The Pulpit Commentary — Romans — Section 70

HOMILIES BY VARIOUS AUTHORS. Vers. 1-4.-The goodness of God. The great object of St. Paul, in these opening chapters of Romans, is to show the world's need of a Saviour. In the first chapter he has shown the inexcusableness of the heathen, and their fallen and lost condition. But he remembers that he is writing to Jews and Jewish Christians at Rome as well as to Gentiles. He knows well the human heart. He can imagine some of hia Jewish readers saying to himself, "Yes, indeed; those heathen are certainly without excuse." But St. Paul does not allow him to cherish this complacent spirit of self-righteousness very long. He seeks to bring home the truth to himself. "Therefore thou art inexcusable, 0 me.n, whosoever thou art that judgest: tor wherein thou condemnest another, thou judgest also thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things" (ver. 1). As if he said, "It is quite true that the heathen are inexcusable. So are you. It is quite true that they have not lived up to the light they got. But have you lived up to the light you have got? Have you not come short of the Law of Moses just as much as they came short of the law of nature?" Thus the Divine Word ever seeks to turn us in upon ourselves. Thus it puts its searching questions, and lays down its searching tests. The Gentile is guilty; so is the Jew. The Jew needs repentance as well as the Gentile. It is this, as we have seen above, that makes the gospel a message for every man. It comes to our fallen humanity everywhere, and, with its message of the goodness and mercy of God, seeks to win us from the paths of sin and death to the way that leadeth to everlasting life. Hence St. Paul emphasizes here the goodness of God. I. THE GOODNESS OF Go», AND BOW IT IS SHOWN, The goodness of God is no new idea. It is as old as the rainbow, as old as the seasons, as old as the sunshine. So strong and deep is the conviction of the human heart about the goodness of the Supreme Being, that when our Anglo-Saxon forefathers were framing words to ~press their ideas, the word they chose to describe the Almighty was this very wurd "God," which simply means "The Good," "The Good One. n So even in that early 0.,,"'0 he was regarded as the personification of goodness. Let us consider how God's goodness is shown to us. Think of what temporal blessings he bestows upon us. Think of his good- ness to our souls. He has not left us, here on earth, to wander in the dark places of sin and sorrow, of uncertainty and despair. He has not le~ us, alone and helpless, to meet the king of terrors, and to step out from the darkness of R hopeless life into the darkness of an unavoidable eternity. If, on the one hand, he has given us the light of conscience and the moral law to show us our guilt, on the other hand he hM given us the light of the gospel, the light of the cross of Jesus, to reveal to us our hope of safety and pence, And, then, how much he has done for each of us personally! How very mercifully God has dealt with us I We are nsharued of m,my things in our own lives. 'l'he memory of them haunts us like an unbidden guest, like a ghost out of the guilty po.at. Yot God did not cast us away from his presonce, nor take his Holy Spirit from us. "Ho he.th not denlt with us nfter our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities." Surely he must have an inexhaustible store of patience, of compassion, of mercy. Ah, yes I Paul was right when he spoke of "the riches of his 9oocl11eas atui forboaranoe and long-suffering,"  THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO THE HOMANS. [o~, n. 1-29,