Exposition on Romans

"Paul." We ask why he writes "Paul," when he was earlier called Saul. He must be believed to have done this after the custom of the saints, who, as they advanced in virtues, were called by a changed name, so that they might be new even in their very name, like Abraham and Sarah and Cephas. "A servant of Jesus Christ." He began with "servant" to show us an example of humility, as an imitator of him who "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death; for which reason God also exalted him." So this man too earned the apostleship by faithful service first. "Called an apostle." "Set apart." As the Holy Spirit says in the Acts of the Apostles: "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have chosen them." "For the gospel of God." "Gospel" is called in Latin "good announcement": namely, of the birth of Christ, of his passion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven.

"Which he had promised beforehand through the prophets." He shows that he preaches no other Christ than the one whose gospel the prophets had promised would come from Jerusalem. "His, in the holy scriptures." He asserts that they are God's own prophets, and that those scriptures are holy which sang of Christ beforehand. This whole passage, however, tells against the Manichaeans, where he says that the gospel was promised beforehand, both through the prophets of God and in the holy scriptures, and that Christ was created according to the flesh from the stock of David, that is, from the virgin Mary, as Isaiah had foretold.

"Concerning his Son." Many are sons by grace; he is Son by nature, and even his birth in the flesh is found unlike that of others. "Who was made from the seed of David." Made through the Spirit. "According to the flesh." By adding "according to the flesh" he extinguished both Photinus and Arius: for if he was made according to the flesh, then according to the substance of the Word he was certainly not made.

"Who was predestined Son of God in power." "That in all things he himself may hold the first place." "According to the Spirit of sanctification, from the resurrection of the dead." He was predestined according to the Spirit of sanctification, so that he might rise before all in the power of incorruptibility and open the way of resurrection to the sons of God, of whom he himself says that they are sons of God, since they are sons of the resurrection. "Jesus Christ our Lord." Not of all who rise, but of those who belong to Christ: in Christ himself the form of the resurrection is foreshown.

"Through whom we have received grace and apostleship." Grace in baptism; apostleship when he was sent by the Holy Spirit: for "apostle" in Greek is "one sent" in Latin. "For the obedience of faith among all nations." I received the apostleship so that they might obey not the law but faith. "For his name." We act in place of his name, as he himself says: "As the Father sent me, I also send you," and again: "He who receives you receives me."

"Among whom you too are called of Jesus Christ." And among you, that is, the Romans, we have received the apostleship.

"To all who are at Rome in the love of God." That is, to all believers, whom God loves equally, without respect to the person of Jew or Greek. "Called saints." Saints by God's calling, not holy by merit. "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Such is his greeting everywhere, so that he both recalls God's benefits and prays that they remain whole in us, because our sins were forgiven us freely and "we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son"; he also reminds us that those who have obtained one and the same grace ought to be peacemakers.

"First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ." By nature he is the God of all, by merit and will the God of few, as "the God of Abraham"; accordingly Paul here calls him his God. "For all of you." Not for the Jews alone. "Because your faith is proclaimed in the whole world." He praises prudently, to spur them to progress. Or: because it was a wonder to the whole world that they had believed, who had been possessed by an excessive worship of idols, so that they served the gods of all the nations they had conquered. But he must also be believed to have simply praised that faith whose devotion was now being shown.

"For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of his Son." That is: I serve with my whole heart and ready devotion; "for if I do this willingly, I have a reward." Or: here he called the word "spirit," as in that saying: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth." "That without ceasing I make mention of you

in my prayers, beseeching." Here he both shows that he will say everything out of love, so that he may be heard more willingly, and gives an example of praying without ceasing. "If at last at some time I may have a prosperous journey by the will of God, to come to you. For I long to see you." By whatever means I may at some time come to you by the will of God. For otherwise I do not have a prosperous journey, unless the will of God, which knows all things, directs me where I may have some fruit. Hence we read in the Acts of the Apostles that they wished to go one way and were directed another. Or: according to that saying of James: "If the Lord wills and we live, we will do this or that." "That I may impart to you something of spiritual grace to strengthen you." Here he shows in what sense he praised them above, since they need something of spiritual grace for strengthening. "That is, to be comforted together with you through the faith that is in one another, yours and mine." That we may be comforted by one another through the common faith.

"For I do not think you are unaware, brothers, that I have often proposed to come to you." You could have heard it through the brothers who travel back and forth. "And I have been hindered until now." "Hindered" is here taken as "occupied." "That I may have some fruit among you also." He calls the reward of his labor "fruit." "As also among the other nations." "I have" is understood.

"To Greeks and barbarians, to wise and unwise." He calls the Greeks wise and the barbarians unwise. "I am a debtor;"

"so, as far as it lies in me, I am ready." That is, "prepared." "To preach the gospel to you also who are at Rome." To the wise equally, as to the Greeks.

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel." This subtly bears on the censure of the pagans, who are not ashamed to believe that their god Jupiter, because of his monstrous lust, was changed into irrational animals and senseless gold, and yet think we ought to be ashamed to believe that our Lord, for the salvation of his image, was crucified in the flesh he had taken up; whereas in the one case there is horrible disgrace, in the other a signal mark of goodness and virtue. At the same time he also touches those heretics who shrink from these things as unworthy of God, not understanding that nothing is more worthy of the Creator than to care for the salvation of his creature, especially since he himself, being impassible, cannot suffer any loss to his nature through these things. "For it is the power of God unto salvation." No power is greater than that which conquered death and gave back to man the life he had lost. "To everyone who believes." Although it seems weakness to unbelievers. "To the Jew first and to the Greek,"

"For the righteousness of God is revealed in it," Or: that it was just that, as Abraham, believing, was first saved from among the gentiles by faith alone, so the other believers should be saved. Or: that the testament which God, being truthful, had promised through the law had to be shown forth. "From faith to faith," Or: that the Jew is justified from faith and the gentile in faith; and therefore he put "to," to avoid the fault of tautology. "As it is written: The righteous, however, lives by faith." "Not by works of the law."

"The wrath of God is revealed from heaven," He begins on this part: for men know to expect both benefits and plagues from heaven. "Against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." There seem to be three kinds of ungodliness: the first and greatest is against God, which is committed either through blasphemy or through idolatry; the second against parents, by injury or contempt, as it is written in Leviticus: "If anyone lies with his father's wife, let both die the death; they have committed ungodliness, they are guilty"; the third against a stranger, as in that saying: "And you forgave the ungodliness of my heart"; and many others, which it would take too long to list. Or: all ungodliness is to be referred to the various cults of idols, so that ungodliness seems to pertain to the injury of God, but unrighteousness to all sins. "Of those who hold back the truth in unrighteousness." They hold back the truth of the name of God in the unrighteousness of the unworthy material of idols.

"Because what is known of God." What can be known of God naturally: that he exists and that he is just. "Is manifest in them." In their consciences: for every creature testifies that it knows God, and shows that it was made by another, whose will it must obey. For if God is the supreme greatness, and invisible, incomprehensible, inestimable, and above all things, that is, one to whom nothing can be preferred or made equal, whether in greatness or in brightness or in power, it is clear that this can befit no creature, which is seen by the eyes, grasped by reason, and judged by estimation. And no creature is greater than all in every respect, because they all surpass one another, some in size, as heaven and earth, others in brightness, as the sun and moon or stars, others in depth, as the sea. So it is plainly seen that no element is God. That they were made, their changeableness shows, which cannot befall eternity. That they did not make themselves is clear, because if they made themselves, they already existed before they came to be, in order to be able to make themselves, which is quite absurd to say. And when they vary and change their orders and give way to one another, they show both that they were made by one author and that they do not do their own will but the will of their Lord, whose command they cannot transgress. "For God has manifested it to them. For his invisible things, from the creation of the world, through the things that are made." His hidden powers are estimated from those things that are evident. For if the things that are seen were made by him so splendid that some thought them gods and tried to maintain they were eternal, how much more could they have understood their maker to be everlasting and almighty and immeasurable, according to the book of Wisdom, which says: "By the greatness of the creature, by comparison, the creator of these can be seen," and the rest.

"Are clearly seen, being understood; his everlasting power also and divinity, so that they are without excuse." They were understood so evidently that they are said to be "clearly seen."

"Because when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God." Whether through nature or through the reasoning of the created order. "Or give thanks." For having been made such that they could know God if they wished. "But they became vain in their thoughts," Thinking that they could grasp the greatness of God by thought, they fell away into vanity from natural good sense, venerating creatures instead of the Creator. "And their foolish heart was darkened." As it withdrew from the light of truth.

"For saying that they were wise." As if they had found out how the invisible God could be worshipped through a visible image. "They became fools;"

"and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness" Not understanding that the mortal has no likeness to the immortal, nor the corruptible to the everlasting. "Of the image of corruptible man and of birds and of serpents." Not only into a man, but into an image of a man; and not this only, but also of animals. Here he refers to the worshippers of Jupiter, who say that he was transformed, and that for this reason they consecrate to him such images, in which he satisfied his lust.

"Therefore God handed them over to the desires of their heart." God is said in the scriptures to "hand over" when he does not hold back those who transgress, because of the freedom of choice, as in the psalm: "And I let them go according to the desires of their heart," and the rest. "To uncleanness." That which is in the shameful mysteries of idols. "So that they dishonor their own bodies." When in their rites they inflict brandings and burnings on themselves. "Among themselves." So that, as if out of their minds, they themselves take vengeance on themselves for their own offenses.

"Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped." They exchanged the worship of the true God for the lie of idols, which are falsely worshipped as gods, and in a way they lie to fools that they are what they are not. "And served the creature rather than the Creator." They did not only love it but also served it: and whoever is overcome by desire for any creature serves it: "for by whom anyone is overcome, of him he is also the slave." "Who is blessed forever." Had they served him, they too could have become blessed forever: for "he who does the will of God abides forever, as God also abides forever."

"For this reason God handed them over to passions of disgrace." For the causes mentioned above they were let go into these shameful acts. "For their women also changed the natural use into that which is against nature." Perverse toward God, they perverted everything: for they could not keep the order of nature who had abandoned the author of nature. "For the worship of unspeakable idols is the cause, beginning, and end of every evil."

"And likewise the males also, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their desires toward one another, males with males working shamefulness." Unbridled lust does not know how to keep measure. "And receiving in themselves the recompense of their error which was due." So the order ran its course, that those who had forgotten God should not know even themselves.

"And as they did not see fit to have God in knowledge," They were not ignorant, but they did not see fit at all. For he sees fit to have God in knowledge who always holds him present and does not dare to sin. "God handed them over to a reprobate mind." By not seeing fit, they were handed over to a reprobate mind. "To do what is not fitting." For a human being to do.

"Filled with all iniquity, malice," He shows that iniquity and malice are the principal causes of vices. "Sexual immorality, greed." He joined sexual immorality and greed together, because both are compared almost to idolatry. "Wickedness; full of envy, murders." He fittingly associated murder with envy, because envy is the first material of this crime. "Strife." Strife is when something is defended not by reason but by stubbornness of mind, and when truth is not sought, but only the effort of contending is worn out. "Deceit." Hidden malice adorned with smooth words. "Malignity." The wish or the deed of malice is called malignity.

"Whisperers." Murmurers. Speaking not to the face but into the ear. "Detractors, hateful to God." For nothing is so hateful to God as idolatry, to which detraction is joined in the scriptures by a like penalty of being uprooted. "Insolent." Those who are quick with injurious words. "Proud, haughty, inventors of evils." He who wishes to rise above what he is, is proud, as the devil lost the very thing he was. For whoever wishes to be above others will become lower than himself; and therefore there follows "inventors of evils," because pride always devises and invents evils, as the author of pride by his exaltation invented for himself an evil that had not existed before. And he is called "haughty" who is carried beyond his measure. "Disobedient to parents." True parents are those who beget into light and eternal life through the seed of the word.

"Senseless, disordered." Those who have withdrawn from the fountain of wisdom must needs be borne along without order. "Without affection." Affection is the fulfilling of love. "Without mercy." How could they have mercy on others who refused to be merciful to themselves? All these sins, set out in order, he says of those who abandoned God and were abandoned by him. Let us therefore beware lest we too, having some of these evils, be abandoned likewise.

"Who, though they knew the righteousness of God, did not understand that those who do such things are worthy of death." Though they knew the righteousness of God from the fact that evil displeases even themselves, they did not understand that such people are to be punished by him, if not in the present, at least in the future; for if they had understood, they would surely have been afraid to commit such things. "Not only those who do them, but also those who consent to those who do them." Lest anyone say that he had not done all these things, he added: "those who consent to those who do them." But even one who did not consent in these things, because they judged such deeds, yet by consenting to idolatry, which is the head and cause of all of them, was seen to have consented to all.

"Therefore you are without excuse, O man, everyone who judges. For in that you judge another, you condemn yourself: for you do the same things that you judge." All people of this kind judged, but especially those who have judgment in reproving. Judges and masters are addressed. For by natural judgment each one pronounces a sentence fitting the deeds, and all know that innocence deserves reward and that malice has punishment.

"And we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against them." The judgment by which such people are judged is according to truth, since they could condemn in others what they did not fear to commit themselves. For if you, a sinner, judge a sinner like yourself, how much more will God, who is just, judge you who are unjust, lest evil perhaps seem to please him and good to displease him; since without respect of persons he spared neither his friends nor the angels who sinned! Human judgment, by contrast, is corrupted in many ways: love, hatred, fear, greed often violate the integrity of judges, and sometimes mercy leans against the rule of justice.

"And do you think this, O man, who judge those who do such things and do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?"

"Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?" Or do you flatter yourself about impunity because God does not repay in the present, and, looking at the length of time and the abundance of his goodness, you think there is no longer any judgment? Hear the sentence of Scripture: "The Lord does not delay his promise, but acts patiently for your sake, not wishing anyone to perish, but all to be turned to repentance." He is good in waiting, just in punishing; hence the prophet warns: "Do not delay to turn to the Lord, and do not put it off from day to day: for his wrath comes suddenly, and in the time of vengeance he will destroy you." And again: "Do not say: I have sinned, and what sad thing has happened to me? For the Most High is a patient repayer." People deceive themselves greatly through God's patience, because he does not wish to punish sinners at once: he is thought either to care little for human affairs or to pardon faults, because he delays. Many even complain against him, why he does not repay in the present, not understanding that, if it were so, hardly any human being would have remained, nor would the unjust ever become just. God seems to people to wait long for sinners because we, who last a short time, think a hundred years an eternity. But he, "with whom a thousand years are as one day," does not count a hundred years equal even to the space of one hour: therefore this is little with God, since even human beings commonly hope for a long time for the correction of sinners.

"But according to your hardness and impenitent heart." But you, an imprudent sick man, use the very remedy to make greater wounds, you who, according to the saying of blessed Job, "abuse the place of repentance in pride." Hence goodness not acknowledged prepares a greater judgment, so that he who scorned to feel mercy feels vengeance. "You store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to each one according to his works." For the day of judgment you yourself store up wrath upon wrath for yourself; that day will appear at a fixed and certain time.

"To those who, according to patience in good work," The reward of good work is awaited through patience, because it is not repaid in the present life: "for we walk by faith, and not by sight." Or: the work will be perfect then, if it has lasted to the end, because "he who perseveres to the end will be saved." "Glory and honor and incorruption." "Glory," by which "the saints will shine like the sun"; "honor," that of the sons of God, than which nothing is greater, by which they will even judge angels; "incorruption," that of everlasting life. "To those who seek eternal life." He will obtain all these things, and "everyone who has this hope in him sanctifies himself, as he also is holy."

