ROMANS, EPISTLE TO THE (ante). opens with affirming, 1. That the gospel is of divine authority, and had been promised in the Old Testament; 2. That in the person of Jesus Christ the divine and human natures are united; 3. That the righteousness of God by faith which is revealed in the gospel makes it the power of God unto salvation. I. This proposition begins the doctrinal part of the epistle, which shows. 1. That all men need God's way of salvation. (1.) The Gentiles, having sufficient light by nature to render them without excuse for transgression, manifest their depravity in flagrant vices. (2) The Jews pronounce their own condemnation when, doing the same things for which they condemn others, they boast in the law, which forbids sin, and in the Scriptures, which affirm the universal prevalence of transgression. Jews and Gentiles, therefore, being sinners, no man can be saved by the deeds of the law. 2. God offers all men salvation through the death of Christ. This provision had been foretold from the begin ning, and even Abraham had been saved through faith in it. 3. The results of justifica tion by faith arc: peace with God, access into a state of grace, it joyful hope of glory, present joy even in tribulation as promoting growth of Christian character, and assur ance that since the love of God had been exercised toward sinners in giving Christ to die for them, much more by his living again would the blessings of salvation be secured. These blessings are great and abounding, being, as coming through the righteousness of one man, analogous to the ruin which had come on mankind through the transgression of one man; yet far transcending that. 4. This grace to sinners does not tolerate sin, but insures its destruction in all who truly believe. The very profession of reliance on Christ is a promise to forsake sin; and the exercise of faith in him, is the beginning of a new life which is to be perfected in holiness. Yet sin does not die easily, or soon. A conflict between the old nature and the new is waged, often with increasing strenuous ness in proportion as the new grows strong, so that believers, if depending on themselves, would be in despair; but through Christ their deliverance is sure. 5. Therefore to true
believers there arc present manifold blessings: release from condemnation, spiritual life, adoption as children of God, joint-heirship with Christ in all that belongs to God, even though as creatures they still continue, in common with others, subject to the vanity of the present life; yet they have the sure hope of being saved from it, and of their creature nature attaining the glorious liberty of God's children. In the mean time, the spirit of God dwelling in them helps their infirmities; all external things, they know, are so administered as to work together for good to them; and the love of God, which did not spare his own son, will triumph for them and in them over all actual and possible hos tile things. 6. To this doctrinal exhibition an objection of great apparent force is urged. The Jews, through whom historically the one way of salvation in the gospel has been manifested to men, are, as a nation, unbelievers in their own Messiah, and •1...31sequently, are rejected of God. Paul admits the fact, declaring that he endured great and constant Sorrow for diem as his kinsmen according to the flesh whose case had once been his own when, in his ignorant unbelief, he used to imprecate on himself a curse from Christ ; he recounts their ancient privileges and honors, yet declares that God's supreme purpose, itself a part of a universal plan, having from the beginning respect to a portion of the ,people, had been accomplished; that the rejection of the unbelieving portion will not lie perpetual, because ultimately they shall become a believing people; and that, as throgh their unbelief salvation had gone out to the Gentiles, so, in the fullness of time, their faith and restoration will be to the world as life from the dead. IL The practical part of the epistle flows logically from the doctrinal exhibition.