25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Dig Deeper
When my son was much younger than he is now, he was determined that he wanted to learn how to swim. Now, I had promised him that I was going to teach him how to swim but I didn’t think he was quite ready to do it yet. He became impatient and slowly became convinced that he could figure out how to swim on his own if we would just let him. He certainly did not think that he needed help anymore. So, I decided that the best course of things would be to let him try and fail. I let him get in the pool and pushed him a ways from the edge and let him go. He flailed around and realized quite quickly that he had overestimated his own ability to quickly learn how to swim. This was exactly where I wanted him to get to. He now knew that he couldn’t do it on his own. He needed help. He needed me to teach him to swim. Now he was ready to learn how to swim because he knew that he needed to rely on me. At the same time, there was another benefit. I had not only taught him a valuable lesson, I had shown myself faithful to my original promise to teach him to swim. I had given him the chance to learn on his own but that was only related to my original promise to teach in so much as it showed him that he really needed me to come through on that promise. And now I had.
Paul has made the case that the whole human race, Jew and Gentile alike, stand guilty before God in rebellion to his will with nothing to say in their defense and nothing that they can do to change the situation. Not even the sacrifices of the law in the old covenant could change the verdict of the Israelites. They could be called the people of God in the present age, but they needed something that would justify them not only temporarily in the present age but also at the final judgment. The Jews and the Gentiles needed the power of the gospel to change the situation that they both faced. They needed it to have the justifying effect, to enact the declaration that they were in the right as the people of God both now and forever, that the law could simply not have. Paul has already stated that the solution to both the problem of man and the problem of establishing God as righteous and faithful to his covenant is found in Jesus the Messiah. He will now begin to offer at least a brief explanation of how it is that God has accomplished all of that through Jesus.
In Leviticus 16, God gives Moses some strikingly specific instructions as to how Aaron was to enter in the Most Holy Place and make atonement for the sins of the people of God on the great Day of Atonement. The text tells us that “The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they approached the LORD. The LORD said to Moses: ‘Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die. For I will appear in the cloud over the atonement cover’” (Lev. 16:1-3). The text goes on to describe the way that Aaron should “put the incense on the fire before the LORD, and the smoke of the incense will conceal the atonement cover above the tablets of the covenant law, so that he will not die. He is to take some of the bull's blood and with his finger sprinkle it on the front of the atonement cover; then he shall sprinkle some of it with his finger seven times before the atonement cover. He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull's blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it” (Lev. 16:13-15). Israel was in a constant state of trouble before God before their sins but the Day of Atonement was the day that God graciously and mercifully put things back to right between them, at least temporarily.
This is the language and the imagery that Paul draws upon to describe what Jesus has done. On a much larger scale, in fact in a once-and-for-all type of action, Jesus’ death was the final sacrifice that the Day of Atonement could only point to and serve as a shadow for. What could be done only temporarily on the Day of Atonement was enacted for all time in Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. Just as the Day of Atonement showed the Israelites that God was faithful to the covenant by dealing with their sin and inability to live up to that covenant, the sacrifice of Jesus is the ultimate atonement, in a sense, that shows God’s righteousness, his covenant faithfulness to the highest degree.
This falls in line perfectly with Paul’s overall point that the death and resurrection of Jesus demonstrate God’s covenant faithfulness. Through Jesus, God was making good on his promise to Abraham that there would be a faithful family of all nations, both Jews and Gentiles. In order for this to happen, though, something had to be done about sin. The shedding of the blood of the suffering but faithful servant is God’s response. This is how he fulfilled his promise. In doing so, God has not only dealt with sin once-and-for-all but he has demonstrated his incredible patience and forbearance by not dealing with rebellious Gentiles and unfaithful Israel in the way that their sin deserved.
God presented Jesus, says Paul, as this sacrifice. He uses the word “presented” that was associated with the act of the priests presenting the showbread on the altar in the Temple. Thus, Paul has combined three powerful points of imagery. The cover of atonement (or mercy seat), the presentation of the showbread, and the shedding of blood. It all adds up to make the point that God has truly made forgiveness available through the blood of Jesus and that this was all to be received in a new way. It was to be received in the way that God had always intended and expected, by faith. Paul will get to that in more detail in chapter 4 but for right now he is content to simply make the statement and let it speak for itself.
To understand what Paul is saying fully in verse 26, then, we have to remember that the way the term “justify” (and all of it’s related terms) was used in two senses. The most important aspect of justification was the final declaration that God would make at the day of judgment. He will declare on that day once-and-for-all who his people are, who is standing in the right before him. But the other aspect of justification was how to tell who those people were in the present. Who did God justify in the present and what was that justification based on? This justification in the present anticipated and brought forward that final future judgment into the present.
Through the Messiah, God has demonstrated his covenant faithfulness in the present age. The final verdict of that last day has, through the resurrection of Christ, been brought forward into the present so that no one has to wonder what the judgment on that final day will be. Those who enter into the life of Christ through the vehicle of faith (There is an unbreakable link in Paul’s mind between faith and entering into Christ which will become more explicit in chapter 6. We must be careful to understand this insoluble connection between faith and the faithful action of entering into Christ and not try to inappropriately disconnect the two as so many in the modern evangelical world do. This leads to a false distinction between faith and the obedient act of entering into the life of Christ that Paul would not have recognized) can know in the present that they have been justified. They have been declared to be in the right and given access to the one true family of God. This declaration stands as a sure guarantee for those who stand in Christ before God on the final day. Thus the sign of justification, the uniform (so to speak) of the people of God is those who live by faith in the life of the Messiah. Theologian NT Wright declares that the meaning of justification by faith is that “when anyone believes in the gospel, God declares that he or she is truly one of those who will be vindicated in the future.” Doing the works of the law that separated the Jews out from everyone else, Paul wanted to make clear, are not the marks of justification in the present age. If you want to know the verdict of the future in the present, if you want to know who the people of God are, then look for those who have died to self and are living by faith a crucified life in Christ (Gal. 2:20).
Devotional Thought
In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has shown himself to be faithful to his covenant, to be just in dealing with sin; and to be compassionate on those who would appeal in faith to the life of the Messiah rather than their own merit. When we consider all of that, is there any better reason than to spend some extra time today in fervent praise of the almighty God?
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Romans 3:21-24
Righteousness Through Faith
21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Dig Deeper
When Abraham Lincoln was a younger adult he began a small store with a partner. It was the nineteenth century version of a corner grocery store. The store managed to stay open for awhile but then Lincoln’s partner basically skipped town and left Lincoln holding the bag for a great deal of debt to creditors and suppliers. Under Illinois law at the time, Lincoln was only obligated for his half of the debts and did not have to cover the debts that were left by his partner. That was the fair thing to do, but Lincoln didn’t think it was the just thing to do. Instead he vowed to pay not only his portion of the debt of the now-closed store but his partner’s portion as well. He called it his own personal national debt. Lincoln worked hard for years and finally paid off every cent of that debt. This is part of the reason that he gained a reputation as not just an honest man but one who was faithful to his word. People knew that Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t just do what was fair; he would do what was just.
As it stands to this point, Paul has left God with a big problem. Paul has demonstrated clearly that Jews and Gentiles alike stand speechless and defenseless before God and well deserving of his wrath and punishment. But where does God go from there? How can be considered righteous, or in other words, just and faithful to his covenant to bless the whole world and do something about the problem of sin. Paul has made it clear that everyone stands guilty before God because of that very sin problem, so how has God been faithful to his covenant promises? It might be a simple solution if the situation was as many Jews of Paul’s day imagined it; that Israel was just and the rest of the pagan world was not. They were simply waiting for God to sort that out and make it clear, exalting Israel as his special and privileged covenant people. But if God acted in that way he would be showing favoritism to the Jews and not treating them on even ground with pagans. That would make this an issue of God’s justice.
But for Paul, that’s exactly where things got extremely complicated and muddled. Israel was supposed to be that solution. The family that had been promised to Abraham in Genesis 12 that would solve the problem of sin from Genesis 3, had become part of the problem. They were just as guilty before God as the Gentile world. How could God live up to his promise to solve the problem of sin and still be faithful to his promise to bless the whole world through Israel? How could he be faithful when, seemingly, his chosen vehicle was faithless. His promise to Abraham was that he would create one family that would stand in the place of reconciliation but that it would come directly through Israel. Paul, as we can see, has worked himself into quite a corner in his defense of God’s righteousness. Just as Jacob was faithful to the covenant but Esau wasn’t, so God passed the covenant through Jacob, what God needed was a faithful Israelite, a Jacob, through whom the covenant could pass. This isn’t just a matter of God’s justice but his covenant justice.
This is exactly what the gospel is. It’s not just some new religion or ethical teaching. It is the declaration of an historical event. In the Messiah, and even more specifically through his resurrection (Rom. 1:1-6) God has made his righteousness known. Paul must walk a tightrope, however, with this declaration. It is apart from the law itself in that it is completely new. It’s not just the best that the law had to offer, but something quite different. Yet, it is not an invention that the Law and the Prophets, a common way of referring to the entire Old Testament, knew nothing of. It is new but it is the very fulfillment of God’s promises. If it was something entirely new, then God would not be considered faithful to his covenant promises. Paul’s point is that the revelation of God’s righteousness through the Messiah stands as something completely separate from the law yet comes from it and stands in continuity with the original promises given to Abraham. That is precisely why the gospel reveals God’s faithfulness to his covenant.
The wording of verse 22 in the TNIV can certainly be correct but it could just as easily be translated that “This righteousness is given through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for the benefit of all who have faith.” This slightly changes the common understanding of this passage but fits much better with the overall context of Paul’s line of thinking. It is not so much that the covenant faithfulness of god is given by having faith in Jesus Christ and then, redundantly stating “for all who believe” (although Paul will discuss the role and importance of individual faith in the gospel). Rather, Paul’s point is that the covenant faithfulness of God is revealed through the faithfulness and obedience of the Messiah.
One of Paul’s common ways of thinking that we need to understand in order to work through passages like this with him and arrive at the same point that he wants to take us is to realize that Paul is operating on the ancient understanding that what was true of the king is true of his people. Paul sees the Messiah through that same lens He represented his people so that what was true for him was true for them, and what was true of them was true for him. It is this close association that led the risen Christ to inquire of Paul as to why he was persecuting him when, in fact, it was the Messiah’s people that were being persecuted (Acts 9:4). The Messiah was the faithful servant of Isaiah 40-55 which meant that the servant wasn’t just a personification of Israel as many Jews of Jesus’ day thought. The servant really was one person that would represent the people (Isaiah 53:4). The covenant faithfulness is available in the faithful obedience of the Messiah to all those who respond in faith to the gospel and obediently put their hope in his life rather than their own. He was faithful to Israel’s role in the covenant and obedient by submitting to God’s will.
This is not just something, though, that was available to Jews. The Jews and Gentiles were in the same boat when it came to their guilt and now they have the same access to the covenant justice of the Father. He promised Abraham one family of his descendants and non-descendants and now that promise has been fulfilled. All were in need of this faithfulness because, as Paul says in verse 23 summarizing his arguments from 1:18-3:20, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
All humans were in obvious need of redemption. “Redemption” was a specific word that pointed to buying back a slave from the market but it also held connotations for the Jews of their rescue from slavery in Egypt. God has now done, in the Messiah, for the world what he had done for Israel in Egypt. All have sinned and continue to fall short of God’s glory, the purpose for which he made humankind. The Messiah has enacted the new Exodus and set all people who associate themselves with the Messiah and his gospel free from the enslavement and humanity-robbing qualities of sin.
This freeing action that has come through the Messiah is exactly the new power that the whole world needed. Humans were separated from God and unable to enact their own freedom. In the same token, the resurrection of the Messiah and the revelation of that life to those who would respond in obedience and faith, freely makes justification available. This is a monumental display of God’s grace. He didn’t just let people off the hook but declared them to be in the right and to be part of his family. There is a huge difference there. Many years ago, O.J. Simpson was found not guilty but most people still thought of him as guilty and treated him as such even if he was free. There is a far cry between let off the hook or simply pardoned for a crime and being declared to be in the right. All Jews and Gentiles who stand side-by-side, sharing in the same guilt in the cosmic courtroom that Paul has described have been shown the grace of God available in the life of the Messiah for all those who would respond to the gospel message in faith and determine to enter into that life and live by faith.
Devotional Thought
One conviction that is often difficult for Christians to gain or to keep consistently is the conviction that all human beings have sinned, have fallen short of God’s glory and stand in need of saving. This is a message that is particularly unpopular in our world today. How does it change the way you live among the world and evangelize if you have a firm biblical conviction in Romans 3:23.
21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Dig Deeper
When Abraham Lincoln was a younger adult he began a small store with a partner. It was the nineteenth century version of a corner grocery store. The store managed to stay open for awhile but then Lincoln’s partner basically skipped town and left Lincoln holding the bag for a great deal of debt to creditors and suppliers. Under Illinois law at the time, Lincoln was only obligated for his half of the debts and did not have to cover the debts that were left by his partner. That was the fair thing to do, but Lincoln didn’t think it was the just thing to do. Instead he vowed to pay not only his portion of the debt of the now-closed store but his partner’s portion as well. He called it his own personal national debt. Lincoln worked hard for years and finally paid off every cent of that debt. This is part of the reason that he gained a reputation as not just an honest man but one who was faithful to his word. People knew that Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t just do what was fair; he would do what was just.
As it stands to this point, Paul has left God with a big problem. Paul has demonstrated clearly that Jews and Gentiles alike stand speechless and defenseless before God and well deserving of his wrath and punishment. But where does God go from there? How can be considered righteous, or in other words, just and faithful to his covenant to bless the whole world and do something about the problem of sin. Paul has made it clear that everyone stands guilty before God because of that very sin problem, so how has God been faithful to his covenant promises? It might be a simple solution if the situation was as many Jews of Paul’s day imagined it; that Israel was just and the rest of the pagan world was not. They were simply waiting for God to sort that out and make it clear, exalting Israel as his special and privileged covenant people. But if God acted in that way he would be showing favoritism to the Jews and not treating them on even ground with pagans. That would make this an issue of God’s justice.
