EXPOSITION OF ROMANS IX.

THE apostle, when about to launch into the great theme of this chapter, was conscious of a peculiar burden of solemnity lying on his heart.

Hence the two emphatic asseverations contained in the first verse. (1) I say "truth" in Christ, and (2), I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit.

Instead of the somewhat indefinite expression I say "truth," the more definite phrase I say "the truth" might be employed. It is the translation of Tyndale. It was Luther's before him, and Coverdale's after him. It has its place in our public English version of 1611; and it is retained in the Revised Version. The Rheims Version corresponds Latinisingly,-I speake "the" verity. There is no objection to the insertion of the article, except on the score that it is not present in the apostle's Greek. The two representations, the definite and the indefinite, are but the obverse and the reverse of one reality. They were lying, and with almost equal claims, before the apostle for his option: but he chose

the indefinite I say "what is true" (when I say that I have great grief and continual sorrow in my heart). Wycliffe retained the indefinite translation,-I seye treuthe. So did Calvin, Je di vérité. The late Dutch translators abide by the same literality, Ik spreek waarheid.

These Dutch translators use-it will be observed-the verb spreek, corresponding to our English speak, instead of zegge, corresponding to our English say. The Rheims Version too has speake. But say is the better translation. I say truth is better adapted than I speak truth to bridge the attention over to the statement in verse second, to which the apostle wishes to give emphasis. The word say, as distinguished from speak, directs attention rather to the thing uttered than to its utterance. In his first translation, that of 1829, Meyer had truth I speak (Wahrheit rede ich); but in all his subsequent editions he wisely substituted say for speak.

The peculiar collocation of the words is noteworthy, truth I say. It is especially noteworthy in connexion with the succeeding phrase in Christ. This phrase is not to be connected with the noun truth, as if the whole expression were, I say truth as it is in Christ. Origen's ingenuity imposed upon him when, assuming that the expression "seemed to show that there is some truth which is not in Christ," he proceeded to establish, by instances, such a distinction of

truths. The apostle, assuredly, is simply referring to the statement which he is about to make in verse second; and he does not take into consideration whether that statement is a truth in Christ, or some other denomination of truth. Enough for him that it is truth. The phrase in Christ is to be grammatically connected, not with the noun truth, but with the verb I say.

It was for long a favourite opinion of interpreters that this phrase in Christ is the formula of an oath, and should be rendered by Christ. Küttner even supposes that the words I say truth simply mean I swear. Abelard paraphrases the apostle's statement thus,-"Swearing by Jesus Christ, I truthfully say." Lombard, another of the great schoolmen, takes the same view. So does Thomas Aquinas; Calvin also, and Hemming, Este, Grotius, Day, and many others of the older expositors. In more recent times, the same interpretation has received the support of Cramer, Nösselt, Flatt, Terrot, Burton, Reiche, Köllner, Schrader; but it is not approved of by the most recent expositors. Piscator among the older interpreters, and Schrader among the the more recent, have introduced the interpretation into their respective German versions (bei Christo). So did Theophilo, long before, in his Italian version (per Christo). But it is a wrong translation and interpretation. Not decisively so, indeed, because of the unfitness of the pre

position (ev=2, see Matt. v. 34-36, Gen. xxxi. 53, Deut. vi. 13, etc.); but because, in the first place, a simpler interpretation is at hand; while in the second place, we never find any of the apostles taking an oath by Christ. When they took an oath, they swore by God. (See Rom. i. 9; 2 Cor. i. 23, xi. 31; Phil. i. 8.) And then moreover, if we were to interpret the expression as the formula of an oath, consistency would constrain us-as it constrained Cramer, Mace, Nösselt, Flatt, Reiche, Köllner, Schrader -to interpret the corresponding expression in the Holy Spirit, at the close of the verse, as a similar formula, I swear by the Holy Spirit. But such an oath would be inconsistent with usage. And to suppose that the apostle should, within the compass of one short verse, employ two distinct oaths, taking them moreover in a way that excluded the only Divine One, in the name of whom oaths were wont to be made, confounds our sense of propriety.

The phrase in Christ was one of the apostle's favourite expressions. All Christians, according to him, are in Christ. They have been "baptized into Christ" (Rom. vi. 3)-that is to say, they have been united to Christ by the baptism of the Spirit (1 Cor. xii. 13),—so that they are in Christ, as if they were parts of His person, members of His body. When the apostle thinks of this union, he sometimes allows the relations of time

(1 Cor. i. 2.)

They

past and time future to interpenetrate, so that to his eye believers have not only been crucified with Christ (Gal. ii. 20), and buried with Him (Rom. vi. 4), but also raised with Him (Col. ii. 12, iii. 1), and glorified with Him in heavenly places (Eph. ii. 6). Christians "have their Christian being" in Christ. They "live and move" in Christ. They are "justified" in Christ. (Gal. ii. 17.) They are "sanctified" in Christ. They "triumph" in Christ. (2 Cor. ii. 14.) They "speak" in Christ. (2 Cor. ii. 17, xii. 19.) And here the apostle says that "he says truth" in Christ. The personality of Christ had, to his transfiguring conception, become the sphere of his spiritual being and activity, so that what he did, in the express consciousness of his Christian state, he did in the realized presence of Christ, and thus all the nobler elements of his spiritual being were intensified and exalted. In such a mood, how could he stoop to wilful misrepresentation? There were the amplest guarantees for the truthfulness of what he was about to aver. Realizing that he was, so to speak, "interned" in Christ, he felt that in his ethical acts he was dominated by the power that ensphered him.

"I lie not," I am uttering no falsehood. It is the reverse representation of that which, in the preceding expression, is represented in obverse. It lends intensification to the affirmation. (Com

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