35. Who hath first given, etc. From Job xii. 3. Heb., Who has been beforehand with me that I should repay him ? Paul here follows the Aramaic translation. The Septuagint is: Who shall resist me and abide?
36. Of—through—to (¢£—did—els). Of, proceeding Srom as the source: through, by means of, as maintainer, preserver, ruler: ¢o or unto, He is the point to which all tends. All men and things are for His glory (1 Cor. xv. 28). Alford styles this doxology “the sublimest apostrophe existing even in the pages of inspiration itself.”
* Thayer (‘‘ Lexicon”), Knowledge, regarded by itself; wisdom, exhibited in action. Lightfoot, Knowledge is simply ¢ntiuztive, wisdom is ratiocinative also. Knowledge applies chiefly to the apprehension of truths. Wisdom superadds the power of reasoning about them.
Cu. XI] THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 133
NOTE. PAUL’S ARGUMENT IN ROMANS IX, X., AND XL
Tuxse chapters, as they are the most difficult of Paul’s writings, have been most misunderstood and misapplied. Their most dan- gerous perversion is that which draws from them the doctrine of God’s arbitrary predestination of individuals to eternal life or etern- al perdition.
Tt can be shown that such is not the intent of these chapters. They do not discuss the doctrine of individual election and repro- bation with reference to eternal destiny. The treatment of this question is subordinate to a different purpose, and is not, as it is not intended to be, exhaustive.
At the time when the epistle was written, this question was not agitating the Church at large nor the Roman church in particular. Had this been the case, we may be sure, from the analogy of other epistles of Paul, that he would have treated it specifically, as he does the doctrine of justification by faith, in this epistle, and the questions of idol-meats and the resurrection in first Corin- thians.
Such a discussion would not have been germane to the design of this epistle, which was to unfold the Christian doctrine of justifica- tion by faith, as against the Jewish doctrine of justification by works.
The great question which was then agitating the Church was the relation of Judaism to Christianity. Paul declared that Christian- ity had superseded Judaism. The Jew maintained, either, that the Messiah had not come in the person of Jesus Christ, and that Christianity was therefore an imposture ; or that, admitting Jesus to be the Messiah, He had come to maintain the law and the insti- tutions of Judaism: that, therefore, entrance into the messianic kingdom was possible only through the gate of J udaism ; and that the true Christian must remain constant to all the ordinances and commandments of the law of Moses.
According to the Jewish idea, all Gentiles were excluded from
134 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. XL
the kingdom of God unless they should enter it as Jewish prose- lytes. Paul himself, before his conversion, had undertaken to stamp out Christianity as heresy, verily thinking that he ‘ ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth ” (Acts xxvi. 9). Hence the Jew “ compassed sea and land to make one proselyte ” (Matt. xxiii. 15). Every Gentile who should resist the conquest of the world by Israel would be destroyed by Mes- siah. The Jew had no doubts as to the absoluteness of the divine sovereignty, since its fancied application flattered his self-compla- cency and national pride. All Jews were elect, and all others were reprobate. Paul’s proclamation of Messianic privilege to the Gen- tiles did, perhaps, quite as much to evoke Jewish hatred against himself, as his allegiance to the Jesus whom the Jews had crucified as a malefactor.
The discussion in these three chapters fits perfectly into this question. It is aimed at the Jews’ national and religious conceit. It is designed to show them that, notwithstanding their claim to be God’s elect people, the great mass of their nation has been justly rejected by God ; and further, that God’s elective purpose includes the Gentiles. Hence, while maintaining the truth of divine sover- eignty in the strongest and most positive manner, it treats it on a grander scale, and brings it to bear against the very elect them- selves.