But for Paul, that’s exactly where things got extremely complicated and muddled. Israel was supposed to be that solution. The family that had been promised to Abraham in Genesis 12 that would solve the problem of sin from Genesis 3, had become part of the problem. They were just as guilty before God as the Gentile world. How could God live up to his promise to solve the problem of sin and still be faithful to his promise to bless the whole world through Israel? How could he be faithful when, seemingly, his chosen vehicle was faithless. His promise to Abraham was that he would create one family that would stand in the place of reconciliation but that it would come directly through Israel. Paul, as we can see, has worked himself into quite a corner in his defense of God’s righteousness. Just as Jacob was faithful to the covenant but Esau wasn’t, so God passed the covenant through Jacob, what God needed was a faithful Israelite, a Jacob, through whom the covenant could pass. This isn’t just a matter of God’s justice but his covenant justice.
This is exactly what the gospel is. It’s not just some new religion or ethical teaching. It is the declaration of an historical event. In the Messiah, and even more specifically through his resurrection (Rom. 1:1-6) God has made his righteousness known. Paul must walk a tightrope, however, with this declaration. It is apart from the law itself in that it is completely new. It’s not just the best that the law had to offer, but something quite different. Yet, it is not an invention that the Law and the Prophets, a common way of referring to the entire Old Testament, knew nothing of. It is new but it is the very fulfillment of God’s promises. If it was something entirely new, then God would not be considered faithful to his covenant promises. Paul’s point is that the revelation of God’s righteousness through the Messiah stands as something completely separate from the law yet comes from it and stands in continuity with the original promises given to Abraham. That is precisely why the gospel reveals God’s faithfulness to his covenant.
The wording of verse 22 in the TNIV can certainly be correct but it could just as easily be translated that “This righteousness is given through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for the benefit of all who have faith.” This slightly changes the common understanding of this passage but fits much better with the overall context of Paul’s line of thinking. It is not so much that the covenant faithfulness of god is given by having faith in Jesus Christ and then, redundantly stating “for all who believe” (although Paul will discuss the role and importance of individual faith in the gospel). Rather, Paul’s point is that the covenant faithfulness of God is revealed through the faithfulness and obedience of the Messiah.
One of Paul’s common ways of thinking that we need to understand in order to work through passages like this with him and arrive at the same point that he wants to take us is to realize that Paul is operating on the ancient understanding that what was true of the king is true of his people. Paul sees the Messiah through that same lens He represented his people so that what was true for him was true for them, and what was true of them was true for him. It is this close association that led the risen Christ to inquire of Paul as to why he was persecuting him when, in fact, it was the Messiah’s people that were being persecuted (Acts 9:4). The Messiah was the faithful servant of Isaiah 40-55 which meant that the servant wasn’t just a personification of Israel as many Jews of Jesus’ day thought. The servant really was one person that would represent the people (Isaiah 53:4). The covenant faithfulness is available in the faithful obedience of the Messiah to all those who respond in faith to the gospel and obediently put their hope in his life rather than their own. He was faithful to Israel’s role in the covenant and obedient by submitting to God’s will.
This is not just something, though, that was available to Jews. The Jews and Gentiles were in the same boat when it came to their guilt and now they have the same access to the covenant justice of the Father. He promised Abraham one family of his descendants and non-descendants and now that promise has been fulfilled. All were in need of this faithfulness because, as Paul says in verse 23 summarizing his arguments from 1:18-3:20, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
All humans were in obvious need of redemption. “Redemption” was a specific word that pointed to buying back a slave from the market but it also held connotations for the Jews of their rescue from slavery in Egypt. God has now done, in the Messiah, for the world what he had done for Israel in Egypt. All have sinned and continue to fall short of God’s glory, the purpose for which he made humankind. The Messiah has enacted the new Exodus and set all people who associate themselves with the Messiah and his gospel free from the enslavement and humanity-robbing qualities of sin.
This freeing action that has come through the Messiah is exactly the new power that the whole world needed. Humans were separated from God and unable to enact their own freedom. In the same token, the resurrection of the Messiah and the revelation of that life to those who would respond in obedience and faith, freely makes justification available. This is a monumental display of God’s grace. He didn’t just let people off the hook but declared them to be in the right and to be part of his family. There is a huge difference there. Many years ago, O.J. Simpson was found not guilty but most people still thought of him as guilty and treated him as such even if he was free. There is a far cry between let off the hook or simply pardoned for a crime and being declared to be in the right. All Jews and Gentiles who stand side-by-side, sharing in the same guilt in the cosmic courtroom that Paul has described have been shown the grace of God available in the life of the Messiah for all those who would respond to the gospel message in faith and determine to enter into that life and live by faith.
Devotional Thought
One conviction that is often difficult for Christians to gain or to keep consistently is the conviction that all human beings have sinned, have fallen short of God’s glory and stand in need of saving. This is a message that is particularly unpopular in our world today. How does it change the way you live among the world and evangelize if you have a firm biblical conviction in Romans 3:23.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Romans 3:9-20
No One Is Righteous
9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
13 "Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
14 "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know."
18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes."
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
Dig Deeper
I remember many years ago when my sister and I were both still in our teen years and one afternoon she left school at lunchtime and went back to our house with a bunch of her friends. They were all a little bit older than I and certainly didn’t want me around in their immediate vicinity but usually didn’t mind if I hung around at the house so long as I kept my distance. So, on this one particular day, because they all went to our house, I decided to go there as well. When I go there I discovered that my sister and her friends were breaking a few of my parents rules when we had friends over. My sister wasn’t concerned, though, because who was going to tell on her? If they happened to suspect something later and ask, she wasn’t going to point out her own guilt and she certainly expected that I would exonerate her. She was sure that if I was called to testify, she would be okay because I wouldn’t accuse her of anything. And there was her big mistake. I was upset that her friends told me to leave them alone and so I actually gathered a little evidence and turned on her. She thought that I would defend her but I actually did nothing but point out her violation. There is nothing quite like the sinking feeling that comes when you think someone is going to defend and protect you only to find that they are the very ones who accuse you.
This is not a perfect analogy to what is going here in this section, analogies never are perfect, but Paul wants the Jews to know that they are on the same footing as the Gentiles when it comes to God’s justification. Justification, as we remember, is his declaration of who the people of God are and who is standing in the right before God, with an eye on the final justification on the final day of judgment. The Jew of Paul’s day of course would be horrified a suggestion that they were on equal grounds with Gentiles and quite confident that they were justified in the present because of their possession of the law of God. This present justification kept them separate from the pagan world and showed them to be the true people of God in the present. Thus, when they faced God in final judgment they felt confident that their status as the possessors of the law would acquit them in this divine legal scene. And that is exactly where Paul wants them to see that they have gotten things wrong. That was not the purpose of the law and it never was. The law won’t acquit, defend, or protect them when they stand in judgment. It will actually accuse them as sinners. If they think that the law will justify them they will be sadly mistaken because the law will actually point the finger of accusation at them rather than defending them.
The question that begins this section looks the same, at first glance, as the question Paul answered affirmatively in verse 1 of chapter three. Are there real privileges that come with being a Jew? “Yes,” said Paul. Not the least of those is being entrusted with the oracles of God. His question now, though, despite the seeming similarity is a different question. Are the Jews in a better position when it comes to justification and judgment than anyone else if they have the privilege of being entrusted with the oracles? Of course not, says Paul. The charge has already been made in complete against the Gentiles, now he is finishing his point that the Jews stand charged and guilty just as surely as the Gentiles are. Paul goes farther than just saying that all humans have sinned, but he gives a personifying force to sin, describing it as a malevolent force that has enslaved all human societies, Jew and Gentile alike. They are both enslaved to sin and, as Paul will begin to show in the next section, need a new power, something that was not previously available to set them free.
Paul then turns to a string of quotations from the Old Testament that seem to be a string of references that make the point that all humans are guilty before God. And while that is true, Paul’s choice of quotations is far more systematic, subtle, and intentional than a random string of proof-texts that bolster the point he is trying to make. Paul begins with a string of quotes from Psalm 14:1-3 (with possible allusion to Ps. 53:1-3; Eccl. 7:20); he then, in verse 13, moves to Psalm 140:3; verse 14 comes from Psalm 10:7; verses 15-17 come from Isaiah 59:7-8; and verse 18 comes from Psalm 36:1. To follow Paul’s brilliant but subtle line of thought it is necessary to go back and not just read the verses from which Paul quotes but we have to understand the entire context of the passages to which Paul alludes. When we do this the rapid blur of so many loosely connected quotes comes into sharp focus. Each passage makes clear the condemnation of every human being before God but they all also point to a promise that God will work things out in the end. He will be faithful to his covenant and will show himself to be faithful and just despite the seeming bleakness of the circumstances. Yes, the surface meaning of the quotes is that no one is faithful to the covenant, no one stands in the right place before God, no one does God’s will, so all are equally guilty. But for the careful reader, Paul has deftly woven in a clue to where he is about to turn in the next section. All humans are guilty, but because of that very situation, God will act to help the helpless and fulfill the covenant, demonstrating that he is just, fair, and faithful to the covenant.
Paul’s point in verse 19 is for the Jew that thinks they can appeal to their possession of the law as a sign of their justification in the present, which guarantees their position in the final judgment. If they think that, they need to cover their mouths and let it be silenced. When Paul says this about silencing the mouth, he is clearly thinking of a courtroom setting. In the Jewish culture when a defendant had nothing more to say in their own defense because of their obvious guilt (see Job 5:16; Ps. 63:11; 107:42), they would put their hand over their mouth. An obviously guilty defendant who continued to speak in their own defense might be struck in the mouth by someone signifying that they should cover their own mouths (see John 18:22 and Acts 23:2 for descriptions of this happening). Everyone, in other words, stands before God with no excuse and nothing more to say. The Jew should cover his own mouth rather than trying to continue to assert his covenant righteousness before God.
Paul has already made an airtight case that Gentiles are deserving of God’s judgment and now he will finish off his shocking charge that the Jews are in the same state despite their possession of the law and all of the other privileges that came with being a Jew under the old covenant. No one, says Paul, will be declared to be in the right before God or in good standing in covenant with God by “observing the law.” The TNIV changes what is more accurately “by doing the works of the law.” When Paul uses “works of the law” here he doesn’t mean that Jews thought they earned salvation by doing the law. The works of the law were the aspects of the law that defined Jews as a separate people from the Gentiles. The works of the law could include the whole law, but things like circumcision, the food laws, and Sabbath observation were usually meant. These were the things that marked them out as being the people of God and clearly different from the Gentiles. A Jew that appealed to the works of the law would be saying, “Look, these are the things that demonstrate that we are different from the pagans and thus, obviously the true people of God. We are the ones that will be justified and vindicated at the final judgment.” By appealing to the works of the law, a Jew didn’t believe they were claiming to be sinless or to have perfectly followed every command, but they appealed to the possession of the law as the uniform of God’s promised people.
They thought, in other words that the possession of the law and doing the works of the law would exonerate them as innocent by showing them to be part of the one true family that had been forgiven and was the light of the world, the descendants of Abraham. Instead of the law doing that, however, Paul says the law accuses them by making them conscious of sin. They appealed to the law to defend them and help them but the law has responded by pointing the finger at them as being as guilty as anyone else. Paul doesn’t attempt to fully explain the purpose of the law but will return in 5:20 and 7:7-25 to dealing with why God gave the law. He has made his case, though, that both Jews and Gentiles have nothing to say to God in their defense. They both need something new and powerful to gain their freedom from the slavery of sin. It is to this that Paul will now begin to turn.
Devotional Thought
The problem for the Jews was that they put their hope in following God’s law rather than in God himself. Have you ever found yourself putting your hope for salvation in what you do or where you go to church rather than in the life of Christ alone? Spend some time today and dwell on the thought of why Paul put so much emphasis on understanding that the new family of God relied on faith in the life of the Messiah alone.
9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
13 "Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
14 "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know."
18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes."
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
Dig Deeper
I remember many years ago when my sister and I were both still in our teen years and one afternoon she left school at lunchtime and went back to our house with a bunch of her friends. They were all a little bit older than I and certainly didn’t want me around in their immediate vicinity but usually didn’t mind if I hung around at the house so long as I kept my distance. So, on this one particular day, because they all went to our house, I decided to go there as well. When I go there I discovered that my sister and her friends were breaking a few of my parents rules when we had friends over. My sister wasn’t concerned, though, because who was going to tell on her? If they happened to suspect something later and ask, she wasn’t going to point out her own guilt and she certainly expected that I would exonerate her. She was sure that if I was called to testify, she would be okay because I wouldn’t accuse her of anything. And there was her big mistake. I was upset that her friends told me to leave them alone and so I actually gathered a little evidence and turned on her. She thought that I would defend her but I actually did nothing but point out her violation. There is nothing quite like the sinking feeling that comes when you think someone is going to defend and protect you only to find that they are the very ones who accuse you.
This is not a perfect analogy to what is going here in this section, analogies never are perfect, but Paul wants the Jews to know that they are on the same footing as the Gentiles when it comes to God’s justification. Justification, as we remember, is his declaration of who the people of God are and who is standing in the right before God, with an eye on the final justification on the final day of judgment. The Jew of Paul’s day of course would be horrified a suggestion that they were on equal grounds with Gentiles and quite confident that they were justified in the present because of their possession of the law of God. This present justification kept them separate from the pagan world and showed them to be the true people of God in the present. Thus, when they faced God in final judgment they felt confident that their status as the possessors of the law would acquit them in this divine legal scene. And that is exactly where Paul wants them to see that they have gotten things wrong. That was not the purpose of the law and it never was. The law won’t acquit, defend, or protect them when they stand in judgment. It will actually accuse them as sinners. If they think that the law will justify them they will be sadly mistaken because the law will actually point the finger of accusation at them rather than defending them.
