East was done. From Jerusalem and round about unto Illyricum he had fully preached the gospel of Christ. He had no more place in these parts (xv. 19, 23). His eye was turned westward, and rested inevitably on Rome. He had wished to visit it for a good many years (xv. 23), perhaps ever since he had first met Prisca and Aquila in Corinth (Acts xviii. 2), and he had often formed the purpose, though it had been as often disappointed (i. 13). But now it hada definiteness which it had never had before. He did not indeed look on Rome as the goal of his journey ; he meant only to stay there till he had been somewhat satisfied with the Church’s fellowship, and then to be convoyed by them toward Spain (xv. 24). But he wasa Roman citizen, and must have been conscious, as an expression in i. 8 shows (“Your faith is proclaimed in all the world”), of the supreme importance of the Church which had its seat in the capital of the empire. He would not only wish a point of support there for his further operations in the West; he must have been more than commonly anxious that Christianity there should appear as what it truly was, and that the Romans should be firmly established in it. If Paul was going to write to the Romans at all, no matter from what immediate impulse—though it should only have been to announce his approaching visit—it would be natural that his com- munication, in proportion as he realized the place and coming importance of the Church at Rome, should assume a catholic and comprehensive character. We can hardly imagine the man who was conscious of his own vocation as Apostle of the Gentiles, and conscious at the same time of the central significance of this Church, writing anything of a merely formal character to such a community. When he introduced himself to them, it was a great occasion, and the epistle is the best evidence that he was sensible of its greatness.
There are other considerations which would tell on Paul’s mind in the same direction. When he wrote, he was setting out on a journey the issue of which was doubtful and perilous. At the very outset he had to change his course, because of a plot formed against him by the Jews (Acts xx. 3). He dreaded what these same relentless enemies might do in Judza; he was not sure that even the Christians in Jerusalem would receive graciously the offering which his love and zeal had raised among the Gentiles on their behalf (chap. xv. 31). He was setting out in readiness not only to be bound, but to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts xxi. 19). In a sense,
therefore, this epistle might be called histestament (Weiss). He puts
into it,not merely what is suggested to him by special circumstances of which he is aware in the Church at Rome—e.g., the discussion of the relations between “the strong” and “the weak ’’—but all that his
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ς7ο INTRODUCTION
own situation and that of the Church, looking at both in the largest aspect, determine to be of interest. He has achieved a great work in the East. By carrying the charity of the Gentile Christians to: Jerusalem, and fraternising once more with the primitive Church, he hopes to secure and perfect that work, and to effect a more cordial union between the two great branches of Christendom, which: so imperfectly understood each other. He has passed through great conflicts, but his mind has only been made clearer by them, and: established in firmer possession of the fundamental principles of the Christian life; he can define it without misgiving in relation to all previous modes of human experience and all earlier stages of religion, whether in Greek or Jew. His heart is set on further labours, but he is profoundly conscious of the uncertainties of the future. Such are the outward and the spiritual conditions under which Paul writes. Is it not manifest that when we give them all the historical definite- ness of which they are capable, there is something in them which rises above the casualness of time and place, something which might easily give the epistle not an accidental or occasional character, but the character of an exposition of principles? Be the immediate motive what it may, it isnot incredible that the epistle should have something in it which is rather eternal than historical, and that it should require for its interpretation, not a minute acquaintance with opinion in the apostolic age, but some sense of God and man.