Verse 16
16. Not ashamed Though it be the Gospel of the Jesus crucified as a Jewish malefactor, and though it be in the centre of proud and powerful Rome, with the whole Gentile world pouring contempt upon it, yet is he ready to stand up unshamed and hold forth the cross.
Power The Gospel is as it were a concrete power, yet power to a given result.
Every one Here is universality without limit.
That believeth And here is the limit. The salvation is intrinsically universal; the limitation is the rejection by those who might accept.
Jew first Perfectly uniform was the practice of Paul, as appears by the narratives in Acts, to offer the Gospel in every place first in the synagogues of the Jews. (See note on Acts 27:18.) The grand reason for this was that the mission of Israel was to be a nation of priests and preachers for the conversion of the world to Jesus Messiah, and so long as a remnant of hope remained that the Jews would be true to this offer, so long to them the first offer should be made. The word Jew, contracted from Judean, is derived from the name Judah, and from the name of a tribe became the name of the race. Greek here stands for Gentile, as the Jews had mostly to do with Greek-speaking Gentiles.
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