The question that begins this section looks the same, at first glance, as the question Paul answered affirmatively in verse 1 of chapter three. Are there real privileges that come with being a Jew? “Yes,” said Paul. Not the least of those is being entrusted with the oracles of God. His question now, though, despite the seeming similarity is a different question. Are the Jews in a better position when it comes to justification and judgment than anyone else if they have the privilege of being entrusted with the oracles? Of course not, says Paul. The charge has already been made in complete against the Gentiles, now he is finishing his point that the Jews stand charged and guilty just as surely as the Gentiles are. Paul goes farther than just saying that all humans have sinned, but he gives a personifying force to sin, describing it as a malevolent force that has enslaved all human societies, Jew and Gentile alike. They are both enslaved to sin and, as Paul will begin to show in the next section, need a new power, something that was not previously available to set them free.
Paul then turns to a string of quotations from the Old Testament that seem to be a string of references that make the point that all humans are guilty before God. And while that is true, Paul’s choice of quotations is far more systematic, subtle, and intentional than a random string of proof-texts that bolster the point he is trying to make. Paul begins with a string of quotes from Psalm 14:1-3 (with possible allusion to Ps. 53:1-3; Eccl. 7:20); he then, in verse 13, moves to Psalm 140:3; verse 14 comes from Psalm 10:7; verses 15-17 come from Isaiah 59:7-8; and verse 18 comes from Psalm 36:1. To follow Paul’s brilliant but subtle line of thought it is necessary to go back and not just read the verses from which Paul quotes but we have to understand the entire context of the passages to which Paul alludes. When we do this the rapid blur of so many loosely connected quotes comes into sharp focus. Each passage makes clear the condemnation of every human being before God but they all also point to a promise that God will work things out in the end. He will be faithful to his covenant and will show himself to be faithful and just despite the seeming bleakness of the circumstances. Yes, the surface meaning of the quotes is that no one is faithful to the covenant, no one stands in the right place before God, no one does God’s will, so all are equally guilty. But for the careful reader, Paul has deftly woven in a clue to where he is about to turn in the next section. All humans are guilty, but because of that very situation, God will act to help the helpless and fulfill the covenant, demonstrating that he is just, fair, and faithful to the covenant.
Paul’s point in verse 19 is for the Jew that thinks they can appeal to their possession of the law as a sign of their justification in the present, which guarantees their position in the final judgment. If they think that, they need to cover their mouths and let it be silenced. When Paul says this about silencing the mouth, he is clearly thinking of a courtroom setting. In the Jewish culture when a defendant had nothing more to say in their own defense because of their obvious guilt (see Job 5:16; Ps. 63:11; 107:42), they would put their hand over their mouth. An obviously guilty defendant who continued to speak in their own defense might be struck in the mouth by someone signifying that they should cover their own mouths (see John 18:22 and Acts 23:2 for descriptions of this happening). Everyone, in other words, stands before God with no excuse and nothing more to say. The Jew should cover his own mouth rather than trying to continue to assert his covenant righteousness before God.
Paul has already made an airtight case that Gentiles are deserving of God’s judgment and now he will finish off his shocking charge that the Jews are in the same state despite their possession of the law and all of the other privileges that came with being a Jew under the old covenant. No one, says Paul, will be declared to be in the right before God or in good standing in covenant with God by “observing the law.” The TNIV changes what is more accurately “by doing the works of the law.” When Paul uses “works of the law” here he doesn’t mean that Jews thought they earned salvation by doing the law. The works of the law were the aspects of the law that defined Jews as a separate people from the Gentiles. The works of the law could include the whole law, but things like circumcision, the food laws, and Sabbath observation were usually meant. These were the things that marked them out as being the people of God and clearly different from the Gentiles. A Jew that appealed to the works of the law would be saying, “Look, these are the things that demonstrate that we are different from the pagans and thus, obviously the true people of God. We are the ones that will be justified and vindicated at the final judgment.” By appealing to the works of the law, a Jew didn’t believe they were claiming to be sinless or to have perfectly followed every command, but they appealed to the possession of the law as the uniform of God’s promised people.
They thought, in other words that the possession of the law and doing the works of the law would exonerate them as innocent by showing them to be part of the one true family that had been forgiven and was the light of the world, the descendants of Abraham. Instead of the law doing that, however, Paul says the law accuses them by making them conscious of sin. They appealed to the law to defend them and help them but the law has responded by pointing the finger at them as being as guilty as anyone else. Paul doesn’t attempt to fully explain the purpose of the law but will return in 5:20 and 7:7-25 to dealing with why God gave the law. He has made his case, though, that both Jews and Gentiles have nothing to say to God in their defense. They both need something new and powerful to gain their freedom from the slavery of sin. It is to this that Paul will now begin to turn.
Devotional Thought
The problem for the Jews was that they put their hope in following God’s law rather than in God himself. Have you ever found yourself putting your hope for salvation in what you do or where you go to church rather than in the life of Christ alone? Spend some time today and dwell on the thought of why Paul put so much emphasis on understanding that the new family of God relied on faith in the life of the Messiah alone.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Romans 3:1-8
God's Faithfulness
1 What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? 2 Much in every way! First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God.
3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written:
"So that you may be proved right when you speak
and prevail when you judge."
5 But if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6 Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7 Someone might argue, "If my falsehood enhances God's truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?" 8 Why not say—as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say—"Let us do evil that good may result"? Their condemnation is just!
Dig Deeper
A few years ago, when I was still coaching high school basketball, one of my wife’s younger cousins came to live with us for a couple of years. He had been having some academic and other troubles in his home town and it was decided that it would be the best thing for him if he moved from his home state to Wisconsin to live with us for his remaining two years of high school. Once he got there, he decided to attend the high school at which I taught. He was, in addition to being quite intelligent, a pretty good athlete. He played on the football team and then decided that, although football was his best sport, that he would go out for the basketball team as well. Because he lived with us, we had many opportunities to talk about basketball and for me to offer him coaching, insights, and other help. Yet, he was almost surprised when time came around for tryouts to start and the practice season to begin because not only did I have the same expectations for him that I did everyone else, he found himself having to fight for a spot on the team and playing time like anyone else. He couldn’t sail by and expect to be on the team simply because he was my cousin and lived with me. So a natural question that he could have had was, “Is there any advantage to being your cousin and living with you if I’m still in the same boat as everyone else?” He never had to actually ask that question because I think he knew that there were many advantages but they just didn’t stretch to putting him on the team itself. Living with me would give him definite advantages, but he would still have to earn his spot on the team.
Paul has been making a clear point that Jews do not stand in advantage over the Gentiles when it comes to the final judgment and being part of the people of God in the present. The natural question is that if having the law and all the other aspects of Jewish life do no longer automatically make one part of the people of God nor does it reserve a place for them in God’s kingdom on the day of final judgment, then is there any advantage to being a Jew at all? Is Paul, asks Paul imagined debating partner, saying that that there is absolutely no advantage to being a Jew as opposed to a Gentile? At this point, we might expect Paul to agree with that statement but Paul will have no part in such a shallow theology. The Jews really were the people of God, they really were given God’s law and the vocation to be a light to the world, and there were advantages to all of that but not the advantages that they might want. There were many advantages but they still were in need of the gospel in order to become part of the eternal kingdom of God. Their previous advantages didn’t provide them an automatic place as the people of God.
This passage, like much of Romans, has many difficult elements in it and different ways that Paul’s statements can and have been taken through the years. There are two things that will help us through this section if we keep them firmly in mind as we read. I’ve already alluded to the first thing. Paul continues his mock debate in this passage, supplying both questions and challenges to his point of view. Taking careful note of the times when Paul does that will help us follow his line of thinking. The second thing is to realize what Paul means by the word “entrusted.” If I entrusted you with a message, it would typically mean that I have given you a message that you are to keep carefully because it is for someone else. Paul uses the word in the same way. Paul says that Israel has been entrusted with the word of God, meaning that it was given to them with the intent, not of keeping it just for themselves but they were given it with the intent of passing it along to others.
Paul supplies his debating partner here with an obvious question (some have even suggested that Paul might be letting us look in on a debate between Saul/ Paul the Jew and Paul the Christian). If the Jews are on the same footing as Gentiles in their need to become the people of God with a view of the importance of that status on the final judgment day, then is there any value in circumcision, or in being a Jew at all? Paul is quick to deflect that line of thinking. Of course there are many advantages. Israel’s history has not been pointless. First of all, says Paul, they have been entrusted with the very words of God. (He only lists the first and most important of these advantages here but expands the list of advantages in 9:4-5 when he says: “Theirs is the adoption; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah.”) We need to note that what is rendered here as “words” is actually the oracles of God. An oracle in the ancient world was a specific divine revelation from a deity that was given to a messenger for the benefit of someone else. This is exactly his point here, so he uses a word, “oracle,” that is used infrequently in the New Testament. Israel, in other words, was given the great privilege and responsibility of bearing God’s words for the world, not through just the law itself, but through the way they lived the law and let their light shine to the world.
The next question that is raised is “what if some were unfaithful?” What if they failed to be God’s messengers and didn’t fulfill the vocation with which they were entrusted? What, in other words, if they failed to be trustworthy with the covenant? Wouldn’t that mean that God’s plan was thwarted and that God must now be unfaithful to his covenant in order to fulfill his promise to bless the world? If the messenger has failed to deliver the message, it would seem to put God in a tight spot. Not for a moment, argues Paul. Let God be true (which carries the meaning of reliable or trustworthy) and every human being a liar (which carries the meaning of unreliable or untrustworthy). Paul then demonstrates his point by quoting from Psalm 51:4 in which the repentant David says that when God condemns he will be shown to be in the right. God is reliable and just even when human beings fail. Their failure in no way thwarts God’s plan. In fact, God’s plans shine all the more through human weakness and failure. The way that God will work all of this out, as Paul will demonstrate in the course of this letter, is that God will use the Messiah as the faithful Israelite to represent his people and carry out the original mission of Israel.
This leads to the next obvious question for Paul. If Israel’s unfaithfulness to the covenant highlights and brings out God’s covenant faithfulness, then shouldn’t Israel be rewarded for being used in such a way? Is it fair that Israel should stand in the same position as everyone else on the day of God’s judgment if God has used them to demonstrate his covenant faithfulness to the world? Some might argue, says Paul’s debating partner in using an analogy to explain his point, that if their lie or unreliability shows all the more just how reliable and trustworthy God is then it increases his glory (notice that Paul slips into using the singular “I” here to represent the Jewish point of view, a rhetorical technique that we would do well to remember when he gets to 7:7-25 and uses it again). And whatever brings glory to God should be rewarded rather than being punished for the failing. In other words, the result should make up for the failing of the act itself. Why should Israelites who, even though they have failed in being faithful to the covenant have brought glory to God, be punished right along with pagan sinners who have done nothing but blaspheme the name of God.
Paul breaks in with his own voice in verse 8 and asks a question along this same line of thinking. It is a question that springs from false accusations that some who have only half listened to or half understood his message. If God’s glory and his good can come from Israel’s failures and even their evil, then why not let loose with the evil. What might be particularly problematic for some readers at this point is that Paul doesn’t really answer any of these questions right here. The only comment he offers at this point is the heavily ironic thought, that if anything can be said about God’s judgment to come it is that the condemnation of the people who make such accusations about the gospel is just.
But why doesn’t Paul seek to answer such central questions to his purpose? Some have suggested that Paul started to answer them but then got off track until he returns to these questions along with the answers in chapters 9-11. More likely, though, is that Paul is still setting the stage for his argument and is not yet ready to answer these questions. Here, he has given the charge that he is leveling against Israel (2:17-29), followed by this section with objections to that charge (3:1-8), and will confirm the accuracy and truth of the initial accusations in the next section (3:9-20). But to this point, Paul is almost finished with his opening point. The Jews and Gentiles both stand equally guilty before God with nothing to say in their own defense.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever fallen into the line of thinking that your sin or unfaithfulness is not that big of a deal because it just gives a graceful God more opportunity to forgive you? What might Paul say to that type of thinking? What does that thinking say to the world?
1 What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? 2 Much in every way! First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God.
3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written:
"So that you may be proved right when you speak
and prevail when you judge."
5 But if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6 Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7 Someone might argue, "If my falsehood enhances God's truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?" 8 Why not say—as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say—"Let us do evil that good may result"? Their condemnation is just!
Dig Deeper
A few years ago, when I was still coaching high school basketball, one of my wife’s younger cousins came to live with us for a couple of years. He had been having some academic and other troubles in his home town and it was decided that it would be the best thing for him if he moved from his home state to Wisconsin to live with us for his remaining two years of high school. Once he got there, he decided to attend the high school at which I taught. He was, in addition to being quite intelligent, a pretty good athlete. He played on the football team and then decided that, although football was his best sport, that he would go out for the basketball team as well. Because he lived with us, we had many opportunities to talk about basketball and for me to offer him coaching, insights, and other help. Yet, he was almost surprised when time came around for tryouts to start and the practice season to begin because not only did I have the same expectations for him that I did everyone else, he found himself having to fight for a spot on the team and playing time like anyone else. He couldn’t sail by and expect to be on the team simply because he was my cousin and lived with me. So a natural question that he could have had was, “Is there any advantage to being your cousin and living with you if I’m still in the same boat as everyone else?” He never had to actually ask that question because I think he knew that there were many advantages but they just didn’t stretch to putting him on the team itself. Living with me would give him definite advantages, but he would still have to earn his spot on the team.
Paul has been making a clear point that Jews do not stand in advantage over the Gentiles when it comes to the final judgment and being part of the people of God in the present. The natural question is that if having the law and all the other aspects of Jewish life do no longer automatically make one part of the people of God nor does it reserve a place for them in God’s kingdom on the day of final judgment, then is there any advantage to being a Jew at all? Is Paul, asks Paul imagined debating partner, saying that that there is absolutely no advantage to being a Jew as opposed to a Gentile? At this point, we might expect Paul to agree with that statement but Paul will have no part in such a shallow theology. The Jews really were the people of God, they really were given God’s law and the vocation to be a light to the world, and there were advantages to all of that but not the advantages that they might want. There were many advantages but they still were in need of the gospel in order to become part of the eternal kingdom of God. Their previous advantages didn’t provide them an automatic place as the people of God.
