ise for
which the world had been waiting. Of ancient days there were
'prophets,' men commissioned to speak for God, whose writings remained
after them and are held in highest reverence as 'holy scriptures.'
These men foretold good days from God that were to come to His people
in the {48} coming of the divinely anointed king, the Christ. And now
they are come. God has sent to redeem men not a servant, but His own
Son. True, He came as man among men: as one of the royal house of
David, the house from which the Christ was promised; yet simply man in
outward nature and appearance, or 'according to the flesh.' But
besides that ordinary seeming manhood, there was in Him something
higher--a sacred spiritual nature. And this higher nature it was that
finally determined the estimate in which He was to be held. If
'according to the flesh' He was a man of David's house, according to
this 'spirit of holiness' He was decisively designated by God's own act
as Son of God in miraculous power, and that especially when He was made
the example of a resurrection from the dead. Thenceforth 'Jesus' of
Nazareth is 'Christ' and 'the Lord' of Christians. It is He through
whom St. Paul and his fellows received the outpouring of the divine
bounty for their own lives, and their apostolic commission on behalf of
the name of Christ to bring all the nations of the earth to the
obedience of faith. And this commission extends as far as the Roman
Christians and justifies St. Paul in writing to them.

{49}

(3) To all the Christians at Rome, then, 'called to be saints,' i.e.
called into the consecrated body and to the consecrated life, St. Paul
is writing. He does not say 'to the church which is at Rome,' as in
the other epistles of this date he writes 'to the church at Corinth'
and to 'the churches of Galatia.' And though this might be accidental,
yet probably it is due to the fact that St. Paul thought of the Roman
Christians as individuals who, many of them, had been converted
elsewhere and for various reasons had come to be living at Rome; so
that in fact they had hardly yet attained the consistency of a single
ordered church.

(4) And to these Christians he gives his greeting by wishing for them
those gifts which may be taken as summing up the blessings of Christ
about which this epistle is to say so much--'grace,' which is God's
love to us in actual operation, and 'peace,' which is the state of mind
of one who realizes God's love--f