It is not my intention to take up the opening verses so much of the chapter, nor indeed the doctrine of the Epistle with which we are familiar, in setting forth the righteousness of God and the means of justification by faith, although one may find it convenient to say a word on these latter, but my mind is centered on verse 16-the stability of the gospel and its power.
The opening verses show us the gospel as “concerning His Son” (verse 3) and giving the Savior's descent from David, so fulfilling the promise of God to David. Very beautiful it is to see that the key note of the gospel is the fulfillment of promise. There is no give and take in the gospel, no exchange, as commonly thought that in return for faith God gives salvation. No, it is the fulfillment of God's promise not only to David's Son to sit on His throne, but the Seed of Abraham in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed. But the apostle says, “I am not ashamed.” Was there anything in his day to produce a feeling of shame? When the apostle was deserted by all, he might have thought he was linked with a very poor cause. John the Baptist had felt so. All the multitude had gone out to hear him preach, but when cast into prison, his heart failed him, and he sent his disciples to say, “Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another.” What a contrast to the bold stand he had taken at the Jordan when he said, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” and then, to his disciples, “Behold the Lamb of God"! Presenting His great work, he then draws attention to the Person who should accomplish it!
The apostle had a very varied experience, and he too found himself in a Roman prison but not at this time. He had purposed going to Rome, and I think we may gather how God overrules all for our good and His own glory. We should never have had a treatise such as this if he had not been hindered in his journey to Rome. And it brings out his interest in a people he had never seen, we know how our interest increases with those we come in contact with, but here is the love of God shed abroad in the heart of His servant, toward those he had never seen. This is very beautiful. It was his special commission to go to the Gentiles, but there is something more here—the deep yearning of the evangelist in the apostle—for He sums up all the gifts in this vessel, a very rare thing. The evangelist's gift causes him to stir about and go to the unconverted; and the more fish he catches, the more he wants to catch. So when the Lord called Peter from his fishing to become a fisher of men, he also became an evangelist as well as an apostle. But as far as we may gather Peter carnet behind the apostle Paul in his mission. “I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I but the grace of God that was with me.” Gift is capable of development. The talent must be used if the one talent is to become five, and the more we use the gift the more it increases. Now the apostle shows a true pastoral character as well. This epistle was addressed to saints, those “set apart” and “called saints” by God's grace, just as he was called on the road to Damascus as an apostle and a saint too and it was as saints he wished to establish them. It is altogether fictitious to suppose that there are any successors of the apostles. A man who goes to an unexplored part may be called so, in a sense, but not in the strictly scriptural sense, “some apostles,” Eph. 4.
But the apostle's object was that those who came under his ministry should be established. Because I have peace with God it does not follow I am well grounded in the faith; so whether it is Peter or Paul, both endeavor to establish and encourage souls, 2 Pet. 1:12. Rom. 1:11.
The Lord Jesus had spoken of shame. He knew the tendency of our hearts when He said, “Whosoever shall be ashamed of Me and My words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed,” etc. Luke 9:26. No doubt it was addressed to Jews at that time, but the principle always holds good; so He puts the danger of shame as well as of fear. John the Baptist thought he might have made a mistake: his thought was fear, not shame.
The word “gospel” is the Saxon for glad tidings, but the gospel of the kingdom means the glad tidings of a coming kingdom, though this would remain in abeyance for a long time while the King is in heaven; but the sowing and the reaping would follow, and those He was addressing would shine forth in the kingdom of their Father, Matt. 13:43, but the Lord did not say then that those who believe are now translated into the kingdom of His Son, Col. 1:13. Yet that gospel of the kingdom was nothing to be ashamed of. But the disciples thought it, the kingdom in glory, was near at hand and were always asking when it was to be set up, Acts. 1:6. The Lord knew all that and what tribulation and trial they would go through to enter into it, Acts 14:22, and that it would produce shame and fear. The apostle spoke of the gospel of the glory (2 Cor. 4:4; 1 Tim. 1:2). To be an apostle he must have seen the Lord, and he says “Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” 1 Cor. 9:1.
In Acts 9, 22, and 26, we get a three-fold account of Saul's conversion, and in each instance there is the sense of the Lord's personal presence. He has seen a vision and the center of it is the Lord; no doubt he was also caught up into Paradise, but he would not boast of it, He received the thorn in the flesh and three times besought the Lord to remove it (2 Cor. 12). If he must boast it should be in the cross etc. (Gal. vi. 14). It was necessary to sustain the revelation he had had. There was that which it was not lawful for a man to utter. The apostle John had his revelation, and he was enabled to tell it out with one exception (Rev. 10:4).