This passage, like much of Romans, has many difficult elements in it and different ways that Paul’s statements can and have been taken through the years. There are two things that will help us through this section if we keep them firmly in mind as we read. I’ve already alluded to the first thing. Paul continues his mock debate in this passage, supplying both questions and challenges to his point of view. Taking careful note of the times when Paul does that will help us follow his line of thinking. The second thing is to realize what Paul means by the word “entrusted.” If I entrusted you with a message, it would typically mean that I have given you a message that you are to keep carefully because it is for someone else. Paul uses the word in the same way. Paul says that Israel has been entrusted with the word of God, meaning that it was given to them with the intent, not of keeping it just for themselves but they were given it with the intent of passing it along to others.
Paul supplies his debating partner here with an obvious question (some have even suggested that Paul might be letting us look in on a debate between Saul/ Paul the Jew and Paul the Christian). If the Jews are on the same footing as Gentiles in their need to become the people of God with a view of the importance of that status on the final judgment day, then is there any value in circumcision, or in being a Jew at all? Paul is quick to deflect that line of thinking. Of course there are many advantages. Israel’s history has not been pointless. First of all, says Paul, they have been entrusted with the very words of God. (He only lists the first and most important of these advantages here but expands the list of advantages in 9:4-5 when he says: “Theirs is the adoption; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah.”) We need to note that what is rendered here as “words” is actually the oracles of God. An oracle in the ancient world was a specific divine revelation from a deity that was given to a messenger for the benefit of someone else. This is exactly his point here, so he uses a word, “oracle,” that is used infrequently in the New Testament. Israel, in other words, was given the great privilege and responsibility of bearing God’s words for the world, not through just the law itself, but through the way they lived the law and let their light shine to the world.
The next question that is raised is “what if some were unfaithful?” What if they failed to be God’s messengers and didn’t fulfill the vocation with which they were entrusted? What, in other words, if they failed to be trustworthy with the covenant? Wouldn’t that mean that God’s plan was thwarted and that God must now be unfaithful to his covenant in order to fulfill his promise to bless the world? If the messenger has failed to deliver the message, it would seem to put God in a tight spot. Not for a moment, argues Paul. Let God be true (which carries the meaning of reliable or trustworthy) and every human being a liar (which carries the meaning of unreliable or untrustworthy). Paul then demonstrates his point by quoting from Psalm 51:4 in which the repentant David says that when God condemns he will be shown to be in the right. God is reliable and just even when human beings fail. Their failure in no way thwarts God’s plan. In fact, God’s plans shine all the more through human weakness and failure. The way that God will work all of this out, as Paul will demonstrate in the course of this letter, is that God will use the Messiah as the faithful Israelite to represent his people and carry out the original mission of Israel.
This leads to the next obvious question for Paul. If Israel’s unfaithfulness to the covenant highlights and brings out God’s covenant faithfulness, then shouldn’t Israel be rewarded for being used in such a way? Is it fair that Israel should stand in the same position as everyone else on the day of God’s judgment if God has used them to demonstrate his covenant faithfulness to the world? Some might argue, says Paul’s debating partner in using an analogy to explain his point, that if their lie or unreliability shows all the more just how reliable and trustworthy God is then it increases his glory (notice that Paul slips into using the singular “I” here to represent the Jewish point of view, a rhetorical technique that we would do well to remember when he gets to 7:7-25 and uses it again). And whatever brings glory to God should be rewarded rather than being punished for the failing. In other words, the result should make up for the failing of the act itself. Why should Israelites who, even though they have failed in being faithful to the covenant have brought glory to God, be punished right along with pagan sinners who have done nothing but blaspheme the name of God.
Paul breaks in with his own voice in verse 8 and asks a question along this same line of thinking. It is a question that springs from false accusations that some who have only half listened to or half understood his message. If God’s glory and his good can come from Israel’s failures and even their evil, then why not let loose with the evil. What might be particularly problematic for some readers at this point is that Paul doesn’t really answer any of these questions right here. The only comment he offers at this point is the heavily ironic thought, that if anything can be said about God’s judgment to come it is that the condemnation of the people who make such accusations about the gospel is just.
But why doesn’t Paul seek to answer such central questions to his purpose? Some have suggested that Paul started to answer them but then got off track until he returns to these questions along with the answers in chapters 9-11. More likely, though, is that Paul is still setting the stage for his argument and is not yet ready to answer these questions. Here, he has given the charge that he is leveling against Israel (2:17-29), followed by this section with objections to that charge (3:1-8), and will confirm the accuracy and truth of the initial accusations in the next section (3:9-20). But to this point, Paul is almost finished with his opening point. The Jews and Gentiles both stand equally guilty before God with nothing to say in their own defense.
Devotional Thought
Have you ever fallen into the line of thinking that your sin or unfaithfulness is not that big of a deal because it just gives a graceful God more opportunity to forgive you? What might Paul say to that type of thinking? What does that thinking say to the world?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Romans 2:25-29
25 Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. 26 If those who are not circumcised keep the law's requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? 27 The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.
28 A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person's praise is not from other people, but from God.
Dig Deeper
I grew up being a Green Bay Packer fan (that’s a team in the National Football League for those who live in some country that inexplicably doesn’t follow American football). My parents were Packer fans and everyone around us was Packer fans. I was a Packer fan before I remember ever really choosing to be one. I just was one from my earliest memories. Every Sunday people all over the state would put on their Packer jerseys or their green and yellow sweatshirts and gather round the television for the Packer game. Then one year, I was eleven years old and something horrible happened. The NFL players and the NFL management couldn’t come to an agreement on their collective bargaining contract and it was announced that the players would be locked out by the management. Then came a strange announcement. Rather than there being no football during the lockout, the team owners had decided to get players from wherever they could find them, anyone who wasn’t already playing in the NFL, and reconstitute their teams during the duration of the lockout. For over a month the Packers took the field each week with a team that wore the uniforms and played as the Packers but they were not the Green Bay Packers. The outward appearance was recognizable, but no one embraced that team. No one lived and died with the wins and losses of the team. They had the appearance but they simple weren’t the Packers. And, in fact, the uniforms that they wore each Sunday did not convince anyone that they were the real Packers, they served as a reminder and marker that they weren’t the Packers. Rather than demonstrating that they were Packers, the uniforms showed and reminded everyone that they weren’t.
To understand this analogy we have to think of circumcision as a bit of uniform of sorts. It was the visible marker of the people of God. It was a sign and a reminder that they were in covenant with Yahweh. In that respect, circumcision was important but by itself it wasn’t the main thing. It was simply a uniform. The real team is the real team whether they have the uniform on or not. In fact, during that lockout, the news stations would interview the real Packer players who were no longer in their uniform but everyone still knew that they were the real Packers, not the guys on the field wearing the green and gold. Circumcision, the uniform, is important, but only if you’re really on the team. Otherwise it’s nothing more than a replica that you can buy at some sports shop. Circumcision without faith and genuine obedience actually means nothing. In fact it becomes a neon sign pointing out your counterfeit status.
Paul’s argument here, as he continues to show that God has no favorites and neither Jew nor Gentile stand in a better position before God than the other in their equal need for the gospel, is not that circumcision was of no value. Circumcision was extremely valuable as the badge that demonstrated to the world who the people of God were. But that badge, that uniform, was of no value if they didn’t behave as the people of God. Circumcision was not a magic amulet that, once given, provided a status on the Jew that rendered their behavior, their obedience to the law, and their commitment to the covenant, irrelevant.
We need to keep in mind that at least some Jewish Christians, and quite possibly a majority of Jewish Christians, believed that Gentile Christians needed to observe the Mosaic law in order to be considered among the people of God. It’s not that circumcision was a meaningless exercise if one did not follow the law and could have been discontinued all along. If one did not follow the law, then circumcision does not become meaningless, it takes on the reverse meaning of its intent. Circumcision was like a uniform rather than the cause for being on the team. The important thing all along, which Paul will turn his attention to shortly, is faith in the covenant God that led to circumcision, not circumcision itself. Some modern folks might, at this point, argue that this proves that circumcision was not necessary to being part of the people of God, but this is a position that Paul will not allow. Circumcision was absolutely necessary but not the cause of being among the people of God. It was part of the uniform. Faith in the covenant God was necessary to be part of the covenant but refusal of circumcision during the Old Covenant would surely have demonstrated a lack of that faith. To continue with a football analogy; a helmet does make you part of the team but you cannot play if you refuse to wear it.
What the Jewish Christians needed to understand was that this situation has changed entirely. Those who are not circumcised, says Paul (apparently alluding to Gentile Christians) do keep the requirements of the law even though they are not wearing the uniform of circumcision. Those who obey the law in Christ, something Paul in his characteristic fashion only alludes to here but will flesh out more fully as the letter progresses, are part of the true people of God. Circumcision without obedience is nothing. And, here is the kicker, no one apart from Christ can obey the law or fulfill the covenant.
From the moment of the Fall (Gen. 3), all of mankind had a heart disease (Gen. 6:5; Jer. 17:9) which rendered all humans incapable of fulfilling God’s covenant and his law. God offered the temporary solution of the Old Covenant to deal with this problem, but had always promised to bless the entire world and solve this heart issue at it’s core. Israel’s hearts had turned away from God (Deut. 30:17-18) like the rest of mankind. But now God has offered a new solution, the solution that he promised through the prophet Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. . . . you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezek. 36:26-28; see also Jer. 31:33; 32:39-40; Ezek. 11:19). The time had come. These promises, Paul makes clear, have been fulfilled. God has done just as he promised and created his New Covenant and his new people. And he has done all of this, as Paul will fully explain in chapter 8, through the work and leading of the Holy Spirit. God’s own Spirit has accomplished what mankind could never do on its own.
But says Paul, the status of the people of God and with it the name “Israel” and the uniform of circumcision belong to those who have been given this new heart that God had promised. It comes down to the difference between being the people of God outwardly and being the people of God inwardly. The inward kind is the type that God had always promised and wanted and that time had come. The true Jew, says Paul, is the one who has had their heart circumcised. This inward operation that God has performed is the true uniform of God’s people and gives them the right to be called the circumcision (Phi. 3:3).
None of this is brand new to Paul. Jeremiah had hinted at all of this when he wrote “’The days are coming’, declares the LORD, ‘when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh—Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab and all who live in the wilderness in distant places. For all these nations are really uncircumcised, and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.’” God was pointing all along to the fact that he was looking for people who wore the uniform of being the people of God in their hearts, the seat of their will, rather than on their flesh. Their were many things that the Jews and Gentiles did not have in common because of God’s law and his covenant but despite all of that, the one thing that they did share in common was their need for God to write his law, his will, his covenant on their hearts. They were different in many ways but they were exactly equal when it came to their need for the gospel.
Paul caps this section off with a poignant play on words. He says that those who have been circumcised in their heart by the Spirit are different from those who rely on the written code. These people, says Paul, will receive praise only from other people but not God. The word “Judah” from which “Jew” comes means “praise.” Paul’s point is that the real Jews, those who are circumcised on the heart, whether Jew or Gentile, are the ones who receive their praise as a gift from God.
Devotional Thought
From who do you receive your praise? Do you seek to love and obey God through the crucified life of Christ or do you often find yourself seeking the approval and recognition of human beings? Why is it so important to learn to seek praise from God alone?
28 A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person's praise is not from other people, but from God.
Dig Deeper
I grew up being a Green Bay Packer fan (that’s a team in the National Football League for those who live in some country that inexplicably doesn’t follow American football). My parents were Packer fans and everyone around us was Packer fans. I was a Packer fan before I remember ever really choosing to be one. I just was one from my earliest memories. Every Sunday people all over the state would put on their Packer jerseys or their green and yellow sweatshirts and gather round the television for the Packer game. Then one year, I was eleven years old and something horrible happened. The NFL players and the NFL management couldn’t come to an agreement on their collective bargaining contract and it was announced that the players would be locked out by the management. Then came a strange announcement. Rather than there being no football during the lockout, the team owners had decided to get players from wherever they could find them, anyone who wasn’t already playing in the NFL, and reconstitute their teams during the duration of the lockout. For over a month the Packers took the field each week with a team that wore the uniforms and played as the Packers but they were not the Green Bay Packers. The outward appearance was recognizable, but no one embraced that team. No one lived and died with the wins and losses of the team. They had the appearance but they simple weren’t the Packers. And, in fact, the uniforms that they wore each Sunday did not convince anyone that they were the real Packers, they served as a reminder and marker that they weren’t the Packers. Rather than demonstrating that they were Packers, the uniforms showed and reminded everyone that they weren’t.
To understand this analogy we have to think of circumcision as a bit of uniform of sorts. It was the visible marker of the people of God. It was a sign and a reminder that they were in covenant with Yahweh. In that respect, circumcision was important but by itself it wasn’t the main thing. It was simply a uniform. The real team is the real team whether they have the uniform on or not. In fact, during that lockout, the news stations would interview the real Packer players who were no longer in their uniform but everyone still knew that they were the real Packers, not the guys on the field wearing the green and gold. Circumcision, the uniform, is important, but only if you’re really on the team. Otherwise it’s nothing more than a replica that you can buy at some sports shop. Circumcision without faith and genuine obedience actually means nothing. In fact it becomes a neon sign pointing out your counterfeit status.
Paul’s argument here, as he continues to show that God has no favorites and neither Jew nor Gentile stand in a better position before God than the other in their equal need for the gospel, is not that circumcision was of no value. Circumcision was extremely valuable as the badge that demonstrated to the world who the people of God were. But that badge, that uniform, was of no value if they didn’t behave as the people of God. Circumcision was not a magic amulet that, once given, provided a status on the Jew that rendered their behavior, their obedience to the law, and their commitment to the covenant, irrelevant.
We need to keep in mind that at least some Jewish Christians, and quite possibly a majority of Jewish Christians, believed that Gentile Christians needed to observe the Mosaic law in order to be considered among the people of God. It’s not that circumcision was a meaningless exercise if one did not follow the law and could have been discontinued all along. If one did not follow the law, then circumcision does not become meaningless, it takes on the reverse meaning of its intent. Circumcision was like a uniform rather than the cause for being on the team. The important thing all along, which Paul will turn his attention to shortly, is faith in the covenant God that led to circumcision, not circumcision itself. Some modern folks might, at this point, argue that this proves that circumcision was not necessary to being part of the people of God, but this is a position that Paul will not allow. Circumcision was absolutely necessary but not the cause of being among the people of God. It was part of the uniform. Faith in the covenant God was necessary to be part of the covenant but refusal of circumcision during the Old Covenant would surely have demonstrated a lack of that faith. To continue with a football analogy; a helmet does make you part of the team but you cannot play if you refuse to wear it.
