Theodoret of Cyrus

5th century · AD 458 · Eastern & Byzantine · 1,394 passages

In his own words on Romans

Romans 1:1
Civil governors and military commanders put their titles at the beginning of their letters in order to boast and show off. But St. Paul says that he was born out of due time, that he is the chief of sinners and that he is unworthy of his apostleship. Nevertheless, when writing his letters, he starts with the words imposed on him by grace, for the benefit of those who receive them. For when the recipients realized the importance of the person who was writing to them, they would read the letter with greater earnestness and attention.
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Romans 1:2
The Old Testament is full of predictions of Christ's coming. Paul did not call them "holy" by accident but, first of all, in order to teach that he recognized that the Old Testament was divinely inspired, and secondly, in order to exclude all other writings. For only the divinely inspired Scriptures are of any use. Indeed, Paul says that they are the image of the promise which was to come.
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Romans 1:4
Before his crucifixion and death the Lord Jesus Christ did not appear to be God either to the Jews or even to the disciples. For they were offended by human things, as when they saw him eating and drinking and sleeping and urinating, and not even his miracles made them change their minds. So, for instance, when they saw the miracle which he performed with the sea, they said: "Who is this, that even the sea and the winds obey him?" … But after he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, and the Holy Spirit came, and after miracles of every kind which they performed by calling on his adorable name, all those who believed recognized that he was God and the only begotten Son of God.
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Romans 1:6
Paul tells them here that he is not doing anything improper, nor invading fields assigned to others, for God had appointed him to preach to the Gentiles.
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Romans 1:8
Paul was not saying this in order to flatter them; he was simply telling the truth. For it could not be that what was happening at Rome should not be known all over the world. After all, it was the capital of the empire.
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Romans 1:10
Paul does not simply say that he wants to come to Rome but adds that he wants to come in God's will. For when the salvation of so many people was at stake, St. Paul left nothing unclear but acknowledged God's will in his prayer, for it is only by God's permission that we are worthy to deal with material things and to make choices. Do we not commit everything we have to the divine will on which we depend?
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Romans 1:11
These words are full of humility.… Paul only wants to share what he has himself received. And because the great Peter was the first to have taught them, Paul adds that he merely wants to confirm them in the teaching which has already been given to them and to water the trees which have already been planted. Once again, his speech is full of modesty.
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Romans 1:12
Paul wanted to receive as well as to give. The eagerness was on both sides.
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Romans 1:13
Paul declares both his own plan and God's overruling. For God's grace was fully in control of his life.
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Romans 1:17
The righteousness of God is not revealed to everyone but only to those with the eyes of faith. For the holy apostle teaches us that God foresaw this for us from the beginning and predicted it through the prophets, and even before the prophets, had it hidden in his secret will.Paul quoted Habakkuk for the benefit of the Jews, because he wanted to teach them not to cling to the provisions of the law but to follow the prophets. For many centuries before they had predicted that one day there would be salvation by faith alone. Then departing from his admonition to the Jews, he accuses everyone else of having brazenly departed from the natural law which the Creator had placed in them. For when God made them, he did not allow them to live like beasts but honored them with reason and gave them the ability to know the difference between good and evil. Those who lived righteous lives before the time of Moses confirm this by their witness.
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Romans 1:18
For nature taught them both that God is the Creator of all things and also that they should flee unrighteousness and embrace righteousness. But even when teachers were given to them, they did not live up to this. So God threatened them with future punishment.… This punishment is called the wrath of God, not because God punishes people for any emotional reason but in order to stun those who rebel against him.
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Romans 1:22
They increased their guilt by their claim, for in calling themselves wise they showed that in fact they were fools.
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Romans 1:24
By "gave them up" Paul means that God permitted this to happen. He simply abandoned them because they had fallen into extreme ungodliness.
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Romans 1:25
Ungodliness is the root of wickedness. These people were deprived of God's grace for both of these things.
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Romans 1:28
If they had wanted to know him, they would have followed the divine laws. But because they denied their Creator, he stopped looking after them.
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Romans 2:7
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.
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Romans 2:9
Here Paul uses the word Greek to refer not to Gentile believers but to those who lived before Christ's incarnation.
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Romans 2:10
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.
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Romans 2:21
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.
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Romans 3:3
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.
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Romans 3:4
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.
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Romans 3:8
This was not the intention of the apostles' teaching. On the contrary, they demanded that everyone abstain from all manner of wickedness.
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Romans 3:25
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.
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Romans 3:27
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."
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Romans 4:2
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.
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Romans 4:4
The doer of righteousness expects a reward, but justification by faith is the gift of the God of all.
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Romans 4:6
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.
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Romans 4:10
Paul demonstrates that faith was not only older than the law, it was older than circumcision as well.
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Romans 4:12
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.
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Romans 4:16
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.
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Romans 4:18
Abraham believed against the hope of nature but in the hope of the promise of God.
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Romans 4:25
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.
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Romans 5:1
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.
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Romans 5:10
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.
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Romans 5:12