"But to those who are of contention," Let those hear who, often defeated, contend out of animosity, and let them fear to remain in a very bad habit, lest all these things be laid to their account. It was already said above that the contentious man is specifically the one who strives to defend something against his own conscience. "Who distrust the truth, but believe iniquity." They do not believe the truth of the gospel and consent to iniquity, so that, abandoning the Creator, they serve the creature. "Wrath and indignation." These are the penalties in the judgment,

"Tribulation and distress." The conscience of fruitless repentance, as it is written: "Then they will say among themselves, repenting and groaning in distress of spirit." "Upon every soul of a man who works evil, of the Jew first and of the Greek." The apostle threatens punishment of the soul on account of the heretics who say that only the flesh sins and deny that the soul can sin. Or: "soul" is said for the whole man, as in Genesis Jacob is reported to have "entered Egypt with seventy souls."

"But glory and honor and peace to everyone who works good." Glory as against wrath, honor as against indignation, and what he called incorruption above he here calls peace. "To the Jew first and to the Greek." What he called "soul" above, he here named "man." And he puts "first" for "indeed," because "there is no respect of persons with God." Or: first in the time of believing, not in honor.

"For there is no respect of persons with God." So let neither the gentiles flatter themselves with a false plea of ignorance, nor the Jews with the privilege of the law and of circumcision.

"For whoever sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and whoever sinned in the law will be judged by the law." Without the law of the letter, in the law of nature. Here he meant "will perish" and "will be judged" to be understood as one thing, because he who perishes perishes by God's judgment, and the sinner who is judged perishes, as it is written: "because sinners will perish." For he also makes them alike, saying that not the hearers of the law only are just, but the doers, and a little further on he says that the gentiles are to be judged on the day of the Lord. For who doubts that both those placed under the law and those living without the law will perish unless they believe in Christ?

"For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified." He gives the reason why they are not better than the gentiles. Hence we too must fear lest, hearing the law and not doing it, we perish with the gentiles, as he himself says elsewhere: "lest we be condemned with this world."

"For when the gentiles, who do not have the law," Lest anyone perhaps say: "They do not have the law; by what standard could they be judged?" "Do by nature the things of the law." Or: he speaks of those who were righteous by nature before the law. Or: of those who even now do some good. "Not having a law of this kind, they are a law to themselves." He shows that they are not without law, both to make the gentiles inexcusable and to take from the Jews their boast in having the law as their own.

"Who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them." Nature enacts the law in the heart through the testimony of conscience. Or: conscience testifies that it has the law, by fearing while it sins and rejoicing over sins overcome, even if the one who sins fears no human being. "And their thoughts among themselves accusing or even defending"

on the day when God will judge the hidden things of men." He calls it an altercation of thoughts when after long deliberation we decide what is to be done or not done, and according to this we will be judged on the day of the Lord, because we are convicted of not having been ignorant of good or evil. Or: our conscience and our thoughts will be before our eyes on the day of judgment like histories to be read; they will either accuse us or even excuse us, as it is written: "I will reprove you and set them before your face." "According to my gospel, through Jesus Christ." According to what I announce through Jesus. Or: God will judge through Jesus Christ.

"But if you are called a Jew." Here he turns to the Jews: one ought to be a Jew in deed, not in name only, and he is proved a true Jew whose good deeds are hidden. "And rest in the law." You trust in it, or are secure. "And boast in God"

"and know his will." You boast that you alone know God and recognize his will. "And approve the more useful things, being instructed by the law." You choose the greater things and discern among the lesser: for things that are proved useful by nature become more useful by the law.

"You are confident that you yourself are a guide of the blind." Of those whose light is darkened. "A light of those who are in darkness." Of ignorance.

"An instructor of the foolish." Who do not have the wisdom of God. "A teacher of infants." Of little ones, in age or in understanding. "Having the form of knowledge and of truth in the law." Looking always to this, you could not go astray.

"You then who teach another, do you not teach yourself?" As he had said to the gentiles: "For in that you judge another, you condemn yourself." You who rest in the law, O Jew, why do you transgress the law? You who boast in God, why do you dishonor God? You who know his will, why do you not obey his will? You who approve the more useful things, why do you pursue useless ones? Guide of the blind, how do you not see the right way? For if you saw it, you would surely walk in it. If you are a light to others, why do you not cast off the works of darkness? Instructor of the foolish, why have you abandoned the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom? Teacher of infants, how are you a child in understanding? You who have the form of knowledge and truth in the law, why do you neither follow it yourself nor let others follow it, by your very bad example? Why does your life not agree with your teaching, and your work destroy your faith? So it will come about that the law, not kept by you, not only profits you nothing but even holds you guilty of a greater crime, as its despiser. "You who say that one must not steal, steal." Some say: by hiding Christ from men you steal.

"You who teach that one must not commit adultery, commit adultery." Adultery is not of one kind only: for whatever the soul owes wholly to God, if you render it to anyone besides God, you commit adultery. "You who abhor idols commit sacrilege." Sacrilege is what is committed properly against God, a violation, as it were, of what is sacrosanct.

"You who boast in the law dishonor God by transgression of the law." He has explained what he meant by sacrilege.

"The name of God is blasphemed through you among the gentiles, as it is written." Reversing the order, he set down the testimony before saying "it is written": for the speaker's discourse ran on in such a way that what he was saying from his own intention he found written in the prophet in the same sense. So it truly was with those by whose unjust acts the name of the Lord had been blasphemed, as it is written: "They polluted my name among the nations, while it is said of them: These are the people of the Lord"; among those nations they were living as captives, their own sins having brought it about.

"Circumcision indeed profits, if you keep the law; but if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision." How is it "nothing," if it profits? It profits in its own time. The sign profits if the righteousness whose "seal" it is is present; otherwise, without it, it will be superfluous. Or: because it made a Jew live and not be cut off in infancy before he had understanding. Or: because it makes one be in the law, in which, when it is examined, it is found that, when circumcision of the flesh ceased, the true circumcision, that of the heart, was to come. And he is a transgressor of the law when he does not follow what was foretold there.

"If then the uncircumcision [keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not its uncircumcision] be reckoned as circumcision?" The visible needs the invisible; the invisible does not need the visible, because the visible is the image of the invisible, and the invisible is the truth. Therefore circumcision of the flesh needs that of the heart, but circumcision of the heart does not need that of the flesh, because the truth does not need the image. The question is asked, of course, why circumcision was given, if it does not itself profit. First, so that the people of God might be recognized among the nations; indeed, when they were alone in the desert, they were not circumcised. Or: so that their bodies might be recognized in war. As for their being marked on such a member, the first reason is that no other member should be made weak or unsightly, which would be seen in public; the second, on account of the promise of grace, in which God was to be pleased by chastity. Or: that it might signify that Christ would be born of his seed; this carnal circumcision was to last until him who was to bring the spiritual one; bearing his type, Jesus son of Nave was ordered to circumcise the people a second time.

"And what is uncircumcision by nature, fulfilling the law, will judge you, who through the letter and circumcision are a transgressor of the law." Or: while you pursue the circumcision of the letter, you disdain to receive that of the spirit. Or: by not following what the law said, that is, that believing in Christ you should receive the true circumcision.

"For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward,"

"but he who is a Jew inwardly." He is the true one: for all the things that were done earlier concerning the outer man held a figure of the inner. "And circumcision of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men but from God." Of this it is written in the law: "In the last days God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your seed, to love the Lord your God"; and again: "Circumcise yourselves to your God and circumcise the foreskin of your heart"; not according to the letter of the law, but according to the new testament, which seeks the inner things that God alone sees.

"What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision?"

"Much in every way." Having given the reason why the law, when despised, does not profit, and why the prerogative of carnal circumcision, supported by no works, is vain, he asks what more the Jew has, and the answer is given in the Jew's person: "Much in every way." For if the sense "much in every way" and "every man is a liar" were his own, how does he afterwards come against it, saying: "But if our iniquity commends the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust? Far from it," and so on; and finally, how does he affirm that the Jews have nothing more, if here he records that they have much? "First indeed, because the oracles of God were entrusted to them." This is what you are going to say first: that the oracles of God were entrusted to them, and none to the gentiles.

"For what? Some of them did not believe. Will their unbelief make void the faithfulness of God?"

"Far from it!" The faithfulness of the promises to Abraham, to whom it was said: "In your seed all nations will be blessed." "But God is truthful." They speak as if God were truthful for this reason, that man is a liar. "But every man a liar." Here he says "all" for the greater part, as in "all seek their own," and "all have deserted me," "Luke alone is with me." "As it is written: That you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged." The opposing side put forward this testimony as if David had said: "For this reason I sinned, that you might appear just in judging me." But the true sense is this: God had promised that he would punish sinners without respect of persons, and some judged his patience a lie. He prevailed when he judged, when he punished the deeds of those whom no one had thought would be exposed. Otherwise: You have proved that you take care of human beings, you who through the prophet revealed my hidden things, and you have prevailed over those who imagine that you are unconcerned with human actions. Thus far the objection ran; now the apostle begins to respond.

"But if our iniquity commends the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust?" He is unjust if he punishes in those who sinned for this reason, that he might appear more just. "Who inflicts wrath." As in the flood and in Sodom, so in the judgment. "I speak according to man?"

"Far from it!" According to you, who think thus. "Otherwise how will God judge this world?" By what justice will he condemn injustice, if, according to you, he becomes more just through human iniquity?

"For if the truth of God has abounded through my lie, to his glory." That is: has grown. "Why am I still judged as a sinner?" That is: why am I, whatever man lies, judged besides, when I ought to be praised, if by my lie the truth of God is confirmed?

"And not, as we are slandered, and as some say that we say." Why does he judge me so, as a sinner, and not as some say we say: the greater the evils we have done, the greater the goods we receive. "Let us do evil, that good may come." Perhaps they thought this because they did not understand what he said: "Where sin abounded, grace abounded the more." "Whose condemnation is just." What is more just than that they should feel this punishment, which they falsely claimed we deny, we who preach nothing more than the just judgment of God?

"What then do we hold more? For we have charged that Jews and Greeks are all under sin." I find no reason why we who are from the Jews should be greater. Reason has investigated this, that both Jews and gentiles are under sin; and we gather this not by reason alone but also prove it by testimony concerning the Jews.

"As it is written: There is no one righteous." The psalm from which this testimony was taken speaks of the fool; and he shows that this testimony was fulfilled especially at the coming of Christ, at which time, I think, when he suffered, no one was found righteous. "There is none who understands, there is none who seeks God." Because he does not understand, he does not seek. Or: he does not understand because he does not seek. And God is sought when his will is inquired into, because "everyone who sins has not seen him nor known him," since he who sins has not known the will of his Lord. For in common speech too a person is said to be unknown whose will is unknown.

"All have turned aside." He who does not seek a firm support must turn aside. "Together they have become useless." Useless for the work for which they had been created. "There is none who does good, there is not even one." If there is none who does good, how does the psalm further on rebuke those who devour his people and confound the counsel of the poor? For they were not God's people if they did no good, especially since in the same place they are called a righteous generation. But this pertains more to the exposition of the psalm than to the apostle's case.

"Their throat is an open grave." Contaminating and killing their hearers by the stench of their teaching and their flattery: for this is why a grave is carefully closed, lest by its exhalation it breed a pestilence for those still living. "With their tongues they acted deceitfully." Bringing out one thing with the mouth, turning over another in the heart. "The poison of asps." The poison of these serpents is said to be the worst. "Under their lips." That is: in the heart.

"Whose mouth is full of cursing." Cursing is not of one kind: for whatever is said with an evil wish is without doubt evil speaking. "And of bitterness." Bitterness is the contrary of the sweetness of God's words.

"Their feet are swift to shed blood." Either: he simply means murderers. Or: those who kill souls by flattery; hence in the Acts of the Apostles holy Paul says: "I am clean of the blood of all: for I did not shrink from announcing to you the whole counsel of God." "Ruin and misery are in their ways." Souls are crushed and made miserable by their teachings or by the examples of their way of life.

"And the way of peace they have not known." The teaching by which God and men are brought to peace; because everything like is peaceable, and everything contrary hostile.

"There is no fear of God before their eyes." He concluded with the fear of God, because if they had always had the fear of God before their eyes, they would surely not have sinned: for a servant does not dare to sin in his master's presence.

"Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are in the law." Lest they say that these things in the psalm were said of the gentiles, he shows that what was said in the law is said to those who are in the law. The question is asked, of course, how the Jews said that there is no God. Not in word, surely, but in deed: for "they confess that they know him, but deny him by their deeds." So he does not here address the gentiles, because he had already said such things about them in their own case. "That every mouth may be stopped." Not only that of the gentiles, but also that of the Jews, since they have nothing to boast of. "And the whole world may become subject to God." In confession of sin.

"Because no flesh is justified by works of the law before him," It is not justified now. Or: by works of the law he means circumcision, the sabbath, and the other ceremonies, which pertained not so much to righteousness as to the gladness of the flesh. "For through the law is the knowledge of sin." Not remission, but knowledge. For what sin is is recognized through the law for this reason: because either the law of nature had passed into forgetfulness, or before the law of the letter all the lighter things were not known to be sins, that is, those which did no harm to others, such as covetousness, drunkenness, and other things of this kind.

"But now without the law the righteousness of God has been manifested." Without the law of the letter the righteousness has been manifested which was given us freely by God, not sought by our own labor; and what lay hidden in the law has been opened more plainly by the clearer examples of Christ. "Witnessed by the law and the prophets." Or: this righteousness was proclaimed by the law and the prophets as coming in the last times. Or: the knowledge of sin received testimony from the law and the prophets.

"But the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ upon all who believe," That by which one believes in Christ. "For there is no distinction between Jew and gentile."

"For all have sinned and lack the glory of God." Because they do not have their own.

"Justified freely by his grace." Without works of the law, through baptism, by which he freely forgave the sins of all, who did not deserve it. "Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." By which he redeemed us with his blood from death, to which we had been sold through sin, according to Isaiah, who says: "By your sins you have been sold"; that death Christ overcame, who did not sin. For we were all liable to death, to which he handed himself over though he did not owe it, to redeem us by his blood. Hence the prophet had foretold: "You were sold for nothing, and you will be redeemed without money." That is: you received nothing for yourselves, and you are to be redeemed by the blood of Christ. At the same time this must be noted: that he redeemed us, he did not buy us, because before we were his by nature, although we have been estranged from him by our own offenses. Our redemption will indeed be fruitful then, if we cease to sin.

"Whom God set forth." He placed him openly before the eyes of all, so that whoever wishes to be redeemed may come. "As a propitiator of faith in his blood." That he may be propitious to those who believe that they are to be freed by his blood. … had been done. For this reason Christ suffered: to appease the purpose of God by which he had at last decreed to punish sinners.

"In the forbearance of God." He wishes to show that God waited for this, that offenders might at last correct themselves, but that they, having misused God's patience, advanced to greater sins. Hence Job, the most righteous man of his time, says of the sinner: "God gave him a place of repentance, and he abuses it in pride." "For the showing of his righteousness at this time." To reveal the righteousness that is from faith. "That he himself may be just and the justifier of him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ." He alone was found just; and whomever he justifies, he justifies not from works but from faith.

"Where is the boasting? It is excluded." He speaks to the Jew: the boasting in which you boasted that you had merited righteousness by works. "By what law? Of works? No." "It is" is understood. "But by the law of faith." He calls the fixed ordinance of faith a law, that is, the New Testament.