What the Jewish Christians needed to understand was that this situation has changed entirely. Those who are not circumcised, says Paul (apparently alluding to Gentile Christians) do keep the requirements of the law even though they are not wearing the uniform of circumcision. Those who obey the law in Christ, something Paul in his characteristic fashion only alludes to here but will flesh out more fully as the letter progresses, are part of the true people of God. Circumcision without obedience is nothing. And, here is the kicker, no one apart from Christ can obey the law or fulfill the covenant.
From the moment of the Fall (Gen. 3), all of mankind had a heart disease (Gen. 6:5; Jer. 17:9) which rendered all humans incapable of fulfilling God’s covenant and his law. God offered the temporary solution of the Old Covenant to deal with this problem, but had always promised to bless the entire world and solve this heart issue at it’s core. Israel’s hearts had turned away from God (Deut. 30:17-18) like the rest of mankind. But now God has offered a new solution, the solution that he promised through the prophet Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. . . . you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezek. 36:26-28; see also Jer. 31:33; 32:39-40; Ezek. 11:19). The time had come. These promises, Paul makes clear, have been fulfilled. God has done just as he promised and created his New Covenant and his new people. And he has done all of this, as Paul will fully explain in chapter 8, through the work and leading of the Holy Spirit. God’s own Spirit has accomplished what mankind could never do on its own.
But says Paul, the status of the people of God and with it the name “Israel” and the uniform of circumcision belong to those who have been given this new heart that God had promised. It comes down to the difference between being the people of God outwardly and being the people of God inwardly. The inward kind is the type that God had always promised and wanted and that time had come. The true Jew, says Paul, is the one who has had their heart circumcised. This inward operation that God has performed is the true uniform of God’s people and gives them the right to be called the circumcision (Phi. 3:3).
None of this is brand new to Paul. Jeremiah had hinted at all of this when he wrote “’The days are coming’, declares the LORD, ‘when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh—Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab and all who live in the wilderness in distant places. For all these nations are really uncircumcised, and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart.’” God was pointing all along to the fact that he was looking for people who wore the uniform of being the people of God in their hearts, the seat of their will, rather than on their flesh. Their were many things that the Jews and Gentiles did not have in common because of God’s law and his covenant but despite all of that, the one thing that they did share in common was their need for God to write his law, his will, his covenant on their hearts. They were different in many ways but they were exactly equal when it came to their need for the gospel.
Paul caps this section off with a poignant play on words. He says that those who have been circumcised in their heart by the Spirit are different from those who rely on the written code. These people, says Paul, will receive praise only from other people but not God. The word “Judah” from which “Jew” comes means “praise.” Paul’s point is that the real Jews, those who are circumcised on the heart, whether Jew or Gentile, are the ones who receive their praise as a gift from God.
Devotional Thought
From who do you receive your praise? Do you seek to love and obey God through the crucified life of Christ or do you often find yourself seeking the approval and recognition of human beings? Why is it so important to learn to seek praise from God alone?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Romans 2:17-24
The Jews and the Law
17 Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; 18 if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; 19 if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24 As it is written: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."
Dig Deeper
When the United States of America was founded, most of the countries in the world were ruled by some sort of monarchy. America began, however, on a very different foundation. There would be no monarch, no ruler, no tyrant. That, the founding fathers believed, was the problem. A government ruled by just one man would inevitably fall into corruption and the abuse of power. To stop that disease something different must be done. They organized a government that would be overseen by many people. That way they would serve as a check on one another and the people would truly have representatives that they could trust and that stay clean from the type of corruption and self-serving dishonesty that so often characterizes government. Our politicians would solve the problem of governmental dishonesty. Or so they hoped. But what happens when those who are supposed to be solution become part of the problems themselves? What then? Politicians have gotten so bad, that even though only a percentage of them are corrupt, the whole lot of them have a bad name. No one in the US thinks well of politicians anymore because they have become prone to the same problems that every other governmental system has had throughout history.
From the moment that humans began their rebellion against God, questioning what God’s word really was and choosing their own will over the will of God, God showed that he had a plan to reconcile his wayward creation to himself. He was already hinting in Genesis 3:15 that his plan would involve a human family of some sort. That plan came a little more into focus later in Genesis when God came to Abraham and created a covenant with him, promising that God would bless the whole world though his descendants. This promise was key, because the rest of the Bible, including the New Testament, hinges on understanding that God promised that his solution would come through this single family, the descendants of Abraham, and when God promises something it must be true or he is not God.
But that blessing came with a vocation. Israel had the responsibility to not just be God’s people but to be the vehicle through which God would bring his blessings to bear on the rest of the world. The Jews of Jesus’ day felt that Israel had been called by God to be his servant in the world. It would be through them that God would bring blessing to the world. Isaiah captured that mission perfectly when he wrote, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. . . . I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles” (Isa. 42:1, 6). But something had gone terribly wrong in Paul’s eyes. Israel had failed soundly to be a light to the world. They lost sight of the fact that God’s plan was through Israel for the world and began to think that God’s plan was for Israel apart from the world. Rather than being the light of the world they had become blind guides (cf. Matt. 15:14).
This is at the heart of Paul’s charge here against a hypothetical Jewish debating partner (whether it is the same debating partner from earlier in the chapter or a different one is open to speculation). The Jews had begun to rely on their ethnic heritage as a birthright to be the people of God irregardless of whether or not they had lived up to their vocation as a people (we need to keep in mind here that Paul is still talking in terms of people groups not individuals). Paul is leveling the same charge that Micah had, “Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the LORD and say, ‘Is not the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us’” (Mic. 3:11).
Paul’s basic charge is this. The Jewish people were calling themselves people of God, they were relying on the law and putting their trust in their status as God’s people. They believed themselves to be the ones who had had God’s will revealed to them and could choose the right path because they were the ones that had been trained by the law. They were secure in their status and vocation to be a guide for blind, a light to the entire world that was in the dark without God’s law, without knowledge of God’s will, and completely lacking in the ability to choose the right path because of their separation from God. The Jews were the adults in a world of needy infants. They had the full advantage of God’s law passed through Moses and their covenant status as the people of God, or so they thought.
But what happens when the guides for the blind become blind guides? What happens when the light of the world turns that light in upon itself so that no one else can see that light? What happens when the solution becomes the problem? Israel had failed. They were to show the world a different way apart from stealing, adultery, and idolatry but instead have engaged in theft, spiritual adultery of all kinds, and had become so arrogant that some Jews rather than leading the world from idolatry had claimed that pagan temples and the idols were nothing and so the items left for the gods were free for the taking because they didn’t really belong to anyone. Paul’s point is to not imply that every, or even most Jews, had engaged in these specific behaviors. He uses these as demonstrations of the larger problem (Why did Paul chose these specific examples? It may have been that these were specific problems amongst the Jewish population in Rome, or it may have been for other reasons altogether.) with which he is dealing. Israel had failed to be the light of the world.
They had put their entire trust in their status as the people of God simply in the fact that they possessed the law but they did not follow the law. Rather than bringing honor to God in the eyes of the world they had dishonored God. The people that were to be a shining beacon on a hill drawing the rest of the world to worship of the one, true God was causing God to be hated, maligned, and mocked in the world. It is from Isaiah 52:5 that Paul quotes in verse 24: “And now what do I have here?" declares the LORD. ‘For my people have been taken away for nothing, and those who rule them mock,’ declares the LORD’. ‘And all day long my name is constantly blasphemed’”. Israel had brought scorn to God from the nations because their failure to uphold the covenant.
So, how can God remain faithful to his covenant promises with Israel to bless the whole world through the descendants of Abraham when the descendants of Abraham have become part of the problem? Just a few verses later in Isaiah 52 and the rest of 53, the answer to that question was revealed, although it would not become totally clear until Jesus came. God would indeed have a servant that would fulfill his covenant but it would be, as the life of Jesus made clear, his Messiah that was acting as a representative of his people. The Messiah would be the suffering servant, the representative of his people, that would be the answer to the riddle of how God could still bless the nations and yet do so through Israel.
Again, this was necessary because Israel’s actions were not fulfilling the covenant into which they entered with God. Ezekiel, just as Isaiah had, prophesied about this, declaring, “Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their actions. Their conduct was like a woman's monthly uncleanness in my sight. So I poured out my wrath on them because they had shed blood in the land and because they had defiled it with their idols. I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered through the countries; I judged them according to their conduct and their actions. And wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name, for it was said of them, 'These are the LORD's people, and yet they had to leave his land’” (Ezek. 36:17-20). Although the Jews had returned to the land of Israel, the belief in Jesus’ time was that they were still suffering from this exile because they had not returned spiritually to God and his presence had not returned to Jerusalem. But Ezekiel looked forward to a time when there would be a new covenant that would involve God’s people having a new heart (Ezek. 36:26).
Paul is making the case that the ethnic Jewish nation, as things stood, could not be the means through which God would ultimately fulfill his covenant. Something new had bee promised and was now here in the Messiah, but that this was not something new in the sense of being different from the original plan. This was the original plan that had now been revealed. God did have a people through whom the whole world could be reconciled to him. Paul has laid the foundation to show that ethnic Israel is not that people but he will explain shortly who those people are.
Devotional Thought
Paul charged Israel with relying on their status of the people of God but not living like it. In Christ we certainly have a different assurance but we still need to learn from Israel’s example. Do you act like a disciple or do you just rely on the fact that you are. It’s important to act like what you are.
17 Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; 18 if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; 19 if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24 As it is written: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."
Dig Deeper
When the United States of America was founded, most of the countries in the world were ruled by some sort of monarchy. America began, however, on a very different foundation. There would be no monarch, no ruler, no tyrant. That, the founding fathers believed, was the problem. A government ruled by just one man would inevitably fall into corruption and the abuse of power. To stop that disease something different must be done. They organized a government that would be overseen by many people. That way they would serve as a check on one another and the people would truly have representatives that they could trust and that stay clean from the type of corruption and self-serving dishonesty that so often characterizes government. Our politicians would solve the problem of governmental dishonesty. Or so they hoped. But what happens when those who are supposed to be solution become part of the problems themselves? What then? Politicians have gotten so bad, that even though only a percentage of them are corrupt, the whole lot of them have a bad name. No one in the US thinks well of politicians anymore because they have become prone to the same problems that every other governmental system has had throughout history.
From the moment that humans began their rebellion against God, questioning what God’s word really was and choosing their own will over the will of God, God showed that he had a plan to reconcile his wayward creation to himself. He was already hinting in Genesis 3:15 that his plan would involve a human family of some sort. That plan came a little more into focus later in Genesis when God came to Abraham and created a covenant with him, promising that God would bless the whole world though his descendants. This promise was key, because the rest of the Bible, including the New Testament, hinges on understanding that God promised that his solution would come through this single family, the descendants of Abraham, and when God promises something it must be true or he is not God.
But that blessing came with a vocation. Israel had the responsibility to not just be God’s people but to be the vehicle through which God would bring his blessings to bear on the rest of the world. The Jews of Jesus’ day felt that Israel had been called by God to be his servant in the world. It would be through them that God would bring blessing to the world. Isaiah captured that mission perfectly when he wrote, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations. . . . I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles” (Isa. 42:1, 6). But something had gone terribly wrong in Paul’s eyes. Israel had failed soundly to be a light to the world. They lost sight of the fact that God’s plan was through Israel for the world and began to think that God’s plan was for Israel apart from the world. Rather than being the light of the world they had become blind guides (cf. Matt. 15:14).
This is at the heart of Paul’s charge here against a hypothetical Jewish debating partner (whether it is the same debating partner from earlier in the chapter or a different one is open to speculation). The Jews had begun to rely on their ethnic heritage as a birthright to be the people of God irregardless of whether or not they had lived up to their vocation as a people (we need to keep in mind here that Paul is still talking in terms of people groups not individuals). Paul is leveling the same charge that Micah had, “Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they lean upon the LORD and say, ‘Is not the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us’” (Mic. 3:11).
Paul’s basic charge is this. The Jewish people were calling themselves people of God, they were relying on the law and putting their trust in their status as God’s people. They believed themselves to be the ones who had had God’s will revealed to them and could choose the right path because they were the ones that had been trained by the law. They were secure in their status and vocation to be a guide for blind, a light to the entire world that was in the dark without God’s law, without knowledge of God’s will, and completely lacking in the ability to choose the right path because of their separation from God. The Jews were the adults in a world of needy infants. They had the full advantage of God’s law passed through Moses and their covenant status as the people of God, or so they thought.
But what happens when the guides for the blind become blind guides? What happens when the light of the world turns that light in upon itself so that no one else can see that light? What happens when the solution becomes the problem? Israel had failed. They were to show the world a different way apart from stealing, adultery, and idolatry but instead have engaged in theft, spiritual adultery of all kinds, and had become so arrogant that some Jews rather than leading the world from idolatry had claimed that pagan temples and the idols were nothing and so the items left for the gods were free for the taking because they didn’t really belong to anyone. Paul’s point is to not imply that every, or even most Jews, had engaged in these specific behaviors. He uses these as demonstrations of the larger problem (Why did Paul chose these specific examples? It may have been that these were specific problems amongst the Jewish population in Rome, or it may have been for other reasons altogether.) with which he is dealing. Israel had failed to be the light of the world.
They had put their entire trust in their status as the people of God simply in the fact that they possessed the law but they did not follow the law. Rather than bringing honor to God in the eyes of the world they had dishonored God. The people that were to be a shining beacon on a hill drawing the rest of the world to worship of the one, true God was causing God to be hated, maligned, and mocked in the world. It is from Isaiah 52:5 that Paul quotes in verse 24: “And now what do I have here?" declares the LORD. ‘For my people have been taken away for nothing, and those who rule them mock,’ declares the LORD’. ‘And all day long my name is constantly blasphemed’”. Israel had brought scorn to God from the nations because their failure to uphold the covenant.
