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Theodoret of Cyrus

Nicene & Post-Nicene · AD 325–500 · 1,374 passages across 50 books

Commentary

1,181–1,200 of 1,374
Romans 2:7

To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:

Well-doing is for a time, but the reward is eternal. Moreover, eternity applies not only to life but to honor, glory and immortality as well. Paul wanted to show that there are many rewards for those who are good.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 2:9

Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;

Here Paul uses the word Greek to refer not to Gentile believers but to those who lived before Christ’s incarnation.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 2:10

But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile:

God did not promise eternal life to those who worshiped idols but to those who even apart from the law led a Mosaic life, embraced godliness and the worship of God, and were concerned about righteousness.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 2:21

Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?

Paul shows here and in the next two verses that the Jews had learned little from the law even if they gloried in the letter of it. When they tried to teach others, their deeds contradicted their words, and their pride in the law was pointless.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 3:3

For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?

God knew in advance who would obey the law and who would break it. Therefore those who did not believe were unable to stand in the way of his blessings.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 3:4

God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.

Human beings are thus given over to their own free will. Hence they are divided into two groups: those who prefer the worship of God and those who take the opposite path and come to a dire end, corresponding to their choice.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 3:8

And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.

This was not the intention of the apostles’ teaching. On the contrary, they demanded that everyone abstain from all manner of wickedness.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 3:25

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

The mercy seat was gold-plated and placed on top of the ark. On each side was the figure of a cherub. When the high priest approached it, the holy kindness of God was revealed.The apostle teaches us that Christ is the true mercy seat, of which the one in the Old Testament was but a type. The name applies to Christ in his humanity, not in his divinity. For as God Christ responded to the expiation made at the mercy seat. It is as man that he receives this label, just as elsewhere he is called a sheep, a lamb, sin and a curse.
Furthermore, the ancient mercy seat was bloodless because it was inanimate. It could only receive the drops of blood pouring from the sacrificial victims. But the Lord Christ is both God and the mercy seat, both the priest and the lamb, and he performed the work of our salvation by his blood, demanding only faith from us.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 3:27

Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.

By “boasting” Paul means the proud spirits of the Jews and their excessive arrogance. For they thought they were the only ones who enjoyed God’s providence. But after the divine grace appeared and spread to all nations, the boasting of the Jews ceased.… Paul calls faith a law, recalling the words of the prophet Jeremiah: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers.”

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 4:2

For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.

The accomplishment of good works honors those who do them, but it does not reveal the kindness of God. Faith, on the other hand, reveals both the love for God of the one who believes and God’s kindness.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 4:4

Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.

The doer of righteousness expects a reward, but justification by faith is the gift of the God of all.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 4:6

Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,

After demonstrating by the example of the patriarch Abraham that faith is older than the law, Paul quotes a further witness in support of his position, viz., David the prophet and king.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 4:10

How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.

Paul demonstrates that faith was not only older than the law, it was older than circumcision as well.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 4:12

And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.

If a Gentile who has not been circumcised follows Abraham’s faith, which he manifested before being circumcised, he will not be rejected. For the God of all, since he had foreseen as God that he would gather one people from both Jews and Gentiles and prepare for them salvation by faith, had appointed Abraham as their father as well. Paul had demonstrated that Abraham had acquired righteousness by faith before being circumcised and that even after being circumcised he lived not according to the law of Moses but by clinging to his faith. Hence Paul called him the father of the Gentiles who believe.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 4:16

Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,

Paul humbled the pride of the Jews by calling all those who imitated Abraham’s faith “the seed of Abraham,” even if they were of a different race. For if the law punishes those who break it, grace gives forgiveness of sins and confirms the promise of God, giving a blessing to the Gentiles.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 4:18

Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.

Abraham believed against the hope of nature but in the hope of the promise of God.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 4:25

Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

Christ underwent suffering for our sins in order to pay our debt and so that his resurrection might prefigure the general resurrection of us all.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 5:1

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

Faith has given you forgiveness of sins and made you spotless and righteous by the washing of regeneration. Therefore you ought to keep the peace by which you have been united with God. For when you were still enemies, the only begotten Son of God reconciled you by taking on human flesh and putting sin to death in it.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 5:10

For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

Once more, Paul calls the Lord Christ “the Son,” who is both God and man. But it is clear, I think, even to the greatest heretics in which nature his suffering took place.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Romans 5:12

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

St. Paul says that when Adam sinned he became mortal because of it and passed both on to his descendants. Thus death came to all men, in that all sinned. But each person receives the sentence of death not because of the sin of his first ancestor but because of his own sin.

INTERPRETATION OF THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

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