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 humiliate _him_, 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 us _express_ no "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, but _on_ the 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 words τοῦ εὐαγγελίου τοῦ.
[256] So we explain, rather than take the reference to be to the Holy Spirit's _love for us_. In this context, surely, this latter would be less in point.
[257] Διακονία: another possible reading is δωροφορία, "_gift-bearing_."
[258] Perhaps read, "_through the will of the Lord Jesus_."