Time Place Occasion

It is the month of February, in the year of Christ 58¹. In a room in the house of Gaius, a wealthy Corinthian Christian, Paul the Apostle, his amanuensis Tertius at his side, addresses himself to write the converts at Rome.

Meanwhile, the world is rolling on its way. It is the fourth year of Nero; he is Consul the third time, with his colleague Valerius Messala; Poppæa has caught the unworthy Prince in the net of her bad influence. Domitius Corbulo, has just resumed the war with Parthia, and prepares to penetrate the highlands of Armenia. Within a few weeks, in the full spring, an Egyptian impostor is about to inflame Jerusalem with his Messianic claim, leading four thousand fanatics into the desert, and returning to the city with a host of thirty thousand men, only to be totally routed by the legionaries of Felix. For himself, the Apostle is about to close his three months' stay at Corinth; he has heard of plots against his life, and in prudence will decline the more direct route from Cenchrea by sea, striking northward for Philippi, and then over the Ægean to Troas. If possible, he must visit Jerusalem before the end of May because he has with him the Greek collections for the poor converts of Jerusalem. Then, in the vista of his further movements, he sees Rome with a certain apprehension yet with longing hope, thinking about life and witness there.

A Greek Christian woman, Phoebe, a ministrant of the church at Cenchrea is about to visit the City. He must commend her to the Roman brethren; and a deliberate Letter to them is suggested by this personal need.

His thoughts have long gravitated to the City of the World. Not many months before, at Ephesus, when he had “purposed in the Spirit” to visit Jerusalem, he had said, with an emphasis which his biographer remembered, “I must also see Rome” (Acts 19:21); “I must," in the sense of a divine decree, which had written this journey down in the plan of his life. He was assured by circumstantial and perhaps supernatural signs, that he had “now no more place in these parts” (Rom. 15:23) – that is, in the Eastern Roman world where hitherto all his labor had been spent. The Lord who in former days had placed Paul on a track that led him through Asia Minor to the Ægean, and across the Ægean to Europe (Acts 16), now prepared to guide him, though by-paths which His servant knew not, from Eastern Europe to Western, and before all things to the City. Among these providential preparations was a growing occupation of the Apostle's thought with persons and interests in the Christian circle there. As already mentioned, here was Phoebe, about to take ship for Italy. Yonder, in the great Capital, were the beloved and faithful Aquila and Prisca, whose first days perhaps dated from the Pentecost itself, when Roman "strangers" (Acts 2:10) saw and heard the wonders and message of that hour. At Rome also lived other believers personally known to Paul, drawn by unrecorded circumstances to the Center of the world. "His well-beloved” Epænetus was there; Mary, who had sometimes tried hard to help him; Andronicus, and Junias, and Herodion, his relatives; Amplias and Stachys, men very dear to him; Urbanus, who had worked for Christ at his side; Rufus, no common Christian in his esteem, and Rufus' mother, who had once watched over Paul with a mother's love. All these rise before him as he thinks of the arrival of Phoebe, and the faces and hands which at his appeal would welcome her in the Lord, under holy Christian fellowship.

Besides, he has been hearing about the actual state of that all-important congregation. As "all roads led to Rome," so all roads led from Rome, and there were Christian travelers everywhere (1:8) who could tell him how the Gospel fared among the metropolitan brethren. As he heard of them, he prayed for them “without ceasing (1:9), also making request for himself, now definitely and urgently, that his way might be opened to visit them at last.

To pray for others, if the prayer is truly prayer, based to some extent on knowledge, is a sure way to deepen our interest in them, and our sympathetic insight into their hearts and conditions. From the human side, nothing more than these tidings and prayers were needed to draw from Paul a written message to be placed in Phoebe's care. When he once addressed himself to write, there were circumstances of thought and action from this same human side which would naturally give direction to his message.

In matters of Christian truth he stood amid most significant and suggestive circumstances. Quite recently his Judaist rivals had invaded the congregations of Galatia, leading impulsive converts to quit what seemed their firm grasp on the truth of justification by the faith of Jesus Christ. To Paul this was no mere battle of abstract definitions, nor again was it a matter of merely local importance. The success of the alien Galatia teachers showed him that the same specious mischiefs might win their way anywhere. And what would such success mean? It would mean the loss of the joy of the Lord, and the strength of that joy in the misguided churches. Justification by the faith of Jesus Christ meant nothing less than Christ all in all, literally all in all, for sinful man's pardon and acceptance. It meant a profound simplicity of personal reliance on Him before the fiery holiness of eternal Law. It meant a look out and up; intense and unanxious; from alike the virtues and guilt of man, to the mighty merits of the Savior. It was precisely the foundation-fact of salvation, which secured that the process is not human but divine. To discredit that was not merely to disturb the order of a missionary community; it was to hurt the very vitals of the Christian soul, tainting the mountain springs of God’s peace with impure elements. Being fresh from combating this evil in Galatia, it was sure to be in the thoughts of Paul when he turned to Rome. There it was only too certain that his active adversaries would do their worst; probably at work already.

