Romans 11:36

Romans 11:36. For. What was negatively expressed in Romans 11:35, is now positively stated in language which is as simple as it is sublime.

Of him, as the original Source, Author, Creator; and through him, as our Preserver and Governor and Bountiful Benefactor, as superior to nature which He created, controlling and directing it, and that for His own ends, since the Apostle adds: and unto him are all things. All things (not simply all persons) will carry out His will, will contribute to His glory. Human thought can rise no higher than this. Attempts have been made to refer the three phrases respectively to the three Persons of the Trinity, but the second and third prepositions do not seem distinctively applicable to the Son and the Holy Spirit. Nor does the train of thought demand such an explanation.

To him be the glory forever (Gr., ‘unto the ages'). Amen. The glory befitting such a God is here ascribed to Him; ‘unto the ages ‘is, as usual, equivalent to ‘forever;' and the doxology properly closes with the solemn ‘Amen;' comp. chaps. Romans 1:25; Romans 9:5.

This doxology is ‘the sublimest apostrophe existing even in the pages of Inspiration itself' (Alford). Yet how logical its arrangement, how apt its argument. It forms a conclusion to the section, and not less appropriately to the whole discussion in chaps. 9-11, in fact, to the whole doctrinal part of the Epistle. The greatest treatise on God's dealings with men ends not only with praise to Him, but with a confession of His sovereignty. This which so exalts God does indeed humble us. But it is through this humility that we too are exalted. The gospel of grace would be no real gospel were it not the message of the sovereign God whom the Apostle thus adores. He only has practically solved the mystery of God's sovereignty and our free will who can join in this doxology. It is our privilege, in regard to the great mysteries of humanity as well as in the personal perplexities which meet us, it is our privilege to trust and praise God, when we can no longer trace His purposes. As Godet well remarks, ‘in chap. 11 are traced the grand outlines of the philosophy of History,' but Paul's philosophy of history ends in this conception of God, which is as essential for our every day needs as for the solution of the problem of man's origin, history, and destiny. Rightly then the Apostolic ‘therefore' the practical inference, is at once added. Unless Paul's theism is acknowledged, and his praise repeated, his ethics are powerless.