Romans 15:17-19

“ I have therefore whereof I may glory through Jesus Christ in the service of God. For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought by me, for the obedience of the Gentiles, by word and by deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit of God;so that from Jerusalem, and the countries round about, as far as Illyria, I have accomplished [the preaching of] the gospel of Christ. ”

Therefore: in virtue of that weighty commission by which I have felt myself authorized to write you as I have done. If we read the article τήν before καύχησιν, “ the glorying,” the meaning is: “I have therefore this cause of glorying (that of being Christ's minister to the Gentiles).” But the last words: in the service of God, are thus made superfluous. The article must therefore be rejected; the meaning is this: “I have truly occasion to glory in what concerns the service of God.” The expression τὰ πρὸς Θεόν, literally, “what concerns God,” is a sort of technical phrase in the Jewish liturgical language to denote the functions of worship (Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 5:1, etc.). This term therefore belongs to the same order of ideas as all those of the preceding verse (ἱερουργεῖν, λειτουργός, προσφορά, ἡγιασμένη).

The words: through Jesus Christ, soften the too startling force which the term glorying might have. This verse, while recalling the work already done by Paul in God's service, completes the justification of what Paul had called the τολμηρότερον, the somewhat bold character of his conduct. Nothing assuredly could have a more authentic character than such a passage.

This Romans 15:17 is at the same time the transition to what follows. As a confirmation of his apostolic mission to the Gentiles, Paul expounds the extraordinary results which he has obtained (1) from the viewpoint of the nature of the work, Romans 15:18-19 a; (2) from the viewpoint of the extension of the work accomplished, Romans 15:19 b

Vv. 18. The words: “I will not dare to speak of any of those things,” signify, according to Meyer and others, that to exalt himself he will not take the liberty of inventing facts which Christ had not really wrought by him. But did this odious supposition need to be denied? Such a defence of his veracity might be in place in the Epistles to the Corinthians, but not in that to the Romans. Besides, the expression τι ὧν, any of the things which, naturally refers only to real facts. To designate fictitious facts, he must have used, not τι ὧν, but τι ὅ, anything which. Finally, all the following qualifications: “ for the obedience..., by word and by deed ”..., can be applied only to real facts. Hofmann thinks Paul means that he will not take advantage here of any other grounds of glorying than those which enter into the service of Christ; that he will omit, for example, all those he enumerates (Php 3:4 et seq.). But in that case the subject Χριστός, Christ, should be at the head of the proposition. And what motive could the apostle have to allude in this passage to the advantages which he might have possessed before being a Christian? The only possible meaning of these words: I will not dare, is this: “It would imply some hardihood on my part to indicate a single mark of apostleship whereby God has not deigned to set His seal on my ministry to the Gentiles.” It is a very delicate form of saying, that it would be easier to convict him of falsehood in the signs of apostolic power which he might omit in speaking of his work, than in those which he enumerates here. This: I will not dare, is, as it were, the acme of the καύχησις, of that glorying of which he spoke in Romans 15:17. It would be vain for him to seek a divine manifestation which Christ has not wrought by him; he would not discover it. This mode of speaking does not come of boastfulness; it is the expression of a holy jealousy in behalf of the Gentiles, that domain which God has assigned him, and which He has privileged by the apostleship of Paul, no less than the Jewish world has been by the apostleship of the Twelve; comp. 2 Corinthians 12:11-12.

In the expression: by word, are embraced all his teachings, public and private; and in the expression: by deed, his labors, journeys, collections, sufferings, sacrifices of all kinds, and even miracles, though these are mentioned afterward as a category by themselves.

The expression: the power of signs, is explained by Meyer in this sense: “the power (my power over men) arising from signs.” It seems to me more natural to understand: “the (divine) power breaking forth in signs.” Miraculous facts are called signs in relation to the meaning which God attaches to them and which men ought to see in them, and wonders (τέρας) in relation to nature and its laws, on the regular basis of which the miracle is an inroad.

The power of the Spirit may designate the creative virtue inherent in this divine breath; but here the complement seems to me to be the person of Paul: “the power with which the Spirit fills me.”

It is better to read, with the T. R., the Spirit of God than the Holy Spirit (with 6 Mjj.), for it is force that is in question rather than holiness.

In the second part of the verse Paul passes from the nature of his activity to the extent of the results obtained. The latter is the effect of the former; hence the ὥστε, so that. For the previous subject, Christ, there is substituted the personal pronoun I, because in the act of preaching it is the human agent who is in view. There has been found (by Hofmann and others) in the word κύκλῳ, in a circle, an indication of the course followed by the apostle in his work of evangelizing, to the effect that Paul did not proceed from Jerusalem to Illyria by a straight line, but by describing a vast ellipse. This idea is far from natural, and would have a shade of boastfulness. It is much simpler to understand the word in a circle (or with its surroundings) as intended to widen the point of departure indicated by the word Jerusalem: “Jerusalem, with the surrounding countries.” In fact, it was strictly at Damascus, then in Arabia, that Paul had begun to evangelize. But Jerusalem being the point best known to western Christians, he names only this capital.

If we refuse, with Meyer, to give to the word εὐαγγέλιον the meaning of preaching of the gospel, it is impossible to find a natural meaning here for the word πληροῦν, to fill. To translate, with Luther: “to fill every place with the gospel,” is contrary to grammar. Meyer understands: to give the gospel its full development (by spreading it everywhere). But one feels how forced this manner of expression would be in this sense. We have only to represent to ourselves the act of preaching the gospel in the east as a task to be fulfilled or an ideal to be reached, and the meaning of πληροῦν becomes clear. It is in this same sense that we have seen πλήρωμα νόμου signify the fulfilment of the law, Romans 13:10. Baur has here found manifest exaggeration, and therein a sign of unauthenticity. But it is clear that Paul was not claiming to have finished the work of preaching in relation to the small towns and country districts of the lands he had evangelized. He regarded his apostolic task as entirely fulfilled when he had lighted the torch in the great centres, such as Thessalonica, Corinth, and Ephesus. That done, he reckoned on the churches founded in those capitals continuing the evangelization of the provinces. The same critic has pronounced the fact here mentioned of the apostle's preaching in Illyria to be inadmissible. None of the apostle's journeys known to us had led him into this “rude and inhospitable country.” The rudeness of a country did not arrest St. Paul. From the fact that this mission is not mentioned in the Book of Acts, must it be concluded that it is a fable? But this book does not speak of the three years passed by Paul in Arabia, according to Galatians 1:17; must it therefore be concluded that the statement is false, and that the Epistle to the Galatians is unauthentic? A forger would have taken good care, on the contrary, not to implicate himself in other facts of the apostle's life than those which were generally known. Besides, what is there improbable in the statement that during the time which elapsed from his leaving Ephesus (Pentecost 57 or 58) till his arrival at Corinth (December 58) the apostle, who spent that time in Macedonia, should have made an excursion to the shores of the Adriatic? For that only a few days were needed. The Book of Acts is not at all intended to relate in detail the life of Peter or of Paul.