Romans 16:17

Special warning against certain teachers of error

17. Now I beseech you, &c. From this ver. to Romans 16:20, inclusive, we have a paragraph or section by itself. It contains a brief but earnest warning against an evil which everywhere beset and encountered the Apostle the bold or subtle efforts of perverted and perverting teachers, Christians in name. We may gather that this evil was only just beginning at Rome; otherwise more of the Epistle would be given to it.

Bp Lightfoot, in his note on Philippians 3:18, gives good reason to think that the teachers specially in view here are not Judaizers, but their antipodes Antinomians. "They (the persons in this passage) are described as … holding plausible language, (Romans 16:18,) as professing to be wise beyond others, (Romans 16:19,) and yet not innocent in their wisdom. They appear therefore to belong to the same party to which the passages Romans 6:1-23; Romans 14:1 to Romans 15:6, of that Epistle [to the Romans] are chiefly addressed." [48]

[48] We think, however, that the opinions refuted in ch. 6 are not identical with those corrected in cch. 14, 15. In the former case, St Paul makes no compromise; in the latter, as regards abstract principle, he almost identifies himself with those whom he reproves. In the present verse, accordingly, we take the Antinomians whom the Romans are to avoid to be Antinomians in the fullest sense; rejecters of the moral (as well as ceremonial) law in all respects;heretics, in fact, of the type afterwards developed in some forms of Gnosticism, holding, probably, that the acts of the body were indifferent to the soul. They thus may have coincided with the persons in view in ch. 16, but hardly with those in view in cch. 14, 15.

mark watch; so as to avoidthem. Cp. Philippians 3:17, where the same word is used with an opposite reference "watch, so as to followwith them."

divisions and offences Strictly, and better, the divisions and the stumblingblocks. He refers to circumstances already well-known in various Churches, and beginning to be felt at Rome.

contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned Lit. beyond the teaching which you (emphatic) did learn. (" Contrary," however, rightly represents the Gr.) The emphasis on "you" seems to indicate that the erring teachers were, or would be, visitors to Rome, not original members of the Roman Church. "Did learn:" at the time of their evangelization. On the question, when that time was, see Introduction, i. § 17, 23.

"The teaching they had learned" could admit no real compromise, just because it was, in its origin, "not the word of men, but the word of God." 1 Thessalonians 2:13. Cp. Galatians 1:6-10.

avoid them A peaceable but effective way of resistance. Cp. 2 Timothy 3:5; 2 John 1:10. But these parallels are not exact;for the present passage seems to be specially a caution to individual Christians, not to go as learnersto the erring teachers.