8
B.- Let us consider the passage, then, step by step.
`I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ'.
That is most certainly true for all time and for all believers.
`For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth'.
That again is still as blessedly true as it was when the sentence was first written.
`To the Jew first, and also to the Greek'.
Is that still true?
A.- Yes, I believe the Church has a great debt to pay to Israel, for through that nation we received the Scriptures,
and even, so far as the flesh was concerned, the Saviour Himself.
B.- All that is quite true and admitted, but does not the Apostle mean something more than that? He uses the
same expression in Romans 2:
`But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,
tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but
glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no
respect of persons with God' (Rom. 2:8-11).
A.- I see your point. The Apostle, by using the same expression with regard both to blessing and wrath, must
have intended some special distinction between the Jew and the Gentile.
B.- Peter says much the same thing in Acts 3:
`Ye are the children of the prophets . . . unto you first God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to bless you,
in turning away every one of you from his iniquities' (Acts 3:25,26).
Paul and Barnabas were evidently of the same mind, for in Acts 13, when the Jews refused their testimony, they
said:
`It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and
judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles' (Acts 13:46).
You will observe, moreover, that the apostles took this pre-eminence of Israel literally.
`They came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: and Paul, as his manner was, went in unto
them' (Acts 17:1,2).
Do you feel under the same obligation? Have you made it a rule always to visit the Jewish synagogue first,
before preaching the gospel in a new centre?
A.- I am afraid I have not considered the reference to `the Jew first' so literally.
B.- Yet you will find that even when the Apostle reached Rome, and even though he had told the Roman
Christians how he longed to see them, he sends for the chief of the Jews and bears his testimony to them first of all
(Acts 28:17-31). The position of the Jew in Romans 1:16, in Acts 3:25,26, and in Acts 13:46, is in harmony with
their position as enunciated by the Lord Himself and repeated by the Apostle in Romans 15.
`I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel' (Matt. 15:24).
`Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: but go rather to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel' (Matt. 10:5,6).
`Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises
made unto the fathers: and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy' (Rom. 15:8,9).
We must, therefore, divide Romans 1:16 into two sections: