Christian community: the spirit was given to Christians in virtue of their faith (Gal. iii. 2), and normally on occa- sion of their baptism (1 Cor. xii. 13, Acts xix. 1 ff.) : and it 15 this experience, pos- sibly this event, to which the participle definitely refers. What the spirit, given (in baptism) to faith, does, is to flood. the heart with God’s love, and with the: assurance of it..
Ver. 6. The reading et ye is well sup- ported, and yields a good sense (‘‘so surely as”’: Evans), though the sugges- tion is made in W. and H. that it may be a primitive error for et περ (see note on iii. 30). The assurance we have of the love of God is no doubt conditioned, but the condition may be expressed with the utmost force, as it is with et ye, for there is no doubt that what it puts as a hypothesis has actually taken place, viz., Christ’s death for the ungodly. Although he says et ye, the objective fact which follows is in no sense open to question : it is to the Apostle the first of certainties. Cf. the use of et ye in Eph. iii. 2, iv. 21, and Ellicott’s note on the former. ἀσθενῶν : the weakness of men who had: not yet received the Spirit is conceived as appealing to the love of God, rt. goes with ὄντων jp. ἀσθενῶν: the per- sons concerned were no longer weak,. when Paul wrote, but strong in their new relation to God. κατὰ καιρὸν has been taken with ὄντῶν ἡ. ἀ. ἔτι: ‘while we were yet without strength, as the pre- Christian era implied or required’: but this meaning is remote, and must have- been more clearly suggested. The anal--
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3--9.