figurative sense. The sacrifice which they offer are the people, whom they are instrumental in bringing' unto God.
Ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. This is the apostle's explanation of the preceding clause. * He was appointed a minister of Christ to administer, or to act the part of a priest in reference to, the gospel, that is, to present the Gentiles as a holy sacrifice to God.«-' Paul, therefore, no more calls himself a priest, in the strict sense of the term, than he calls the Gentiles a sacrifice in the literal meaning of that word. Paul thus acted the part of a priest that the offering of the Gen- tiles might be acceptable. The word offering sometimes means the act of oblation, sometimes the thing offered. Our translators have taken it here in the former sense ; but this is not so suitable to the figure or the context. It was not Paul's act that was to be acceptable, or which was * sanctified by the Holy Spirit.' The latter sense of the word, therefore, is to be preferred ; and the meaning is, ' That the Gentiles, as a sacri- fice, might be acceptable;' see ch. 12:1. Phil. 2:17. 2Tim. 4:6. Being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. As the sacrifices were purified by water and other means, when prepared for the altar, so we are made fit for the service of God, rendered holy or acceptable, by the influences of the Holy Spirit. In this beautiful passage we see the nature of the only priesthood which belongs to the Christian ministry. It is not their office to make atonement for sin, or to offer a propitiatory sacrifice to God, but by the preaching of the gospel to bring men, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, to offer themselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.
(17) / have therefore whereof to glory, through Jesus Christ, in those things which pertain to God. That is, ' seeing I have received this office of God, and am appointed a minister of the gospel to the Gentiles, I have ground of confidence and rejoicing.' As, in the previous verses, Paul had asserted his divine appointment as an apostle, he shows, in this and the following verses, that the assertion was well founded, as God had crowned his labours with success, and sealed his ministry with signs and wonders. He, therefore, was entitled, as a minister of God, to exhort and admonish his brethren with the boldness and authority which he had used in this epistle. This ground of boasting, however, he had only in or through Jesus Christ, all was to be attributed to him; and it was in reference to things pertaining to God, i. e. the preaching and success of the gospel, not to his personal advantages or worldly dis- tinctions.
(18, 19) In these verses the apostle explains more fully what he had intended by saying he had ground of confidence or boasting. It was that God had borne abundant testimony to his claims as a divinely commis- sioned preacher of the gospel ; so that he had no need to refer to what others had done; he was satisfied to rest his claims on the results of his own labours, and the testimony of God. For I will not dare to speak