So, how can God remain faithful to his covenant promises with Israel to bless the whole world through the descendants of Abraham when the descendants of Abraham have become part of the problem? Just a few verses later in Isaiah 52 and the rest of 53, the answer to that question was revealed, although it would not become totally clear until Jesus came. God would indeed have a servant that would fulfill his covenant but it would be, as the life of Jesus made clear, his Messiah that was acting as a representative of his people. The Messiah would be the suffering servant, the representative of his people, that would be the answer to the riddle of how God could still bless the nations and yet do so through Israel.
Again, this was necessary because Israel’s actions were not fulfilling the covenant into which they entered with God. Ezekiel, just as Isaiah had, prophesied about this, declaring, “Son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own land, they defiled it by their conduct and their actions. Their conduct was like a woman's monthly uncleanness in my sight. So I poured out my wrath on them because they had shed blood in the land and because they had defiled it with their idols. I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered through the countries; I judged them according to their conduct and their actions. And wherever they went among the nations they profaned my holy name, for it was said of them, 'These are the LORD's people, and yet they had to leave his land’” (Ezek. 36:17-20). Although the Jews had returned to the land of Israel, the belief in Jesus’ time was that they were still suffering from this exile because they had not returned spiritually to God and his presence had not returned to Jerusalem. But Ezekiel looked forward to a time when there would be a new covenant that would involve God’s people having a new heart (Ezek. 36:26).
Paul is making the case that the ethnic Jewish nation, as things stood, could not be the means through which God would ultimately fulfill his covenant. Something new had bee promised and was now here in the Messiah, but that this was not something new in the sense of being different from the original plan. This was the original plan that had now been revealed. God did have a people through whom the whole world could be reconciled to him. Paul has laid the foundation to show that ethnic Israel is not that people but he will explain shortly who those people are.
Devotional Thought
Paul charged Israel with relying on their status of the people of God but not living like it. In Christ we certainly have a different assurance but we still need to learn from Israel’s example. Do you act like a disciple or do you just rely on the fact that you are. It’s important to act like what you are.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Romans 2:12-16
12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges everyone's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
Dig Deeper
When we go to South Africa or any other unique location my wife and I do as most travelers do. We buy up souvenirs and interesting articles from the country or location where we are at to take back to our house or to give to friends. It’s cool to get exotic items that you don’t normally see at home. On our last trip to South Africa, I particularly wanted to get a painted ostrich egg. It’s just not something you see around here and they are incredibly beautiful. I finally found one that I really liked that was painted with a black background and an incredible depiction of the “big five” animals of South Africa. We took it home and put it up on the mantle over our fireplace and I really enjoyed it. That is, until I came home a few weeks ago to find my oldest son sitting on the couch with a wry grin on his face and my youngest son whining fervently that it wasn’t his fault. For the sharp parent, these are clues that the little one has done something that the older one is going to find great satisfaction in telling me about. The little one realized that it would go better for him if he spilled the beans himself and quickly told me that he had broken the ostrich egg by playing baseball in the house. The older one sat back with the same smile on his face enjoying the show. I calmly asked our youngest why he would be playing baseball in the house at all. The eldest piped in that he knew not to play baseball in the house and had no part in this affair nor did he have any idea why the little one would have engaged in such an egregious act. As we talked, it came out that I had never specifically told our young son that he could not play baseball in the house but I pointed out that he knew better anyway as was evidenced by the facts that he never played in the house when I and his mother are there and that similar activities were banned from indoor play. I had never given him that precise rule but he should have known better given the information that he did have.
Paul is busy laying a foundation for his defense of God’s justice that has been revealed to the world through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ultimately he is setting about to answer the objection that if the gospel is true and Gentiles are streaming into the kingdom of God but the majority of Jews are not, then hasn’t God been unjust in his covenantal promises to Israel? In order to demonstrate God’s justice Paul will set about to show that God’s plan, which did involve Israel in a special way, was always intended to be for all mankind, not just Israel. Paul wants to make it clear that there is only one plan. God does not have two plans or two paths to salvation and that that one plan is absolutely faithful to the covenant that he made with Israel. If there is only one plan, though, then that would mean that everyone has a common need, but how can that be true when Israel had the law? Either they would be at an advantage in having the law, or if the law only highlighted their guilt in breaking it then those without the law would be at an advantage because they didn’t have the law accusing or defending their behavior. How could they be blamed for breaking something they didn’t have? As we will see, Paul walks this line carefully to demonstrate the point that he has made earlier. God does not show favoritism.
Again, we have to keep our minds on what Paul is talking about in this letter so that we don’t drift off into reading things into the letter that Paul is not saying. In making his defense of God’s covenant faithfulness that is demonstrated in the resurrection of the Messiah, Paul is also answering the question of who the people of God are and how they can be identified. Will there be one people or two sets of people of God and how can one tell? Paul’s answer that will become more and more clear as we progress, is that there is only one family and that was the plan from the beginning. His intent is to show how that one plan that includes Jews and Gentiles in Christ is the just fulfillment of God’s covenant promises.
This then, is what the term translated as “justify” is all about. It has to do with being declared to be in the right. “Justify” was a primarily legal word in Paul’s day. It was a word that was used when a judge would pass down a decision. His declaration of who was in the right was their justification. It was the marker that showed them to be vindicated. Thus, when Paul talks of being justified he is talking of who is declared in the present time to be in God’s one true family, a declaration that points to and anticipates the final decision and declaration at the final judgment. This declaration changes the status of the one who is being marked out so that we can see that when one is justified, their status is changed from being enslaved to sin (Paul will return to this thought in chapter 5) to being part of the family of God. And how do we receive that justification? Paul will get to that soon, but the short answer is those who live by faith in the life of Christ rather than those who think that living by the works of the law will demonstrate them to be justified as the people of God.
When Paul talks of the works of the law, he is primarily referring to the yoke of the Mosaic law, the Torah, as well as all of the rules and regulations that had grown into Jewish tradition to help them uphold the Mosaic law. Jews believed that following this law defined them and assured their status as the people of God. This meant that those who followed the law were shown to be the people of God but those who didn’t bore the evidence in their lack of following the law that they were not the people of God. This is why this issue became so important in early Christian communities that found themselves a mixture of Jewish Christians who followed the law, and Jewish and Gentile Christians who did not. We should note that the issue was not about earning salvation. This is a modern construct that does not relate to the Judaism of Paul’s day. It is just not accurate to say that Jews of Jesus’ and Paul’s day thought that by following the law they earned salvation. They knew that the salvation that came to God’s people was an act of grace but they believed that the badge of identification that showed them to be God’s family was living by the law. It separated them from the pagan sinners all around them.
Paul wants to make it clear that the law had another purpose. It served a purpose, as a he describes in Galatians 3:19, “It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.” The law kept Israel separate from the sinful pagan nations and dealt with their sin until the full plan could be unveiled in the Messiah. Paul will get to all of that, but for now his point is that the law is not the marker of justification. It was a tool that served a temporary role in preserving their status but it did not create or even demonstrate that status. The Jews might hear the law, but they don’t really do it perfectly which is what it requires. The ultimate purpose of the law was not to justify people. That was always a matter of faith as Paul will explain in chapter 4.
Those with the law and those without the law are standing on the same ground when it comes to facing God at the final judgment that Paul has been discussing. Those who sin under the law and those who sin without the law are in the same boat. In the same way, those who have and hear the law are not justified either. In fact, Paul says, Gentiles don’t have the law, but they do have the heart of the law written on their hearts, on their consciences, and sometimes they follow it, sometimes they don’t. Paul was referring to something that was an accepted belief in the Grecco-Roman world; the belief that humans had a sort of natural law written into their consciences that directed them to right and away from wrong. In chapter 1, Paul said that God had revealed himself through the creation so that humans have enough information to seek God further. Now he describes a second light that all humans have, even those that didn’t have the Mosaic law, the testimony from within. We all have a conscience that either accuses or defends us but Gentiles, said Paul, can’t find justifying solace in that anymore than the Jews could find it in the law. The Mosaic law and the conscience law accuse people of their sin and leave them without excuse but they don’t bring justification. Jew and Gentile stand on the same ground. Only, says Paul, those who obey the law” will be “declared righteous” or a faithful part of God’s covenant family. He doesn’t explain that statement in verse 13 yet, but again, that is coming. Here, Paul is content to simply allude to the fact that there is some way that people can be found to obey the law and faithful to the Covenant.
This even standing of the Jew and Gentile and the equal need for the gospel will come sharply into focus on the last day of judgment. This is the time when God will judge what is, including human’s hearts, not just what seems to be. He will judge humans through Jesus Christ. It is curious that he says “through Jesus” rather than “by the standard of Jesus.” Paul will make this somewhat mysterious statement clear in chapter 6 when he will remind his readers of the need to die to self and enter into the life of the Messiah. The resurrection of Christ and the availability of that resurrection life in the present age is the gospel that he declares. Everyone, both Jew and Gentile, will find themselves being judged by one simple standard. Are they covered by the life of Christ or not. It is that life, and the accompanying faith which allows one to enter into that life, that will justify someone in the present or will show them to be worthy of condemnation on that final day.
Devotional Thought
As a Christian, do you ever find yourself reverting to the mindset that you can somehow work or earn your way into favor with God? Do you fear that God will cast you out of his kingdom if you don’t perform up to some standard? Do you rely on your status as a son of God in Christ alone?
Dig Deeper
When we go to South Africa or any other unique location my wife and I do as most travelers do. We buy up souvenirs and interesting articles from the country or location where we are at to take back to our house or to give to friends. It’s cool to get exotic items that you don’t normally see at home. On our last trip to South Africa, I particularly wanted to get a painted ostrich egg. It’s just not something you see around here and they are incredibly beautiful. I finally found one that I really liked that was painted with a black background and an incredible depiction of the “big five” animals of South Africa. We took it home and put it up on the mantle over our fireplace and I really enjoyed it. That is, until I came home a few weeks ago to find my oldest son sitting on the couch with a wry grin on his face and my youngest son whining fervently that it wasn’t his fault. For the sharp parent, these are clues that the little one has done something that the older one is going to find great satisfaction in telling me about. The little one realized that it would go better for him if he spilled the beans himself and quickly told me that he had broken the ostrich egg by playing baseball in the house. The older one sat back with the same smile on his face enjoying the show. I calmly asked our youngest why he would be playing baseball in the house at all. The eldest piped in that he knew not to play baseball in the house and had no part in this affair nor did he have any idea why the little one would have engaged in such an egregious act. As we talked, it came out that I had never specifically told our young son that he could not play baseball in the house but I pointed out that he knew better anyway as was evidenced by the facts that he never played in the house when I and his mother are there and that similar activities were banned from indoor play. I had never given him that precise rule but he should have known better given the information that he did have.
Paul is busy laying a foundation for his defense of God’s justice that has been revealed to the world through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Ultimately he is setting about to answer the objection that if the gospel is true and Gentiles are streaming into the kingdom of God but the majority of Jews are not, then hasn’t God been unjust in his covenantal promises to Israel? In order to demonstrate God’s justice Paul will set about to show that God’s plan, which did involve Israel in a special way, was always intended to be for all mankind, not just Israel. Paul wants to make it clear that there is only one plan. God does not have two plans or two paths to salvation and that that one plan is absolutely faithful to the covenant that he made with Israel. If there is only one plan, though, then that would mean that everyone has a common need, but how can that be true when Israel had the law? Either they would be at an advantage in having the law, or if the law only highlighted their guilt in breaking it then those without the law would be at an advantage because they didn’t have the law accusing or defending their behavior. How could they be blamed for breaking something they didn’t have? As we will see, Paul walks this line carefully to demonstrate the point that he has made earlier. God does not show favoritism.
Again, we have to keep our minds on what Paul is talking about in this letter so that we don’t drift off into reading things into the letter that Paul is not saying. In making his defense of God’s covenant faithfulness that is demonstrated in the resurrection of the Messiah, Paul is also answering the question of who the people of God are and how they can be identified. Will there be one people or two sets of people of God and how can one tell? Paul’s answer that will become more and more clear as we progress, is that there is only one family and that was the plan from the beginning. His intent is to show how that one plan that includes Jews and Gentiles in Christ is the just fulfillment of God’s covenant promises.
This then, is what the term translated as “justify” is all about. It has to do with being declared to be in the right. “Justify” was a primarily legal word in Paul’s day. It was a word that was used when a judge would pass down a decision. His declaration of who was in the right was their justification. It was the marker that showed them to be vindicated. Thus, when Paul talks of being justified he is talking of who is declared in the present time to be in God’s one true family, a declaration that points to and anticipates the final decision and declaration at the final judgment. This declaration changes the status of the one who is being marked out so that we can see that when one is justified, their status is changed from being enslaved to sin (Paul will return to this thought in chapter 5) to being part of the family of God. And how do we receive that justification? Paul will get to that soon, but the short answer is those who live by faith in the life of Christ rather than those who think that living by the works of the law will demonstrate them to be justified as the people of God.
When Paul talks of the works of the law, he is primarily referring to the yoke of the Mosaic law, the Torah, as well as all of the rules and regulations that had grown into Jewish tradition to help them uphold the Mosaic law. Jews believed that following this law defined them and assured their status as the people of God. This meant that those who followed the law were shown to be the people of God but those who didn’t bore the evidence in their lack of following the law that they were not the people of God. This is why this issue became so important in early Christian communities that found themselves a mixture of Jewish Christians who followed the law, and Jewish and Gentile Christians who did not. We should note that the issue was not about earning salvation. This is a modern construct that does not relate to the Judaism of Paul’s day. It is just not accurate to say that Jews of Jesus’ and Paul’s day thought that by following the law they earned salvation. They knew that the salvation that came to God’s people was an act of grace but they believed that the badge of identification that showed them to be God’s family was living by the law. It separated them from the pagan sinners all around them.
