Charles Ellicott Commentary Romans 14:17

"for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." — Romans 14:17 (ASV)

Meat and drink.—Strictly, eating and drinking.

Righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.—By “righteousness and peace” is not here meant imputed righteousness, or justification and reconciliation with God, but rather the moral condition of righteousness in the Christian himself, and concord with his fellow-men. These are crowned in the confirmed Christian by that feeling of subdued and chastened exultation which is worked in him by the presence in his heart or constant influence of the Holy Spirit.

It is remarkable how, with all the wide difference in terminology between the writings of St. Paul and the Gospels, they yet come round to the very same point.

The “kingdom of God,” as described here, is exactly what we should gather from the fuller and more detailed sayings of our Lord: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man;” “The kingdom of God is within you;” “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation;” “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light;” “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness;” “Blessed are the peacemakers;” “Rejoice and be exceeding glad.”

It has not been beyond the power of non-Christian or even Christian philosophers, such, e.g., as Marcus Aurelius, to arrive at the conception of righteousness and peaceableness as duties to be observed and pursued.

The distinctiveness of Christianity consists in the unity it gives to these attributes, which naturally flow from a spring of deep religious emotion, and in the finish and perfection it adds to them by introducing that third term, “joy in the Holy Ghost.”

Many individuals have shown, and still show, with greater or lesser approximation, what the Christian ideal should be. However, the great and only perfect Exemplar is Jesus Himself, and that less, perhaps, in the later portion of His ministry, when He was fulfilling that other side of His mission, to “bear the sins of many” as the Saviour of mankind, than in the earlier, untroubled phase that finds expression in the Sermon on the Mount. This phase is in closest contact with the normal life of people.