The circumstances under which the Epistle to the Romans was written gave occasion to the most thorough and comprehensive unfolding, not of the church, but of Christianity. No apostle had ever yet visited Rome. There was somewhat as yet lacking to the saints there; but even this was ordered of God to call forth from the Holy Spirit an epistle which more than any other approaches a complete treatise on the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, and especially as to righteousness.
Would we follow up the heights of heavenly truth, would we sound the depths of Christian experience, would we survey the workings of the Spirit of God in the church, would we bow before the glories of the person of Christ, or learn His manifold offices, we must look elsewhere in the writings of the New Testament no doubt, but elsewhere rather than here.
The condition of the Roman saints called for a setting forth of the gospel of God; but this object, in order to be rightly understood and appreciated, leads the Apostle into a display of the condition of man. We have God and man in presence, so to speak. Nothing can be more simple and essential. Although there is undoubtedly that profoundness which must accompany every revelation of God, and especially in connection with Christ as now manifested, still we have God adapting Himself to the very first wants of a renewed soul—nay, even to the wretchedness of souls without God, without any real knowledge either of themselves or of Him Not, of course, that the Roman saints were in this condition; but that God, writing by the Apostle to them, seizes the opportunity to lay bare man’s state as well as His own grace.