Paul wants to make it clear that the law had another purpose. It served a purpose, as a he describes in Galatians 3:19, “It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come.” The law kept Israel separate from the sinful pagan nations and dealt with their sin until the full plan could be unveiled in the Messiah. Paul will get to all of that, but for now his point is that the law is not the marker of justification. It was a tool that served a temporary role in preserving their status but it did not create or even demonstrate that status. The Jews might hear the law, but they don’t really do it perfectly which is what it requires. The ultimate purpose of the law was not to justify people. That was always a matter of faith as Paul will explain in chapter 4.
Those with the law and those without the law are standing on the same ground when it comes to facing God at the final judgment that Paul has been discussing. Those who sin under the law and those who sin without the law are in the same boat. In the same way, those who have and hear the law are not justified either. In fact, Paul says, Gentiles don’t have the law, but they do have the heart of the law written on their hearts, on their consciences, and sometimes they follow it, sometimes they don’t. Paul was referring to something that was an accepted belief in the Grecco-Roman world; the belief that humans had a sort of natural law written into their consciences that directed them to right and away from wrong. In chapter 1, Paul said that God had revealed himself through the creation so that humans have enough information to seek God further. Now he describes a second light that all humans have, even those that didn’t have the Mosaic law, the testimony from within. We all have a conscience that either accuses or defends us but Gentiles, said Paul, can’t find justifying solace in that anymore than the Jews could find it in the law. The Mosaic law and the conscience law accuse people of their sin and leave them without excuse but they don’t bring justification. Jew and Gentile stand on the same ground. Only, says Paul, those who obey the law” will be “declared righteous” or a faithful part of God’s covenant family. He doesn’t explain that statement in verse 13 yet, but again, that is coming. Here, Paul is content to simply allude to the fact that there is some way that people can be found to obey the law and faithful to the Covenant.
This even standing of the Jew and Gentile and the equal need for the gospel will come sharply into focus on the last day of judgment. This is the time when God will judge what is, including human’s hearts, not just what seems to be. He will judge humans through Jesus Christ. It is curious that he says “through Jesus” rather than “by the standard of Jesus.” Paul will make this somewhat mysterious statement clear in chapter 6 when he will remind his readers of the need to die to self and enter into the life of the Messiah. The resurrection of Christ and the availability of that resurrection life in the present age is the gospel that he declares. Everyone, both Jew and Gentile, will find themselves being judged by one simple standard. Are they covered by the life of Christ or not. It is that life, and the accompanying faith which allows one to enter into that life, that will justify someone in the present or will show them to be worthy of condemnation on that final day.
Devotional Thought
As a Christian, do you ever find yourself reverting to the mindset that you can somehow work or earn your way into favor with God? Do you fear that God will cast you out of his kingdom if you don’t perform up to some standard? Do you rely on your status as a son of God in Christ alone?
Monday, September 21, 2009
Romans 2:1-11
1 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God's judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God "will repay everyone according to what they have done." 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.
Dig Deeper
If you grew up being a fan of American baseball the way I was when I was a kid, the last few years of baseball have not been exactly encouraging. Baseball has gone from America’s pastime, with star players who every kid looked up to and wanted to emulate, to something entirely different. Almost out of nowhere in the 1990’s baseball changed dramatically. Records that had stood for decades were suddenly being smashed yearly and players were crushing home runs at simply unprecedented rates. There were a few hints that there might be steroid use and cheating, but no one seemed to pay much attention. In the past two or three years, though, even that has changed as it seems nearly every month, reports come out that one of those great players in the late 90’s or early part of this decade tested positive for steroids. It got so bad that the U.S. Congress decided to have a hearing on steroids in baseball and invited a group of well known players in to testify. What was particularly striking was that nearly every one of those players not only denied using steroids, they soundly criticized anyone who would use them. As time has gone on, though, their own words have damned them. Many, if not most, of those same players have since been shown to have used steroids, the very thing they denied and condemned in others. They sat in front of Congress and haughtily condemned behavior that they themselves were entangled in.
One technique that Paul seems to use fairly often in his writings is to create an imaginary or representative opponent with whom he debates and answers as he goes along. This creates two problems for us reading his letters so many years later. The first is that we can easily miss that Paul is doing this and think that he is directly addressing his comments to the members of the church that he is writing. The context, however, of the letter itself usually clues us in when he is addressing his imagined debating partner and when is addressing the church. The second problem is that we sometimes don’t know who his imagined debating partner is. In a case like this second chapter of Romans, is his opponent a haughty Jewish moralizer looking down at the pagans or is it a pagan moralist looking down at his fellow men, all the while thinking he is above them and not part of their activity. Whichever viewpoint Paul’s opponent is coming from, it seems fairly clear that he is using the technique of a representative opponent here. It doesn’t make a huge difference if we don’t know the precise viewpoint of his opponent, the important point is that it is someone who is sitting above the fray looking down at the rest of humans and thinking that they are the problem. This is something, apparently, that both the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians were doing in Rome, to one degree or another, so Paul will take that line of thinking to the extreme and show the recipients of his letter where that leads.
Paul begins his theoretical argument with his opponent who fancies himself to not be in the same sort of mess that he has described in the latter half of chapter 1. Paul is trying to describe the common plight of mankind, Jew and Gentile alike. It doesn’t matter quite how they got to the state of rebellion against God but there is a big problem. If one group would like to sit back and exclude themselves from this state of judgment and experience of God’s wrath in the present then they are going to miss the solution. That’s the big problem with passing judgment on others. When we pass judgment, we usually assume that we are beyond the need for a solution because the judgment doesn’t apply to us so why bother with a solution. When a group of people begin to think that they are outside of the common plight of mankind, they are in very real danger. It’s not that it is wrong to take God’s standard and apply it to all human beings, pointing out our common need for God to reach out and remove us from his wrath. That is exactly the direction that Paul is heading. That’s not passing judgment on others, that’s reality. It’s when we remove ourselves from the picture as though we’re above it that it moves into the realm of passing judgment.
But does this mean, then, that Christians cannot ever tell anyone of their need for God because they stand in his wrath? Of course it does not. What Christians must remember is that we are no different from any other lost human being save for being in Christ. There is nothing special about us and we have no special status. We have simply found what everyone else needs and we should humbly offer it to others, being careful not to begin to think of ourselves as better or more pure than anyone else.
Those who think they don’t need the gospel, whether it’s a pagan caught in the darkness and futility of image-robbing idolatry, or a moralist who thinks that they have risen above such silliness, or Jews who think that they don’t need anything beyond their badge as the chosen people of God, are in serious trouble. God has shown incredible kindness in his patience and his grace in making the gospel available to all but that kindness has a purpose. The world is full of people who claim God’s grace as a license to do whatever they want, believing that God’s grace makes him a big pushover who will let them off at the final judgment. But they are sadly mistaken. God’s kindness has a purpose and it is to drive us toward repentance. We all need to see our need for a savior. But to continue in stubborn refusal of that and remaining in our darkened state, whatever it may be (and we should point out that idols like money, status, power, and prestige are every bit as real as pagan statues of gods), is to build up God’s wrath. Every moment we remain separated from God is a decision to further build up wrath against us. Every decision to remain unrepentant makes it more difficult to respond to God’s grace.
The modern conception and creation of who God is doesn’t often fit with a God of wrath. Yet, if God is a good God as we believe him to be then he must stand in firm opposition to evil. He is committed to restoring his creation and that would include human beings who engage in dehumanizing activities and behavior. Those who persist in this kind of evil are brining more judgment on themselves in the face of a patient and kind God. But this begs the question: why does God allow evil and suffering at all if he is so opposed to it? Why doesn’t he stop war, and children suffering and other forms of evil? When we ask questions like that, though, we don’t think them through all the way. God is definitely opposed to evil and the resurrection of Christ is the evidence of that, as Paul will expound through the remainder of this letter (especially in chapters 6-8). It is his kindness that defers him from destroying evil. If God were to rid his creation of all evil right now, what would that look like? Tyrants would be in trouble, as would child molesters, murders, and those that dehumanized themselves and others. But where would that stop. If God were to truly sanitize the creation from all evil right now, he could not stop there. He would have to destroy envy, hate, selfishness, pride, and even evil thoughts. Suddenly our collars get a little tighter as God’s kindness and patience come a little more into focus. Those who criticize God for not doing away with evil immediately are actually among those who benefit from that very patience. There is a time when he will lay bare all impurity and evil and burn it up in the all-consuming fire of his presence (see 2 Peter 3 for a clear description of that), but God has offered his gospel in the life of Christ as a way to seek good glory, honor, and immortality.
This is one of Paul’s clearest references to the final judgment that Peter describes in such vivid and classic Jewish language in 2 Peter 3. Those who seek good will be shown glory, honor, and peace. Notice that Paul does not insist that anyone achieve good on their own, simply that they seek it. As Paul is so fond of doing, he doesn’t unpack that statement yet, but simply alludes to a truth that he will expound upon later in his letter. No, they only need to seek good and they will find it. What is clear is that they will not find good in themselves and must find that solution elsewhere. Those who do seek for the solution in themselves, reject the truth and follow evil and will find nothing but wrath and anger in the end. Every human who does evil, and Paul will make it clear that includes every human (Rom. 3:23), will find trouble and distress on that day. Paul is not interested just yet in offering a solution to that problem. He is simply setting the stage. God does not show any favoritism to anyone.
But statements about God treating everyone the same bring us back to the questions of chapter 1 that Paul says are answered in the gospel but has not yet explained how. How does this impartiality that Paul is claiming for God match up with his covenant promises made to Israel? How can God’s justice as a good judge be reconciled with his justice as a covenant maker and keeper. Paul will unveil the answer to that quandary in the latter part of chapter 3 and the whole of chapter 4 but for now, Paul simply wants to drive home the point that God has no favorites. Everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, are standing on common ground in their need for the gospel.
Devotional Thought
Are you ever tempted to start to feel just a little bit privileged because you are a Christian? Do you ever find yourself not wanting to be around certain kind of people because they are such “sinners”? If so, what challenges does this passage hold for you?
5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God "will repay everyone according to what they have done." 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.
Dig Deeper
If you grew up being a fan of American baseball the way I was when I was a kid, the last few years of baseball have not been exactly encouraging. Baseball has gone from America’s pastime, with star players who every kid looked up to and wanted to emulate, to something entirely different. Almost out of nowhere in the 1990’s baseball changed dramatically. Records that had stood for decades were suddenly being smashed yearly and players were crushing home runs at simply unprecedented rates. There were a few hints that there might be steroid use and cheating, but no one seemed to pay much attention. In the past two or three years, though, even that has changed as it seems nearly every month, reports come out that one of those great players in the late 90’s or early part of this decade tested positive for steroids. It got so bad that the U.S. Congress decided to have a hearing on steroids in baseball and invited a group of well known players in to testify. What was particularly striking was that nearly every one of those players not only denied using steroids, they soundly criticized anyone who would use them. As time has gone on, though, their own words have damned them. Many, if not most, of those same players have since been shown to have used steroids, the very thing they denied and condemned in others. They sat in front of Congress and haughtily condemned behavior that they themselves were entangled in.
One technique that Paul seems to use fairly often in his writings is to create an imaginary or representative opponent with whom he debates and answers as he goes along. This creates two problems for us reading his letters so many years later. The first is that we can easily miss that Paul is doing this and think that he is directly addressing his comments to the members of the church that he is writing. The context, however, of the letter itself usually clues us in when he is addressing his imagined debating partner and when is addressing the church. The second problem is that we sometimes don’t know who his imagined debating partner is. In a case like this second chapter of Romans, is his opponent a haughty Jewish moralizer looking down at the pagans or is it a pagan moralist looking down at his fellow men, all the while thinking he is above them and not part of their activity. Whichever viewpoint Paul’s opponent is coming from, it seems fairly clear that he is using the technique of a representative opponent here. It doesn’t make a huge difference if we don’t know the precise viewpoint of his opponent, the important point is that it is someone who is sitting above the fray looking down at the rest of humans and thinking that they are the problem. This is something, apparently, that both the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians were doing in Rome, to one degree or another, so Paul will take that line of thinking to the extreme and show the recipients of his letter where that leads.
Paul begins his theoretical argument with his opponent who fancies himself to not be in the same sort of mess that he has described in the latter half of chapter 1. Paul is trying to describe the common plight of mankind, Jew and Gentile alike. It doesn’t matter quite how they got to the state of rebellion against God but there is a big problem. If one group would like to sit back and exclude themselves from this state of judgment and experience of God’s wrath in the present then they are going to miss the solution. That’s the big problem with passing judgment on others. When we pass judgment, we usually assume that we are beyond the need for a solution because the judgment doesn’t apply to us so why bother with a solution. When a group of people begin to think that they are outside of the common plight of mankind, they are in very real danger. It’s not that it is wrong to take God’s standard and apply it to all human beings, pointing out our common need for God to reach out and remove us from his wrath. That is exactly the direction that Paul is heading. That’s not passing judgment on others, that’s reality. It’s when we remove ourselves from the picture as though we’re above it that it moves into the realm of passing judgment.
But does this mean, then, that Christians cannot ever tell anyone of their need for God because they stand in his wrath? Of course it does not. What Christians must remember is that we are no different from any other lost human being save for being in Christ. There is nothing special about us and we have no special status. We have simply found what everyone else needs and we should humbly offer it to others, being careful not to begin to think of ourselves as better or more pure than anyone else.
Those who think they don’t need the gospel, whether it’s a pagan caught in the darkness and futility of image-robbing idolatry, or a moralist who thinks that they have risen above such silliness, or Jews who think that they don’t need anything beyond their badge as the chosen people of God, are in serious trouble. God has shown incredible kindness in his patience and his grace in making the gospel available to all but that kindness has a purpose. The world is full of people who claim God’s grace as a license to do whatever they want, believing that God’s grace makes him a big pushover who will let them off at the final judgment. But they are sadly mistaken. God’s kindness has a purpose and it is to drive us toward repentance. We all need to see our need for a savior. But to continue in stubborn refusal of that and remaining in our darkened state, whatever it may be (and we should point out that idols like money, status, power, and prestige are every bit as real as pagan statues of gods), is to build up God’s wrath. Every moment we remain separated from God is a decision to further build up wrath against us. Every decision to remain unrepentant makes it more difficult to respond to God’s grace.