"For we hold that a man is justified by faith without works of the law." "We are certain," or "we judge." Some misuse this passage to destroy works of righteousness, asserting that faith alone can suffice, although the same apostle says elsewhere: "And if I have all faith, so that I move mountains, but do not have love, it profits me nothing"; and in another place he asserts that the fullness of the law is contained in this love, saying: "Love is the fullness of the law." If these seem contrary to their sense, without what works must the apostle be believed to have said that a man is justified by faith? Clearly without those of circumcision or the sabbath and others of this kind, not without works of righteousness, of which blessed James says: "Faith without works is dead." But here he speaks of the one who, coming to Christ, is saved by faith alone when he first believes. And by adding "works of the law," he shows that there are also works of grace.

"Or is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the gentiles?" Did God create the Jews alone, so that he should care for them alone? For if the gentiles sinned, so did you; and if you are converted, so are they; if the Christ promised in the law came to you, so he came to them; for the prophets often spoke of their calling too. "Yes, of the gentiles also." He kept measure fittingly in his words. He said "yes" to show that the gentiles have the greater claim, because the first saints were not circumcised, and Abraham was righteous before circumcision; and he added "also," so as not to seem to exclude the Jews.

"Since indeed it is one God who justifies." Both of you have believed in one God and one Christ. "The circumcision from faith and the uncircumcision through faith." Of course "from faith" and "through faith" are one thing, but the usage of the scriptures here is that in the same matters they prefer to vary the wording rather than repeat it, as it is written in Daniel: "For the sake of Abraham your servant and Isaac beloved by you and Israel your holy one."

"Do we then destroy the law through faith? Far from it! Rather we establish the law." Do we then judge superfluous the law that commanded circumcision? Far from it! Rather we make it stand, as we prove true what it said: that law would succeed law, testament testament, and circumcision circumcision.

"What then shall we say that Abraham found?" He called them back to the head of circumcision, so that what held at the beginning may be held in the whole. "Our father according to the flesh." Father according to the circumcision of the flesh; for faith consists in the mind.

"For if Abraham was justified by works, he has glory, but not before God." If he was justified from the fact that he circumcised himself, then God gave him nothing, but he had glory from himself. Otherwise: if he fulfilled commands, he has glory in himself, not before God.

"For what does Scripture say? Abraham believed God." So great was Abraham's faith that his former sins were forgiven him and it alone was credited to him in place of all righteousness; and thereafter he burned with such love that he prepared himself for works above all. "And it was reckoned to him as righteousness." And therefore he has glory before God, as the law proved.

"Now to him who works, the wage is not reckoned according to grace." He explains the example. "But according to debt." For it is for the debtor to do what is commanded, and if he has not obeyed, he is condemned. But if he has done it, he has no glory, because he is still called an unprofitable servant who does nothing more than what was commanded. Otherwise: righteousness is not given to him freely, but a wage is paid for previous works.

"But to him who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness." God justifies the ungodly man who turns, by faith alone, not by good works, which he did not have; otherwise he would have had to be punished for his works of ungodliness. At the same time it must be noted that he asserted that not the sinner but the ungodly man is justified by faith, that is, the one who has recently believed. "According to the purpose of God." By which he purposed to forgive sins freely by faith alone.

"As David also speaks of the blessedness of the man." It is a great blessedness to win the Lord's favor without the labor of the law and of repentance, as if someone received some dignity freely. "To whom God credits righteousness without works." For this purpose first faith is reckoned as righteousness: that one may be both absolved for the past and justified in the present and prepared for the future works of faith.

"Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered."

"Blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin." What is forgiven is not held, and what is covered does not appear, and therefore it is not imputed at all. Some say that sins are forgiven through baptism, covered by the labors of repentance, and not imputed through martyrdom. Others say that when sins have been forgiven through baptism, love toward God increases, which covers a multitude of sins and thereafter does not let them be imputed, as past evils are overcome by good works every day.

"Is this blessedness then in the circumcision or in the uncircumcision?" He wishes to assign this blessedness to three times: of nature, of circumcision, and of Christianity. "For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness." For we all confess and agree; so let us observe concerning the others what reason has found concerning Abraham.

"How then was it reckoned? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision?" Let us see whether circumcision was born of righteousness, or righteousness of circumcision. "Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision." Because he was righteous before he was circumcised.

"And he received the sign of circumcision." Lest they say, "Then he was circumcised to no purpose," he says that it is a sign of righteousness, not an increase of it. "A seal of the righteousness of faith, which is in uncircumcision." He received the seal of that righteousness which the faith of the uncircumcised man merited; for it was so perfect that it merited a seal: for it is always a full thing that is sealed. Or: to show how righteous and faithful he was, who did not hesitate to inflict pain on himself at God's command, not thinking superfluous what the Lord commanded, just as he did not believe ungodly the slaying of his son, which the fountain of godliness had commanded. "That he might be the father of all who believe in uncircumcision."

["That righteousness might be credited to them, and that he might be the father of circumcision, of those who are not only of the circumcision, but also of those who follow the footsteps of our father Abraham."] So that all who believe from among the gentiles may be sons of Abraham, since for them too faith alone is reckoned as righteousness, and they too become circumcised, but in heart. Or: because he was righteous in uncircumcision, so that he might be the father of the uncircumcised, and remained righteous when circumcised, so that he might become the father of the righteous circumcised.

"For not through the law was the promise to Abraham or to his seed." Here he calls circumcision itself "the law," because every precept can be understood as law. "That he should be heir of the world, but through the righteousness of faith." Or: that in his seed, which is Christ, all the nations might be blessed, which were given to him by the Father as an inheritance. Or: that the nations may "recline with him in the kingdom of heaven."

"For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith has been made void, the promise abolished." If the circumcised alone, as you would have it, are heirs, God has not fulfilled his promise to Abraham that "he would be the father of many nations"; and if that is so, Abraham will seem to have believed God for nothing.

"For the law works wrath." Because "it is laid down for the unjust," and it weighed down those who wished to sin more than it absolved them, heaping up offenses through knowledge: for "if you were blind, you would have no sin."

["Therefore it is from faith, so that according to grace the promise may be firm to all his seed, not only to him who is of the law, but also to him who is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all."] Since faith cannot be emptied nor the promise abolished, the inheritance is not from the law but from faith. For the law does not forgive sins but condemns them, and therefore it cannot make all nations sons of Abraham, because, since all were found under sin, all were certainly to be punished; but faith, once sins have been forgiven by grace, makes all believers sons of Abraham. ["For where there is no law, there is no transgression either."] Or: there is nothing to transgress where there is no law. Or: there is nothing to be punished where the law is not needed.

"As it is written: For I have made you the father of many nations." Not of the one nation of Israel. "Before him whom you believed," Before God, the father of all believers. "Who justifies the dead." Here he speaks of "dead" with respect to begetting, to fit the present case. "And calls the things that are not," Although in the beginning he also called the things that were not, and they at once began to be, yet here because the time for begetting was already past for them.

"Who against hope believed in hope." It was against the hope of nature that a man of a hundred years, with a woman equally worn out, who had been barren even in her youth, should believe that his seed would be like the stars of heaven. "That he might become the father of many nations, according to what was said: So shall your seed be." He who could no longer by himself be the father even of one son. The question is asked how Abraham, his body already dead, begot sons by Keturah, when earlier he could not by Sarah. He did not beget by Sarah because she was both old and barren; but by Keturah, as by a young woman, he could easily beget in the course of nature.

"And he was not weakened in faith; he did not consider his own body, dead, when he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb." Faith considers nothing of nature, because it knows that he who spoke is almighty.

"But he did not hesitate in distrust at the promise of God, but was strengthened in faith." He doubted neither because of the impossibility of old age nor because of the greatness of the promise. "Giving glory to God,"

"most fully knowing that whatever he has promised he is able to do." Giving thanks as for something already received.

"Therefore it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Because he believed so perfectly and firmly.

"Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned to him,"

"but also for our sake, to whom it will be reckoned." Not that we should know his faith only, but that we should imitate his example as that of a father, like all the examples of the saints by which they pleased the Lord; they were tempted for this reason too, that they might know themselves and we might follow. "To us who believe in him who raised Jesus from the dead." If we believe as perfectly that Christ rose from the dead as he believed that his own body, already dead, could be brought to life for begetting.

"Who was handed over for our offenses and rose for our justification." He abolished our sins by his death, and in rising necessarily appeared in the same condition in which he died, to confirm the righteousness of believers.

"Being justified therefore by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." He has treated the case that none of them was justified by works, but all by faith, which he proves by the example of Abraham, whose sons the Jews thought themselves alone to be; and he has shown the reason that neither race nor circumcision but faith makes sons of Abraham, who was first justified by faith alone. This reasoning concluded, he exhorts them to have peace, because no one has been saved by his own merit, but all equally by the grace of God. Either: let us both be subject to God; or: let us have the peace of God, not only that of the world.

"Through whom we also have access by faith into this grace." Through whom we have drawn near, we who were far off. "In which we stand." We who before lay fallen. "And boast in the hope of the glory of God." We boast that we hope to possess the glory of the sons of God; and what we hope for is so great that no one would dare to hope it of himself, lest it be thought not hope but blasphemy, and to many it seems incredible because of its greatness.

"And not only so, but we also boast in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience,"

"and patience approval, and approval hope." Not only in the hope of glory, but also in most wholesome tribulations we boast, knowing the greatness of the reward, as James says: "Count it all joy, brothers," and the rest. Hence we ought even to wish to suffer something for the name of the Lord, so that from a tribulation that will end we may acquire a reward without end. For when the reward is considered, we can reckon no labor equal to it. For we know that men for the sake of gold voluntarily hire themselves out to the beasts, gold which they will nevertheless not be able to possess forever. How much more we, by their example, in tribulations which, though temporal, acquire eternal salvation and free us from everlasting pains; since many, for the hope of a little health and the care of the body, have endured the greatest tortures, and yet could not attain perfect health, which, even if it came, will be dissolved a little later when death intervenes! We have therefore something to boast of honorably, even if at some risk. For it is great glory to grow from the lowest to the highest and to come from nothing to the greatest things. From the mud to heaven and from slavery we are called to a kingdom, if only, despising all the glory and pleasure of the world, we boast in that alone which is promised to us. If you do this, it is as if someone, despising a lead coin, should obtain a royal jewel; though even so the comparison is not worthy, because here, although the value differs, corruption remains for both; but there corruptible things are exchanged for incorruptible, and fleeting things for eternal. "And hope does not put to shame." The hope of things to come drives out all shame; hence it is proved that he does not have hope who is ashamed in the commandments of Christ. "Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts." The greatness of his benefits stirs up a great love toward him, which, being perfect, knows neither shame nor fear. "Through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." We know how much he loves us from this: that he not only forgave us our sins through the death of his Son, but also gave us the Holy Spirit, who already shows the glory of things to come.

"For why did Christ, when we were still weak?" Why did he die for us, though he did not owe it, except to show his love, when we were still weighed down by the sicknesses of sins and crimes? "According to the time." Weak according to the time, when righteousness had almost failed. Or: because Christ suffered in the last time. Or: he died for a time of three days, as was foretold. "He died for the ungodly." He wishes to show that he died for the ungodly, in order to commend his grace by the contemplation of his benefits, and to show how much we, loved undeservedly, ought to love him, and that we might see whether anything is to be preferred to one so beneficent and holy, since he did not prefer even his own life to us, the ungodly, nor deny us the death we needed.

"For scarcely does anyone die for a just man." It is hard to die for a just man because the just man does not have to die: for if by chance another dies, it is for one who is going to die. "For perhaps for a good man someone would dare to die." The good man is the same as the just: for he says elsewhere: "The commandment is just and holy and good." "Perhaps" here means: one would dare so readily, lest wrong be done to him.

"But God commends his love toward us." He makes it lovable when he suggests how much he loves us. For when something is given undeservedly, then love is most commended. For what is so undeserved as that the Lord, without sin, should die for ungodly servants, and the founder of the universe be spent for a portion of his own creation? "Since when we were still sinners," It is to be noted that the apostle, when he says that those who now believe in Christ were sinners, usually signifies that they are so no longer, so that they may recognize how they ought to conduct themselves. "Christ died for us:"

"much more, now justified." If he loved sinners so much, how much more will he now keep the righteous! "In his blood we shall be saved from wrath through him." Not by the blood of animals, as in the law. Let us therefore beware lest by sinning we count it polluted, as the apostle himself says to the Hebrews.

"For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son." Sinners are enemies by despising, as the apostle says: "Do you not know that friendship with this world is hostile to God? Whoever wishes to become a friend of this world is made an enemy of God." Enemies, then, by acts, not by nature; and reconciled because we had been joined to him by nature. "Much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved in his life." If we have been saved by Christ's death, how much more shall we be glorified in his life, if we imitate it! "Not only ... Christ." Not only will eternal life be given to us, but a certain likeness of the divine glory is also promised through Christ, as the apostle John says: "It has not yet appeared what we shall be; we know that when he appears we shall be like him." "Through whom we have now received reconciliation." Hence he wishes to show that Christ suffered for this purpose: that we who, following Adam, had departed from God might be reconciled to God through Christ.

"Therefore, as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death." By example or pattern: as sin, when it did not yet exist, came through Adam, so also, when righteousness had remained with almost no one, it was called back through Christ; and as death entered through his sin, so also life was restored through this one's righteousness. "And so it passed through to all men, in which all sinned." As long as they sin in the same way, they also die in the same way: for it did not pass through to Abraham and Isaac. But here he says that all are dead because in the multitude of sinners the few righteous are not excepted, as there: "There is none who does good, there is not even one," and "a man a liar." Or: it passed through to all those who lived by a human and not a heavenly rule.

"For until the law sin was in the world." It came as the avenger of sin; before its coming sinners enjoyed more freely even the length of the present life. Sin indeed existed before the law, but it was not thought to be sin in the same way, because natural knowledge had already been almost obliterated. "But sin is not imputed when there is no law." How did death reign, if sin was not imputed? Unless you understand that it was not imputed "in the present."

"But death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression." Or: since there was as yet no one to distinguish between just and unjust, it thought it ruled over all. Or: not only over those who transgressed a precept, as Adam did, that is, the sons of Noah, who were commanded not to eat the life in the blood, and the sons of Abraham, to whom circumcision was commanded, but also over those who, without a precept, despised the law of nature. "Who is a type of the one to come." Or: he was a type of Christ for this reason, that as Adam was made by God without intercourse, so Christ came forth from a virgin by the working of the Holy Spirit. Some say: a type by contrast; that is, as Adam was the head of sin, so Christ is the head of righteousness.

"But not as the offense, so also the grace." Lest the type be thought to imply equality. "For if by the offense of one many died, much more has the grace of God and the gift in the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to more." Righteousness prevailed more in giving life than sin in killing, because Adam killed only himself and his descendants, but Christ freed both those who were then in the body and their descendants. But those who are against the transmission of sin try to attack it thus: "If Adam's sin," they say, "harmed even those who do not sin, then Christ's righteousness also profits even those who do not believe; for he says that people are saved through one in like manner, indeed even more, than they had previously perished through one." Then they say: "If baptism cleanses that ancient offense, those born of two baptized parents ought to be without this sin: for they could not pass on to their children what they themselves did not have at all. This also follows: if the soul is not from transmission, but only the flesh, then the flesh alone has the transmission of sin and it alone deserves punishment." Saying that it is unjust that a soul born today, not from the lump of Adam, should bear so ancient a sin, belonging to another, they say that it can by no means be granted that God, who forgives a person's own sins, should impute another's. "And not as through one offense, so also the gift." But more. "For the judgment from one unto condemnation." From one sinning proceeded the judgment of death. "But the grace from many offenses unto justification." Because Adam did not find much righteousness to destroy, but Christ by his grace dissolved the sins of many; and Adam made only a pattern of offense, but Christ both forgave sins freely and gave an example of righteousness.

