Romans 12 - Introduction

CHAPTER 12.

CHAPTER 12. The distinction of doctrinal and practical is not one that can be pressed anywhere in the N.T., and as little in Paul as in any other writer. It is under practical compulsion of some kind that he develops most of his characteristic doctrines, and he has no doctrines which do not imply a corresponding practice. Yet the distinction does exist, and the remainder of this epistle, especially chaps. Romans 12:1 to Romans 15:13, may be properly described as the practical part of it. Not that it is independent of the other. On the contrary, it is nothing but the application of it. (οὖν Romans 12:1.) Christian ethics are relative to the Christian revelation. It is the relations in which we stand that determine our duties, and the new relations in which we are set both to God and to other men by faith in Jesus Christ have a new morality corresponding to them. There is such a thing as a Christian ethic with a range, a delicacy, a flavour, all its own. There is no formal exposition of it here, though perhaps the nearest approach to such a thing that we have in the N.T., but a comprehensive illustration of it in a variety of bearings. Paul starts (Romans 12:1 f.) with a general exhortation, covering the whole Christian life. From this he proceeds to the spirit and temper which ought to characterise Christians as members of the same society, dwelling especially on the graces of humility and love (Romans 12:3-21). In the following chapter he discusses the duties of the individual to his legal superiors (Romans 13:1-7); his duties to his neighbour, as comprehended in the love which fulfils the law (Romans 13:8-10); and the urgent duty of sanctification in view of the Parousia. With chap. 14 he comes to a different subject, and one apparently of peculiar interest in Rome at the time. It is one of those questions in which the claim of Christian liberty has to accommodate itself to the social necessity created by the weakness of brethren, and the discussion of it extends from Romans 14:1 to Romans 15:13, and concludes the “practical” part of the epistle.