Ver. 38 f. The Apostle’s personal conviction given in confirmation of all that has been said, especially of ver. 37. πέπεισµαι cf. 2 Tim. i. 12. οὔτε θάνατος οὔτε ζωὴ: death is mentioned first, either with ver. 36 in mind, or as the most tre- mendous enemy the Apostle could con- ceive. If Christ’s love can hold us in and through death, what is left for us to fear? Much of the N.T. bears on this
5ο,
ΠΡΟΣ ΡΩΜΑΙΟΥΣ ὅςς
γῆς ' ”) 37. ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τούτοις πᾶσιν ὑπερνικῶμεν διὰ τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντος
ἡμᾶς.
38. πέπεισµαι γὰρ ὅτι οὔτε θάνατος οὔτε ζωή, οὔτε ἄγγελοι
οὔτε ἀρχαὶ οὔτε Ὀυνάμεις, οὔτε ἐνεστῶτα οὔτε μέλλοντα, 39. οὔτε
ὕψωμα οὔτε βάθος, οὔτε τις κτίσις ἑτέρα δυνήσεται ἡμᾶς χωρίσαι
2 ‘ a 3 , A “a lol > AF - n , ς A ἀπο τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ Θεοῦ, τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ ᾿Ιησοῦ τῷ Κυριῳ ἡμῶν.
very point, cf. John viii. 51, x. 28, xi. 25 f., x Thess. iv. 13-18, 1 Cor. xv., 2 Cor. iv. 16-v. 5, Rom. xiv. 8, Heb. ii. 14 f. The blank horror of dying is annihilated by the love of Christ. Neither death nor life is to be explained: explanations ‘‘only limit the flight of the Apostle’s thoughts just when they would soar above all limitation’’ (Gifford). οὔτε ἄγγελοι οὔτε ἀρχαὶ: this, according to the best authorities, forms a second pair of forces conceivably hostile to the Christian, As in every pair there is a kind of contrast, some have sought one here also: either making ἄγγελοι good and ἀρχαὶ evil powers, though both spiritual ; or ἄγγελοι heavenly, and ἀρχαὶ (as in Le. xii, rz, Tit. iii. 1) earthly powers, in which case either might be either good or bad. But this is arbitrary: and a comparison of 1 Cor. xv. 24, Eph. i. 21 favours a suggestion in S. and H. that possibly in a very early ‘copy οὔτε δυνάµεις had been accidentally omitted after οὔτε ἀρχαὶ, and then added in the margin, but reinserted in a wrong place. The T.R. ‘‘neither angels nor principalities nor powers” brings to- gether all the conceptions with which ‘the Apostle peopled the invisible spiritual world, whatever their character, and de- οἶατες their inability to come between us and the love of Christ. οὔτε ἐνεστῶτα οὔτε μέλλοντα: cf. 1 Cor, iii. 22. οὔτε ὕψωμα οὔτε βάθος: no dimensions of space. Whether these words pictured something to Paul’s imagination we cannot tell; the patristic attempts to give them definiteness are not happy. οὔτε τις κτίσις ἕτέρα: nor any created thing of different kind. All the things Paul has mentioned come under the head of κτίσις ; if there is anything of a different kind which comes under the same head, he includes it too. The suggestions of «6 another world,” or of ‘‘ aspects of ‘reality out of relation to our faculties,”’ and therefore as yet unknown to us, are toys, remote from the seriousness and passion of the Apostle’s mind. Nothing that God has made, whatever be its nature, shall be able to separate us ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ θεοῦ τῆς ἐν Χ. Ἰ. τοῦ κ. ἡμῶν. The love of Christ is God’s love,
manifested to us in Him; and it is only in Him that a Divine love is manifested which can inspire the triumphant assur- ance of this verse.
CHAPTERS ΙΧ.-ΧΙ. With the eighth chapter Paul concludes the positive exposition of his gospel. Starting with the theme of i. 16 f., he showed in i. 18- 11. 20 the universal sinfulness of men —Gentile and Jew; in iii. 21-v. 21 he explained, illustrated and glorified the gospel of justification by faith in Christ, set forth by God as a propitiation for sin; in vi. I-viii. 39 he has vindicated this gospel from the charge of moral inefficiency, by showing that justification by faith is inseparably connected with a new life in the Spirit, a life over which sin has no dominion and in which the just demands of God’s law are fulfilled. He has even carried this spiritual life on, in hope, to its consummation in glory: and no more remains to be said, With chap. ix. a new subject is intro- duced. There is no formal link of connection with what precedes. Struc- turally, the new division of the epistle stands quite apart from the earlier; it might have been written, and probably was written, after a break. But though no logical relation between the parts is expressed, a psychological connection between them 15 not hard to discover. The new section deals with a problem which presented great difficulty to the early Church, and especially to men of Jewish birth, a problem which haunted the Apostle’s own mind and was no doubt thrust on his attention by his unbelieving countrymen, a problem all the ‘more painful to him as he realised more completely the greatness and glory of the Christian salvation. This was the problem constituted by the fact that the Jews as a whole did not receive the Gospel. They were God’s chosen people, but if the Christian Gospel brought salvation they had no share in it. The Messiah was to spring from them, but if Jesus was the Messiah this privilege meant not redemption but condemnation, for they rejected Him almost with one consent. In short, if the birth of the Christian Church and the gathering of