Paul had also been engaged with the problems of Christian life in the church at Corinth. In the Corinthian Epistles we find no grand traces of an energetic heretical propaganda, but rather a bias in the converts toward a strange license of temper and life. Perhaps this was accentuated by a popular logical assent to the truth of justification taken alone, isolated, from other concurrent truths, tempting the Corinthian to dream that he might “continue in sin that grace might abound.” If such were his state of spiritual thought, he would encounter (by his own fault) a positive moral danger in the supernatural “gifts” which at Corinth about that time seem to have appeared with quite abnormal power. In the presence of such exaltations an antinomian theory would easily lead one to the conception of being too free and rich in the supernatural order to be the servant of common duties, of common morals. Thus the Apostle's soul would be full of need of expounding to its depths the vital harmony of the Lord's work for the believer and the Lord's work in him; the coordination of a free acceptance with both the precept and possibility of holiness. Once and for all he must show how the justified are bound to be pure and humble, how they can be, and what forms of practical dutifulness their life must take. He must forever make it clear that the Ransom which releases also purchases; that the Lord's freeman is the Lord's property; that the Death of the Cross leads directly to his living union with the Risen One, including a union of will with will. Thus, if true to itself, the Christian life must be a life of loyalty to every obligation, every relation, constituted in God's providence among men.

Another question which had pressed on the Apostle's mind for years, now has a special weight – the mystery of Jewish unbelief. Who can estimate the pain and greatness of that mystery in the mind of Paul? His own conversion, while teaching him patience with his old associates, must have filled him with eager hopes for them. Every deep and self-evidencing manifestation of God in a man's soul naturally suggests to him the thought of glorious things possible in the souls of others. Why should not the now converted leading Pharisee be the signal and means of conversion of the Sanhedrin, and the people? But the hard mystery of sin crossed such paths of expectation, and more so as the years went on. Judaism outside the church was stubborn, and energetically hostile. And within the church it crept in underground, springing up in an embittered opposition to the central truths. What did all this mean? Where would it end? Had Israel collectively sinned beyond pardon and repentance? Had God cast off His people; these troublers of Galatia; these fiery rioters before the tribunal of Gallio at Corinth; did their conduct mean that all was over for the race of Abraham? The question was agony to Paul; and he sought his Lord's answer as a thing without which he could not live. That answer flooded his soul while meditating on his Letter to Rome; while thinking of the Judaists there and the loving Jewish friends who would read his message when it came.

Though strictly conjectural, we venture to describe the possible outward and inward conditions under which the Epistle to the Romans was conceived and written. The wonderful fullness of the Epistle, both of outline and detail, offers more than a shadow of basis to such conjectures. Let us never forget that whatever the writer saw around him or felt within, the finished Epistle was infinitely more than the resultant of Paul's mind and life; it was, and is, an oracle of God, Holy Scripture, a revelation of eternal facts and principles by which to live and die. It is in this mindset we approach this book; not to simply analyze or attempt to explain, but to submit and believe; taking it as not only Pauline but Divine. However, it is none the less Pauline. What does this mean? It means that both the thought and circumstances of Paul are to be traced and felt as truly and naturally as if we had before us the letter of an Augustine, a Luther, or a Pascal. He who chose the writers of the Holy Scriptures, used each of them in his surroundings and character, yet harmonizing them all in the Book which, while many, is one. He used them with the sovereign skill of Deity. And that skilful use meant that He used their whole created being, as well as their whole circumstances which He had ordered. They were indeed His amanuenses; His pens. He can take a human personality, made in His own image, formative, causative, in all its living thought, sensibility, and will, and can throw it upon its task of thinking and expression – and behold, the product will be His; His matter, His thought, His exposition, His Word, "living and abiding forever."

Thus, in spirit we enter the Corinthian citizen's house, in the sunshine of the early Greek spring, and find our way invisible and unheard to where Tertius sits with his reed-pen and strips of papyrus; where Paul is prepared to give him, word by word, sentence by sentence, this immortal message. Perhaps the corner of the room is heaped with hair-cloth from Cilicia, and the implements of the tent-maker. But the Apostle is now the guest of Gaius, a man whose means enable him to be “the host of the whole church.” We can’t see the form or face of him who is about to dictate. The mist of time is in our eyes; but perhaps we see a small and emaciated frame; a face remarkable for its arched brows and wide forehead, and for the expressive mobility of the lips.2 We trace in looks, in manner and tone of utterance, and even in unconscious attitude and action, tokens of a mind rich in every faculty, a nature equally strong in energy and sympathy, made both to govern and win, to will and love. The man is great and wonderful, a master soul, subtle, wise, and strong. Yet he draws us to his heart with pathetic force, as one who asks and will repay affection.

As we look on his face we think, with awe and gladness, that only twenty years ago with those same thought-tired eyes (possibly troubled with disease) he literally saw the risen and glorified Jesus. His work during those twenty years, his innumerable sufferings, his spirit of mental and moral sanity, yet of supernatural peace and love – all make his assurance absolutely trustworthy. He is a transfigured man since that sight of Jesus Christ, who now dwells in his heart and uses him as the vehicle of His will and work. Now listen as the Lord speaks through His servant. The scribe is busy with his pen, as the message of Christ is uttered through the soul and from the lips of Paul.