What Does Romans 1:4 Mean?

(4) **With power.**—That is, in a transcendent and superhuman manner. **According to the spirit of holiness.**—In antithesis to “according to the flesh,” and therefore coming where we should expect “in His divine nature.” And yet there is a difference, the precise shade of which is not easy to define. What are we to understand by the “spirit of holiness”? Are we to regard it as simply convertible with “Holy Spirit”? Not quite. Or are we to look upon it as corresponding to “the flesh,” as “spirit” and “flesh” correspond in man? Again, not quite—or not merely. The spirit of Christ is human, for Christ took upon Him our nature in all its parts. It is human; and yet it is in it more especially that the divinity resides. It is in it that the “Godhead dwells bodily,” and the presence of the Godhead is seen in the peculiar and exceptional “holiness” by which it is characterised. The “spirit,” therefore, or that portion of His being to which St. Paul gives the name, in Christ, is the connecting-link between the human and the divine, and shares alike in both. It is the divine “enshrined” in the human, or the human penetrated and energised by the divine. It is, perhaps, not possible t*o* get beyond metaphorical language such as this. The junction of the human and divine must necessarily evade exact definition, and to carry such definition too far would be to misrepresent the meaning of the Apostle. We may compare with this passage 1Timothy 3:16, “God (rather, *Who*) was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit:” or St. Peter’s phrase, “Put to death in the flesh. but quickened by the Spirit”—rather, *in the spirit,* as the seat of that divinity by virtue of which He overcame death—(1Peter 3:18). The particular act in which the Sonship of Christ was most conspicuously ratified and confirmed was His resurrection from the dead. It was ratified by His resurrection, as a manifestation of transcendent and divine power. (Comp. Acts 2:24 *et seq.;* Acts 17:31; Romans 4:24.) It should be observed that this antithesis between the human and divine nature in Christ is not here intended to carry with it any disparagement of the former. Rather the Apostle wishes to bring out the completeness and fulness of the dignity of Christ, as exhibited on both its sides. He is at once the Jewish Messiah (and with the Jewish section of the Church at Rome this fact would carry great weight) and the Son of God. **By the resurrection from the dead.**—Strictly, *by the resurrection of the dead.* There is a slight distinction to be observed between the two phrases. It is not “by *His* resurrection *from* the dead,” but in an abstract and general sense, “by *the* resurrection *of* the dead”—by that resurrection of which Christ was the firstfruits.