$72 Introduction

an element of truth in it is not to be denied. Paul does not write in vacuo, in no concrete relations at all. In iii. 8 there is a hint of actual adversaries and their criticisms on the Pauline gospel ; in xvi. 17-20 there is another hint of at least possible ones. It may be, as has been noticed above (p. 566), that Jews or Jewish Christians were attempting to create prejudice against the Apostle in Rome ; but we cannot, on the ground that this is a letter, and must there- fore have its character explained by the circumstances of the readers, conclude for certain (with Weizsacker), that this was the case. In expounding his gospel systematically to the Romans, Paul defines it, not necessarily against enemies who were forestalling him in Rome, but against the criticism which had followed him all through his missionary work. And we must remember, as has also been referred to already, that part of that criticism was not so much Jewish as human. It is not the Jewish or Jewish-Christian consciousness in particular—it is the consciousness of the natural man at a certain stage of moral development—which thinks that forgiveness is an immoral doctrine, and is shocked at the idea of a God “ who justifies the ungodly,” or on the other hand, indulges the idea that pardon procures licence to sin. Though the opposition Paul encountered everywhere was headed by Jews or by Christians of Jewish birth, what it represented was by no means exclusively Jewish ; and in an epistle of this unique character, standing where it stands in the Apostle’s life, and making so little express reference to actual Jewish adversaries (contrast it in this respect with Galatians or 2 Cor. x.- xiii.), we must not limit too narrowly the kind of opposition he has in view. He is stating the case of gospel against law—against all that is pre-Christian, infra-Christian, and anti-Christian ; and his polemic has not a temporary but a permanent significance. It is addressed not to Jews of the first century, but to men, and to Christians, of all time. Nothing so conclusively proves its necessity as the fact that it so soon ceased to be understood. It is not easy to live at the spiritual height at which Paul lived. It is not easy to realise that religion begins absolutely on God’s side; that it begins with a demonstration of God’s love to the sinful, which man has done nothing and can do nothing to merit ; and that the assurance of God’s love is not the goal to be reached by our own efforts, but the only point from which any human effort can start. It is not easy to realise that justification, in the sense of an initial assurance of God’s love, extending over all our life, is the indispensable pre- supposition of everything which can be called Christianity. It is not easy to realise that in the atoning death of Christ and the gift of the Holy Ghost there are the only and the adequate securities