St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. IGore, Charles
Religion
St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. I
Gore, Charles
Bible. Romans -- Commentaries
4. We must notice what is implied in this passage about the Holy
Trinity. St. Paul speaks[8] of 'the Spirit of God' (the Father), 'the
Spirit of Christ,' 'Christ,' and then again, the 'Spirit of Him that
raised up Christ,' as if all these expressions were identical; as
elsewhere[9] he prays that the Father will strengthen men by His
Spirit, in order that Christ may dwell in their hearts, and they be
filled with the fullness of God. All which language means that where
the Spirit is, Christ is, and where Christ is, God the Father is. So
in St. John, our Lord speaks of the Holy Spirit as 'another' advocate
who is to come 'in his name' from the Father; and yet adds that in the
Spirit's coming He Himself will come; and with Him the Father--'we will
come[10].' The sacred 'persons' are spoken of as distinct--personally
distinct--and yet as so mutually involved in the action one of another
that the coming of one is the coming of all. So truly is God one in
three. We find something like this in human personalities under the
influence of love. Each single personality is not {286} self-contained
and exclusive. Love, to a real degree, fuses persons; and thus the
husband and wife and child (to take the highest example) may be said to
live and act in one another and through one another's influence. But
this is only to a limited extent. We are also mutually exclusive. Our
responsibility and actions remain individual and impermeable. What I
am doing, I am doing, and not another. But with God the mutual
interpenetration of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is represented in the
inspired language as far more complete. The Godhead is a fellowship
and relationship of perfect love 'in three persons.' But God is not
three separate individuals. What each 'person' does the others do.
The action of one involves all. God is inseparably one in His being
and in His action. If the Father creates, He creates through the Son
and by the Spirit. If the Son redeems, the redemption proceeds from
the Father and is effected in the Spirit. If the Spirit sanctifies, it
is from and in the Father and the Son. Thus when the Spirit came forth
at Pentecost out of the uplifted manhood of the Son to impart to us all
His richness, He came not merely to supply His absence, but to
accomplish His presence. He makes Christ present within us, and also
the {287} Father: so that God, three in one, dwells in the hearts of
His people.
5. 'The requirement of the law is to be fulfilled in us.' Do we ask
how we are to keep the whole of that terrible law? It is by obeying
the commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves, in which the whole
law is 'briefly comprehended[11].'
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