The long letter is almost ended. St. Paul has developed the meaning of the revelation of the divine righteousness. He has vindicated the ways of God to the Jews. He has drawn out sufficiently the moral conclusions from God's mercy to mankind. Now he has only to secure again his good terms with the Roman Christians—which he does with the same tact and the same anxiety as at the beginning[[1]],—to explain his movements, to send his greetings to individuals, and to bid farewell.
[[1]] Vol. i. p. 53.
DIVISION VI. § 1. CHAPTER XV. 14-33.
His excuse for writing and his hope of coming.
St. Paul is very anxious not to be understood as if, while giving the Christians at Rome these exhortations which we have just been reading, he stood in any doubt himself of their goodness of heart and full grasp of Christian principles, or of their fitness to admonish one another. He has only been bold to put them in mind of what they already knew, because of the priestly commission on behalf of his Lord towards all the Gentiles, which the divine grace has bestowed upon him as apostle of the Gentiles. The gospel entrusted to him requires him as a priest to prepare and offer sacrifice; and the sacrifice which he is to prepare, which the consecration of the indwelling Spirit alone can make acceptable, is that of the whole Gentile world. The extent to which this great charge laid upon him has been fulfilled, gives him good reason for boasting as he stands before God—not in himself, but in Christ Jesus. His work has been a pioneer's work. He has made it his ambition purely to lay foundations. Taking words of Isaiah[[1]] for his motto, he had resolved to go nowhere where any other had been before him to make Christ known. But in that free and open area of a yet unevangelized world, Christ had worked through him to bring the Gentiles to His obedience, and had accompanied his preaching with evidences of miraculous power and with the strong manifestations of the Spirit. So that in the result the work of proclaiming the gospel had been accomplished, starting from Jerusalem, in an extending circuit[[2]] or irregular progress, as far as Illyria.
This world-wide mission would give St. Paul his title to visit Rome[[3]]. But its very greatness has hitherto hindered him. Now however he is hoping to satisfy the desire that has so long possessed him, and to pay them a visit of some length on his way to Spain. That is to say, he hopes to come to them when the task is over which is immediately occupying him. The good will of the churches in Macedonia and Achaia has shown itself in a collection of money for the poor Christians at Jerusalem. This is really the payment of a debt to those to whom they owe their fellowship in Christ's salvation. When then St. Paul has handed over this collection, and secured to its recipients this fruit of his mission, he hopes to pass to Spain by way of Rome; and again, as in his introduction[[4]], he expresses his confidence that at Rome, as elsewhere, the fullness of the rich gifts of Christ will accompany his coming.
Meanwhile he makes his urgent request, by their allegiance to Christ and their fellowship in the spirit of love, that they will join with him in wrestling with God in prayer for the success of his present undertaking—that he may escape the danger to which he is exposed from the hostility of the unbelieving Jews, and that the gift, as ministered by him, may not prove unacceptable to the Jerusalem church; so that he may get happily to Rome and find repose there with them. And he prays for the blessing of the God of peace upon all of them.