εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ)may prove acceptable to the saints,may be taken by the Christians there without prejudice, and in love;that I may with joy come to you, through the will of God,[258]and may share refreshing rest with you,the rest of holy fellowship where the tension of discussion and opposition is intermitted, and the two parties perfectly "understand one another" in their Lord.But the God of our(τῆς)peace be with you all.Yes, so be it, whether or no the longed-for "joy" and "refreshing rest" is granted in His providence to the Apostle. With his beloved Romans, anywise, let there be "peace"; peace in their community, and in their souls; peace with God, and peace in Him. And so it will be, whether their humanfriend is or is not permitted, to see them, if only the Eternal Friend is there.
There is a deep and attractive tenderness, as we have seen above, in this paragraph, where the writer's heart tells the readers quite freely of its personal misgivings and longings. One of the most pathetic, sometimes one of the most beautiful, phenomena of human life is the strong man in his weak hour, or rather in his feeling hour, when he is glad of the support of those who may be so much his weaker. There is a sort of strength which prides itself upon never shewing such symptoms; to which it is a point of honour to act and speak always as if the man were self-contained and self-sufficient. But this is a narrow type of strength, not a great one. The strong man truly great is not afraid, in season, to "let himself go"; he is well able to recover. An underlying power leaves him at leisure to shew upon the surface very much of what he feels. The largeness of his insight puts him into manifold contact with others, and keeps him open to their sympathies, however humble and inadequate these sympathies may be. The Lord Himself, "mighty to save," cared more than we can fully know for human fellow-feeling. "Will ye also go away?" "Ye are they that have continued with Me in My temptations"; "Tarry ye here, and watch with Me"; "Lovest thou Me?"
No false spiritual pride suggests it to St Paul to conceal his anxieties from the Romans. It is a temptation sometimes to those who have been called to help and strengthen other men, to affect for themselves a strength which perhaps they do not quite feel. It is well meant. The man is afraid that if he owns to a burthen he may seem to belie the Gospel of"perfect peace"; that if he even lets it be suspected that he is not always in the ideal Christian frame, his warmest exhortations and testimonies may lose their power. But at all possible hazards let him, about such things as about all others, tell the truth. It is a sacred duty in itself; the heavenly Gospel has no corner in it for the manœuvres of spiritual prevarication. And he will find assuredly that truthfulness, transparent candour, will not really discount his witness to the promises of his Lord. It may humiliatehim, but it will not discredit Jesus Christ. It will indicate the imperfection of the recipient, but not any defect in the thing received. And the fact that the witness has been found quite candid against himself, where there is occasion, will give a double weight to his every direct testimony to the possibility of a life lived in the hourly peace of God.
It is no part of our Christian duty to feel doubts and fears! And the more we act upon our Lord's promises as they stand, the more we shall rejoice to find that misgivings tend to vanish where once they were always thickening upon us. Only, it is our duty always to be transparently honest.
However, we must not treat this theme here too much as if St Paul had given us an unmistakable text for it. His words now before usexpressno "carking care" about his intended visit to Jerusalem. They only indicate a deep sense of the gravity of the prospect, and of its dangers. And we know from elsewhere (see especially Acts xxi. 13) that that sense did sometimes amount to an agony of feeling, in the course of the very journey which he now contemplates. And we see him here quite without the wish to conceal his heart in the matter.
In closing we note, "for our learning," his example as he is a man who craves to be prayed for. Prayer, that great mystery, that blessed fact and power, was indeed vital to St Paul. He is always praying himself; he is always asking other people to pray for him. He "has seen Jesus Christ our Lord"; he is his Lord's inspired Minister and Delegate; he has been "caught up into the third heaven"; he has had a thousand proofs that "all things," infallibly, "work together for his good." But he is left by this as certain as ever, with a persuasion as simple as a child's, and also as deep as his own life-worn spirit, that it is immensely well worth his while to secure the intercessory prayers of those who know the way to God in Christ.
[250]Ἔγραψα: the epistolary aorist.[251]Ἀπὸ μέρους"as regards part" of his instructions and cautions. He probably refers particularly to the discussions of ch. xiv. 1—xv. 13.[252]He is seen in the Epistle not before the throne, standing, butonthe throne,seated.[253]These words have weak documentary support. But surely the ellipsis left by their absence is difficult to accept, even in St Paul's free style.[254]Or perhaps "from you,"ἀφ' ὑμῶν.[255]Omitting the wordsτοῦ εὐαγγελίου τοῦ.[256]So we explain, rather than take the reference to be to the Holy Spirit'slove for us. In this context, surely, this latter would be less in point.[257]Διακονία: another possible reading isδωροφορία, "gift-bearing."[258]Perhaps read, "through the will of the Lord Jesus."
