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St. Paul certainly implies that Rome was included in his province of work, and that he owed them a yet unpaid debt¹⁹¹. This must surely mean, according to St. Paul's principle, that no other of the greater apostles had yet evangelized them or founded the church there¹⁹². Rome was no other man's foundation. But none the less, the elements of a church had collected there. The gospel was being preached there by 'apostles' from among his own circle. And St. Paul, for this reason, does not contemplate any permanent stay with the Romans, but regards Rome only as a place where he can rest and refresh himself, as well as supply deficiencies in the spiritual equipment of the church there, before he passes further west to the untouched region of Spain. St. Paul, we see plainly enough, had no power to foresee the future. But after the long residence at Rome during his first captivity, which he did not the least anticipate, did he, we ask, actually get to Spain? There is certainly no good reason to say he did not, for his movements are, in the main, unknown to us in the last period of his life; and on the other hand in Clement's letter to the Corinthians, written within the first century, he is said to have passed before his martyrdom to 'the limits of the west' – the extreme west – which is certainly most naturally interpreted of Spain¹⁹³.

4. St. Paul speaks of having wrought 'signs and wonders.' The two words are habitually combined in the New Testament. The word 'wonders' describes the miraculous and astonishing character of the events, while 'signs' indicates that moral witness and significance which distinguishes Christian miracles from vulgar portents. We read of St. Paul working miracles in the Acts. What he says here, and elsewhere¹⁹⁴, implies that they were frequently worked, and especially at Corinth, where no such events are recorded in the history. What it is important for us to recognize is, that St. Paul so plainly and repeatedly appeals, in the face of those who could bear witness, to the fact that he himself had power given to him to work miracles, as if it were indisputable.

5. St. Paul tells us that he had it specially laid upon him by the apostles of the circumcision that he was to 'remember the poor,' i.e. the poor Christians at Jerusalem; where poverty was specially rife, because, as we should gather, the wealthier Jews had held aloof from Christianity¹⁹⁵. And this, he adds, was the very thing he himself was zealous to do¹⁹⁶. How much it was in his mind, both the Acts and his own epistles bear witness. We hear much in the epistles to the Corinthians¹⁹⁷ of the collection made in the churches of Macedonia and Achaia. Not only was this expression of Gentile good will intended to conciliate the half-alienated and suspicious Jewish Christians of Jerusalem, but the acceptance of the gift at St. Paul's hands, as the fruit of his own labour, was to diminish their suspicion of himself. St. Paul was at pains to prevent any suspicion attaching to his administration of this bounty, and at every point we perceive how much trouble he took about the matter. But, hopeful and zealous as he was about this work of charity, he did not underrate its dangers. His urgent request for the Roman Christians' prayers in this passage, and his readiness to meet his death, if need be, at Jerusalem, as expressed in the narrative of the Acts, show us that he knew the danger he was incurring from the fierce hostility of the Jerusalem Jews.

6. This passage about the collection¹⁹⁸, coupled with the allusion to Cenchreae, the port of Corinth, at the beginning of the next chapter, and the allusion to the Corinthian Gaius as St. Paul's host¹⁹⁹, enable us to fix the occasion of the writing of this epistle exactly at the moment recorded in Acts xx. 3 – the end of his three months' residence in Greece. We also gather from the Acts²⁰⁰, as well as from this epistle, that it was his intention at that period, when he had paid his visit to Jerusalem, to go to Rome. Once more we know from the Acts²⁰¹ that Sosipater and Timothy were with him at this point, and they join in the greetings of the epistle²⁰². So that all the indications taken together fix with wonderful accuracy the exact point when the epistle was written²⁰³.

7. We do well to note the word used by St. Paul in asking the Roman Christians' prayers. He begs them to 'strive together' with him in their prayers. This word is a derivative of that which describes our Lord's 'agony' in prayer; and Origen's comment upon it is this: 'Hardly any one can pray without some idle and alien thought coming into his mind, and leading off and interrupting the intended direction of his mind to God… And, therefore, prayer is a great striving (agon, wrestling), so that the fixed direction of the soul towards God may be maintained, in spite of the enemies which interfere and seek to scatter the sense of prayer; so that one who prays may justly say, with St. Paul, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course."'

