Romans 9:1

): I say the truth in Christ, "I speak it as a Christian, one of God's people, children that will not lie, as one that knows not how to give flattering title." Or, "I appeal to Christ, who searches the heart, concerning it." He appeals likewise to his own conscience, which was instead of a thousand witnesses.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — leading-punctuation+unbalanced-parens

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not,....

I say the truth - In what I am about to affirm respecting my attachment to the nation and people. In Christ - Most interpreters regard this as a form of an oath, as equivalent to calling Christ to witness. It is certainly to be regarded, in its obvious sense, as an appeal to Christ as the searcher of the heart, and as the judge of falsehood. Thus, the word translated “in” ἐν en is used in the form of an oath in Mat 5:34-36; Rev 10:6, Greek.

WHAT an intense man Paul was! Once convince him and his whole nature moved in the direction which he judged to be right. He was whole-hearted when he persecuted the Church of God and he was equally whole-hearted when, afterwards, he labored with all his might to build up the Church which he had sought to destroy! I would to God we were all as thorough-going in the service of our Lord!

WHAT an intense man Paul was! Once convince him and his whole nature moved in the direction which he judged to be right. He was whole-hearted when he persecuted the Church of God and he was equally whole-hearted when, afterwards, he labored with all his might to build up the Church which he had sought to destroy! I would to God we were all as thorough-going in the service of our Lord! The pity is that so many professing Christians appear to have no heart, while others borrow a heart for some occasions but do not seem to keep one permanently beating in their own bosoms. O for a warm, engine-like heart all consecrated and forever pulsing mightily! What a change was worked in Saul of Tarsus, that he who was so ardent a persecutor should become so fervent a preacher! His conversion is one of the proofs of the Divinity of Christianity. The study of the story of Paul was the means of the conversion of Lord Lyttleton who read it with the design of exposing it as a hoax. His friend, Gilbert West, was, at the same time, considering the resurrection of our Lord in a similar spirit and, happily, with the same result—the friends met to unite in the joint conviction that the Bible is the Word of God! Dr. Johnson says of Lyttleton's, "Observations upon the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul," "it is a treatise to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer." Consider for a moment the renowned conversion of Paul. It was singularly Providential that just at that period when the Church needed such a man, the Apostle with his remarkable education, his noble purpose and his acquaintance with Jewish and Greek literature, should have been called out from the world and placed in the very forefront of the battle for Christ! Truly might he say that he was not a whit behind the very chief of the Apostles, though in his humility, he felt himself to be nothing.

I say the truth in Christ, I lie not - This is one of the most solemn oaths any man can possibly take. He appeals to Christ as the searcher of hearts that he tells the truth; asserts that his conscience was free from all guile in this matter, and that the Holy Ghost bore him testimony that what he said was true. Hence we find that the testimony of a man’s own conscience, and the testimony of the Holy Ghost, are two distinct things, and that the apostle had both at the same time. As the apostle had still remaining a very awful part of his commission to execute, namely, to declare to the Jews not only that God had chosen the Gentiles, but had rejected them because they had rejected Christ and his Gospel, it was necessary that he should assure them that however he had been persecuted by them because he had embraced the Gospel, yet it was so far from being a gratification to him that they had now fallen under the displeasure of God, that it was a subject of continual distress to his mind, and that it produced in him great heaviness and continual sorrow.