[250]Ἔγραψα: the epistolary aorist.
[251]Ἀπὸ μέρους"as regards part" of his instructions and cautions. He probably refers particularly to the discussions of ch. xiv. 1—xv. 13.
[252]He is seen in the Epistle not before the throne, standing, butonthe throne,seated.
[253]These words have weak documentary support. But surely the ellipsis left by their absence is difficult to accept, even in St Paul's free style.
[254]Or perhaps "from you,"ἀφ' ὑμῶν.
[255]Omitting the wordsτοῦ εὐαγγελίου τοῦ.
[256]So we explain, rather than take the reference to be to the Holy Spirit'slove for us. In this context, surely, this latter would be less in point.
[257]Διακονία: another possible reading isδωροφορία, "gift-bearing."
[258]Perhaps read, "through the will of the Lord Jesus."
A COMMENDATION: GREETINGS: A WARNING:A DOXOLOGY
Romansxvi. 1-27
ONCE more, with a reverent licence of thought, we may imagine ourselves to be watching in detail the scene in the house of Gaius. Hour upon hour has passed over Paul and his scribe as the wonderful Message has developed itself, at once and everywhere the word of man and the Word of God. They began at morning, and the themes of sin, and righteousness, and glory, of the present and the future of Israel, of the duties of the Christian life, of the special problems of the Roman Mission, have carried the hours along to noon, to afternoon. Now, to the watcher from the westward lattice,
"Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,Along Morea's hills the setting sun;Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,But one unclouded blaze of living light."
"Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,Along Morea's hills the setting sun;Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,But one unclouded blaze of living light."
"Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run,
Along Morea's hills the setting sun;
Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But one unclouded blaze of living light."
The Apostle, pacing the chamber, as men are wont to do when they use the pens of others, is aware that his message is at an end, as to doctrine and counsel. But before he bids his willing and wondering secretary rest from his labours, he has to discharge his own heart of the personal thoughts and affections which have lainready in it all the while, and which his last words about his coming visit to the City have brought up in all their life and warmth. And now Paul and Tertius are no longer alone; other brethren have found their way to the chamber—Timotheus, Lucius, Jason, Sosipater; Gaius himself; Quartus; and no less a neighbour than Erastus, Treasurer of Corinth. A page of personal messages is yet to be dictated, from St Paul, and from his friends.
Now first he must not forget the pious woman who is—so we surely may assume—to take charge of this inestimable packet, and to deliver it at Rome. We know nothing of Phœbe but from this brief mention. We cannot perhaps be formally certain that she is here described as a female Church-official, a "deaconess" in a sense of that word familiar in later developments of Church-order—a woman set apart by the laying-on of hands, appointed to enquire into and relieve temporal distress, and to be the teacher of female enquirers in the mission. But there is at least a great likelihood that something like this was her position; for she was not merely an active Christian, she was "a ministrant ofthe Church." And she was certainly, as a person, worthy of reliance and of loving commendatory praise, now that some cause—absolutely unknown to us; perhaps nothing more unusual than a change of residence, obliged by private circumstances—took her from Achaia to Italy. She had been a devoted and it would seem particularlya brave[259]friend of converts in trouble, and of St Paul himself. Perhaps in the course of her visits to the desolate she had fought difficult battles of protest, where she found harshness and oppression. Perhaps she had pleaded theforgotten cause of the poor, with a woman's courage, before some neglectful richer "brother."
Then Rome itself, as he sees Phœbe reaching it, rises—as yet only in fancy; it was still unknown to him—upon his mind. And there, moving up and down in that strange and almost awful world, he sees one by one the members of a large group of his personal Christian friends, and his beloved Aquila and Prisca are most visible of all. These must be individually saluted.
What the nature of these friendships was we know in some instances, for we are told here. But why the persons were at Rome, in the place which Paul himself had never reached, we do not know, nor ever shall. Many students of the Epistle, it is well known, find a serious difficulty in this list of friends so placed—the persons so familiar, the place so strange; and they would have us look on this sixteenth chapter as a fragment from some other Letter, pieced in here by mistake; or what not. But no ancient copy of the Epistle gives us, by its condition, any real ground for such conjectures. And all that we have to do to realize possibilities in the actual features of the case, is to assume that many at least of this large Roman group, as surely Aquila and Prisca,[260]had recently migrated from the Levant to Rome; a migration as common and almost as easy then as is the modern influx of foreign denizens to London.
