Never having known the Roman Christians as an assembly, Paul sends many
personal salutations. This was the link which subsisted. We see how
touchingly his heart dwells upon all the details of service which attached
him to those who had rendered it. He who by grace had searched into all the
counsels of God, who had been admitted to see that which could not be made
known to man here below, remembered all that these humble Christians-these
devoted women-had done for him and for the Lord. This is love; it is the
real proof of the power of the Spirit of God; it is the bond of charity.
We have also here a precious and most perfect rule for our walk, namely, to
be simple concerning evil, and wise unto that which is good. Christianity
alone could have given such a rule; for it provides a walk that is
positively good, and wisdom to walk in it. As Christians we may be simple
concerning evil. What a deliverance! While the man of the world must needs
acquaint himself with evil, in order to avoid it in this world of snares
and of artifice, he must corrupt his mind, accustom himself to think of
evil, in order not to be entrapped by it. But soon there should be entire
deliverance-soon should Satan be trodden under their feet.
We see also that the apostle did not write his letters himself, but
employed a brother to do it. Here it was one named Tertius (v. 22). Deeply
concerned at the condition of the Galatians, he wrote himself the letter
addressed to them; but the salutation at the end of this, as of other
epistles, was in his own hand in order to verify the contents of the
epistle. (1 Corinthians 16:21; 2 Thessalonians 3:17, in which the feigned
epistle alluded to in 2 Thessalonians 2 gave occasion to state this proof,
which he always gave, that an epistle was truly his.) We see likewise, by
this little circumstance, that he attached a solemn and authoritative
character to his epistles, that they were not merely the effusions of a
spiritual heart, but that in writing them he knew and would have others
understand, that they were worthy of consideration and of being preserved
as authorities, as the expression and exercise of his apostolic mission,
and were to be received as such; that is to say, as possessing the Lord's
authority, with which he was furnished by the power of the Holy Ghost. They
were letters from the Lord by his means, even as his words had also been (1
Thess. 2:13, and 1 Cor. 14:37).
We have yet to observe, with regard to the three verses at the end of the
epistle, that they are, as it were, detached from all the rest,
introducing, in the form of a doxology, the suggestion of a truth, the
communication of which distinguished the apostle's teaching. He does not
develop it here. The task which the Holy Ghost accomplished in this
epistle, was the presentation of the soul individually before God according
to the divine thoughts. Nevertheless this connects itself immediately with
the position of the body; and the doctrine respecting the body, the
assembly, cannot be separated from it. Now the apostle informs us
distinctly, that the mystery, the assembly, and the gathering together in
one of all things under Christ, had been entirely unknown: God had been
silent on that subject in the times which were defined by the word ages,
the assembly not forming a part of that course of events, and of the ways
of God on earth. But the mystery was now revealed and communicated to the
Gentiles by prophetic writings-not "the writings of the prophets." The
epistles addressed to the Gentiles possessed this character; they were
prophetic writings-a fresh proof of the character of the epistles in the
New Testament.
He who has understood the doctrine of this epistle, and of the writings of
Paul in general, will readily apprehend the significance of this
postscript. The epistle itself develops with divine perfection and fulness
how a soul can stand before God in this world, and the grace and
righteousness of God, maintaining withal His counsels as to Israel.
