God hath laid them all, and that the punishment due for sin, which is death, has been inflicted upon him; the demands of the law have been fulfilled, and its penalty suffered. On this the believer rests, and his conscience is satisfied." Leighton: "If election, effectual calling and salvation be inseparably linked togetherthen by any one of them a man may lay hold upon all the rest, and may know that his hold is sure; and this is the way wherein he may attain and ought to secure that comfortable assurance of the love of God... Find then but within thee sanctification by the Spirit; and this argues necessarily both justification by the Son, and election by God the Father."

PRAYER.

O Lord God, the Father of mercies and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, give us grace to accept all the loving kindness manifested to us in the gift of thy dear Son. Make us conformable to his life and to his death. Put thy good Spirit within us as a Spirit of adoption, of truth, of grace and supplications, of wisdom and holiness. Bring us within the pale of that covenant which is ordered in all things and sure. Write our names in the Lamb's Book of Life. Surround us by thy gracious Providence. Enable us to believe every word which thou hast spoken and give us the victory over all our spiritual adversaries, letting nothing separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. And unto him. that is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy; to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.

CHAPTER IX.

VERSES 1-5.

PAUL'S SORROW AT THE REJECTION OF THE JEWS. THE HIGH PRIVILEGES THEY HAVE ENJOYED.

I SAY the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost.

2 That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.

3 For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh :

4 Who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;

5 Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever.

PAUL

Amen.

AUL had proved that Gentiles and Jews were all sinners; that they all needed gratuitous salvation; that justification could not possibly be by the deeds of the law; that there was but one way of salvation for all nations of men; that there was no revelation of more than one method of restoration to God's favor; that Abraham was saved just as sinners of the Gentiles are saved; that David clearly spoke of this one method; that Christ's humiliation opened up to us the way of life; that we are justified through faith in Christ; that the fruits of justification are abundant and blessed; that the great principle of federal headship brought to our notice in the fall of Adam is the same as that involved in our representation in Christ; that gratuitous salvation gives no license to loose living, but by a right apprehension of it men become servants of God; that sanctification is by the gospel, not by the law; that in the spiritual warfare of the Christian life the victory is won only through Jesus Christ; that justification is complete in this life and inseparably joined with sanctification by the Spirit; that nothing in the form of affliction is in the end really injurious to believers; that God had an eternal plan

concerning men's salvation; that nothing could destroy those, who were the called according to God's purpose; and that the combined powers of wickedness could not separate a believer from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Thus the apostle closes his discussion of the glorious way of life by a gratuitous justifica tion, and by a scriptural sanctification, and closes it with shoutings and exultations the most animating.

But just here a sad topic is presented. It is this. If the foregoing is the only method of salvation, is not the case of many Jews sad? have they not rejected Jesus as the Messiah, the way, the truth, and the life? Notorious facts compel the apostle to admit that this is so. To this matter he now addresses himself in the most tender and solemn manner.

1. I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. It is as if he had said, I have not taught the doctrines of this epistle because I was indifferent to the case of my countrymen, nor because they had cast me off and persecuted me for my love to the gospel. Far from it. I say the truth, I speak what I am sure is verity, On this point I am not mistaken. I say the truth in Christ. This phrase is variously explained. Four methods are chiefly relied on. 1. Many regard the phrase as equivalent to an oath. But there is no verb of swearing used here. Nor was there any propriety in his taking an oath. No one had called for it. The occasion did not call for it. 2. Some put I and in Christ together-I in Christ, I a man who claim to be in Christ, a new creature, a Christian. This form of expression, thus understood, could give no weight, among Jews, to what he was about to say. 3. Some think that in Christ means in a Christian manner. This too would not commend to Jews what he was about to say. Nor is this a very good sense to give the phrase, nor is it the usual signification of the words in Christ. 4. Others, admitting that it is not an oath, yet regard it as an asseveration. We are said to asseverate when with solemnity we positively aver. An asseveration expresses vehemence and is designed to give emphasis to our assertions. Asseverations are right or wrong according to the occasion or manner of using them. When lawful they do not materially differ from persistent declarations. Thus Rhoda the damsel constantly affirmed that Peter was at the gate. We may make our asseverations very strong, as Elijah did to Elisha, when he said, "As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth," 2 Kings 2: 2, 4, 6. This is not a formal oath, and yet it is an assertion hardly less solemn than an oath, but there is no swearing in it. So Paul here under a sense of his awful responsibility to the Master whom he served, in whose presence he felt himself to be,

