[60] Μὴ ἀσθενήσας:--we attempt to convey the thought, given by the aorist, that he _then and there_ was "not weak." [61] We render this clause as literally as possible. It is as if he would have written "On the promise of God _he relied_," but changed the expression to one more ample and more forcible. "_His_ unbelief": τῇ ἀπιστίᾳ. Not that Abraham _had_ unbelief actually, but he had it potentially; he _might have_ disbelieved. In that sense unbelief was "_his_." [62] Ἐνεδυναμώθη: the thought is of strength summoned _at a crisis_. CHAPTER XII _PEACE, LOVE, AND JOY FOR THE JUSTIFIED_ ROMANS v. 1-11 We reached a pause in the Apostle's thought with the close of the last paragraph. We may reverently imagine, as in spirit we listen to his dictation, that a pause comes also in his work; that he is silent, and Tertius puts down the pen, and they spend their hearts awhile on worshipping recollection and realization. The Lord delivered up; His people justified; the Lord risen again, alive for evermore--here was matter for love, joy, and wonder. But the Letter must proceed, and the argument has its fullest and most wonderful developments yet to come. It has now already expounded the tremendous _need_ of justifying mercy, for every soul of man. It has shewn how _faith_, always and only, is the way to appropriate that mercy--the way of God's will, and manifestly also in its own nature the way of deepest fitness. We have been allowed to see faith in illustrative action, in Abraham, who by faith, absolutely, without the least advantage of traditional privilege, received justification, with the vast concurrent blessings which it carried. Lastly we have heard St Paul dictate to Tertius, for the Romans and for us, those summarizing words (iv. 25) in which we now have God's own certificate of the triumphant efficacy of that Atoning Work, which sustains the Promise in order that the Promise may sustain us believing. We are now to approach the glorious theme of the Life of the Justified. This is to be seen not only as a state whose basis is the reconciliation of the Law, and whose gate and walls are the covenant Promise. It is to appear as a state warmed with eternal Love; irradiated with the prospect of glory. In it the man, knit up with Christ his Head, his Bridegroom, his all, yields himself with joy to the God who has received him. In the living power of the heavenly Spirit, who perpetually delivers him from himself, he obeys, prays, works, and suffers, in a liberty which is only not yet that of heaven, and in which he is maintained to the end by Him who has planned his full personal salvation from eternity to eternity.