—but a real death of the spirit, attended by moral
dissolution, since ‘life indeed’ is found only in VOL. HI, —a6
fellowship with God (Ro 6" 8* 19, Col 3!, 1 Ti 6). As it is through and with the dying Christ that we enter into this ‘newness of life,’ the change itself is called, relatively, a death; ‘our old man was crucified with Christ’ (Ro 6%, Gal 2”).
(d) The history of the race is but the story of the ‘wretched man’ of Ro 7 writ large; it is a history of sin and redemption. There are with Paul, as in Jewish theology, two ages—é αἰὼν ὁ ἐνεστὼς and ὁ αἰὼν ὁ μέλλων (1 Co 2° 731, 2 Co 44, Ro 123, Gal 1*), two worlds corresponding to the ‘new’ and ‘old man’ —one corrupt and perishing, the other newborn in Jesus Christ. His cross marks the boundary between them (Gal 6"). From the ascension ot Jesus dates the Messianic age, the reign of grace, the dispensation of the Spirit, the new humanity, the establishment of ‘the kingdom of the Son of God’s love’ on the territory of ‘the dominion of darkness.’
But the earlier times were never God-forsaken. A fatherly and forbearing Providence directed the nations ; in the bounties of nature God ‘ left him- self without witness’ to none; through His works of creation His ‘eternal power and divinity’ appealed to man’s intelligence (Ac 145} 17>-5!, Ro 1'8-20), The lives of the heathen, with no express ‘law,’ disclose not infrequently the marks of His working in the human conscience (Ro 2!'*+!5-®-#), The Gentile world, as a whole, had notwithstanding sunk into desperate guilt. The more wanton or monstrous a cult might be, so much the more it was ade and the popular idolatry might be roughly
escribed as half lies, half devilry—‘the Gentiles sacrifice to demons and not to God’ (Ro 1*-, 1Co 8* 101-21 122, Gal 4°). Under the sway of such re- ligions, moral debasement went on apace ; the most horrible vices throve ranklyin the great cities where the apostle taught. Satan was de facto ‘the god of this world.’ ‘The law of sin and death,’ operating incessantly from Adam downwards, was working out for society its last results. Here was at leasta negative preparation for Christ. The world was lost, and Paul proclaims to Rome a gospel that is the spames of God unto salvation’; to its ‘ obedience of faith’ he proposes to reduce ‘all the nations.’
In Israel a ditferent, but concurrent, preparation had taken place. The Mosaic law, fastening its bet on the Jewish conscience, compelled it to the hopeless path of salvation by works. The Jew was God’s ‘ bondman’ (Ro 8", Gal 41:7. 4-5"), striving to win ‘a righteousness of his own’ and to secure by merit the Messiah’s coming. The attempt was an acknowledged failure. The law was not kept; it provoked rather than repressed transgression, and ai more hypocrites than saints (Ro 2). The Jew was no better than the Gentile whom he con- demned,—nay, worse because of his boasted know- ledge. The Bivine anger burnt eed against his nation ; their spiritual privileges had ia in them a stubborn and inhuman pride (Ro 259,1 Th 2 36, Ac 13"), The Messianic salvation, as they con- ceived it, was farther off than ever. Gentile and Jew alike—‘all the world ’—were ‘guilty before God,’ with no defence and no resource ‘shut u unto the faith that was to be revealed’ (Ro 3**, Gal 3*-*). The former age extending, with the Mosaic interlude, from Adam to Christ, had cul- minated in a general moral bankruptcy.
At the same time, the apostle viewed the expiring age in another and more favourable light. Both in heathenism and Judaism an education of intellect and conscience had all the while been going on; the elementary truths of religion (τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, i.e. not ‘the’ physical ‘elements,’—starry powers or the like, identified with angels, as many inter- preters suppose,—but ‘the rudiments’ belongin to a childish, pupillary state; see Lgtft. on Gal. 4 and Col 2°; ee Weiss, NJ’ Theol. $70) had been
eae oe
PAUL THE APOSTLE
£22
inculeated and widely understood, however ill ractised, and had disciplined the κληρονόμος νήπιος or his emancipation in Christ. In and around the
Synagogue there was a people prepared for the Lord
—‘a remnant according to the election of grace’ ;
and ‘the salvation of God,’ sent from unbelieving
Judaism to the Gentiles, found these in multitudes
ready to hear; so that the present ‘ casting ΒΟΥ ἥ
of Israel is proving a ‘reconciliation of the world,’
which in turn was destined to end in Israel's full
‘reception’ (Ro 11, Ac 28%). On all accounts it
was clear that ‘the fulness of the times,’ the
turning-point of human destiny, had come,—at once the consummation of the shameful past and the foundation of a glorious future. At the crisis where the apostle stands, ‘God has shut up all together unto disobedience, that he might have
mercy upon all’ (Ro 1153, Gal 353).
3. Doctrine of Christ and of Salvation.—On the basis of St. Paul’s doctrines of God and of righteousness, of man and of sin, stands his doctrine respecting Christ and salvation, — the birth of ‘ the fulness of time’ (Gal 42).
(a) The Person of Christ.—The Pharisee Saul persecuted Jesus of Nazareth after His death for the reason for which He had been put to death,— His claim to be the Son of God. Ina moment he discovered his utter mistake, and reversed his judgment of the Nazarene. Jesus was, after all, the Messiah ;—and not a mere human ‘Son of David,’ a Χριστὸς κατὰ σάρκα, but as He was under- stood to assert before the Sanhedrin and as His apostles continually preached, the Lord of glory, the Son of the Highest. These convictions entered, with alightning flash, the mind of the stricken persecutor. ‘Who art thou, Lord?’ was his question to the Celestial One who appeared to him in the way. The terms of Saul’s faith in the Person of Christ were already present to his thought; he needed but to substitute ‘Jesus Lord’ for ‘Jesus anathema’ (1 Co 12°), and to adore whom he had _ blasphemed. ‘Immediately in the synagogues [of Damascus] he preached that this Jesus is the Son of God’ (Ac 91% ) ; what ‘the Son of God’ meant to Jewish ears, the trial before the Sanhedrin and the record of St. John’s Gospel show. The relationship of Christ to God gave supreme worth in St. Paul’s eyes to His sacrifice, and turned the shameful cross into the glorious revelation of God’s love to mankind: ‘ sent forth his own Son (éavrov) to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons’—‘He spared not his own Son (τοῦ ἰδίου ; comp. Jn 5"*), but delivered him up for us all’; it is thus that God is known to be ‘for us,’ thus He ‘commends his own (ἑαυτοῦ) love toward us’ (Gal 445, Ro 58-10 551. #2),