"For if by the offense of one death reigns, as from Adam to Moses, much more, receiving the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness unto life, shall we reign through one, Jesus Christ." By which he forgave many sins; and the abundance of the gift of the Holy Spirit, because the gifts are many; but righteousness itself, too, is given through baptism, not possessed by merit.

"Therefore, as through the offense of one unto all men unto condemnation, so also through the righteousness of one unto all men unto justification." Death reigned: understand "so also grace reigned through justification."

"For as through the disobedience of one man very many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many will be made righteous." As by the example of Adam's disobedience many sinned, so also by Christ's obedience many are justified. Great therefore is the crime of disobedience, which kills so many.

"But the law came in, so that the offense might abound." Lest they say, "But the law forgave us our sins," "No," he says, "it did not come to forgive offenses but to show them; and since sin is committed knowingly, the offense began to abound"; as if he said that the law did not take away sins but added to them, yet not by its own fault, but by theirs. "Came in," that is, came in suddenly; and so it happened that the offense abounded. "But where the offense abounded, grace abounded the more." As the Savior says: "He to whom more is forgiven loves more." For the quantity of sin was made manifest so that the greatness of grace might be known and we might repay the fitting debt of love.

"So that, as sin reigned unto death, so also grace may reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." As the reign of sin was abundantly confirmed through contempt of the law, so also the reign of grace is to be confirmed through the forgiveness of many sins and the unceasing practice of righteousness thereafter.

"What then shall we say? Shall we remain in sin, so that grace may abound?"

"Far from it!" Lest those who do not understand me say: "If grace grows with the greatness of offenses, we ought to sin, so that grace may abound more and more." Far from it! I speak of those whom faith found in that state, not of us who have already died to sin, so that we might live to grace. "For we who have died to sin, how shall we live in it again?" He wants the baptized person to be so firm and so perfect.

"Or do you not know?" Or do you not know the very sacrament of baptism? "That all of us who have been baptized in Christ Jesus." Baptism is taken in three ways in the scriptures: of water; of the Holy Spirit, who is also called fire; and of blood in martyrdom, of which the Savior said: "I have a baptism to be baptized with." "We were baptized into his death." So that we might die with him in baptism.

"For we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that, as Christ rose from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life." He shows that we are baptized in this way for this reason: that through the mystery we may be buried with Christ, dying to crimes and renouncing our former life; so that, as he is glorified in the resurrection of the Son, so he may also be honored by all through the newness of our way of life, so that not even the marks of the old man may be recognized in us. For we ought not to wish or desire anything that those wish or desire who are not yet baptized, and whoever are still entangled in the errors of the old life.

"For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be of his resurrection." If we are buried with him now, we shall also then be able to share in his resurrection; and if we are new and changed in our way of life, we shall likewise be new and changed in glory.

"Knowing this, that our old man," Who sinned by imitating the old, earthly man Adam. "Was crucified with him." Understand that you were crucified with Christ through baptism, you who have been made a member of his body. And he indeed hung up an innocent body, so that you might hang up your guilty body away from vices; in this mystery Moses hung up the bronze serpent in the desert. "That the body of sin may be destroyed, so that we may no longer serve sin." That is, that all vices may be destroyed, because one vice is a member of sin, all of them its body. For Christ was crucified not in part, but whole. Or: that our body may be destroyed from the slavery of sin, and what used to be the property of offense may become that of righteousness: for "everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin."

"For he who has died has been justified from sin." That is, he has been estranged from sin: for one who is dead does not sin at all. So too "he who is born of God does not sin": for one who is crucified, with all his members seized by pain, will hardly be able to sin.

"For if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him." If we have not died with him, neither shall we live with him, because we are not his members.

"Knowing that Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more: death will no longer have dominion over him." So we too, if we die here by our will, shall not fear the second death. Or: you cannot now be baptized again, because Christ cannot be crucified again for you, as he says to the Hebrews: "It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened," and the rest; in which he does not deny them repentance but denies the repetition of baptism.

"For in that he died to sin, he died once." Because "he himself bore our sins" and suffered for us, so that we should not sin any further. "But in that he lives, he lives to God." He lives in the glory of the Godhead. "So you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus." As his members, know that you, who have once died with him, must now always live to God in Christ, in whom our life is hidden with God; having put him on, let us follow his example.

"Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey it." In the mortal body, live as immortals. And he has explained how sin reigns in the body: namely, through obedience and consent.

"But do not present your members as weapons of iniquity to sin." Each member, if it turns its office to evil uses, becomes a weapon of iniquity for attacking righteousness. At the same time it is to be noted that a human being presents his members to whichever side he wishes, through the freedom of choice. "But present yourselves to God as alive from the dead." As those who have already risen, because then one neither lives carnally nor sins. "And your members as weapons of righteousness to God." As the eye that before looked in order to covet. So consider the other members.

"Sin," he says, "will not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law." Sin will not defeat you: for you are not little children but grown, as if a tutor were to say to a boy: "Do not commit a fault of speech: for you are not hearing the grammarian but the orator." Or: "It ought not to have dominion." "But under grace." Grace provided teaching and example for conquering.

"What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?" Lest they say: "Then, since the law's punishment has ceased, we shall sin with impunity." "Far from it!" If you sin, you will not be under grace.

"Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of him whom you obey, whether of sin or of obedience to righteousness?" If you choose to serve sins, you will begin to be subject to the sentence of the law, which punishes sinners; but if you obey righteousness, you are not under the law but under grace.

"But thanks be to God that you were slaves of sin." "You were," he says, not "you are." "But you obeyed from the heart." That is, faithfully. "In that form of teaching in which you were handed over:"

"and now, set free from sin, you have been made slaves of righteousness." In the teaching and example of Christ, who taught that not only sins but even the occasions of offenses are to be removed.

"I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now present your members to serve unto sanctification." I speak in human terms, because you cannot yet fully hear "divine" terms. For although you ought to serve righteousness much more than you served sin before, I nevertheless concede to your weakness that you serve righteousness only so much. Or: I speak things worthy even of human reason, which all can perceive with me and none can deny. Whatever the soul does carnally is reckoned to the flesh; but if the flesh does a spiritual work, the whole man becomes spiritual; or as in that saying: "The body, which is corrupted, weighs down the soul." We presented our members to serve sin, not, as the Manichaeans say, because the nature of the body has sin implanted in it.

"For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness." That is, serving it in nothing at all; so now also be free from all sin.

"What fruit then did you have at that time, of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death:"

"but now, set free from sin, and slaves to God." Without doubt there is no fruit in a thing of which one is ashamed through repentance. For everyone who knows goodness is ashamed of his former acts; but whoever is ashamed of righteousness does not know its fruits. So those who sin have no fruit in the present and receive perpetual death in the future; but those who serve God both have fruit in the present, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in the future eternal life. Otherwise: what kind of fruit did you have in doing that thing, at the very memory of which there is shame? "You have your fruit in sanctification, and the end, eternal life." This itself is already fruit, that you live sanctified through baptism.

"For the wages of sin is death." He who soldiers for sin will receive death as his pay. "But the grace of God is eternal life." He did not say likewise "the wages of righteousness," because it was not in us before it was rewarded: for it was not sought by our labor, but granted as God's gift. "In Christ Jesus our Lord." Whether grace or life.

"Or do you not know, brothers? For I speak to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives." Here he begins to show the difficulty of the law, so as to urge them to pass over to grace without fear of it. Either the man, or the law of the man.

"For the woman who is under a husband is bound to the law while her husband lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband." By way of comparison he calls the commandment of the law the husband, to show that the law, being without power to punish and as it were dead to us who have been put to death, cannot prevent us from passing over wholly to Christ, who rose from the dead; the law would rightly live for us if it found something in us that it could punish.

"Therefore, while her husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she is joined to another man; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she is with another man." As long as the husband lives, so long must she live according to his will alone; but when, after his death, the woman has been joined to another man, she no longer has to live according to the custom of her former husband.

"So, my brothers, you also have been put to death to the law." He did not want to tell them, as the comparison would require, that the law was dead; but what he did not dare to say among Jews he left to be understood. "Through the body of Christ." By dying with Christ, who condemned sin in the flesh. "So that you may belong to another, who rose from the dead, so that we may bear fruit for God." He bears fruit for God who in works of righteousness, like a fruit tree, is first in flower, then in fruit, and at last reaches full ripeness: for no fruit is always in flower.

"For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, worked in our members." When we were in a carnal way of life, the passion of concupiscence worked in the eyes, and in the other members every concupiscence, which had been forbidden by the law. "For without the law sin was dead." The natural law had almost passed into oblivion, which suggested what sin was; therefore the law of the letter was brought in, to remind those who had forgotten.

"But I was once alive without the law." I thought I was living as one righteous and free. Or: I was living in the present. "But when the commandment came." At the end of the forgetting, sin was recognized when the commandment came, so that everyone who did it might know that he was dead. "Sin revived." Because it had lived through natural knowledge and had died through forgetfulness, it is therefore said to have revived through the law.

"But I died." Because, now knowing, I transgressed. "And the commandment which was unto life was found to be unto death for me." What led to life when kept led to death when neglected. "For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, seduced me and through it killed." "So the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good." Against the assailants of the law and against those who separate justice from goodness, the law is called both good and holy, and grace just: "for unless your righteousness abounds." And God is sometimes called good in the Old Testament and just in the New: "Righteous Father," says the Lord. This is against the Marcionites.

"Did then what is good become death to me? Far from it!" It is not itself the cause of death to me, but I am, who find death by sinning. "But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through what is good." Through the good law sin is revealed, and by it sin is punished. "So that sin might become beyond measure sinful through the commandment." Before the law it had a measure, through ignorance; it is beyond measure when it is committed knowingly.

"For we know that the law is spiritual." Since it commands spiritual things. "But I am carnal." I, whoever receives the law and has become accustomed to living carnally. "Sold under sin. For what I do I do not understand: for not what I will,"

"do I do, but what I hate, that I do." Set before sin, so that, if I accept its counsel, I become its slave, subjecting myself of my own accord; and now, as if drunk with the habit of sins, I do not know what I am doing: "for what I do, I do not understand." Or it is to be pronounced thus: I do not understand that what I commit unwillingly is evil.

"If then I do what I hate, I agree with the law." If I do not wish to do the very evil that I commit, I certainly agree with the law, which both does not want evils and forbids them. It can also be understood thus: If I sin, I subject myself to the truth of the law.

"But now it is no longer I who do it." Before the habit, then, I myself did it willingly. "But sin that dwells in me." It dwells as a guest, as one thing in another, not as one thing with it: as an accident, that is, not as something natural.

"For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh." He did not say: "My flesh is not good." "For to will is present with me." The will is there, but not the effect, because carnal habit resists the will. "But to accomplish the good I do not find." I do not see myself doing it.

"For I do not do what I will, but the evil I do not will, that I do." As, for example, someone who has long been accustomed to swear falls into it even when he does not wish to.

"But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me." Not I, because I do it unwillingly, but the habit of sin, a necessity that I nevertheless prepared for myself. "I find then a law, when I will to do good, that evil is present with me." If I will, I find for myself a law to do good against the evil that is present.

"For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man." I agree with the law according to the mind.

"But I see another law in my members, fighting." Habitual desires, or the persuasion of the enemy. "Against the law of my mind." Namely the natural conscience, or the divine law that resides in the mind. "And leading me captive in the law of sin which is in my members." In the habit of offenses.

"Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" I who am held in this way, who will deliver me from the deadly bodily habit?

"The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The one whom the law could not free. Had Paul not yet been freed by the grace of God? From this it is proved that he speaks in the person of another. "So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God." He recapitulates in order to conclude. "But with the flesh the law of sin." The carnal man is in a way double and divided in himself.

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh." There is nothing deserving condemnation in those who have been crucified to the works of the flesh.

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus." It is to be noted that he calls grace a law. "Has freed you from the law of sin and death." Which puts sinners to death.

"For what was impossible for the law." To make carnal people keep righteousness, since it gave no example of putting the flesh to death. "In which it was weak through the flesh." It was weak in them, not in itself. "God sent his Son." Against Photinus, who denies the Son before the flesh. "In the likeness of the flesh of sin." Here likeness has truth, as in "Adam begot a son in his own likeness." So he took flesh like that of other men. "And concerning sin he condemned sin in the flesh." As if you were to say: "He defeated a nation by means of a nation." Just as the victims which they offered for sin under the law were called by the name of sin, though they themselves knew nothing of offenses, as it is written: "He shall lay his hands on the head of his sin," so too the flesh of Christ, which was offered for our sins, received the name of sin. Some indeed say that through the sin of the Jews, by which they killed the Lord, he condemned, through a man, the sin of the devil, by which he had deceived man, as he says to the Hebrews: "That through death he might destroy him who had the power of death." Or: from the substance of that flesh which before served sin, he conquered sin by never sinning, and in that same flesh condemned sin, to show that the fault lies in the will, not in nature, which was made by God such that it could not sin.

"So that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." So that, since it could not be fulfilled in them because carnal habit resisted, it might at least be fulfilled in us, who by Christ's example have put the flesh to death.

"For those who are according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but those according to the Spirit perceive the things of the Spirit." Man is constructed of spirit and flesh. So when he does carnal things, he is called wholly flesh; but when he does spiritual things, he is called wholly spirit. For each substance, when the other has brought it under its sway, loses in a way both its own force and its name. For each desires what is akin and near to it.

"For the prudence of the flesh is death, but the prudence of the Spirit is life and peace." He himself says elsewhere that human prudence is to return evil for evil. Such prudence therefore brings forth death by transgressing the commandment; but the prudence of the Spirit both has peace in the present by not returning evil, and will receive life in the future. Prudence (prudentia) is named from foreseeing (prouidendo).

"For the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God: for it is not subject to the law of God." Not the flesh itself, as the Manichaeans say, but the carnal mind is hostile to God. For everything that is not subject is hostile, and whoever wishes to avenge himself sometimes exceeds the measure even of the old law. "Nor indeed can it be." He said "impossible" so as to call them back, at least in this way, from the concupiscences of the flesh.

"But those who are in the flesh." Hence it is proved that above he accused not the flesh but the works of the flesh, because those to whom he says this were certainly living in the flesh. "Cannot please God." For it cannot be that one given over to the flesh does not sin at some time.

"But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit." That is, occupied with spiritual things. "If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you." The Spirit of God dwells in him in whom his fruit appears, as he says to the Galatians: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy," and the rest. "But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his." The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of humility, of patience, and of all virtues, of him who loved his enemies and prayed for them.

"But if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin." If you imitate Christ, the carnal mind does not resist, as if dead. Hence David also said: "But I, like a deaf man, did not hear, and like a mute man not opening his mouth," and the rest. "But the spirit lives because of righteousness." The spirit lives in order to work righteousness: for it is not only required that we cease from carnal things, but also that we do spiritual ones.

"But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit dwelling in you." If you are so pure that the Holy Spirit deigns to dwell in you, God will not let the temple of his Spirit perish, but as he raised Jesus from the dead, so he will restore your bodies too.

