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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Romans 1:7 - 1:7
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
7. πᾶσιν κ.τ.λ. The local designation comes first, then the foundation of their state in GOD’S love, then the demand thus made on them for response.
All Christians in Rome are addressed, whatever their previous history.
ἀγαπητοῖς θεοῦ, ‘GOD’S beloved’: a unique phrase, but cf. 1Th 1:4, 2Th 2:13, and with ἅγιοι Col 3:12. GOD’s love for them is the beginning, the call follows, and it is a call to respond to that love by a life consecrated to GOD; cf. Eph 5:1.
κλητοῖς ἁγίοις, called to be holy, as GOD is holy; cf. 1Pe 1:15-16 (see Hort). Constructed as κλητὸς ἀπόστολος above. See note on ἁγιωσύνης, Rom 1:4.
Χάρις ὑ. κ.τ.λ. The words, while reminding of the common forms of salutation, have their full Christian sense. GOD’s favour and the peace which it brings between man and GOD, and between man and man, is the prayer of S. Paul for his readers. The stress is thrown on χάρις by the interposition of ὑμῖν.
ἀπὸ θ. π. ἡ. κ. κ. Ἰ. Χρ. S. Paul’s regular form except Col 1:2, 1Th 1:1 (2Th 1:2, ἡμῶν is absent), till the Pastoral Epistles. Note that here the Lord Jesus Christ is coordinated with GOD our Father as the source of blessing (in Rom 1:5 He is the Agent of the Father’s blessing): this coordination is highly significant; it appears in its clearest form already in Epp. Thes. (n. esp. 1Th 3:11, 2Th 1:12; 2Th 2:16): it combines the Christian experience and conviction as to the Person of the Lord with the Lord’s own teaching as to the Fatherhood of GOD into the theological conception which (cf. 2Co 13:13) was ultimately expressed in the Catholic dogma of the Trinity. See S. H. ad lo[63]. For a Jew the position is already implied in the first phrase δοῦλος Ἰ. Χρ.
[63] ad loc ad locum
These introductory verses thus lay the foundations of the Gospel in the nature and act of GOD as revealed through His Son—a fitting introduction to an Epistle which is in fact a reasoned exposition of the Gospel as preached to Gentiles by S. Paul. The main theological conceptions are here stated or implied in a fully developed form, but as attained through religious experience, not deduced or even interpreted by any philosophical method. In full accordance with all other evidence as to the primitive development of Christian thought, these conceptions are seen to be reached by the reflection upon the fact of the Resurrection and the light thrown back from that fact on the teaching, acts, and character of the Lord Jesus Christ.