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.
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Romans 5:13
Paul is not, as some think, accusing those who lived before the law but rather everyone together. When he says "before the law" he does not mean before the law began but before the law came to an end, because as long as the law was in control, sin retained its force.
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Romans 5:15
Paul calls Jesus a man in this passage in order to underline the parallel with Adam, for just as death came through one man, so the cure for death came through one man as well.
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Romans 5:19
Note that Paul says "many" and "not all," for we find some among the ancients who did not sin, e.g., Abel, Enoch, Melchizedek, the patriarchs and those who succeeded in keeping the law. On the other hand, after the coming of grace, there were many who continued to embrace an unrighteous and wicked life.
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Romans 5:20
Paul says that "the law came in" because he wants to show that God did not leave earlier generations destitute of his providence. But he also gave the law to the Jews, so that by their zeal and dedication to godliness they could act as a light to the other nations.
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Romans 6:4
The sacrament of baptism itself teaches us to turn away from sin. For baptism is a type of the death of Christ. In it we have become participants in the death and resurrection of Christ. Therefore, because we have shared in Christ's resurrection, we ought to live a new life now.
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Romans 6:6
The "old man" does not refer to our nature but to our evil mind. It is this which has been put to death in baptism, so that the body would not continue to serve sin.
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Romans 6:7
Whoever saw a dead man sleeping in some harlot's bed, or bloodying his hands with murder, or doing anything else which is sinful?
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Romans 6:8
Those of us who were buried with Christ ought to die to sin, because we are waiting for the resurrection.
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Romans 6:12
A reign is different from a tyranny in that a tyrant rules without the consent of his subjects, whereas a reign applies in those cases where the subjects have assented to it. Therefore Paul is urging his hearers not to assent any longer to the reign of sin, for the Lord destroyed sin's reign when he took on human flesh.
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Romans 6:13
By telling us to yield our members to God as instruments of righteousness, Paul teaches that the body is not evil but the creation of a good God. Therefore if it is properly and correctly controlled by the soul it can serve God.
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Romans 6:14
In other words, nature is no longer struggling on its own but has the Holy Spirit to help it.
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Romans 6:16
Righteousness and sin are mutually incompatible. As the Lord himself said in the holy Gospel: "No man can serve two masters."
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Romans 6:17
You who once were slaves to sin have broken away from it by the free will of your mind and have embraced spiritual teaching instead.
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Romans 7:4
In order not to offend the Jews or to give those heretics who reject the Old Testament any encouragement, Paul did not say that the law had come to an end but rather that we have died to the law by the saving grace of baptism.
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Romans 7:5
"In the flesh" means "under the law." Paul calls those laws regarding food, drink, leprosy and so on "flesh." … Paul teaches us that before grace came, while we were still under the law, we suffered ever more serious attacks of sin because, although the law showed us what it was we should be doing, it did not give us any help in doing it.
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Romans 7:6
Paul continues in his cautious manner, for he does not say that the law is abolished but rather that we have been set free from it.
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Romans 7:9
Adam had no fear of death before he sinned.
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Romans 7:10
As soon as God gave Adam and Eve the commandment concerning the trees, the devil came to Eve in the form of a serpent and lied to her. When she saw the beauty of the fruit she ate of it, being overcome by desire, and broke the commandment. Both she and Adam were immediately placed under sentence of death, for Adam too ate the fruit along with her.
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Romans 7:12
The law is what was given to Moses; the commandment, what was given to Adam. What Paul praises so highly the average person condemns. For those who have given themselves over to idleness and run away from the works of righteousness blame God for having given a commandment in the first place. They say that, if God did not know what was going to happen, how can he be God? And if he did know that men would sin but nevertheless gave the commandment, then he is himself the cause of sin. But these people ought to realize that the knowledge of good and evil belongs to all who have the gift of reason. Only those without reason lack the ability to distinguish one from the other. The wolf is vicious, the lion devours, and bears and leopards do the same sort of thing but they have no sense of sin, nor do they have a conscience which is offended by their actions. But men are ashamed even if nobody else sees what they do and are afraid to admit what they have done. For their conscience accuses them. How could this be if they lived without any law? But God gave them a commandment so that they would recognize their own rational nature and fear the lawgiver. Yet they knew that the lawgiver was merciful and that the law was not difficult to keep.The commandment is "holy" because it teaches what is right. It is "just" because it pronounces the correct sentence on those who break it. But it is also "good" because it prepares eternal life for those who keep it.
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Romans 7:14
Once again, Paul covers the law with praise. For what could be nobler than what he says about it here? He says in effect that the law was written by the Holy Spirit. Moses was given a share in his grace and thus wrote the law.
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Romans 7:15
We do not sin from necessity or by compulsion; rather we are overcome by desire and do things which in principle we detest.
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Romans 7:16
Paul says that he learned to hate what he does from the law, and therefore he defends the law and says that it was right.
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Romans 7:21
Paul says that "evil lies close at hand" because our body is mortal and passible, and our soul is sluggish and weak.
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Romans 7:24
Paul calls the body a "body of death" because it has been made subject to death and is therefore mortal. The soul, on the other hand, is immortal.
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Romans 8:3
Christ came "in the likeness of sinful flesh" because, although he took on human nature, he did not assume human sinfulness.… For although he had the same nature as we have, he did not have the same outlook or the same thoughts. For although the law could not accomplish its purpose on account of the weakness of those to whom it was given (for they had a mortal and passible nature), the only begotten Word of God broke the power of sin by taking on human flesh and fulfilled all righteousness, not giving in to the temptations of sin in any way.
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Quoted verbatim from public-domain English translations of the fathers — Aquinas's Catena Aurea, the Ante-Nicene and Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers, and related editions. Each quotation links to its source.