"Therefore, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh." He does all this to show them that the law, which was given to carnal people, is not necessary.

"For if you live according to the flesh, you will die." According to the reasoning set out, that carnal people cannot keep righteousness. "But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live." You subject the works of the flesh to spiritual acts. It is to be noted, of course, that the works of the flesh are condemned, not its substance.

"For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." All who deserve to be governed by the Holy Spirit; as, on the contrary, those who sin are led by the spirit of the devil, the sinner from the beginning.

"For you did not receive the spirit of slavery again in fear, but you received the spirit of adoption of sons." The Jews received a spirit that compelled them to slavery through fear. For to fear belongs to slaves, to love to sons, as it is written: "The slave will fear his master, and the son will love his father." So those who would not work by the will of love are compelled by the necessity of fear; but let us do everything willingly, so that we may prove ourselves sons. "By which we cry: Abba, Father." He who calls him Father professes himself a son: he ought therefore to be found like the Father in his ways, lest he be liable to greater punishment for taking the name too in vain.

"The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are sons of God." The testimony of adoption is that we have the Spirit, through whom we pray thus; for none but sons could receive so great a pledge.

"And if sons, also heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ." He who deserves to be a son deserves to be made heir of the Father and joint heir of the true Son. "If indeed we suffer with him." If, when it is necessary, we suffer for his name such things as he endured for us. "So that we may also be glorified together." As John says: "We know that when he appears we shall be like him."

"For I consider that the sufferings of this time are not worthy." Here he wishes to commend the future glory, so that we may bear present pressures more easily. And in truth a man could suffer nothing worthy of the heavenly glory, even if that glory were only such as life now is. For whatever he has suffered, even death, is no more than he previously deserved for his sins; but now his sins are forgiven, and then eternal life will be granted, the fellowship of angels, the splendor of the sun, and the other things we read are promised to the saints. "Compared with the future glory that will be revealed in us." For now "it is hidden with Christ in God," and "it has not yet appeared what we shall be."

"For the expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God." Different people expound this passage in different ways. Either: the whole creation awaits the time of the resurrection, because then it will be changed for the better. Or: the rational angelic creation: for Peter says that the angels desire the glory of the saints. Some also say that the creation is Adam and Eve, whom the serpent long ago, by the hope of divinity, made subject to vanity and in bondage to corruption, not sinning by themselves but at the serpent's instigation. "And they too," they say, "will be freed, so as no longer to be in bondage to corruption." And "the whole creation" they say is those who were righteous until the coming of Christ, because they too have not yet received, "God providing something better for us." Not only they, but we ourselves too, in whom these things have been fulfilled, do not yet hold them, but wait for them in hope, although we have seen what many righteous people desired to see.

"For the creation was subjected to vanity." Vanity is everything that at some time comes to an end. "Was subjected." As the angels are, ministering to men. "Not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope,"

"because the creation itself also will be freed from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God." It will no longer serve those who have corrupted the image of God.

"For we know that the whole creation groans and is in labor until now." As "the angels rejoice over those who repent," so they grieve over those who refuse to be converted.

"And not only it, but we too, who have the dwelling place of the Spirit, groan within." Not only the angels, who are kinder than we, grieve over people of this kind, but also we who already have the Holy Spirit groan over such people, as Jeremiah too groaned and said: "Woe is me, my soul, for the reverent man has perished from the earth!" and the rest. "Awaiting the redemption of our body:"

"for in hope we were saved." We have not yet received the promises in reality, but we hope, as he says to the Corinthians: "For we walk by faith, and not by sight." "But hope that is seen is not hope: for what one sees, why does he hope for it?" What is seen is not hoped for, but if it is one's own, it is possessed. So there is no hope for Christians in visible things: for not present things were promised to us, but future ones.

"But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it through patience." Faith through patience is therefore of great reward, because it believes what it does not see, and, as if it had already received, is secure about what it has not yet received, as he says to the Hebrews: "You need patience, so that, doing the will, you may receive the promise." For hope does not know how to exist without patience.

"Likewise the Spirit also helps our weakness." He helps according to this hope, so that we ask not for earthly but for heavenly things. For our capacity is weak unless it is helped by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. "For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought." Because we still see through a mirror, and often things harm us that we think will help; and therefore very few of the things we ask are granted us, by divine providence, as he himself also says elsewhere: "For this I asked the Lord three times that it might depart from me," and the rest. "But the Spirit himself intercedes with groanings that cannot be uttered:"

"But he who searches knows what the Spirit desires, that he intercedes for the saints according to God." Here he called the grace of the Spirit "spirit," as he says there: "If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays," and: "You are zealous for spirits." And he says "intercedes" because he makes us intercede with groanings that cannot be described, just as God is said to tempt us in order to know, that is, to make us know what we are like. And in common usage too, what a master orders to be done he himself is said to do, as "he built a house" or "he made a book," though the one did not write it and the other did not build it.

"But we know that for those who love God all things work together for good." Everything we do or suffer for the love of God grows into reward for us. "Whatever the righteous man does will prosper." "For those who are called according to purpose,"

"those whom he foreknew." According to what he purposed: to save by faith alone those whom he had foreknown would believe; and those whom he called freely to salvation, much more will he glorify when they work. "He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son." To predestine is the same as to foreknow. So those whom he foresaw would be conformed in life, he willed to become conformed in glory, because "he will transform the body of our lowliness, conformed to the body of his glory." "That he may be the firstborn among many brothers." "The firstborn from the dead," in glory.

"And those whom he predestined, these he also called; these he also sanctified; and these he honored." Those whom he foreknew would believe, these he called. And the calling gathers the willing, not the unwilling; or certainly the distinction is not in persons but in time. He says this on account of the enemies of faith, lest they judge the grace of God to be fortuitous. So they are called through preaching to believe; believing, they are justified through baptism; they are glorified in the powers of the gifts of grace or in the future resurrection.

"What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?" He wishes to show that no one can prevent those who love God, and are loved by God, from attaining the glory promised to them, because the perfect love that is in them drives out every cause of mortal fear.

"He who did not spare his own Son." He permitted him to be handed over, so that the freedom of choice might remain for those who handed him over, and an example of patience might be shown to us. "But handed him over for us all." Not for some. "How has he not also given us all things with him?" What dearer thing can he have to deny us, who did not deny his Son?

"Who will bring a charge against the elect of God? God who justifies:"

"who is it that condemns?" Those whom God has chosen as believers and shown to be righteous by signs and powers, who will dare to accuse them for their former offenses, or for contempt of the legal commandments? "Christ who died, rather who rose, who is at the right hand of God." He speaks according to the form of the man assumed, who died and rose. "Who also intercedes for us." That we may be with him where he is. The Arians, of course, are accustomed to raise a false charge from the matter of intercession, saying that he to whom intercession is made is greater than he who intercedes. They must be answered that God does not suffer forgetfulness, so as to be continually reminded of those whom he himself chose; but Christ intercedes in this, that he always shows and offers to the Father the man whom he assumed, as our pledge, as the true and eternal high priest.

"Who then will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?"

"As it is written." After such great and splendid benefits and promises, what pressure could be so heavy as to tear us from his love? And by saying "we" he says that all ought to be such that they cannot be separated from Christ even by dangers. At that time the Jews wished to separate them from Christ so as to call them back to keeping the law. "Because for your sake we are put to death all day long." Not for any crime, but for your sake, who said: "Blessed are you when they persecute you," and the rest. "We are regarded as sheep for slaughter." This is fulfilled most of all in us Christians, who are not permitted to defend ourselves, but, by the example of our Lord and Master, who "was led like a sheep to the sacrifice," to bear everything inflicted on us most patiently.

"But in all these things we overcome because of him who loved us." We count all these tribulations as nothing because of him who loved us so much that he even died for us; and when we die for his name, then we triumph most of all, especially since it is light to suffer for oneself what the Lord first deigned to suffer for others.

"For I am confident that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor power,"

"nor height, nor depth." I am confident for certain that neither if anyone threatens me with death, nor if he promises life, nor if he says that he is an angel sent by the Lord, nor if he falsely claims to be a prince of angels, nor if he confers honor in the present, nor if he promises the glory of things to come, nor if he works miracles, nor if he promises heaven and frightens with hell, or tries to persuade by depth of knowledge, will he ever be able to sever us from the love of Christ. "Nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God." He named almost every creature, and was not content with these unless he added that even if there is another creature, it too cannot separate us. "Which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." He loved God in Christ, the love of whom consists in keeping the commandments, as he himself says: "If you love me, keep my commandments"; he established the imitation of his love in brotherly love, saying: "By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." And John: "If you do not love your brother whom you see, how can you love God whom you do not see?"

"I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit,"

"that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart." About to deal with the Jews, he first assures them that he does not say these things out of hatred but out of love, because he grieves that they do not believe in Christ, who had come to save them first of all. And in saying that he speaks the truth in Christ, he shows that whatever the baptized person, who through communion in the body and blood of Christ abides in him and he in him, does or says in Christ, it is he whose member he is who speaks or acts; and whatever injury is inflicted on him is likewise inflicted on Christ. And as for his saying that his conscience bears him witness in this, he teaches that one speaks the truth to whom conscience bears witness in all things, and whom it does not make guilty of a lie by inner accusation.

"For I wished that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers, who are kinsmen according to the flesh,"

"who are Israelites." I wished it once, when I was persecuting Christ; not that I would wish it now: for I knew that all these things were theirs; but after I knew the truth, I left those whom I loved so much, and they are not converted. "Whose is the adoption of sons." For of them it was said: "Israel is my firstborn son." "And the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law." The giving of the old and the promise of the new. "And the service." That is, the ministry of angels or of prophets.

"Whose are the fathers." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. "From whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever." Against the Manichaean, Photinus, and Arius: because he is both from the Jews according to the flesh and God blessed forever; as Thomas too adores him and says: "My God and my Lord!", which Christ confirms, saying: "Because you have seen, you have believed."

"But it is not that the word of God has failed." Because he had said above that he grieved that the race of Israel, to whom all these things had belonged, was being excluded from the kingdom by its own fault, here he shows that those who do not believe are not sons of Abraham, lest he prejudge all Jews and the objection be made to him: "Did God then lie to Abraham?" "For not all who are from Israel are Israelites,"

"nor, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all sons." If not all, yet some; and if not all Israelites are from Israel, then some are from the gentiles, "in whom there is no guile." "But in Isaac shall your seed be called." In Isaac alone were the sons of Abraham called even then, not in Ishmael as well, though he too descended from his stock.

"That is, not the children of the flesh are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed." For Ishmael was born of a slave woman in the ordinary way of the flesh, but Isaac was begotten beyond nature from aged parents by the promise of God; so now too the promise makes Christians sons of Abraham, the promise which faith merited, namely that he should be the father of very many nations.

"For this is the word of promise: About this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son." Here he shows that the later people is a people of promise, like Isaac. "And not only so, but also Rebecca." Not only are Ishmael and Isaac, who were born of one father, not one before God, but also Jacob and Esau, who were born of Rebecca from one act of intercourse, were separated before God before they were born, by the merit of faith, so that God's purpose of choosing the good and rejecting the evil might already stand in his foreknowledge. So now too, he has chosen those from the gentiles whom he foreknew would believe, and has rejected the unbelieving from Israel. "Having conceived by one act of intercourse with Isaac our father." Rebecca is thought to have been the first to bear twins; for this reason, as if something new had happened to her, she was terrified and asked God. "For when they had not yet been born or done anything good or evil, so that the purpose which was made by God's election might stand." Or: so that this might be signified, that now even of twins the one who does not believe is cast away.

"Not from works but from calling it was said that the elder shall serve the younger." God's foreknowledge does not prejudge the sinner, if he wishes to be converted: for he says through Ezekiel: "If I say to the sinner, 'You shall surely die,' and he turns and does righteousness, he shall surely live and shall not die."

"As it is written: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." What had been said to Rebecca the apostle shows fulfilled in the later posterity, through the prophet.

"What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? Far from it!" He feared that, as to what he himself had said for the purpose of proving that the prerogative of race is worth nothing before God, or that it was already then signified that the later people would be better, they might not understand, and might think he was saying that God makes some good and others evil, and that by their own judgment it was unjust to punish those who had not sinned of their own accord. So he sets before himself the testimonies from the opposing side by which they used to affirm this, and, answering these examples with brief objections, shows that it should not be so understood. "For Moses says: I will have mercy on whom I have had mercy, and I will show mercy to whom I have shown mercy." This is understood in the right sense thus: I will have mercy on him whom I have foreknown to be able to deserve mercy, so that already then I have

had mercy on him.

"So then it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy?" If it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, as some think, why did he himself run, saying, "I have finished the course," and urge others to run, saying, "So run that you may all obtain"? Hence it is understood that here he uses the voice of one asking rather than of one denying.

"For Scripture says to Pharaoh: For this very purpose I raised you up, to show my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth." This too they wrongly put forward. But this passage is expounded in two ways by different people. Either: that each one is punished when the measure and limit of his sins has been filled, like the Sodomites and the Amorites; so this man had already exceeded the measure, and therefore God wished, as concerning one already about to perish, to provide for others, so that his people might recognize his justice and power, and neither sin nor fear their adversaries. What was done in Pharaoh is as if a physician were to find health for many from the torture of a criminal already condemned, by investigating the causes of diseases; or as if a judge, though he could punish a criminal at once, were to afflict him with various penalties, to put all in fear. Or: he was hardened by God's patience: for when God's plague ceased, he became harder; and although God knew that he would not be converted, yet he wished to show his clemency even in him.

"So then he has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills."

"You will say to me then: Why does he still find fault? For who resists his will?" So if this too is understood thus: "He has mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills," which is quite unjust, then your proposition will be concluded in such a way that you say that you are not the cause of your wickedness, but the will of the Lord, which cannot be contradicted; but the very nature of God's justice resists this reasoning of yours. "O man, who are you to answer back to God? Does the thing formed say to him who formed it: Why have you made me thus?" To some it seems that he says this too still in their person, because it is the same thing to say that no one can contradict the will of God, who has mercy on one and hardens another, and to add that no one answers back to God. But some say that from here on the apostle answers that, even if it were as they falsely charge, they ought not to answer back to their maker, because we are such in comparison with God as a figure of clay is to its craftsman.

"Or does the potter not have power over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?" According to those who say these are the apostle's words, by "lump" he means all who were living in Egypt, because Israel too had served idols there.

"But if, willing to show his wrath and make known his power, he endured with much patience." Because he endured him for a long time as he blasphemed and afflicted God's people with hard labors, and besides had cruelly ordered the innocent age of little children to be killed. "Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction." By filling up their sins they became vessels worthy of wrath and were prepared by themselves for destruction.

"And to show the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he prepared for glory." They were worthy of mercy, because they had committed lesser things and had been grievously afflicted.

"Whom he also called, us, not only from the Jews but also from the gentiles, as he says in Hosea: I will call not my people my people, and her who had not [obtained mercy, as having obtained mercy];"

"for it will be in the place where it was said: Not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God." Because then too some of the Egyptians had gone out with the sons of Israel (whereas if God accepted persons, Israel alone ought to have had salvation), so now too he has called to faith not only Jews but also gentiles. But according to those who think that these things are said not in the apostle's person but in the Jews', "he saved whom he willed," they say, "to such an extent that he even chose idolatrous gentiles, who had never served God, and called few from Israel, according to the testimony of Isaiah."

