 |  |
The Apostle regularly employed amanuenses for the writing of his letters, but Tertius
is the only one whose name is given in the N.T. He was a believer and was evidently
glad to include his greeting with the others. Lucius may be the Lucius of Cyrene
(Acts.xiii.1). On the other hand there are some expositors who think this is Luke, the
writer of the Gospel and the Acts, who frequently accompanied Paul on his travels. The
Apostle certainly refers to Luke in Col. 4: 14, Philemon 24, and II Tim. 4: 11, and in
these references calls him Lucas (Loukas), but this spelling can be an equivalent to
Lucius. The matter must be left undecided.
Gaius seems to be the Titius Justus of Acts 18: 7 who gave hospitality to Paul and
the church members of Corinth who were expelled from the synagogue next door.
Erastus was the city treasurer of Corinth who had evidently been touched by the truth of
the gospel preached by Paul.
The doxology of verses 25-27 which follows bristles with difficulties:
"Now unto Him Who hath power to establish you, according to my glad message--
even the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of a sacred secret in
age-past times kept silent, but now made manifest, and through means of prophetic
scriptures, according to the command of the age-abiding God, for obedience of faith unto
all the nations made known" (J. B. Rotherham).
Many translations insert the definite article before the word "mystery", or secret, but it
is not in the original. The addition of the article creates a problem, for it makes the
phrase parallel with Eph. 3: & Col. 1:, and appears to be a reference to the great
"mystery" revealed in those two epistles. But neither of them had been written when
Romans was composed, and therefore the revelation of the secret concerning the Body of
Christ, and Christ's headship in relation to it, had not yet been made known.
Some get over the difficulty by the suggestion that this doxology was added at a later
date by Paul after he had written Ephesians and Colossians. This was put forward by
John B. Lightfoot in his Biblical Essays. But after the Mystery had been revealed, what
need was there to add this doxology to the epistle to the Romans, and that in an enigmatic
way which does not reveal the details of this great Secret? Just what purpose would this
serve? We should note that the time elements concerning the secret of Rom. 16: do not
agree with Ephesians and Colossians. In Romans the secret was hushed in age times,
whereas in the prison epistles the secret was hidden from the ages and generations
(Col.i.26) and related to a period "before the age times" (Titus 1: 2; II Tim. 1: 9). This
hidden subject had "its own season" of manifestation, which manifestation was through
"preaching" and "according to a commandment" (Titus 1: 3). This manifestation is now
in this present age of grace.
Paul was a steward of the mysteries (secrets) of God (I Cor. 4: 1), some of which
were made known through his ministry during the Acts, like the secret of Israel's
blindness (Rom. 11: 25) and the instantaneous change of the believer in resurrection
(I.Cor.xv.51,52), so there is no need to try to fit the later revelation of Eph.3: & Col.3:
into Rom.16: