Romans 12 - Introduction

SECOND PART OF THE EPISTLE. THE PRACTICAL TREATISE. THE LIFE OF THE JUSTIFIED BELIEVER. 12:1-15:13.

IN the doctrinal part which we have just finished, the apostle has expounded the way of salvation. This way is no other than justification by faith, whereby the sinner is reconciled to God (chaps. 1-5), then sanctified in Christ by the communication of the Spirit (vi.-viii.); and it is precisely the refusal to follow this way which has drawn down on Israel their rejection (chaps. 9-11). What now will be the life of the justified believer life in salvation? The apostle sketches it in a general way in chaps. 12 and 13; then he applies the moral principles which he has just established to a particular circumstance peculiar to the church of Rome (Romans 14:1 to Romans 15:13). We can therefore distinguish two parts in this course of practical doctrine, the one general, the other special.

General Part. Chaps. 12 and 13.

There exists in regard to these two Chapter s a general prejudice which has completely falsified their interpretation. They have been regarded as giving, according to the expression used even by Schultz, “a series of practical precepts,” in other words: a collection of moral exhortations without systematic order, and guided merely by more or less accidental associations of ideas. This view, especially in recent times, has brought graver consequences in its train than could have been expected. It has been asked whether those details in regard to practical life were in keeping with a whole so systematically arranged as the didactic treatise contained in the first eleven Chapter s. And Renan and Schultz have been led in this way to the critical hypotheses which we have summarily expounded at the end of the Introduction (I. pp. 66 and 67), and which we must now study more closely.

According to the former of these writers, chaps. 12, 13, and 14 formed no part of the Epistle as it was sent to the church of Rome. These Chapter s were only in the copies despatched to the churches of Ephesus and Thessalonica, and an unknown church, for whose benefit Paul is held to have composed our Epistle. The conclusion, in the copy destined for the church of Rome, was composed solely of chap. 15. Nor did chap. 16 belong to it. Here we have to do only with chaps. 12 and 13. The reasons which lead Renan to doubt the original connection of these Chapter s with the first eleven, in the copy sent to Rome, are the two following: (1) Paul would be departing here from his habitual principle: “Every one in his own domain;” in fact, he would be giving imperative counsels to a church which he had not founded, he who rebuked so sharply the impertinence of those who sought to build on the foundations laid by others. The first word of chap. 12, the term παρακαλῶ, I exhort, is no doubt habitual to him when he is giving a command to his disciples; but it is unsuitable here, where the apostle is addressing believers whom he did not bring to the faith. (2) The first part of chap. 15, which, according to Renan, is really addressed to the church of Rome, forbids the thought that chaps. 12, 13, and 14 were composed for the same church; for it would form a duplicate of those three Chapter s of which it is a simple summary, composed for Judeo-Christian readers, such as those at Rome.

The viewpoint at which Schultz places himself is somewhat different. In his eyes, we possess from chap. 12 a considerable fragment of a wholly different epistle from that which the apostle had composed for the church of Rome. This letter, of which we have not the beginning, was addressed to the church of Ephesus, and must have been written in the last period of St. Paul's life, that of his Roman captivity. To it belong the three Chapter s, 12, 13, and 14, as well as the first seven verses of chap. 15, then the salutations of chap. 16 (Romans 16:3-16), and finally, the warning against Judaizers, Romans 16:17-20. The true conclusion of the Epistle to the Romans is to be found, according to him, in chap. 15, from Romans 15:7 to the end, adding thereto the recommendation of Phoebe, Romans 16:1-2, and the salutations of Paul's companions, Romans 16:21-24. How has the fusion of those two letters in one come about? It is rather difficult to explain, as the one went to the East, the other to the West. Schultz thinks that a copy of this Epistle to the Ephesians, written from Rome, remained without address in the archives of this church, and that the editors of the Epistle to the Romans, finding this short epistle of practical contents, and thinking that it had been written to the Romans, published it with the large one. Only they omitted the beginning, and mixed up the two conclusions.

The following are the reasons which lead Schultz to separate chaps. 12 and 13 from what precedes:

1. The exhortation to humility, at the beginning of chap. 12, would be somewhat offensive if addressed to a church which the apostle did not know.

2. The exhortation to beneficence toward the saints, and the practice of hospitality, supposes a church in connection with many other churches, which was rather the case with the church of Ephesus than with that of Rome.

3. It is impossible to connect the beginning of chap. 12 (οὖν, therefore) naturally with chap. 11; for the mercies of God spoken of chap. Romans 12:1, are not at all identical with the mercy of God spoken of Romans 11:32.

4. The whole moral side of the gospel having been expounded in chap. 6, it was not necessary to go back on it in chap. Romans 12:5. There was no reason for reminding the Judeo-Christians of the church of Rome, as Paul does in chap. 13, of the duty of submission to the Roman authorities; for the Jews were quite happy at Rome about the year 58, during the first years of Nero's reign. Such a recommendation was much more applicable to the Jews of Asia, disposed, as the Apocalypse proves, to regard the imperial power as that of Antichrist.