"But Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:" It is shown to be a threat against them. "If the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant will be saved." Showing that few of them would believe.

"For he is completing the word and cutting it short in equity, because the Lord will make a shortened word upon the earth." The historical sense is this: as I shorten a word and define it quickly, so God will accomplish this with all speed. But in the prophecy the shortened word is taken as the New Testament, because in it all things are briefly comprehended.

"And as Isaiah foretold." "Foretold" fittingly, because it is written earlier in the book. "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah." Because he did not allow a few righteous to perish with the multitude of the ungodly. Or: unless Christ, the seed of Abraham, had been sent to free the people. But the sense of the objectors is this: unless he had wished to call at least a few of the Jews.

"What then shall we say? That the gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained righteousness?" If the preceding things are said in the apostle's person, here he again raises a question for himself, because they could say: "If it is not as we say, that it is not of him who wills nor of him who runs, how did the gentiles find a righteousness which they never sought before, while Israel, always seeking righteousness, could not find it?" But if the whole preceding sense is applied to the objectors, here the apostle replies and briefly recapitulates the question, saying: "What then shall we say to the things objected against us, except that the gentiles, when called, believed at once, and they refused to believe?" "But the righteousness that is from faith." Because righteousness is from faith, and they refused to believe.

"But Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not attain to the law."

"Why? Because not from faith, but as from works." He gives the reasons why they did not find righteousness: because, boasting falsely in works, they refused to believe, rejecting grace as if they were righteous. "They stumbled at the stone of stumbling,"

"as it is written: Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense." He who sees the stone does not stumble, but he who is blind strikes against it: this happened to the Jews, whom their own malice blinded, and, not recognizing Christ, they crucified him. But Christ was also foretold as a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense for this reason: that many take offense at his birth and passion, as it is written that "they were offended at him," and this same apostle says: "Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." Hence here too there follows: "He who believes in him will not be put to shame." Peter also says that to believers he is "a chosen stone, but to unbelievers a stone of stumbling." "And everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame." Not the Jew alone, but everyone who has believed will not be put to shame for former offenses.

"Brothers, the desire of my heart and my prayer to the Lord for them is for their salvation." Here he shows that he prays for his enemies not only with his lips but also with his heart.

"I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge." They have zeal for following the law, but they do not understand that Christ came according to the law, and that they cannot be justified through the law. Indeed it is dangerous if it is done without knowledge, because it is often turned into its opposite.

"For, not knowing the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to the righteousness of God." Not knowing that God justifies by faith alone, and thinking themselves righteous by works of the law which they did not keep, they refused to submit to the forgiveness of sins, lest they seem to have been sinners, as it is written: "But the Pharisees, despising the counsel of God against themselves, refused to be baptized with the baptism of John."

"For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes." He who believes in Christ is, on the day he believes, like one who has fulfilled the whole law. "For Moses wrote of the righteousness that is from the law." Moses himself distinguished between the two kinds of righteousness, namely of faith and of deeds: the one justifies the one who comes by works, the other by belief alone. "That the man who does them shall live in them." So none of them will live, because at this time no one fulfils the law without Christ, since this too belongs to the law, that he be believed. Some think from this passage that the Jews merited only the present life by the works of the law; the Lord's words show this is not true, for when asked about eternal life he set forth the commandments of the law, saying: "If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments." Hence we understand that he who kept the law in his own time had everlasting life.

"But the righteousness that is from faith speaks thus: Do not say in your heart, Who will ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down;"

"or, Who will descend into the abyss? that is, to bring Christ up from the dead?"

"But what does Scripture say? The word is near, in your mouth and in your heart." Moses said this of the law, according to the history, but the apostle applies it to Christ, because the law was neither in heaven nor in the abyss. Or: he always bids them meditate on the law for this reason, so that they may be able to find Christ there. "This is the word of faith which we preach." Namely, of the New Testament.

"Because if you confess the Lord Jesus with your mouth, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead." The confession of the mouth is the testimony of the heart. "You will be saved." From past offenses, not from future ones.

"For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." So if faith suffices for righteousness and confession for salvation, there is no distinction between Jew and gentile believers.

"For Scripture says: Everyone who believes in him." Not only the Jew. "Will not be put to shame." So do not you put to shame for their former acts those whom Scripture says cannot be put to shame.

"For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same one is Lord of all, rich toward all who call on him."

"For everyone, whoever calls on the name of the Lord, will be saved." One Lord of all, abounding in mercy, and he has salvation from which to bestow it.

"How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed?" That they could not call on God. "Or how will they believe him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?"

"Or how will they preach unless they are sent?" Because prophets were never sent to them. "As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who announce peace, who announce good things!" The feet of these who announce peace are beautiful; but the feet of those who run to the vanities of the world are foul and deformed. "But not all obey the gospel." So if not even all those to whom prophets were sent obeyed, how much less these to whom no one was sent! "For Isaiah says: Lord, who has believed our report?" Who has believed what he heard from us, or what we heard from you so that we might announce it to others?

"So faith is from hearing, and hearing through the word." Here is the apostle's answer.

"But I say: Have they not heard?" He confirms that they heard, even before. "Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world." He wants this testimony to be understood allegorically of the voices of the prophets.

"But I say: Did Israel not know?" That the gentiles were to be called to faith. "First Moses says." Moses first, because all the prophets afterwards spoke of the salvation of the gentiles. "I will provoke you to jealousy by a non-nation; by a foolish nation I will provoke you to anger." Before they believed God, they were not God's nation. As if he were saying: I will call those who are not my nation, and they will believe me to provoke you, so that you, who ought to have been greater than they, may be glad to be made equal to them; as if someone had a disobedient son and, to correct him, gave half his patrimony to his slave, so that the son, at last converted, might be glad if he deserved to receive even so much. Or: we were not a nation, because "we were dead in sins."

"But Isaiah is bold and says: I was made manifest to those who did not seek me." To the gentiles, who did not seek God in the law, but idols in ignorance. "I was found by those who did not ask for me." They asked not God but demons, through augurs, astrologers, and soothsayers of idols.

"But to Israel what does he say?" He who promised such things to the gentiles, see what he threatens the Jews with, so that you may know that both were foretold! "All day long I stretched out my hands." All the time I showed wonders or plagues, and not even so did they believe. "To a people unbelieving and contradicting." The stretching out of the hands signifies the cross allegorically.

"I say then: Has God rejected his inheritance? Far from it!" Since he had humbled them enough, now like a good teacher he consoles them, lest he seem to embitter them too much. He has not rejected all, he says, nor forever, but only as long as they do not believe. "For I too am an Israelite." If he had rejected all, he would surely not have taken me up either. "Of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin." Not of the race of proselytes.

"God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew." He has not rejected that people which he foreknew would believe. "Or do you not know what Scripture says in Elijah?" In Kingdoms, where it is written about Elijah. "How he pleads with God against Israel." He takes pride away from the gentiles, lest they boast because very few of the Jews have believed.

"Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have dug down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life." All the prophets knew only those things which had been revealed to them by the Lord; hence the king, in doubt, asks Jeremiah whether, at the hour when he was speaking with him, the word of the Lord was with him. And Elisha too says: "How has the Lord hidden this from me?" So Elijah too in this passage did not know that there were others besides himself who worshipped God.

"But what does the divine answer say to him? I have left for myself seven thousand men." If so many were hidden from a prophet, how much less do you know how many of the Jews have been saved and are to be saved! "Who have not bowed the knee before Baal." One serves idols not only by sacrificing to them but also by sinning: for if God is denied by deeds, demons are surely honored.

"So too at this present time." As not all perished then, so now too some are saved. "A remnant according to the election of grace has been saved." The election of grace is faith, as works are the election of the law. Besides, what election is there where there is no difference of merits?

"But if by grace, it is not from works." Lest they should say about those of whom it was said to Elijah, "Those were righteous; but how were these sinners chosen?", he added that they too were saved freely, like the gentiles. "Otherwise grace is no longer grace." Because grace is so called from a free gift.

"What then? What Israel sought, it has not obtained?" The whole of Israel did not obtain righteousness for this reason, that it did not seek it by faith but thought itself justified by the works of the law alone, while despising the greatest commandments of the law; hence they are rebuked by the Savior as straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. "But the election has obtained it." Those who have been chosen through faith. "But the rest were blinded,"

"as it is written." The rest were blinded through unbelief, as it is written: "Unless you believe, you will not understand." "God gave them a spirit of compunction, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear." "Before man are life and death; whatever pleases him will be given him," so that the freedom of choice is not taken away. For God, then, to give is to permit; and the spirit of compunction is the one they desired: for they were always unbelieving toward God's words. For if they had wished to have the spirit of faith, they would have received it. And now too Christians who doubt the resurrection, the reward, and hell have sought a similar spirit for themselves: for in this passage the prophet was speaking of unbelievers and sinners. "Until this present day." Until they are converted, as he says to the Corinthians about the veil of the heart.

"And David says: Let their table become a snare and a trap and a stumbling block and a retribution to them."

"Let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bend their back always." At which they rejoiced at Christ's passion, eating the Passover. For this is prophesied of those who gave the Savior vinegar and gall to drink; and yet Peter says to them: "And now I know that you did this through ignorance"; "Repent therefore, and let each one of you be baptized." And Paul himself says a little later: "And they too, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in," so that we may know that the spirit of compunction did not take away from them the ability to be converted. Then he himself at once resolves the question.

"I say then: Have they so stumbled" Now he again shows the Jews' side. "That they should fall? Far from it!" They did not fall completely and beyond remedy. "But by their offense salvation has come to the gentiles, so that they may be jealous of them." He loved them so much that the gentiles were called for their salvation, so that, seeing the gentiles admitted to the kingdom of God, they might at least in this way be converted more easily.

"But if their offense is the riches of the world, and their diminution the riches of the gentiles, how much more their fullness!" If their offense profited you so much that it made you their joint heirs without the works of the law, and if the few of them who believed have called all of you to salvation, how much more could they have profited you by their teaching, if all believed!

"For I speak to you gentiles." He wishes to show that he is eagerly hastening toward the salvation of the Jews. "As long as I am apostle of the gentiles, I will make my ministry glorious." As long as I am set in the body, I will honor my ministry, while I strive by my example to save more of them.

"If in any way I may provoke my flesh to jealousy." So that I may show myself in every way such that they desire to imitate me. "That I may save some of them." Or some, if all are unwilling.

"For if their loss is the reconciliation of the world." He repeats what he said above. "What will their acceptance be but life from the dead?" How would the gentiles be accepted unless they lived by Israel's death? Or: from among the dead Jews, Christ or the apostles were life to the gentiles. Or: if I free any from there, they will benefit your life.

"But if the firstfruit is holy, so is the lump." If the few who have believed are holy, so are all, if they believe. "And if the root is holy, so are the branches." The root of the patriarchs. That is: both the first and the last holy ones are from them.

"But if some of the branches were broken off." They were not broken off because of you, but you were grafted in because they were broken off. "But you, being a wild olive." An olive indeed, but uncultivated and wild. "Were grafted in among them and became a sharer of the root and of the richness of the olive." Of the root of the fathers, of the richness of Christ.

"Do not boast against the branches; but if you boast, it is not you who bear the root, but the root you." Do not rejoice at their perdition; otherwise you will hear that they do not stand through you, but you through them, and you do not give life to them, but they to you.

"You will say then: Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in."

"Well, they were broken off because of unbelief." You say that they were broken off so that you might be grafted in. Let us see whether it was for that reason, and not rather because of their unbelief, that they fell. "But you stand by faith." Not because God accepted your person and cast them off without cause. "Do not be high-minded, but fear." Some, not understanding this passage, nor attending to the matter or the persons of which and to whom the apostle is speaking, think that wisdom is forbidden here; if this is so, according to them he will be found contrary to himself, for here he would forbid what elsewhere he asks from the Lord for the Ephesians and others to receive. "Do not be high-minded" therefore means: do not be proud against them.

"For if God did not spare the natural branches, perhaps he will not spare you either." If he did not spare them because of unbelief, who are from a holy root, how much less you, if you sin!

"See then the goodness and severity of God." Against those who assert one God who is just and another who is good; and against those who deny that God punishes sinners. "Toward those who have fallen, severity; but toward you, goodness." Because they were justly broken off and you mercifully grafted in. "If you remain in goodness." In the faith that was conferred on you by God's goodness. "Otherwise you too will be cut off."

"And they too, if they do not remain in unbelief, will be grafted in." But if so, you will feel severity and they goodness. "For God is able to graft them in again." With men it is indeed impossible to restore dry shoots; with God all things are possible and easy.

"For if you were cut from the olive that is wild by nature." Because their fathers had long ago forgotten the natural law and degenerated from nature, and through a succession of sinning, as the habit persisted, they had begun to be bitter and unfruitful as if by nature. "And contrary to nature were grafted into the good olive, how much more will these, according to nature, be grafted into their own olive!" It is contrary to nature to graft a wild olive into an olive, because the branch usually changes the force of the root more than the root turns the branches into its own quality.

"For I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers." And all this lest the gentiles be proud against them. "This mystery." The secret unknown to men, why the gentiles were saved: because even Israel's blindness furnished them an occasion of salvation. "So that you may not be wise in your own sight." Lest you say by human wisdom: "God chose us and cast them off." "That blindness in part has befallen Israel." Offenses and unbelief took hold of Israel to such an extent that the time came for all the gentiles to be admitted to life, and so all Israel would be saved by faith alone, as the fullness of the gentiles is, so that they would be equal in Christ, because they had been equal in offenses. "Until the fullness of the gentiles came in,"

"and so all Israel would be saved." The blindness lasted until they saw the gentiles being saved, because all have been called to salvation. Or: from Judah and Israel, that is, from the law. "It is written: There will come from Zion one who will deliver and turn away ungodliness from Jacob." Some think all these things are still to come. They must be answered: "Then this testimony too, 'there will come from Zion one who will deliver' Israel, is still to come, and Christ will come again to free them; and if they have been blinded by God for a time, and not by themselves, what of those who are now perishing in unbelief?"

"And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins." The new covenant which Jeremiah promises, which they will receive only as new men, their sins abolished.

"According to the gospel they are enemies for your sake." They are enemies to me because I preach Christ to you: "forbidding us." "But according to election, beloved for the sake of the fathers." But if they believe, they are most beloved, doubly commended.

"For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." If they believe, sins cannot be imputed to them, because God does not repent of having made the promise to Abraham's seed. Or: if they believe, they will be saved without the affliction of penance.

"For just as you too once did not believe God." When they still believed. "But now you have obtained mercy because of their unbelief." Not by your own merit.

"So they too now have not believed in your mercy." The mercy of the gentiles is Christ. "So that they too may obtain mercy." They did not believe to such an extent that they too might be justified not by their works but by mercy, as you were.

"For God has shut up all in unbelief." He did not shut them in by force, but by reasoning he concluded those whom he found in unbelief, that is, all the Jews and the gentiles. He concluded these because before the Jews were only sinners, not also faithless; but after they did not believe Christ, they are equal to the gentiles, and all alike obtain mercy. "So that he may have mercy on all." For this reason he does these things: that he may have mercy on all. "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" He praises the wisdom of God, who waited so long, according to his foreknowledge, until all needed mercy, so that the glory of the false boasting of works might be taken from all. "How unsearchable are his judgments!" "The judgments of God are a great abyss": for they cannot be grasped clearly. "And his ways past finding out." That is, the thought of his dispositions.

"For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" So as to know his secret mysteries.