DIVISION VI. § 2. CHAPTER XVI. 1-2.
A commendation

One strong link among Christians of different towns, constraining them to remember that their brotherhood did not depend on physical nearness or personal acquaintance, lay in the 'letters of commendation' from one local church to another, which the Christian traveller carried with him. And here we have an example of such a letter given by St. Paul to the Corinthian deaconess, Phoebe, who was probably the bearer of his letter to the Roman Christians.

I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant²⁰⁴ of the church that is at Cenchreae: that ye receive her in the Lord, worthily of the saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever matter she may have need of you: for she herself also hath been a succourer of many, and of mine own self.

The necessity of instructing women inquirers or catechumens, visiting them at their homes, preparing them for baptism, attending to their unclothing and reclothing at the font, and looking after them afterwards, forced upon the Church the institution of an order of deaconesses, side by side with the deacons and for similar purposes. Pliny found these female officers among the Christians in Bithynia in the beginning of the second century, and there is no reason why already at this date the female order should not have existed²⁰⁵. 'Here we learn,' says Origen on this passage, 'that female ministers are recognized in the Church.'

Phoebe is also called a succourer or 'patroness' of Christians, including St. Paul, which suggests a woman of wealth and influence. If so, we have here an example of wealth, not asserting itself but devoting itself to service, according to our Lord's teaching: 'He that is greatest among you shall be your servant (deacon)'; 'I am in the midst of you as he that serveth (the deacon)²⁰⁶.' Such an one is to be received in a manner 'worthy of the saints,' the consecrated family of God, and to be allowed to lack nothing which the Roman Christians can supply her with.

DIVISION VI. § 3. CHAPTER XVI. 3-16.
Personal greetings

Then St. Paul, according to his custom, winds up his epistle with personal greetings. In this case they are sent to the individual Christians, among those who from various parts of the empire had collected at Rome, whose names his memory – so retentive of personal relationships – enabled him to recall.

Salute Prisca and Aquila my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus, who for my life laid down their own necks; unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles: and salute the church that is in their house. Salute Epaenetus my beloved, who is the firstfruits of Asia unto Christ. Salute Mary, who bestowed much labour on you. Salute Andronicus and Junias²⁰⁷, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also have been in Christ before me. Salute Ampliatus my beloved in the Lord. Salute Urbanus our fellow-worker in Christ, and Stachys my beloved. Salute Apelles the approved in Christ. Salute them which are of the household of Aristobulus. Salute Herodion my kinsman. Salute them of the household of Narcissus, which are in the Lord. Salute Tryphaena and Tryphosa, who labour in the Lord. Salute Persis the beloved, which laboured much in the Lord. Salute Rufus the chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine. Salute Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brethren that are with them. Salute Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints that are with them. Salute one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ salute you.

1. Aquila, a Pontic Jew, had resided in Rome, doubtless in pursuit of his business as a tent-maker; but the edict of Claudius had compelled him to quit the capital in common with his brethren, and he had taken refuge at Corinth with his wife Prisca (as St. Paul calls her), or Priscilla (according to St. Luke²⁰⁸); and there, shortly after their arrival, St. Paul had found them, made their acquaintance, and combined with them in a common trade. To this was possibly due their conversion to Christianity. When St. Paul left Corinth, they accompanied him to Ephesus, and remained there when he left for Jerusalem; their influential position in the Christian community being indicated to us by their dealings with so important a teacher as Apollos. When St. Paul had returned to Ephesus, and was writing his First Epistle to the Corinthians, their house was the centre for a Christian congregation²⁰⁹. It was possibly during the Ephesian disturbances that they risked their lives, or 'laid down their own necks' for St. Paul. Whether on account of this peril incurred, or for whatever reason, they returned, as they were now free to do, to Rome. The Epistle to the Romans follows the First Epistle to the Corinthians by not more than a year, and it finds Prisca and Aquila established at Rome, with a church meeting at their house. Probably they had been St. Paul's informants as to affairs among the Roman Christians. A good many years afterwards, when St. Paul was writing his Second Epistle to Timothy²¹⁰, we hear of them again at Ephesus. So much travelling as we find in their life was not unusual in the Roman empire, and perhaps least of all among the Jews.