Bishop Lightfoot, in an Excursus in his edition of the Philippian Epistle,[261]has given us reason to think that not a few of the "Romans" named here by St Paul were members of that "Household of Cæsar" ofwhich in later days he speaks to the Philippians (iv. 22) as containing its "saints," saints who send special greetings to the Macedonian brethren. TheDomus Cæsarisincluded "the whole of the Imperial household, the meanest slaves, as well as the most powerful courtiers"; "all persons in the Emperor's service, whether slaves or freemen, in Italy and even in the provinces." The literature of sepulchral inscriptions at Rome is peculiarly rich in allusions to members of "the Household." And it is from this quarter, particularly from discoveries in it made early in the last century, that Lightfoot gets good reasons for thinking that in Phil. iv. 22 we may, quite possibly, be reading a greetingfromRome sent by the very persons (speaking roundly) who are here greeted in the EpistletoRome. A place of burial on the Appian Way, devoted to the ashes of Imperial freedmen and slaves, and other similar receptacles, all to be dated with practical certainty about the middle period of the first century, yield the following names:Amplias,Urbanus,Stachys,Apelles,Tryphæna,Tryphosa,Rufus,Hermes,Hermas,Philologus,Julius,Nereis; a name which might have denotedthe sister(see ver. 15) of a man Nereus.
Of course such facts must be used with due reserve in inference. But they make it abundantly clear that, in Lightfoot's words, "the names and allusions at the close of the Roman Epistle are in keeping with the circumstances of the metropolis in St Paul's day." They help us to a perfectly truthlike theory. We have only to suppose that among St Paul's converts and friends in Asia and Eastern Europe many either belonged already to the ubiquitous "Household," or entered it after conversion, as purchased slaves or otherwise; and that some time before our Epistlewas written there was a large draft from the provincial to the metropolitan department; and that thus, when St Paul thought of personal Christian friends at Rome, he would happen to think, mainly, of "saints of Cæsar's Household." Such a theory would also, by the way, help to explain the emphasis with which just these "saints" sent their greeting, later, to Philippi. Many of them might have lived in Macedonia, and particularly in thecoloniaof Philippi, before the time of their supposed transference to Rome.
We may add, from Lightfoot's discussion, a word about "the households," or "people"—of Aristobulus and Narcissus—mentioned in the greetings before us. It seems at least likely that the Aristobulus of the Epistle was a grandson of Herod the Great, and brother of Agrippa of Judea; a prince who lived and died at Rome. At his death it would be no improbable thing that his "household" should pass by legacy to the Emperor, while they would still, as a sort of clan, keep their old master's name. Aristobulus' servants, probably many of them Jews (Herodion, St Paul's kinsman, may have been a retainer of thisHerod), would thus now be a part of "the Household of Cæsar," and the Christians among them would be a group of "the Household saints." As to the Narcissus of the Epistle, he may well have been the all-powerful freedman of Claudius, put to death early in Nero's time. On his death, his greatfamiliawould become, by confiscation, part of "the Household"; and its Christian members would be thought of by St Paul as among "the Household saints."
Thus it is at least possible that the holy lives which here pass in such rapid file before us were lived not only in Rome, but in a connexion more or less closewith the service and business of the Court of Nero. So freely does grace make light of circumstance.
Now it is time to come from our preliminaries to the text.
Ver. 1.Ver. 2.
But—the word may mark the movement of thought from his own delay in reaching them to Phœbe's immediate coming—I commend to you Phœbe, our sister,(this Christian woman bore, without change, and without reproach, the name of the Moon-Goddess of the Greeks,)being a ministrant(διάκονον)of the Church which is in Cenchreæ,the Ægæan port of Corinth;that you may welcome her, in the Lord,as a fellow-member of His Body,in a way worthy of the saints,with all the respect and the affection of the Gospel,and that you may stand by her(παραστῆτε αὐτῇ)in any matter in which she may need you,stranger as she will be at Rome.For she on her part(αὕτη)has proved[262]a stand-by(almosta champion,one whostands up forothers,προστάτις)of many,aye,and of meamong them.
Ver. 3.toVer. 5.