There is something between the Lord and the servant that is only given to the servant. It is very blessed to serve the Lord. Well may the apostle say, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel!”
“The gospel of glory” and “My gospel!” Now he goes on to show its power, power unto salvation. Each writer of the New Testament has got his special line of things, and we must not shake up all the epistles together, because there was never meant to be a harmony of these any more than of the Gospels. No harmony is wanted. It is contrast rather than comparison that is needed. But there is no discord. The Gospels give us One Person in four views, and each Epistle gives us its own line of things, looking at these from a different standpoint. The apostle John in the main looks at eternal life in his Epistle and as a present possession, taking up the instructions he had received. How we need to treasure the teaching of the apostle John now, and based upon his Gospel, when the Person of the Lord is assailed in His divinity and humanity! So the apostle shows us the truth about both. He deals with eternal life as a present fact. His teaching is abstract and positive. He records, “I give unto My sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish.” There is absolute security denoted in these words, and how much blessing and comfort they have been to the saints for many years! yet the enemy has not been slack in seeking to rob us of these.
Paul, in speaking of eternal life in this epistle, looks at it as something to be gained and striven after, and gained at the end. So he directs our attention to two classes of people. Chap. 1 is devoted to bringing out the gross immorality of heathendom which has given us all the corrupt religions in the world even to making a religion of sin deifying their very lusts. Then he takes up that which was not exactly religious. There was a class of people who had seen the folly of making a religion of their sin, and yet they did similar things themselves—this he brings out in chap. 2:6. “God will render to every man according to his works.” That is the subject of judgment, whether of the nations in Matt. 25; or at the great white throne, in Rev. 20; or of the judgment seat of Christ in 2 Corinthians 5. Every one shall receive the things done in the body. So it says here, “to these who by patient continuance in well doing, seek for glory, and honor and immortality, eternal life; but unto these that are contentious and do not obey the truth... indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish” You see he is looking at eternal life here as a goal; so in chap. 6 where he traces the issue of things in verse 21, “the end of those things is death.” We must not forget that God said, “Dying thou shalt die,” to Adam, and in his sinning, death was wrought, and he would have died eternally had not God announced the Seed of the woman. Adam was a believer, for otherwise the end of these things would have been eternal death for him He now was mortal, and had to die. I know in the Old Testament eternal verities are not gone into, but I am showing the logical conclusion. But because of verse 22 it does not follow you have to wait to the end to receive., anything. You must begin with life. The new birth includes the thought of eternal life, and you cannot disengage these two truths. There is a necessity for the new birth, and with it the gift of eternal life.
But to come back to our verse 16. What a thought, “the power of God unto salvation!” Just think what is included. In the Epistle to the Hebrews it is called “So great salvation.” There we are on the ground of contrast. There were numerous temporal salvations and deliverances in times past, but none to compare with what we get in Hebrews. In Ex. 15, on the shores of the Red Sea, it was a great salvation, but here was a greater. Everything connected with Christ glorified is greater than anything before. Everything is greater, and heavenly, in contrast with what is earthly. But salvation is a continuing thing, not only a present deliverance from God's wrath, and future too, as promised to the Romans, (Romans 5:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:10); but all along the pilgrim pathway we experience God's delivering mercy, until the salvation of the body, when He gives us one like Christ's, Philippians 3. The apostle in this epistle not only speaks of what is doctrinal, but of what is very practical; and if it is not, the truth has not got hold of us at all. When we are finally established, then the apostle may give us exhorting, for he wants a practical people to be expositors of his doctrine. So he says (Romans 12:1, 2), “I beseech,” etc. Oh, what true missionaries of the gospel we everyone would be if these verses were fulfilled in us! The apostle was a living witness of this, so he says “I am not ashamed.” What a mighty change had been made in him! One who had sought to exterminate, now builds up (Galatians 1:23), and none built so firmly and strongly as he. Oh, the mighty power of faith! It is the ground of justification, here, and even to all. Faith is just as essential for our daily life as for forgiveness of sins. How often we get a rude awakening instead of simply reposing in God! “The just shall live by faith” is applied not only to my eternal safety but to my walk. The emphasis in Habakkuk 2:4 being upon live, as in Rom. 1:17 it is upon the word just, and Gal. 3:11 on faith.
E.B.D.