Romans 9:1-2 : I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. In chapter 9, Paul enters on a new train of thought, which he continues to the close of the eleventh chapter. He has developed his theme that the gospel is God's power for saving men, and has shown that only through obedience to the gospel can men be saved, whether they be Jews or Gentiles. This would naturally lead to certain questions concerning the Jewish nation. "The theme of Rom 1:16-17 has been worked out; it has been shown that the gospel is a power of God unto salvation for them that believe, a power needed by Gentile and Jew alike, guaranteed on condition of faith and in response to faith by the love of God, and adequate to man's needs as shown in history and in individual experience; and a brief description has been given of the actual state of the Christian in Christ and of the certainty and splendor of his hope, resting upon the love of God. Naturally at this point the question of the Jews arises they were the typical instance of a people brought into close and peculiar relation to God, and they therefore afford a crucial case of God's dealings with such. How then did it come to pass that they rejected the gospel? What is their present state? their future destiny? and how does this affect Christians? The answer is found in the conditions under which God selects men for the executing of his purposes. It is important to bear in mind that the selection through-out is regarded as having reference not to the final salvation of persons, but to the execution of the purpose of God. Underlying the whole section is the special object of Saint Paul to justify himself in preaching the gospel to the Gentiles." (Cambridge Greek Testament). Romans 9:1-2 : I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. There seems to me no just reason for saying, as some commentators do, that Paul was making oath that he was telling the truth. He was solemnly assert---ing that, as a man in Christ--that is, as a Christian he was saying the truth. This use of the word con-science seems to be purely classical. Liddell and Scott define the Greek word thus: "A knowing with one's-self , consciousness; conscience." Of conscience Schaff-Herzog say: "The word comes to us from the Latin conscius, conscientia ('conscious,' consciousness'); but neither Greek nor Roman used it in our sense. It had no religious bearing. It is unknown in the Old Testa-ment, never used by our Lord, nor by the New Testa-ment writers, except Paul (and those directly inspired by him) and Peter." Hence, all that Paul knew of himself, as enlightened by the Holy Spirit, bore wit-ness that he was speaking the truth when he said that he had great sorrow and unceasing pain in his heart. He was conscious that he was telling the truth. Paul did frequently use the word conscience in a moral and religious sense, but not here. Bear in mind that where we have two words--"consciousness" and "conscience"--the Greeks had the one word.