Greet Prisca[263]and Aquila(Ἀκύλας),my co-workers in Christ Jesus;the friendswho(οἵτινες)for my life's sake submitted their own throatto the knife (it was at some stern crisis otherwise utterly unknown to us, but well known in heaven);to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the Churches of the Nations;for they saved the man whom the Lord consecrated to the service of the Gentile world.And the Church at their housegreet with them; that is, the Christians of their neighbourhood, who used Aquila's great room as theirhouse of prayer; the embryo of our parish or district Church. This provision of a place of worship was an old usage of this holy pair, whom St Paul's almost reverent affection presents to us in such a living individuality. They had gathered "a domestic Church" at Corinth, not many months before (1 Cor. xvi. 19). And earlier still, at Ephesus (Acts xviii. 26), they wielded such a Christian influence that they must have been a central point of influence and gathering there also. In Prisca, or Priscilla, as it has been remarked,[264]we have "an example of what a married woman may do, for the general service of the Church, in conjunction with home-duties, just as Phœbe is the type of the unmarried servant of the Church, or deaconess."
Greet Epænĕtus, my beloved, who is the firstfruits of Asia,[265]that is of the Ephesian Province,unto Christ;doubtless one who "owed his soul" to St Paul in that three years' missionary pastorate at Ephesus, and who was now bound to him by the indescribable tie which makes the converter and converted one.
Ver. 6.
Greet Mary—a Jewess probably,MiriamorMaria,—for she(ἥτις)toiled hard for you[266];when and how we cannot know.
Ver. 7.
Greet Andronicus and Junias,Junianus,my kinsmen, and my fellow-captives inChrist'swar(συναιχμαλώτους); a loving and mindful reference to the human relationships which so freely, but not lightly, he had sacrificed for Christ, and to some persecution-battle (was it at Philippi?) when these good men had shared his prison;men who(οἵτινες)are distinguishedamong the apostles;either as being themselves, in a secondary sense, devoted "apostles," Christ's missionary delegates, though not of the Apostolate proper, or as being honoured above the common, for their toil and their character, by the Apostolic Brotherhood;who also before me came to be,as they are,in Christ.[267]Not improbably these two early converts helped to "goad" (Acts xxvi. 14) the conscience of their still persecuting Kinsman, and to prepare the way of Christ in his heart.
Ver. 8.toVer. 10.
Greet Amplias,Ampliatus,my beloved in the Lord;surely a personal convert of his own.
Greet Urbanus, my co-worker in Christ, and Stachys—another masculine name—my beloved.
Greet Apelles, that(τὸν)tested man in Christ;the Lord knows, not we, the tests he stood.
Greet those who belong to Aristobulus' people.[268]
Ver. 11.Ver. 12.
Greet Herodion, my kinsman.
Greet those who belong to Narcissus' people, those who are in the Lord.
Greet Tryphæna and Tryphosa,(almost certainly, by the type of their names, femaleslaves,)who toilin the Lord, perhaps as "servants of the Church," so far as earthly service would allow them.
Greet Persis, the beloved woman,(with faultless delicacy he does not here say "mybeloved," as he had said of the Christianmenmentioned just above,)for she(ἥτις)toiled hard in the Lord;perhaps at some time when St Paul had watched her in a former and more Eastern home.
Ver. 13.
Greet Rufus—just possibly the Rufus of Mar. xv. 21, brother of Alexander, and son of Cross-carrying Simon; the family was evidently known to St Mark, and we have good cause to think that St Mark wrote primarily forRomanreaders—Rufus,the chosen man in the Lord,a saint of theélite;and his mother—and mine!This nameless woman had done a mother's part, somehow and somewhere, to the motherless Missionary, and her lovingkindness stands recorded now
"In either Book of Life, here and above."
Ver. 14.
Greet Asyncrĭtus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrŏbas, Hermes, and the brethren who are with them;dwellers perhaps in some isolated and distant quarter of Rome, a little Church by themselves.
Ver. 15.
Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and all the saints who are with them,in their assembly.
Ver. 16.
Greet one another with a sacred kiss;the Oriental pledge of friendship, and of respect.All(readπᾶσαι)the Churches of Christ greet you;Corinth, Cenchreæ, "with all the saints in the whole of Achaia" (2 Cor. i. 1).
The roll of names is over, with its music, that subtle characteristic of such recitations of human personalities, and with its moving charm for the heart due almost equally to our glimpses of information about one here and one there and to our total ignorance about others; an ignorance of everything about them but that they were at Rome, and that they were in Christ. We seem, by an effort of imagination, to see, as through a bright cloud, the faces of the company,and to catch the far-off voices; but the dream "dissolves in wrecks"; we do not know them, we do not know their distant world. But we do knowHimin whom they were, and are; and that they have been "with Him, which is far better," for now so long a time of rest and glory. Some no doubt by deaths of terror and wonder, by the fire, by the horrible wild-beasts, "departed to be with Him"; some went, perhaps, with a dismissal as gentle as love and stillness could make it. But however, they were the Lord's; they are with the Lord. And we, in Him,