The fact that Priscilla is generally mentioned before her husband, both by St. Paul and St. Luke²¹¹, as if she were more important, combined with (1) a tradition which connects her with the titulus (or parish-church) Priscae at Rome, (2) evidence connecting the Coemeterium Priscillae with the Acilian gens, – has led some scholars to believe that Priscilla was a noble Roman lady married to a Jewish husband. But the evidence is not cogent, and it is more likely that both she and her husband owed their Roman names to being freedmen²¹². It was probably her prominence among the Christians which led to her name preceding that of her husband. We need only think of Phoebe and Priscilla to understand how influential women were in the earliest Christian churches.

'The church (which met) at their house' is a significant phrase²¹³. The wealthier Christians, or those whose houses were commodious, turned them into churches, where the neighbouring Christians met for worship, love feast and eucharist. Several of the oldest churches in Rome grew in this manner out of private houses.

2. St. Paul's brief characterizations of individuals are full of personal memory and tenderness – 'my beloved, who is the firstfruits of Asia unto Christ²¹⁴,' 'who bestowed much labour on you,' 'my kinsmen (i.e. Jews) and fellow prisoners (on some occasion which we cannot fix, but which St. Paul remembers), who also were in Christ before me,' 'our fellow worker,' 'the man approved in Christ,' who has been tried and found not wanting, 'his mother and mine.' St. Paul, notwithstanding his wide ecclesiastical plans and theological labours, as he thought no pains too much to bestow on the details of his scheme for collecting Gentile money for the needs of poor Jews, so also never lets great designs obscure the memory of persons and their intricate relations to himself.

3. Andronicus and Junias (or junianus) are 'of note among the apostles.' There are other indications that the term 'apostle' was not confined to the twelve. Not St. Paul only, but Barnabas also, and the Lord's brother, were included in it. Later, in the Didache, we find it used in a wide but somewhat dim sense, for the chief teachers of the Church who were not settled in particular churches²¹⁵. Nevertheless, this passage describing two men of unknown names as 'conspicuous among the apostles' is surprising. Probably the real requirement for sharing the title of apostle was to have received commission from the Lord (as 'other seventy' did besides the Twelve), and to have seen Him after His resurrection. These two – 'early disciples' as St. Paul tells us – may have fulfilled these requirements. They were Jews like himself, who with him had laboured and suffered. They would be centres of authority among the Christians at Rome²¹⁶: and possibly to the laying on of their hands other brethren at Rome who 'ruled' or 'taught' or 'ministered' owed their qualifying gift.

Chrysostom takes the second name to be a woman's – Junia; and expresses his astonishment at finding a woman thought worthy of the title of an apostle.

4. 'Them that are of the household of Aristobulus.' This Aristobulus was very probably the grandson of Herod the Great, who lived and died at Rome in a private station, and whose 'household' would naturally include many Jews and orientals. The following name of a Jew suggests connexion with the Herods.

5. 'Rufus' may very likely be the son of Simon of Cyrene, whom St. Mark, writing probably at Rome, refers to as well known²¹⁷.

6. 'A holy kiss.' 'It was from this and similar words,' says Origen, 'that it has been handed down as a custom in the Church that after the prayer the brethren should welcome one another with a kiss.' He goes on to urge that this ritual kiss should be neither unchaste nor without real feeling.

7. 'All the churches of Christ salute you.' This unique phrase is probably used, as Dr. Hort suggests, to express how 'the church of Rome was an object of love and respect to Jewish and Gentile churches alike.'

DIVISION VI. § 4. CHAPTER XVI. 17-20.
Final warning

Something occurred before the letter to the Romans was concluded and dispatched to make St. Paul insert a final warning against false teachers, who were causing divisions and perverting the gospel as all Christians had at first received it, in the interests of their personal aggrandizement. St. Paul makes a brief but vigorous appeal to the Romans to be true to their first obedience, and maintain their reputation unsullied.

Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine which ye learned: and turn away from them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Christ, but their own belly; and by their smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts of the innocent. For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I rejoice therefore over you: but I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil. And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

This abrupt insertion strongly reminds us of the Epistle to the Galatians (see i. 7-9, vi. 13), and of the similar outburst in the Epistle to the Philippians (iii. 1-3). St. Paul believed that such Judaizing teaching was inconsistent with the fundamental Christian 'tradition.' He does not imply that Rome was already corrupted, but he scents danger.