and to whom he knew he must soon give account, solemnly asserts "his sincerity and truthfulness. In 2 Cor. 2: 17 there is a similar solemn assertion: "As of sincerity, as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ." I lie not, quite uniformly rendered, I speak not falsely. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost. How one's conscience bears witness to the truth of what he says' men commonly suppose they well understand. The doubt arises. respecting the last phrase, in the Holy Ghost. There are five opinions. I. Some take it as an oath by the third person of the Trinity; but for this there seems to be no reason whatever. There is no form of swearing, but there is a simple statement that his conscience testified to his veracity. 2. Others think the meaning is, my conscience testifies and the Holy Ghost also testifies with it. This makes good sense, and teaches the same truth as that taught in Rom 8: 16. The only difficulty is in so construing the words as to get this sense out of them. 3. Others make the sense to be, My conscience in [or under the direction of] the Holy Ghost testifies. It is true that the Holy Spirit does purify and sanctify the conscience of a believer in Jesus Christ. But is this what Paul here intends to assert of himself? 4. Others think that the phrase in the Holy Ghost, is a simple claim of being under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. This is certainly the meaning of the phrase in Matt. 22:43; Mark 12:36; 1 Cor. 12: 3, 13, etc. In each of these places we have the same preposition as in our verse. 5. The other explanation offered is that, like the first clause of the verse, this is a solemn asseveration, in the presence of the Spirit who searcheth the heart, that he uttered no falsehood. Either this or the 4th is best sustained by scripture usage, gives the best sense, and is most free from objections.

sorrow.

2. That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. Heaviness, once rendered grief, twice heaviness, but commonly Sorrow, found in but one other place (1 Tim. 6:16) and there rendered as here. The latter is the stronger word. Bretschneider renders the former grief; the latter, violent grief. But to the former Paul adds the word great, and to the latter the word continual. His grief was great and without ceasing; for how could he endure to see the destruction of his nation? Their rejection of Christ caused them to be awfully rejected by God; subjected them to the utter loss of all that had distinguished them as a people, and gave them over to the direst calamities that ever befell a city or a country. Though this epistle was written at least ten years before the destruction of Jerusalem, yet from the days of the personal ministry of Christ the doom of the holy city had been no secret among his disciples, Matt. 24: 2-22; Luke

19: 41-44. Indeed so well advised were even private Jewish Christians of the approaching catastrophe that tradition distinctly says that. not one of them perished in the overthrow of their ancient city. As Jesus, beholding the city twenty-five or thirty years before, wept over it, so now his servant Paul was bowed. down with sorrow on the same account, and so much the more as the awful events, made certain by prophecy and by the general rejection of Messiah, were near at hand.

3. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. As might be expected the interpretations of this verse are both various and diverse. The extreme views are these: 1. Some explain the words as though the apostle meant to say that he loved his nation so that for their good he was willing to be excluded from the hope of salvation, separated from Christ, and brought under the curse impending over his unbelieving countrymen both in this and the next world. Surely Paul was not calling down on himself the eternal destruction of the wicked, nor expressing a readiness to be a cast-away and a blasphemer of Christ for ever. This is one extreme. 2. The other makes very little of the verse, supposing it expresses not what Paul now wished, but what he had wished before his conversion. But all, who knew Paul's history, needed not to be told of his former madness and bitterness against the Lord Jesus. The dislike of the Jews to him arose very much from the fact that he had so utterly renounced Judaism and changed his course. He was endeavoring to soften their prejudices, by telling them of his present sentiments respecting them. He was assuring his countrymen that he now ardently loved them. Between these extremes lie a large number of opinions, most, if not all of which depend on the misconstruction of some word in the Greek text of this verse. Thus Waterland, followed by Doddridge, thinks that the preposition rendered from means after the example of Christ. But the place relied on to establish it (2 Tim. 1: 3) does not sustain the exposition. Another turns on the meaning of the word rendered accursed, in the Greek anathema. Because anything anathema, if possessed of animal life, was devoted to death, some think Paul meant that he was willing to die for his people, if that would save them. But the difficulty arises from the fact that the word denotes not merely death, but commonly death under the curse of God, and that here he adds the words from Christ. Surely Paul did not seriously desire to die under the curse of God, or to be banished from Christ. Nor can we suppose that by accursed he merely meant excommunicated from the church; for a man could not be lawfully cut off from the church except for some great sin,