Romans 8:15

have not received Better, did not receive; a reference to definite past bestowal. See on ch. Romans 5:5, last note.

the spirit of bondage of slavery. The verse practically means "Ye received the Holy Spirit not as a Spirit of (connected with) slavery, but as a Spirit of (connected with) adoption." See Romans 6:19, where we have a seeming discord, but real and profound harmony, with this verse. The Holy Spirit's influence leads the regenerate to "yield their members as slaves to righteousness;" but his method of compulsion(see ch. Romans 5:5) is such as to make their real subjection "perfect freedom," because divinely filial.

again As in the old days of their "ignorance," when they knew God only as a justly offended King and Judge. Cp. Heb 2:14-15; 1 John 4:18. It is scarcely needful to point out the difference between the "fear" of the unwilling slave, or criminal, and the reverent and sensitive "fear" of the child of God; (1 Peter 1:17).

adoption Same word as Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5. The relationship of God's children to their Father is sometimes viewed as generative, for the change in their wills amounts to a change, as it were, of life and person a new birth(see 1 Peter 1:3; &c.): sometimes as adoptive, in respect of the divinely legalredemption which procures to them this inner change, and also in distinction from the essential and eternal Sonship of Christ, the "Own Son" of the Father.

whereby Lit. in which; surrounded and animated by His influence.

we cry Whether in supplication, or in praise. Observe the change again to the first person, suggesting St Paul's sense of the holy community of the family of God.

Abba, Father Same words as Mark 14:36; Galatians 4:6. The first word is the Chaldee for "Father." St Paul places the Gr. equivalent after it, not for explanation, (which was surely needless, in view of the well-known use of the word by the Lord,) but probably because in prayer and praise the Gentile Christians themselves did so. To them the Chaldee word would sound as a quasi-Name, and would be as it were supplemented by their own word; q. d., "Our Father Abba." So Meyer; who suggests that the word "Abba" was already familiar in Jewish prayers, but now specially sanctified for Christians by the Lord's Gethsemane-prayer. The present verse does not, of course, mean that the view of God as the Father of His People was unknown in O. T. (see e.g. Psalms 103:13; Isaiah 63:16), but that the Gospel had both extended this view to others than Jews, and had intensified and glorified it by fully revealing the Eternal Son as the Firstborn among Brethren (Romans 8:29). The knowledge of the Father as our Father because the Father of the Son is among the greatest of the treasures of grace.