"Or who first gave to him, that it should be repaid him?" Who first did any good, so as not to glorify God's mercy but to boast of his own merit?

"For from him and through him and in him are all things." From him every creature received its beginning, and through him it is governed, and in him all things are enclosed, and he himself is contained by nothing. "To him be glory forever. Amen." He alone is to be glorified, to whom belongs even this, that we are and live and move. This passage also tells against the Arians, since God is said to be the one from whom all things are and through whom all things are shown to have been made; for the evangelist indicated that all things were made in the beginning through the Word, and what the evangelist testifies of the Son, the apostle teaches is to be understood and believed of the Father, through the mystery of their unity.

"I beseech you therefore, brothers." Since he had spoken of the mind of the Lord, now he teaches what they ought to show themselves to be, so as to deserve to have the mind of the Lord. "By the mercy of God." They had nothing greater, because through it they had been freed. "To present your bodies." Not those of animals, as in the law, which nevertheless, though done as a figure, were offered unblemished and living. "A living sacrifice, holy." That is, chaste and free from every death of sin. "Pleasing to God." Please God, not men only. Or: such a sacrifice pleases him. "Your reasonable service." Every good work pleases God if it is done reasonably; otherwise it is deprived of reward: for instance, if someone fasts for the sake of men, he does a good thing unwisely. So it must be judged of all such things.

"And do not be conformed to this age, but be reformed in the newness of your mind, so that you may prove what is the will of God." Do not be like the children of the world, you who have been made children of God, but renew your mind, by which the body is ruled and all the members directed, so that the acts of the body may also become new; and so you may know the will of God and his mind: for these are revealed only to a new mind. "What is good and acceptable and perfect." That is, what is good, and better, and best.

"For I say, through the grace that has been given me." As he is about to forbid human wisdom which is outside the law, he says that he speaks not from his own mind but by the authority of spiritual grace. "To all who are among you." Those who are priests or teachers, whose example the rest follow. "Not to be wise beyond what one ought to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety." He wishes to be wise beyond measure who searches into things the law does not say; hence Solomon too says: "Do not seek things higher than you, and do not search into things greater than you; but what God has commanded you, think on these always." "And to each, as God has distributed." It is to be noted that he says "God" of the Holy Spirit, who, he asserts to the Corinthians, divides gifts to each as he wills. "The measure of faith." The measure is to be understood as the grace of powers, which only the faithful receive.

"For as in one body we have many members." By the comparison of the body he exhorts them to concord, lest they be disturbed even by this, that they had received different gifts: for individuals could not have all the gifts, lest they become proud needing no one; nor could all have the same, so that the likeness of the body of Christ might be shown in us. "But all the members do not have the same function." For the eye cannot hear nor the ear see, and so with the rest.

"So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another." So that, by giving one another what we have, love may be strengthened more and more.

"Having gifts differing according to the grace that has been given us." A gift depends not on our choice but on the giver's; and glory in the future is promised to all believers, but he who has so pure a heart as to deserve it receives the grace of powers even in the present. "Whether prophecy, according to the proportion of faith." Of faith, not of law. Or: because faith merits it. For each one receives as much as he believes.

"Or ministry, in ministering." The ministry of the office of priest or deacon. "Or he who teaches, in teaching;"

"he who exhorts, in exhorting." He who teaches is greater than he who exhorts: for even the less skilled can exhort according to their strength. It is to be noted, of course, that he put it only third. Or: the spiritual reader ought to recognize why he did so. "He who gives, in simplicity." That he give to all simply, believing that all who ask are good and in need. "He who presides, in solicitude." He who presides over the church or the brothers ought to be solicitous. "He who shows mercy, in cheerfulness." Mercy is to be shown above all toward the sick. Or: the title of mercy is general, and it is to be shown toward all with a calm mind. For "God loves a cheerful giver," and without doubt hates a sad one, because "a good word is better than a gift."

"Love without pretense, hating evil, clinging to good." There ought to be complete purity in a Christian, as God is pure light: for pretending belongs to slaves. And let us love not in tongue only, but in deed and in truth, so that, if it should be necessary, we even die for one another.

"Kind to one another with brotherly love." Love one another as if born of one mother. "Outdoing one another in honor." If we always kept this, we would hold both love and patience, as he says elsewhere: "Each esteeming the other greater." For if we judged ourselves less than all, we would neither do injury to anyone of our own accord, nor grieve heavily at injury done to us.

"Not slothful in solicitude." Lest through the solicitude of the world you become slothful and inert in God's work. "Fervent in spirit." Because the Lord does not love the cold and is nauseated by the lukewarm. We are surely fervent in spirit when we are cold to the world. "Serving the Lord." Not the world nor vices, but doing everything for the Lord.

"Rejoicing in hope." For the joy of future hope endure all things, as he says: "Count it all joy." "Persistent in prayer." Persistence in prayer … grants us help in adversity …

"Sharing in the needs of the saints." … it is understood thus, that they should remember the saints … who for a time are in need … have deserved of God, and how the saints … sharers with them … "Pursuing hospitality." … as Abraham, as Lot … some, without knowing it, have received angels as guests … "Bless those who persecute you" … that we ought to do both … blessed Peter: "not … curse for curse, but on the contrary blessing."

"Rejoice with …" … if one member suffers anything … and the Lord … Lazarus, whom he … because of the unbelief of those who often did not believe him, though he worked wonders. But we now, perversely, weep with those who rejoice and rejoice with those who weep. For if someone is praised, we are saddened; if someone falls, we exult. Hence we who do such things show that we are not of the body of Christ: we do not grieve over one member cut off, but are enemies of our own side and friends of the opposing side; we do not grieve when the bravest men of our battle line fall, nor rejoice when we see them fighting bravely, although we ourselves are not strong enough to fight.

"Feeling the same toward one another." So that you feel toward another as toward yourself. "Not minding high things, but consenting to the humble." He minds proud things who desires to avenge injury by himself and does not consent to humble things, that is, to humility. "Do not be wise in your own estimation." Do not boast in human wisdom, but be fools to the world, so that you may be wise to the Lord, as it is written: "Blessed is he whom you instruct, O Lord, and teach from your law."

"Repaying no one evil for evil." It is human wisdom if you seek to repay your enemies in kind; for it is folly in this world if you are willing to offer the other cheek to one who strikes you. But if you are of such patience and humility, you will be able to appear approved not only before the Lord but also before all people. "Providing good things not only before God but also before men." Only beware lest you do it so that you desire to please not God but men alone.

"If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, having peace with all men." As far as it is yours, have peace with all, and say with the prophet: "With those who hated peace I was peaceable," desiring, of course, their conversion and salvation. Or: it is in you that it may be possible.

"Not defending yourselves, beloved, but give place to wrath." Either by fleeing, or by allowing yourselves to be harmed. "For it is written: Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord." I will avenge the injury as mine, says the Lord, not as yours, since the prophet says: "He who touches you is as one who touches the pupil of his eye."

"But if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink." Do not deny him what God denies no one, though he be a blasphemer and ungodly. "For by doing this you will heap coals of fire on his head." So that when he understands that coals are being heaped on him by your undeserved mercy, he may shake them off, that is, be converted, and love you whom he once hated. Otherwise it is not mercy but cruelty, if you do it so that something worse may befall him, for whom you are commanded to pray to the Lord.

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." He is said to have conquered who has drawn another to his side, such as a heretic or a pagan. So if he has made you repay him in kind, he has conquered you, by making you like himself; but if by your patience you have made him cease from injury, you have conquered.

"Let every soul be subject to the higher powers." This matter was raised against those who thought they ought to use Christian liberty in such a way as to show no one honor or pay tribute. He wishes to humble them in every way, lest perhaps they suffer insult because of pride rather than because of God. Therefore he teaches them to redeem the time by humility. Otherwise: the higher powers can be understood as ecclesiastical dignities. "For there is no power except from God." Then how does God say through the prophet of some: "They reigned, and not through me"? "And those that exist are ordained by God." If he seems to speak of the powers of the world, not all will therefore be just, even if they received their beginning from God. For they are given according to the desire of each; for Solomon says: "For power was given you by God. But though you were ministers of his kingdom, you did not judge rightly; terribly and swiftly he will appear to you," and the rest. For power is established by God to judge justly, and so that sinners may have something to fear, lest they sin.

"Therefore he who resists the power resists the ordinance of God; and those who resist acquire condemnation for themselves." As it is said to Rahab: "Whoever goes out of doors will be guilty on his own head." "For rulers are not a terror to good work, but to evil." The evil man ought to fear the power, for the good man has nothing to fear; if he is killed unjustly, he glories. "Do you wish not to fear the power?" Take my advice and you will never fear. "Do good, and you will have praise from it." The very condemnation of the wicked is the praise of the good.

"For he is God's minister to you for good." Because he is concerned for your quiet. "But if you do evil, fear: for he does not bear the sword in vain." He has a duty toward you too, if you sin, and that will not count toward your reward. Or: priests bear the spiritual sword, as Peter struck Ananias and Paul the magician. "For he is God's minister, an avenger for wrath on him who does evil." Because God does not love the wicked, he who "hates all who work iniquity."

"Therefore be subject of necessity, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience." Not only because the powers can be angry even without cause, but also lest you be condemned by the consciousness of some sin. Or: not only lest the priests be angry, but also because you know that honor is owed them even by the righteous.

"For this reason you also pay tributes: for they are God's ministers, serving for this very thing." The tributes of priests can also be understood, which were established for them by God. Or: you pay tributes to kings for this reason, that you chose to be subject to the world by possessing things. And he calls them ministers of God so that even so they might render them what they owed, lest Christ seem to have taught pride.

"Render therefore to all their dues." Almsgiving can also be called a debt, as Scripture says: "Incline your ear to the poor and pay your debt." "Tribute to whom tribute, toll to whom toll." Our toll is that we give to those passing by, or that we, passing by, give generously to those sitting by the road and living from it. "Fear to whom fear." How then is it written elsewhere that "no one is to be feared except the Lord"? But act so, he says, that you fear no one: for the fear of God drives out human fear. But since you still have causes for fear, you must fear. "Honor to whom honor." Fear also to superiors, honor only to equals.

"Owe no one anything." Do not fail to render anyone his due. "Except to love one another." This alone ought always to remain, which can never be fully paid. "For he who loves his neighbor." According to the Lord's parable, which commands mercy to be shown to all without distinction, every person is to be regarded as a neighbor. "Has fulfilled the law." He put love first because he was writing to the faithful and treating the conduct of righteousness.

"For: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet; and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." All righteousness is summed up in love of neighbor, and unrighteousness is born when we love ourselves more than others. For he who loves his neighbor as himself not only does him no evil but also does him good, because he wishes both to be fulfilled toward himself.

"Love of neighbor does no evil." Not doing good is also evil. For if one sees another in danger of starving, does he not kill him himself if, while he has plenty, he does not give him food, even though he has not taken away the other's own possessions? For whoever can help a dying man in any need and does not, kills him. "Love therefore is the fullness of the law." That is, its perfection.

"And knowing the time, that it is now the hour for us." It is the hour for you to strive toward more perfect things: for you ought not to be always little children and nursing, as the same apostle says elsewhere: "For by reason of the time you ought to be teachers," and the rest. "To rise from sleep." Let us rise from the sleep of sloth and ignorance: for now the knowledge of Christ shines. "For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed." As knowledge advances, our salvation is nearer than when we believed. "The night has gone before, and the day will draw near." He compares knowledge to day and ignorance to night, according to Hosea, who says: "I have likened your mother to night; my people has become as one having no knowledge." "Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light." Together with ignorance let us cast off the works of ignorance too, and put on the armor of light, that is, the works of light. For "he who does evil hates the light; but he who does the truth comes to the light."

"Let us walk honestly, as in the day." As the light of day prevents each one from doing what he committed freely at night, so knowledge also prevents us from despising the commandments of the law. Or: because we know that we are always seen by God. "Not in revelings and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness." Reveling is a pooling for the table; but we have a spiritual banquet, as is said: "When you come together, each one has a psalm," and the rest. And that drunkenness is pernicious and the material of lust is proved also from this, that he added wantonness; and elsewhere he says: "Do not be drunk with wine, in which is lust." "Not in strife and envy." That strife and envy too are criminal is proved by this and other examples, as James says: "For if you have bitter zeal," and the rest.

"But put on the Lord Jesus Christ." Let Christ alone be seen in you, not the old man: for "he who says he abides in Christ ought himself also to walk as he walked," in whom are all virtues. "And make no provision for the flesh in its desires." As Solomon also says: "Do not go after your desires"; and again: "If you give your soul its desire, it will make you a joy to your enemies." "But receive the one who is weak in faith." Here he begins indirectly to rebuke those who thought themselves strong, so that they ate meat without restraint. "Not in disputes over thoughts." Do not judge, according to your own thoughts, one whom the law does not judge.

"For one believes he may eat all things." He who either has such great faith that he is not moved, or is worn down by abstinence, or by old age. "But he who is weak." Weak either by age or by the heat of the body. "Let him eat vegetables." Hence it is proved that he is not speaking of Jews, as some think, but of abstainers: for they did not eat meats clean according to the law, but only vegetables.

"Let him who eats not despise him who does not eat, and let him who does not eat not judge him who eats." They had stumbling blocks among themselves: the abstainers judged the others as carnal, and the others mocked the abstainers as foolish and thought them superstitious. "For God has received him." He called him as he called you.

"Who are you to judge another's servant?" Of what authority are you, to judge one whom the law does not judge? Hence James says: "He who judges his brother judges the law," namely, judging himself wiser than the law; for otherwise Paul himself judged those who acted against the commandment and gave others the power of judging. "To his own master he stands or falls." Whether he lives or dies; because the one abstains for God's sake, and the other, according to God, does not abstain. "But he will stand: for God is able to make him stand." God, who made the three boys fed on pulse appear better than those who ate from the king's table, can also make these stand longer in the body.

"For one judges every other day, another judges every day; let each one abound in his own mind." The Jews could not judge one day from another in matters of food. So he is speaking of fasting and abstinence, which are not reduced to a fixed measure of the law: let each do as much as he can, and earn as much reward as he wishes. Hence it follows that in such a matter each one should do only what he judges better.

"He who regards the day regards it to the Lord." He regards it to the Lord who fasts for God's sake, not for men's. "And he who eats, eats to the Lord: for he gives thanks to God." Because he eats for God's sake, so that he may have the strength to preach the gospel, through which the converted may give thanks to God; he cares not for his gullet but for the salvation of others. "And he who does not eat, does not eat to the Lord, and gives thanks to God." Because through his example many are saved and give thanks to God: for he who gives thanks with his voice gives thanks alone; but he who also does so by deed gives thanks in many.

"For none of us lives to himself, and none dies to himself;"

"for if we live, we live to the Lord; if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." None of the faithful lives to himself and none dies to himself, because Christ "died for all, so that those who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him." We must beware lest, on the contrary, we either live for ourselves by eating or die for men's sake by fasting.

"For to this end Christ died and rose again, that he might be Lord of both the living and the dead." Christ's coming will both find the living and raise the dead. So it makes no difference whether he raises you or finds you, only that you appear righteous before him.

"But you, why do you judge your brother?" By what authority do you condemn him as a glutton? "Or you, why do you despise your brother?" Do you despise him as weak, or as fasting needlessly? "For your brother is grieved because of food." He did not say "because of fasting"; but lest by your example you provoke or compel him. "You are no longer walking according to love." Because he eats unwillingly what is not good for him, and you no longer love your neighbor as yourself if you do not think of his advantage as your own. "Do not by your food destroy him for whom Christ died." He did not say "by abstinence," as some would have it.

