Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Romans · About this commentary
To the Only Wise God
Romans 16:21-25
21 Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you, as do Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater, my relatives. · WEB
The team greets, the scribe signs, grace closes the letter — and the doxology's placement varies in the tradition, gathering the whole gospel either way.
Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you, as do Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater, my relatives.
The greetings reverse direction: the team around Paul in Corinth sends its own. Timothy first, my fellow worker — the companion of half the letters. Three relatives — kin of Paul in the faith's service. And then a voice unique in the New Testament: I, Tertius, who write the letter, greet you in the Lord Romans 16:22.
The scribe signs. Every long letter of the age went through an amanuensis, but only here does the pen-hand step into the text and greet the readers himself — the man who wrote every word of Romans at dictation, given his one sentence, in the Lord: a brother, not a hired hand. The letter's greatest chapters passed through his fingers, and the church has always known his name because Paul let him say hello.
Gaius, my host and host of the whole assembly — the Corinthian whom Paul baptized, his house wide enough for the church entire. Erastus, the treasurer of the city — a believer holding Corinth's civic purse, the gospel reaching into the administration. And Quartus, the brother — the last name in the list, a man with no title at all, remembered forever as simply the brother: the letter's whole doctrine of standing in four words.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all! Amen Romans 16:24 — grace, the letter's first greeting Romans 1:7 and its last word to the readers.
And the great doxology — now to him who is able to establish you... — stands in this numbering after 14:23, while other English translations carry it here at the letter's end; the manuscript tradition itself divides, and the doxology gathers the whole letter from either seat: the establishing God, the mystery long hidden and now revealed through the prophetic writings Romans 14:24–26, made known to all the nations for obedience of faith — the exact phrase of the opening Romans 1:5, the letter closing its own frame — to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.
Sixteen chapters that began with a servant's name end with God's glory — the only destination this letter's every road has led to Romans 11:36.
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