DIVISION VI. § 5. CHAPTER XVI. 21-23.
Salutations from St. Paul's companions

Timothy my fellow-worker saluteth you; and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen. I Tertius, who write the epistle, salute you in the Lord. Gaius my host, and of the whole church, saluteth you. Erastus the treasurer of the city saluteth you, and Quartus the brother.

Most of these persons are very probably otherwise known to us. Leaving aside the well-known Timothy, we find a Lucius of Cyrene among the prophets in Acts xiii. 1²¹⁸; a Jason at Thessalonica, as St. Paul's host, in Acts xvii. 5 ff; a Sopater (or Sosipater) of Beroea, Acts xx. 4. Gaius was one of the few whom St. Paul had baptized at Corinth (1 Cor. i. 14), and the Christian church, it appears, met at his house. Erastus, the treasurer of Corinth, is probably the man mentioned in 2 Tim. iv. 20.

DIVISION VI. § 6. CHAPTER XVI. 25-27.
Final Doxology

Now to him that is able to stablish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations unto obedience of faith; to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom²¹⁹ be the glory for ever. Amen.

There is no idea in this doxology with which this epistle has not made us familiar in substance. We have been led to think of the gospel, now proclaimed and entrusted to St. Paul, as the disclosure of a divine purpose long working secretly: we have been bidden to adore the unfathomable resourcefulness of the wisdom of God: we have been constantly referred to the testimony borne by law and prophets to the gospels: we have been made familiar with the object of the evangelical preaching, as being to secure 'the obedience of faith among all the nations.' And a particular phrase in an epistle written about the same time²²⁰ – 'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory, which … unto us God revealed by his Spirit,' – is strikingly parallel to the beginning of the doxology. At the same time the elaborate richness of the style, as well as many of the ideas, reminds us irresistibly of the Epistle to the Ephesians²²¹. This, coupled with the fact that there is considerable authority for placing the doxology at the end of chap. xiv, has led some scholars to adopt the idea – accepted and elaborated by Dr. Lightfoot – that St. Paul first wrote the epistle down to xvi. 23, as his Epistle to the Romans, and subsequently, perhaps during one of his sojourns at Rome, turned it into a circular letter, omitting for this purpose the last two chapters, with their personal matter, and adding the doxology in the rich manner of the Epistle to the Ephesians. Subsequently the doxology would have been added also to the complete epistle. There are many difficulties in such a theory. Especially why should the beginning of chap. xv be cut off from the end of chap. xiv, when there is no break in thought? But I do not pursue the subject here²²², for it would be out of place, and alien to our practical purpose. There is no ground for doubting that the whole of what we receive as the epistle was written by St. Paul; and no ground for thinking that any part of the whole, down to xvi. 23, was not found in the letter as originally carried by Phoebe; but it cannot be denied that some mystery, not easily solved, hangs about the manifold and interrupted conclusions of the epistle; and that the rich style of the doxology is somewhat unlike both the rest of the epistle, and the other epistles of this period. However, whether or no it was written at a later date, at least it forms a splendid summing up of what is probably the greatest and most influential letter ever written.

And there is no teaching which we more urgently need to-day than the teaching of this epistle. Whether the need be to expand our personal religion into social service, and also to reinvigorate our social service with the power of personal religion; or so to reassert the divine authority of the Church as never to forget that it depends for its vitality upon personally converted hearts; or to teach men to remember the inexorable severity of divine judgement, as well as the depth of the divine compassion; or to rebuke the shallowness which attempts to separate Christian character from Christian doctrine; or to harmonize individual freedom with the social claim; or to impart to self-sacrifice the spirit of humility and gladness and indomitable hope; or at once to exalt and restrict the function of the State; or to emphasize the true grounds and limits of toleration in a catholic church – whatever, one may almost say, be the need to which the special deficiencies and perils of our church and age give rise, or of which at the moment we are most conscious, the teaching of St. Paul in this epistle is found to meet it full face.

Truly we may thank God with a continually growing gratitude for the gift to us of a letter so inexhaustibly full of spiritual wealth, and so complete in its provision for the whole of life.