Romans 15:16

“ That I should be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest in the gospel of God, that the offering of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. ”

The grace of apostleship had been given to Paul for the accomplishment of a sublime task. The word λειτουργός denotes a public functionary. In this case the function involved is nothing less than presenting to God the Gentile world as an offering which may be acceptable to Him. This world-wide service to which Jesus Christ Himself had called St. Paul was not only that of a preacher, it had a priestly character. This is certainly what is expressed by the term ἱερουργεῖν (see Meyer): “to offer as a priest;” not that the preacher of the gospel is in any sense a mediator who comes between God and the believer; but his function does not consist in simple teaching; each time it is an act of consecration whereby the messenger of salvation offers to God his own person as well as the persons of all his hearers. We know how Paul prayed constantly for the churches which he had already founded (comp. Romans 1:8-10, and the beginning of all the Epistles), and we can thus imagine what the work of their founding was. Thus was his whole apostolate a priestly function. In the expression: “to fulfil sacerdotally (minister) the gospel of God,” we must understand, here as elsewhere (see on Romans 1:8), by “the gospel,” not the contents, but the act of preaching.

The end of this priestly office confided to the apostle is to transform the world of the Gentiles into an offering well-pleasing to God. Comp. Philippians 2:17. Τῶν ἐθνῶν, of the Gentiles, is a genitive of apposition: the offering which consists of the persons of the Gentiles. The verb γένηται, might be (become), indicates progress; this progress does not consist only in the growing extension of the work; but also, and especially, as is shown by the following words, in the transformation of those who are its subjects: being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. The word of salvation received with faith must be sealed in the heart by power from on high, that the soul may be truly gained, and that it may belong to God; comp. Ephesians 1:13. The apostle probably alludes to the Levitical ordinance, according to which the sprinkling of salt over the meat-offering was the condition of its acceptance on the part of God.

If it is true, according to the natural meaning of these Romans 15:14-16, that the apostle justifies his Epistle to the Romans by his commission to be the apostle of the Gentiles, it clearly follows that the majority of the Christians of Rome were of Gentile origin. The defenders of the Jewish-Christian composition of this church have had to seek to parry this decisive blow. They have tried to do so in two ways. Mangold explains these verses in this sense: “I have required, as apostle of the Gentiles, to express myself more than once in this letter more forcibly than seemed fitting in addressing Jewish-Christians like you; but I had to uphold the rights of those of whom God made me the apostle.” But what is there to give us the right to restrict the application of the word τολμηρότερον, more boldly, to a few passages of the Epistle relative to the calling of the Gentiles? This expression bears on the character of the entire writing as a doctrinal composition; this is shown by the connection of Romans 15:15 with Romans 15:14. Filled with knowledge, as the Romans were, they seemed to have no need of this complete instruction. Then the description of Paul's apostolate, from Romans 15:16 to Romans 15:20, proves that we have here the positive indication of the motive which led him to write this Epistle, and not only the justification of some passages of his letter. Weizsäcker correctly observes that the apostle explains his letter by the duty which his task of providing for the edification of the Gentiles imposed on him, and not by the right which he has to uphold their cause before Jewish-Christians.

Volkmar, who pursues the same object as Mangold, has attempted another explanation: “I do not forget, Paul would say, that I am only the apostle of the Gentiles, and I have no thought, in writing you as I do, to intrude on a church which does not belong to me, since it is of Jewish-Christian origin; and that is the very reason which has prevented me hitherto from visiting you, for my intention is not to build on a foundation laid by another; but now that I have no more place in the countries of the east, I am about to proceed to Spain, and I shall see you in passing” (Romans 15:17-24). This construction is ingenious, but impossible. The διὰ τὴν χάριν, “ because of the grace given unto me,” depending on ἔγραψα, I have written unto you, is absolutely opposed to it; and in what follows the apostle does not for a moment say that he has not yet visited Rome because of the Judeo-Christian character of the church, but that he has not done so because he was still detained in the east by nearer duties. Whether the founders of the church of Rome were or were not Judeo-Christians, whether the believers gathered in by them were or were not of this character, the apostle makes no allusion to this side of the question; a proof that it was not this which concerned his inference.

Lucht has attempted to find a proof of unauthenticity in the absence of the title apostle, Romans 15:16. The forger sought, he holds, by avoiding this title, to spare the susceptibilities of the Jewish-Christians of Rome. But, answers Hilgenfeld, “If the word is not there, the thing is.” And, in fact, Romans 15:16 is nothing else than the paraphrase of the term: apostle of the Gentiles. And if Paul has here preferred the paraphrase to the title itself, it is because it was much more suitable than the latter to explain the course which he had followed in writing such a letter to this church which he had not founded, and which he did not even yet know.

As to this mission to the Gentile world with which he has been invested, God has crowned it with such successes that it is now finished in the east, and that it only remains to the apostle to continue it in the west, which will lead him next to Rome. Such are the contents of the following verses, Romans 15:17-24, the somewhat free connection of which with what precedes is not hard to understand.