Are we mistaken in saying that the reasons alleged by these two writers produce rather the impression of being painfully sought after than of having presented themselves naturally to the mind? What! Paul cannot give imperative moral counsels and use the term παρακαλεῖν, exhort, when writing to a church which he does not know? But what did he do in chaps. 6 and 8, when he said to his Roman readers: “Yield not your members as instruments unto sin;” “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die,” etc.? And as to the term which seems unsuitable to Renan, does not Paul use it, as Lacheret observes, in chap. Romans 15:30, which this writer himself supposes addressed to the church of Rome? The objection which Renan draws from the sort of pleonasm which the first part of chap. 15 would form, if it appeared in the same writing as chap. 12, will easily be resolved when we come to the passage. On the contrary, what a difficulty there would be in holding that a doctrinal treatise, composed by the apostle with a view to Gentile-Christian churches, such as Ephesus or Thessalonica, for the purpose of giving them a complete exposition of the faith, could have been addressed just as it was to a Judeo-Christian church like that of Rome (according to Renan) for the purpose of gaining it to the apostle's point of view! This consideration, says Lacheret with reason, suffices to overthrow from the foundation the whole structure of Renan. And what a factitious procedure is that which Renan invites us to witness: “the disciples of Paul occupied for several days copying this manifesto for the different churches,” and then later editors collecting at the end of the chief (princeps) copy the parts which varied in the different copies, because they scrupled to lose anything of what dropped from the apostle's pen!

The reasons of Schultz inspire as little confidence. Paul is careful himself to explain his exhortation to humility in chap. 12, as in chap. 1, and in chap. 15 he explains his whole letter, on the ground of his apostleship, and especially his apostleship to the Gentiles, which gives him authority over the church of Rome, though he has not personally founded it: “I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you” (Romans 12:3).

Why would not the exhortation to beneficence and hospitality have been in place at Rome, where the poor and strangers abounded, as well as at Ephesus?

And as to the warning relative to submission to the authorities, had it not its reason in the general position of Christians over against pagan power, without any need of special oppression to give the apostle occasion to address it to this church? Had not the Emperor Claudius not long before expelled the Jews from Rome because of their continual risings? And what church could more suitably than that of the capital receive instruction on the relation between Christians and the State?

Chap. 12 forms by no means a reduplication of chap. 6; for in the latter the apostle had merely laid down the principle of Christian sanctification, showing how it was implied in the very fact of justification, while in chap. 12 he gives the description of all the fruits into which this new life should expand. We shall immediately see what is the relation between chap. 12 and all that precedes, as well as the true meaning of the therefore in Romans 12:1.

We think, therefore, we are entitled to continue the interpretation of our Epistle, taking it as it has been transmitted to us by Christian antiquity. It would need strokes of very different power to sunder the parts of so well-compacted an edifice.

In the theme of the treatise: “The just shall live by faith,” there was a word whose whole contents had not yet been entirely developed: shall live. This word contained not only the whole matter of chaps. 6-8, but also that of chaps, xii. and xiii.; and this matter is not less systematically arranged in these Chapter s than that of the whole doctrinal part in the preceding eleven. The essentially logical character of Paul's mind would of itself suffice to set aside the idea of an inorganic juxtaposition of moral precepts, placed at haphazard one after the other. We no sooner examine these two Chapter s more closely, than we discover the idea which governed their arrangement. We are struck first of all with the contrast between the two spheres of activity in which the apostle successively places the believer, the religious sphere and the civil sphere the former in chap. 12, the latter in chap. 13. These are the two domains in which he is called to manifest the life of holiness which has been put within him; he acts in the world as a member of the church and as a member of the state. But this twofold course has one point of departure and one point of aim. The point of departure is the consecration of his body, under the direction of the renewed understanding; this is the basis of the believer's entire activity, which Paul lays down in the first two verses of chap. 12. The point of aim is the Lord's coming again constantly expected; this advent Paul causes to shine in splendor at the goal of the course in the last four verses of chap. 13. So: one point of departure, two spheres to be simultaneously traversed, one point of arrival; such, in the view of the apostle, is the system of the believer's practical life. Such are also the four sections of this general part: Romans 12:1-2; Romans 12:3-21; Romans 13:1-10; Romans 13:11-14.

This moral instruction is therefore the pendant of the doctrinal instruction It is its necessary complement. The two taken together form the apostle's complete catechism. It is because the rational relation between the different sections of this part has not been understood that it has been possible for the connection of this whole second part with the first to be so completely mistaken.

Some one will ask, perhaps, if the apostle, in thus tracing the model of Christian conduct, does not seem to distrust somewhat the sanctifying power of faith so well expounded by him in chaps. 6-8. If the state of justification produces holiness with a sort of moral necessity, why seek still to secure this object by all sorts of precepts and exhortations? Should not the tree, once planted, bear its fruits of itself? But let us not forget that moral life is subject to quite different laws from physical life. Liberty is and remains to the end one of its essential factors. It is by a series of acts of freedom that the justified man appropriates the Spirit at every moment, in order to realize with His aid the moral ideal. And who does not know that at every moment also an opposite power weighs on his will? The believer is dead unto sin, no doubt; he has broken with that perfidious friend; but sin is not dead in him, and it strives continually to restore the broken relation. By calling the believer to the conflict against it, as well as to the positive practice of Christian duty, the apostle is not relapsing into Jewish legalism. He assumes the inward consecration of the believer as an already consummated fact; and it is from this fact, implicitly contained in his faith, that he proceeds to call him to realize his Christian obligation.