Romans 1:4

4. Declared Outlined. The word is derived from ορος , a boundary line, and signifies bounded, as with a line. As a painter draws an exact outline of an object, so the form and nature of Jesus was as it were chalked or outlined as God’s Son.

With power Rather in power, referring to the wondrous display of power with which God declared his Son at the resurrection. (See note on Matthew 28:2-4.) He was prophetically outlined as Son of God by the prophets by divine knowledge; the outline was filled up by divine power.

Spirit of holiness This completes the antithesis embodied in the person of Christ, Son of man according to the flesh, Son of God according to the spirit of holiness. This last phrase does not designate the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, but that spirit whose attribute is holiness. (See note on Luke 1:35.)

By the resurrection from the dead Literally, from resurrection of dead, dead, or dead ones, being plural. (See note on Luke 20:35.) Resurrection of dead, or of dead ones, probably is a reference to the fact that the act of power that raised Jesus also raised a retinue of saints, as an earnest of the power by which the final resurrection of all through him would be accomplished. (See note on Matthew 27:53.) The preposition from is used to indicate that it was out from this manifold display of power that the demonstration came that he was, as the centurion confessed, what he claimed to be, the Son of God.

The antithesis of Christ’s nature (given with much beauty from the Greek by Dr. Forbes) may be thus presented in English:

The born | from seed of David | according to flesh.

The outlined | from resurrection of dead | according to spirit.

This is a striking representation of the human and the divine in the Godman.