[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Truth I speak in Christ,= speaking as the member of the All-Truthful; =I do not lie, my conscience, in the Holy Ghost,= informed and governed by Him, =bearing me concurrent witness=--the soul within affirming to itself the word spoken without to others--[Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =that I have great grief, and my heart has incessant pain,= yes, the heart in which (v. 5) the Spirit has "poured out" God's love and joy; there is room for both experiences in its human depths. [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For I was wishing, I myself, to be anathema from Christ,= to be devoted to eternal separation from Him; awful dream of uttermost sacrifice, made impossible only because it would mean self-robbery from the Lord who had bought him; a spiritual suicide by sin--=for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen flesh-wise.= [Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For they are (οἵτινές εἰσιν) Israelites,= bearers of the glorious theocratic name, sons of the "Prince with God" (Gen. xxxii. 28); =theirs is the adoption,= the call to be Jehovah's own filial race, "His son, His firstborn" (Exod. iv. 22) of the peoples; =and the glory,= the Shechinah of the Eternal Presence, sacramentally seen in Tabernacle and Temple, spiritually spread over the race; =and the Covenants,= with Abraham, and Isaac, and Levi, and Moses, and Aaron, and Phinehas, and David; =and the Legislation,= the holy Moral Code, =and the Ritual,= with its divinely ordered symbolism, that vast Parable of Christ, =and the Promises,= of "the pleasant land," and the perpetual favour, and the coming Lord; [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =theirs are the Fathers,= patriarchs, and priests, and kings; =and out of them, as to what is flesh-wise, is the Christ,--He who is over all things, God, blessed to all eternity. Amen.[152]=