fruit among you also, even as among other
Gentiles.- Et Græcis et Barbaris et sapientbus et
stultis debitor sum. - I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the
Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. - Itaque quantum in me est, paratus sum
vobis quoque qui Romae estis Evangelizare. - So, as much as in me is, I am ready to
preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.
13.I would not that you should be ignorant. What he has hitherto testified — that he continually
requested of the Lord that he might visit them, might have appeared a vain thing, and could not
have obtained credit, had he neglected to seize the occasion when offered: he therefore says, that
the effort had not been wanting, but the opportunity; for he had been prevented from executing a
purpose often formed.
We hence learn that the Lord frequently upsets the purposes of his saints, in order to humble
them, and by such humiliation to teach them to regard his Providence, that they may rely on it;
though the saints, who design nothing without the Lord’s will, cannot be said, strictly speaking, to
be driven away from their purposes. It is indeed the presumption of impiety to pass by God, and
without him to determine on things to come, as though they were in our own power; and this is
what James sharply reprehends in James 4:13.
But he says that he was hindered: you must take this in no other sense, but that the Lord
employed him in more urgent concerns, which he could not have neglected without loss to the
Church. Thus the hinderances of the godly and of the unbelieving differ: the latter perceive only
that they are hindered, when they are restrained by the strong hand of the Lord, so as not to be able
to move; but the former are satisfied with an hinderance that arises from some approved reason;
nor do they allow themselves to attempt any thing beyond their duty, or contrary to edification.
That I might obtain some fruit, etc. He no doubt speaks of that fruit, for the gathering of which
the Lord sent his Apostles,
“I have chosen you, that ye may go and bring forth fruit,
and that your fruit may remain.” (John 15:16.)
Though he gathered it not for himself, but for the Lord, he yet calls it his own; for the godly
have nothing more as their own than the work of promoting the glory of the Lord, with which is
connected all their happiness. And he records what had happened to him with respect to other
nations, that the Romans might entertain hope, that his coming to them would not be unprofitable,
which so many nations had found to have been attended with so much benefit.
14.I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, etc. Those whom he means by the
Greeks and the Barbarians, he afterwards explains by adding, both to the wise and to the foolish;
which words Erasmus has not rendered amiss by “learned and unlearned,” (eruditos et rudes,) but
I prefer to retain the very words of Paul. He then takes an argument from his own office, and
intimates that it ought not to be ascribed to his arrogance, that he thought himself in a manner
capable of teaching the Romans, however much they excelled in learning and wisdom and in the
knowledge of things, inasmuch as it had pleased the Lord to make him a debtor even to the wise.
36
(^36) Chalmers paraphrases the text thus — “I am bound, or I am under obligation, laid upon me by the duties of my office, to
preach both to Greeks and Barbarians, both to the wise and the unwise.”