"So let not our good be blasphemed." The liberty we have in the Lord, that all things are clean to us. We ought not to use it in such a way that we seem to walk for the sake of gluttony and feasts. Or: it is blasphemed if we quarrel over such things.

"For the kingdom of God is not food and drink." We are not justified by food. But this too is to be noted, that he did not say "fasting and sobriety are not the kingdom of God," but "food and drink." "But righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." These are more easily kept through abstinence: for where there is righteousness, in loving one's neighbor as oneself, there is also peace; and where there is peace, there is also spiritual joy, because sadness and troubles are always born of dissension.

"For he who serves Christ in this pleases God and is approved by men." No one can doubt of such a man that he is holy.

"So let us pursue the things of peace." So that we do not judge one another about things of this kind. "And let us keep the things that build up one another." Abstinence is edification; food, even if it destroys no one, builds up no one.

"Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food." Namely the human being created by God. "All things indeed are clean," He repeats what he had said above, lest he seem to condemn the creature. "But it is evil for the man who eats with offense." The clean thing itself becomes evil for him, if another stumbles because of him.

"It is good not to eat meat and not to drink wine." He explains what it is by which, he said, the weak stumble. "Nor anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended." Nor any food or drink by which another stumbles. "Or is made weak." Weakened in chastity: for "wine and women make even the wise fall away."

"The faith you have, have it to yourself before God." If you think yourself faithful in this, eat in such a way that no one is weakened by your example. "Blessed is he who does not judge himself in what he approves." He who, in approving, considers not his own firmness but the salvation of another who is weak.

"But he who discerns, if he eats, is condemned." "Because it is not from faith." He who judges himself so: for discernment and judgment are the same thing, since judgment is made by discerning and discernment by judging. "Whatever is not from faith is sin." Not from faith that works through love. So whatever destroys another is not from faith and is therefore sin.

"We who are stronger ought to bear the weaknesses of the weak." If you are truly strong, act as I do, who "became weak to win the weak." "And not to please ourselves."

"Let each one please his neighbor." Let us be praised not by ourselves but by our neighbors, as elsewhere he sets his own example before us, saying: "As I please all in all things, not seeking what is useful for me, but for many, that they may be saved." For no one can build up another whom he has not first pleased by a good life; and they are self-pleasing who, seeking their own advantage, do their own will. "For good edification." He shows the manner and the cause of pleasing, lest we please for vain glory. At the same time, when he says "good edification," he shows that there is also a bad kind, as in that saying: "He will be built up to eat."

"For Christ did not please himself." The imitator and disciple of Christ does not seek his own advantage: for Christ even died for the salvation of others, and bore the bitterest taunts of those who said: "Ah, you who destroy the temple," and the rest. "As it is written: The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me." Whatever is cast up for God's sake not only against Christ but also against the saints is said to be a reproach against God, as in that saying: "Where is your God?"

"For whatever was written was written for our instruction." So nothing was written without cause; for both the merits and the temptations of the righteous profit our edification, because they were most manifest to God. "That through patience and the comfort of the scriptures we may have hope." Through the solace of the scriptures we await the future hope most patiently, as it is written: "Great peace have those who love your law, and they have no stumbling block": that is, those who use the comfort of the law cannot be moved by any temptation. So that through the examples of patience and comfort in what is written we may hope for comfort both in present temptations and, like Lazarus, in the future. For it is a great cause of solace if we know that our Lord and his saints endured before what we suffer.

"Now the God of patience and comfort." His patience, toward conversion; his comfort, for those already converted. Or: of patience and comfort, not of wrath and division, so as to touch those very people. "Grant you to be of the same mind toward one another according to Jesus." That each one may seek another's salvation as his own, as Christ by his death saved all from death.

"So that with one mind and one mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." God is truly honored when he is praised with one mind and harmonious voice: for "if two agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them."

"Therefore receive one another." For the honor of God "bear one another's burdens, and you will fulfil the law of Christ," who received us into himself when we were ungodly: how much more ought we to bear one another, who are alike! "As Christ also received us into the glory of God." Either into the divine glory, or for the honor of God.

"For I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God." Again he exhorts both peoples to unity: "I grant you, O Jews, that Christ, who was promised to you, came to you first, and that the gentiles were called because of God's mercy; yet you have been made one body." "Because he had not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." "To confirm the promises of the fathers." Because Christ had been promised to them, as he himself says: "I have not come except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

"But that the gentiles honor God for his mercy." For "he to whom more is forgiven loves more." "As it is written: For this reason I will confess you among the gentiles, and sing to your name." He takes arrogance away from the Jews, teaching that the salvation of the gentiles was foretold, although it had not been announced to them. Christ confesses among the gentiles that they have obtained mercy, because they too are in his body.

"And again he says: Rejoice, you gentiles, with his people."

"And again he says: Praise the Lord, all you gentiles, and magnify him, all you peoples."

"And again Isaiah says: There will be the root of Jesse." Jesse was the father of David, from whose seed, that is, Mary, Christ was born. "And he who will rise to rule the gentiles; in him the gentiles will hope." Lest they claim it of proselytes; but that saying too is like this passage: "A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs." Hence it is proved that Christ has truly already come, in whom, it is clear, all the gentiles hope.

"Now the God of hope." In whom we hope. "Fill you with all joy and peace in believing." All the joy of the faithful ought to be in future hope, and all joy is where there is peace: there is no joy in dissension, but all sadness. "That you may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit." Abundance of hope consists in powers and signs.

"But I am confident, I myself, concerning you." A good teacher provokes to progress by praising, so that they might blush not to be such as the apostle believed them to be. "That you are full of love." He takes care lest he seem to have rebuked them harshly as contentious, divided, or foolish. "Filled with all knowledge." That is, of both the New and the Old Testament. "So that you can admonish one another." He shows that Christians ought always to admonish one another.

"But I have written to you more boldly, brothers, in part." Rather, I had all the more confidence in writing because I know that you, as prudent people, quickly accept reason, as it is written: "Rebuke a wise man and he will love you." "As reminding you." Recalling that you are prudent. Or: I do not teach you as ignorant, but remind you as knowing. "Because of the grace that has been given me by God." Not for earthly rewards or praise, but to fulfil the office I received.

"That I may be a servant of Christ Jesus among the gentiles." Serving in the gospel; that is, calling back to him his slaves who were once runaways. "Sanctifying the gospel of God." Showing by my example that what I carry out with such great fear is holy. For some despise as human what they preach as divine, and so it happens that a holy thing seems not to be holy, when it is not carried out in a holy way. Make it holy, or show it to be so. "That the offering of the gentiles may be sanctified in the Holy Spirit." That by my example the gentiles may become a sacrifice acceptable to God, sanctified or received not by fire but by the Holy Spirit, as it is written that "there sat upon" the apostles "as it were fire, and divided tongues appeared to them."

"So I have glory in Christ Jesus toward God." "Let him who glories glory in the Lord." I have glory toward God, though among men I am defamed and stained. "For I do not dare to speak of anything that Christ has not worked through me for the obedience of the gentiles." I have not dared to say that I did anything in these matters by my own power, and that God did not work everything through me. "By word and deed"

"in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Holy Spirit." That is: by teaching and signs; for he was speaking not of works but of powers. "So that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum [was fulfilled] the gospel of Christ." The gospel is filled out when the gentiles also believe.

"And I have so preached this gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I build on another's foundation." Not everyone who builds on another's foundation does wrong, if he builds gold and the rest. Here he also touches the false apostles, who always went to those who had already believed and never to the gentiles, because they could not work powers; and he shows that he labored perfectly, who both laid the foundation and raised the building on it.

"But as it is written." He shows that his labor was foretold. "Those to whom nothing was announced concerning him will see, and those who have not heard will understand." Christ is seen in the apostles through the powers they worked in his name.

"This is why I was very much hindered from coming to you." He has explained what he said at the beginning: "and I have been hindered until now."

"But now, having no further place in these regions." Where all are already firm, he says he has no reason to lay a foundation. "But I desire to come to you." It is to be noted that there is also a good desire, as: "I desire to depart and be with Christ," and: "My soul has longed to desire your righteous judgments." "For many years past." He shows what kind of necessity it was that detained him for many years.

"When I begin to set out for Spain." Whether he went to Spain is held uncertain. "I hope, passing through, to come to you, and to be sent on there by you, when I have first enjoyed you in part." Because you so conduct yourselves that I have no reason or need to stay longer among you, he says that he enjoys them in part, because they did not need to believe, but only to be strengthened. Or: "in part," because no length of time satisfies love. "Now therefore I set out for Jerusalem." [This remains for me. "To minister to the saints." There were saints in Jerusalem,] who, having sold all their goods and laid them at the apostles' feet, gave themselves to prayer, reading, and teaching. What kind of people they were is known from this, that the apostle himself went in person to minister to them, and desires his offering to be acceptable to them, that is, that they deign to accept it; he shows that this profits not so much those who receive as those who give. This tells against those who attack the glory of perfection.

"For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution." They judged that it would be useful to them if they made some contribution of means to the saints. "For the poor who are in Jerusalem." Because they chose to be poor for the edification of the saints. Or: simply, poor saints are to be understood.

"For they are their debtors." By their example he urges the Romans to a similar work, showing that it pleased them not without reason. "For if the gentiles have become sharers in their spiritual things, they ought also to minister to them in carnal things." Because they had teachers from among them, and "they had become sharers of the root and richness of the olive"; and so each ought to share with another that in which he abounds.

"When therefore I have completed this and sealed this fruit to them, I will set out by way of you to Spain."

"For I know that when I come to you, I will come in the abundance of the blessing of Christ." If you conduct yourselves well, good teaching will abound from us toward you, because the more the disciple advances, the more the teacher is provoked to speak, as he says elsewhere: "Our mouth is open to you, O Corinthians." Or: at my coming Christ will be more abundantly blessed in you.

"I beseech you, brothers, through the Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit, that you share with me in your prayers to the Lord." He asks that the whole church pray for him insistently, because he knows that the common prayers of many avail much. For when James was killed, Peter was freed from prison by the brothers, who did the kindness not so much to him as to themselves, so that they could be strengthened by his teaching. Spiritual love makes us pray for one another.

"That I may be delivered from the unbelievers who are in Judea." Or: that all may believe. Or: that, ministering to the faithful, I may not fall into the hands of the unbelievers and so be unable to come to you. "And that my recompense which is in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints,"

"so that I may come to you with joy by the will of Christ Jesus, and be refreshed with you." I will come with joy then, if my offering has been accepted by them, and I will speak the word of God more abundantly and without care: for sadness of mind greatly hinders teaching.

"Now the God of peace be with you all." The God of peace dwells only in the peaceable; and he fittingly ended with peace, having called both peoples back to the concord of peace.

"I commend to you Phoebe our sister." This he added below, as he usually does, for the sake of commendation or greeting, when the text of the letter was as it were finished. "Who is in the ministry of the church which is at Cenchreae." As even now in eastern places women deaconesses are seen to minister to their own sex in baptism. Or: in the ministry of the word, because we find that women taught privately, like Priscilla, whose husband was called Aquila.

"That you receive her in the Lord as is worthy, and assist her in whatever she may need of you: for she too has helped me and others." That you help her either with expenses or with comfort, because she too, as long as she had means, helped many.

"Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in Christ Jesus." They are said to have strengthened Apollos in the faith; and he calls them helpers because they too helped in the work of teaching, where he himself labored.

"Who laid down their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the gentiles." By approving my teaching they exposed themselves to dangers; for this all the churches give them thanks, because through them I was preserved.

"And the church in their house." He shows that a congregation of the faithful is called a church. "Greet Epaenetus, my beloved, who is the firstfruits of Asia in Christ." He was the firstfruits of the church of Asia. We understand that all these whom he greets were foreigners, through whose example and teaching we reasonably judge that the Romans believed.

"Greet Mary, who has labored much among you;"

"greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and fellow prisoners, who are notable among the apostles, who were in Christ before me;"

"greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord;"

"greet Urbanus, my helper in the Lord, and Stachys my beloved;"

"greet Apelles, approved in Christ; greet those who are of Aristobulus;"

"greet Herodion, my kinsman; greet those of Narcissus who are in the Lord;"

"greet Tryphaena and Tryphosa, who labor in the Lord; greet Persis the most beloved, who has labored much in the Lord;"

"greet Rufus, beloved in the Lord." These were from the Jews, and because they had been afflicted together with Paul and were not terrified, they were held notable for this merit; they had been appointed among others for the progress of the Romans, and by his own testimony are reported to have believed before Paul. "And his mother and mine." By age, not by birth.

"Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, and the brothers who are with them; greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister Olympas, and all the saints who are with them." By his own example he teaches us what kind of friends we ought to greet in our letters: not those rich in worldly means or honored with dignities, but those rich in grace and faith.

"Greet one another with a holy kiss: the churches of Christ greet you." Not with a feigned or deceitful kiss, such as that with which Judas betrayed the Savior. For this is why peace is first announced in the church: so that one who is about to communicate in the body of Christ may show that he is at peace with all.

"I beseech you, brothers, watch carefully those who cause dissensions and offenses contrary to the teaching you have learned, and turn away from them."

"For such do not serve Christ, but their own belly." He speaks of those who had come from the circumcision at that time, who, destroying fasts and abstinence, preached new moons and sabbaths and other feasts for the sake of the belly, dissenting from the apostolic teaching and preparing offenses for the brothers. "And by sweet words they seduce the hearts of the innocent." By flatteries and adulation composed in polished speech.

"For your obedience has been made known to all." If you obeyed those whom you ought not to have obeyed, how much more ought you to obey us! For they too came to you because they knew that through simple obedience you could quickly be seduced. "I rejoice therefore over you, and I want you to be wise unto good, but pure unto evil;"

"And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet quickly." Because obedience is good, but only if it is reasonable; and therefore I want you to be wise in good, so that, not knowing evil, you may lay the enemy under the feet of innocence. For so the Lord has given us "power to tread upon scorpions and serpents and all the power of the enemy": that is, so that he may not prevail over us, and we may walk over him with all our members free and unbound.

"Erastus, the treasurer of the city, greets you." Here he calls him treasurer, though he was a former treasurer, as he often called believing gentiles "gentiles" though they had come out of the gentiles, according to the custom which still calls Abigail the wife of Nabal when, after his death, she had already passed into marriage with David.

"The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all." This is the subscription of his hand in all his letters, so that in it he may also recall the benefits of Christ.

"Now to him who is able to strengthen you." By signs and teachings. "According to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ." So that you live in the way I have preached, by the example and authority of Christ. "According to the revelation of the mystery kept silent for eternal times,"

"which has now been made manifest through the writings of the prophets." The mystery of the calling of all the gentiles had been hidden in the law, and now, through Paul's gospel, it has been clearly made manifest in Christ by the testimonies of the prophets; for though they had said much beforehand about the gentiles, yet no one had known so openly how gentiles and Jews would become one in Christ. For they could suppose that some would be admitted to the faith as proselytes. "According to the command of the eternal God, made known to all the gentiles for the obedience of faith,"

"to God, alone wise, through Jesus Christ, to whom be honor forever and ever. Amen." God commanded that all the gentiles obey and know God, which he alone knew beforehand would come to pass at some time, he who alone is wise by nature, as he is good by nature; but we can be good or wise by instruction, he by nature; to whom through Jesus Christ be glory and honor forever and ever. Amen.