Romans 15:2-3

“ Let every one of us please his neighbor in what is good to edification. For also Christ pleased not Himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. ”

The γάρ, for, in the T. R., is certainly unauthentic: the asyndeton implies a more emphatic reproduction of the thought of Romans 15:1. The word every one seems to us to extend the exhortation to all the members of the church, weak or strong; it is as if it ran: “Yes, let every one of us in general”...

There are two ways of seeking to please our neighbor. In the one we are self-seeking; we seek to satisfy our interest or self-love. In the other, we seek the good of our neighbor himself. It is this latter way only which the apostle recommends: such is the force of the first clause: in good; for good, not from egoism. Then this abstract notion is positively determined by the second clause: to edification. The life of Paul was all through the realization of this precept; comp. 1 Corinthians 10:33, 34.

Vv. 3. The example of Christ is to the believer the new law to be realized (Galatians 6:2); hence the for also. If, as man, Christ had pleased Himself in the use of His liberty, or in the enjoyment of the rights and privileges which His own righteousness had acquired, what would have come of our salvation? But He had only one thought: to struggle for the destruction of sin, without concerning Himself about His own well-being, or sparing Himself even for an instant. In this bold and persevering struggle against our enemy, evil, He drew on Him the hatred of all God's adversaries here below, so that the lamentation of the Psalmist, Psalms 69:9, became as it were the motto of His life. In laboring thus for the glory of God and the salvation of men, He recoiled, as Isaiah had prophesied, “neither before shame nor spitting.” This certainly is the antipodes of pleasing ourselves. Psalms 69 applies only indirectly to the Messiah (Psalms 69:5: “ My sins are not hid”); it describes the righteous Israelite suffering for the cause of God. But this is precisely the type of which Jesus was the supreme realization.

We need not say, with Meyer, that Paul adopts the saying of the Psalmist directly into his own text. It is more natural, seeing the total change of construction, like Grotius, to supply this idea: “ but he did as is written;” comp. John 13:18.

Paul, Romans 15:1-2, had said us; it is difficult, indeed, to believe, that in writing these last sayings he could avoid thinking of his own apostolic life.

But divine succor is needed to enable us to follow this line of conduct unflinchingly; and this succor the believer finds only in the constant use of the Scriptures, and in the help of God which accompanies it (Romans 15:4-6).