“to the possibility of a tyranny of the
weak, and repressed it in its beginnings. It is easy to lapse from scrupulousness about one’s own conduct into Pharisaism about that of others. οἰκέτης is rare in the N.T. Paul has no other example, and may have used it here for the sugges- tion (which δοῦΌλος has not) that the person referred to belonged to the house. τῷ ἰδίῳ κυρίῳ στήκει ἢ πίπτει: for the verbs in the moral sense see 1 Cor. x. 12. The dative is dat. comm. It is his own Lord who is concerned—it is His interest which is involved and to Him (not to you) he must answer—as he stands or falls. σταθήσεται δέ: but he shall be made to stand, 7.e., shall be pre- served in the integrity of his Christian character. δυνατεῖ yap 6 Κύριος στῆσαι αὐτόν: for the Lord has power to keep
4
702
ἡμέραν. 4
d Ch. viii. 5.
νε
ἕκαστος ἐν τῷ idiw vot πληροφορείσθω.
ἡμέραν Κυρίῳ φρονεῖ, καὶ ὁ μὴ
6. ὁ * φρονῶν τὴν φρονῶν τὴν ἡμέραν Kupiw οὐ φρονεῖ.!
, , , Lad ~ ~ 5 ἐσθίων Κυρίω ἐσθίει, εὐχαριστεῖ γὰρ τῷ Θεῷ:' καὶ 6 μὴ ἐσθίων
, > 3 , ‘ > ο ~ a Kupiw οὐκ ἐσθίει, καὶ εὐχαριστει τῷ Θεῷ.
7. οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἡμῶν
1 και ο µη φρογων την ηµεραν Κνριω ου Φρονει om. ΝΑΒΟΙΡΕ, vulg., Copt., etc, Almost all crit. edd. follow these authorities and omit; but Alf. only brackets the
words, holding that the omission may be due to homeeoteleuton.
found in C3LP, Syr., Chrys., Thdrt.
ο εσθιων with RABCDFL.
him upright. Paul does not contemplate the strong man falling and being set up again by Christ ; but in spite of the perils which liberty brings in its train—and the Apostle is as conscious of them as the most timid and scrupulous Christian could be—he is confident that Christian liberty, through the grace and power of Christ, will prove a triumphant moral success.
Ver. 5. The Apostle passes from the question of food to one of essentially the same kind—the religious observance of days. This is generally regarded as quite independent of the other; but Weiss argues from ver. 6, where the text which he adopts in common with most editors seems to contrast ‘‘him who ob- serves the day” with ‘“‘him who eats,” that what we have here is really a sub- division of the same general subject. In other words, among those who abstained trom Πες] and wine, some did so always, others only on certain days. ‘‘To ob- serve the day” might in itself mean to observe it by fasting—this would be the case if one’s ordinary custom were to use flesh and wine; or it might mean to observe it by feasting—this would be the case if one ordinarily abstained. Practi- cally, it makes no difference whether this reading of the passage is correct or not: Paul argues the question of the dis- tinction of days as if it were an indepen- dent question, much as he does in Col. ii. It is not probable that there is any reference either to the Jewish Sabbath or to the Lord’s Day, though the principle on which the Apostle argues defines the Christian attitude to both. Nothing whatever in the Christian religion is legal or statutory, not even the religious observance of the first day of the week; that observance originated in faith, and is not what it should be except as it is freely maintained by faith. For ὃς μὲν -see ver. 2. κρίνει ἣμ. Wap ἡμέραν means
The clause is
There are other instances of homceoteleuton in the attestation of this passage, as Alf. points out. to ηµεραν, 71 from εσθιει to εσθνει, and L from τω θεω to τω Sew.
Thus 661 omits from ηµεραν Insert και before
judges one day ‘“‘in comparison with,” or ‘‘to the passing by of” another: cf. i. 25, Winer, 503 f. Side by side with this, κρίνει πᾶσαν ἡμέραν can only mean, makes no distinction between days, counts all alike. In such questions the important thing is not that the decision should be this or that, but that each man should have an intelligent assurance as to his own conduct: it is, indeed, by having to take the responsibility of de- ciding for oneself, without the constraint of law, that an intelligent Christian con- science is developed. For πληροφορ- είσθω cf. iv. 21, and Lightfoot’s note on Col. iv. 12. vots (vii. 23) is the moral intelligence, or practical reason; by means of this, enlightened by the Spirit, the Christian becomes a law to himself.