The modern conception and creation of who God is doesn’t often fit with a God of wrath. Yet, if God is a good God as we believe him to be then he must stand in firm opposition to evil. He is committed to restoring his creation and that would include human beings who engage in dehumanizing activities and behavior. Those who persist in this kind of evil are brining more judgment on themselves in the face of a patient and kind God. But this begs the question: why does God allow evil and suffering at all if he is so opposed to it? Why doesn’t he stop war, and children suffering and other forms of evil? When we ask questions like that, though, we don’t think them through all the way. God is definitely opposed to evil and the resurrection of Christ is the evidence of that, as Paul will expound through the remainder of this letter (especially in chapters 6-8). It is his kindness that defers him from destroying evil. If God were to rid his creation of all evil right now, what would that look like? Tyrants would be in trouble, as would child molesters, murders, and those that dehumanized themselves and others. But where would that stop. If God were to truly sanitize the creation from all evil right now, he could not stop there. He would have to destroy envy, hate, selfishness, pride, and even evil thoughts. Suddenly our collars get a little tighter as God’s kindness and patience come a little more into focus. Those who criticize God for not doing away with evil immediately are actually among those who benefit from that very patience. There is a time when he will lay bare all impurity and evil and burn it up in the all-consuming fire of his presence (see 2 Peter 3 for a clear description of that), but God has offered his gospel in the life of Christ as a way to seek good glory, honor, and immortality.
This is one of Paul’s clearest references to the final judgment that Peter describes in such vivid and classic Jewish language in 2 Peter 3. Those who seek good will be shown glory, honor, and peace. Notice that Paul does not insist that anyone achieve good on their own, simply that they seek it. As Paul is so fond of doing, he doesn’t unpack that statement yet, but simply alludes to a truth that he will expound upon later in his letter. No, they only need to seek good and they will find it. What is clear is that they will not find good in themselves and must find that solution elsewhere. Those who do seek for the solution in themselves, reject the truth and follow evil and will find nothing but wrath and anger in the end. Every human who does evil, and Paul will make it clear that includes every human (Rom. 3:23), will find trouble and distress on that day. Paul is not interested just yet in offering a solution to that problem. He is simply setting the stage. God does not show any favoritism to anyone.
But statements about God treating everyone the same bring us back to the questions of chapter 1 that Paul says are answered in the gospel but has not yet explained how. How does this impartiality that Paul is claiming for God match up with his covenant promises made to Israel? How can God’s justice as a good judge be reconciled with his justice as a covenant maker and keeper. Paul will unveil the answer to that quandary in the latter part of chapter 3 and the whole of chapter 4 but for now, Paul simply wants to drive home the point that God has no favorites. Everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, are standing on common ground in their need for the gospel.
Devotional Thought
Are you ever tempted to start to feel just a little bit privileged because you are a Christian? Do you ever find yourself not wanting to be around certain kind of people because they are such “sinners”? If so, what challenges does this passage hold for you?
Friday, September 18, 2009
Romans 1:24-32
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Dig Deeper
So, do you want to take a guess as to the number one cause of tools and household items being broken? You might think its old age, overuse, or even shoddy construction but you would be wrong. The number one reason that household items and tools are broken is from misuse of purpose. We’ve probably all experienced that, when you think about it, at one time or another in your life. I know I have. Recently, I was trying to break apart a pack of bratwurst. I didn’t want to cook all of them so I figured that I would cook half and put the rest back in the freezer. To accomplish this job I took a knife that was supposedly unbreakable. Maybe that’s true if I had used the knife for it’s designed purpose of cutting, but it didn’t prove to be true when it came to using it as a pry bar. The end of the knife snapped off like a twig but I guess that’s what I should expect when I use something outside of it’s intended purpose. That tipless knife now stands as a testament forever to it’s misuse.
In this first chapter of Romans, Paul is laying his foundation for his argument that the gospel, the centerpiece of which is the resurrection of Christ, reveals the covenant justice of God in his dealings with both Jews and Gentiles. It especially, believed Paul, demonstrated God’s righteousness despite the potentially confusing situation that Jews were not streaming into the kingdom of God. As Paul lays out his charge against all humans who have rejected God and turned to foolishness that they label as wisdom, we will do well to remember that Paul is arguing in terms of humankind rather than individuals. If we forget that Paul is talking in terms of human groups, both in this passage and throughout the letter, we can easily get confused and off-track from what Paul is really saying. His basic point in this passage is that humans don’t know God because they have willingly rejected him, and that his very rejection has caused a serious misuse of purpose in human beings. This misuse stands as a testament to humans’ loss of purpose but also, as we should carefully follow Paul’s argument, it reveals God’s wrath and judgment in the present age which is anticipation of his final judgment.
In order for us to understand the full breast of what Paul is saying in this passage, it is vital that we keep in mind that he is writing this letter to demonstrate the justice of God that is displayed once-for-all in the Messiah’s resurrection. The underlying question, however, is how can you tell in the present age who the people of God are? The way you answer that question has profound implications for answering a question of God’s covenantal faithfulness. This underlying question leads to a duality throughout Paul’s letter because he is writing of both status in the present but also the final verdict. We will see, as the letter continues, how Paul will demonstrate that the people of God can be identified in the present and how that verdict correlates and anticipates their final judgment and vindication but here Paul is dealing with those that are not the true people of God. They will certainly be judged at the final judgment, but just as the people of God can be detected in the present as they anticipate the life and verdict of the age to come, so do those who have rejected God’s way demonstrate that life and verdict in the present age.
Three times Paul says that “God gave them up” as he discusses the results of mankind’s rebellion against God. In using that line, Paul once again makes subtle reference to Israel’s relationship with God by alluding to Psalm 81:11-12 which states that God brought his people out of Egypt but “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” Thus Paul is talking primarily of the pagan’s rejection of God but subtly implying that ethnic Israel shares that same plight. When humans, both Jews and Gentiles, reject God he allows them to reap the harvest of what they sow. They do not just face future judgment, they face God’s wrath and judgment in the present. When people, when communities, when nations reject God, God turns them over to their own desires and wills which stands in stark opposition to God’s people who live by faith according to God’s will and the leading of his Spirit (a truth Paul will discuss thoroughly in chapter 8). The very conditions in which nations and people groups find themselves are not the display of their own wisdom that they think but a sign of God’s wrath, guaranteeing their final rejection of God and the final judgment before God.
To put it simply, God made human beings in his image to represent him and rule over his creation (Gen. 1:26-27), bringing him the appropriate glory and worship in the process. This is the purpose of man. As a result of sin, man surrendered vital aspects of that image (Gen. 5:3) which destroyed man’s ability to achieve that purpose. Human groups that have exchanged their proper desires and appropriate wisdom for lies are sad displays of that loss of purpose. They have, as Paul says, “exchanged the truth about God for a lie,” and lost the full measure of what it means to be human. When the true desires of love for God and other humans is distorted into sexual impurity, humans are feeling God’s wrath in the present whether they realize it or not. When humans exchange genuine worship of God for idolatry, it is the result of our loss of purpose as God’s image bearers rather than the cause of it.
This exact logic is what leads Paul to an ever-so-brief discussion of homosexuality and lesbian behavior. It is not that he is horrified by homosexuality more than other sins. Modern religionists have often used this as an explanation to wipe away Paul’s arguments and excuse homosexual behavior. They claim that Paul is merely demonstrating a culturally biased Jewish abhorrence for homosexuality that no longer fits in our enlightened society. But neither this groundless argument nor such hateful behavior towards homosexuals (truly, telling someone they are fine when they are engaged in image destroying behavior is the worst kind of hate) does justice to Paul’s line of reasoning. Paul is arguing about exchanging our created purpose for a distorted one. He argues that this living a distorted purpose is the result of rejecting God and God giving humans over to their own twisted lusts as a sign of judgment. Paul is using homosexuality as an obvious demonstration of what happens when humans exchange the true God for idols. When that happens, our genuine humanness is exchanged for becoming something less than our designed purpose as human beings. But what if they are born with that proclivity, some might argue? Paul has answered that. If they are born with certain proclivities then, in their rebellion against God, God has turned them over to these tendencies (the same way he has any other sin listed in this passage) rather than rescuing them from them. Remaining in that state is a sign of separation from God not the cause of it.
Sexual Perversion, then, like any other rejection of God’s intended order and purpose is an anticipation of the judgment of God, not the cause of it. The rejection of God is the cause of our condemnation, the resulting sin from that rejection is the sign that God has turned us over to our own will and that we stand in his wrath. To get this all straight we need to think in terms of the final destination of those in Christ. We are, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, being transformed back into the image of God by being in Christ. Jesus was the genuine human being (see Ps. 8) and the process of us walking in the Spirit (Rom. 8) and being transformed into his image (see also Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:10) anticipates the final transformation when we will be fully restored to the intended state of genuine human beings (Phil. 3:21; 1 Jn. 3:2). Because the life of Christ is the destination, living by faith in that life is the anticipation or the demonstration that we will receive a vindication or justification from God at the final judgment. In the same way, the ultimate punishment for those outside of Christ is the complete loss of God’s image and the purpose of genuine humanness. Thus abandoning the state of genuine humanness for which God made us is a demonstration and anticipation that we already stand in God’s judgment, just awaiting the final verdict.
This is not a politically correct message in our culture, especially when we see that Paul Paul describes societies turning to homosexuality as a penultimate example of a society that has completely rejected God and standing in the state of judgment and wrath, but a necessary one. As we look through these verses we can be frightened at how much they sound familiar. We know these people. We live, we might even think, in this country; a country that has already rejected God and thus stands in his judgment, as demonstrated by already being given over to image-destroying behavior. But we should take great care to not become arrogant and begin to angrily look down on “everybody else” thinking that they are the cause of the problems; we should be very aware of this dangerous sort of Pharisee-like attitude. As theologian Tom Wright has pointed out, the line of good evil, of genuine humanity and idolatry doesn’t run between countries or neighborhood, but quite frankly, it runs right down the middle of our own hearts. We each have the potential to give ourselves over to this kind of degrading behavior.
Paul reminds his readers, that there is, in a sense, a final step to this image-robbing depravity. It is one thing to lie, to hate, to steal, to degrade and then to know that you have engaged in evil behavior and feel guilty about it. There is hope for the one who feels guilt. But it is another thing entirely when communities begin to exalt degrading and sinful behavior as good. What is left for a society that has called good to be evil and declared evil to be good (Isa. 5:20)? Nothing but the final judgment that will confirm the present reality, as Paul is about to demonstrate in the next chapter. But before we turn the page on this section we should be clear that what Paul is done is to show that both Jews and Gentiles stand firmly separated from God. The outpouring of God’s wrath and judgment will be well deserved. But, of course, that’s not the end of the story. Paul is not primarily defending God’s righteousness in judgment but in the pronouncement of the gospel. Before he can get to that, however, he has laid out the need for a solution of some type apart from what has existed before. And that is exactly what we have in the gospel.
Devotional Thought
How does it change your perspective to know that people living in their own wisdom rather than God’s are actually an anticipatory sign of their rejection of God? How does it change your perspective on evangelism?
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Dig Deeper
So, do you want to take a guess as to the number one cause of tools and household items being broken? You might think its old age, overuse, or even shoddy construction but you would be wrong. The number one reason that household items and tools are broken is from misuse of purpose. We’ve probably all experienced that, when you think about it, at one time or another in your life. I know I have. Recently, I was trying to break apart a pack of bratwurst. I didn’t want to cook all of them so I figured that I would cook half and put the rest back in the freezer. To accomplish this job I took a knife that was supposedly unbreakable. Maybe that’s true if I had used the knife for it’s designed purpose of cutting, but it didn’t prove to be true when it came to using it as a pry bar. The end of the knife snapped off like a twig but I guess that’s what I should expect when I use something outside of it’s intended purpose. That tipless knife now stands as a testament forever to it’s misuse.
In this first chapter of Romans, Paul is laying his foundation for his argument that the gospel, the centerpiece of which is the resurrection of Christ, reveals the covenant justice of God in his dealings with both Jews and Gentiles. It especially, believed Paul, demonstrated God’s righteousness despite the potentially confusing situation that Jews were not streaming into the kingdom of God. As Paul lays out his charge against all humans who have rejected God and turned to foolishness that they label as wisdom, we will do well to remember that Paul is arguing in terms of humankind rather than individuals. If we forget that Paul is talking in terms of human groups, both in this passage and throughout the letter, we can easily get confused and off-track from what Paul is really saying. His basic point in this passage is that humans don’t know God because they have willingly rejected him, and that his very rejection has caused a serious misuse of purpose in human beings. This misuse stands as a testament to humans’ loss of purpose but also, as we should carefully follow Paul’s argument, it reveals God’s wrath and judgment in the present age which is anticipation of his final judgment.
In order for us to understand the full breast of what Paul is saying in this passage, it is vital that we keep in mind that he is writing this letter to demonstrate the justice of God that is displayed once-for-all in the Messiah’s resurrection. The underlying question, however, is how can you tell in the present age who the people of God are? The way you answer that question has profound implications for answering a question of God’s covenantal faithfulness. This underlying question leads to a duality throughout Paul’s letter because he is writing of both status in the present but also the final verdict. We will see, as the letter continues, how Paul will demonstrate that the people of God can be identified in the present and how that verdict correlates and anticipates their final judgment and vindication but here Paul is dealing with those that are not the true people of God. They will certainly be judged at the final judgment, but just as the people of God can be detected in the present as they anticipate the life and verdict of the age to come, so do those who have rejected God’s way demonstrate that life and verdict in the present age.
Three times Paul says that “God gave them up” as he discusses the results of mankind’s rebellion against God. In using that line, Paul once again makes subtle reference to Israel’s relationship with God by alluding to Psalm 81:11-12 which states that God brought his people out of Egypt but “But my people would not listen to me; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.” Thus Paul is talking primarily of the pagan’s rejection of God but subtly implying that ethnic Israel shares that same plight. When humans, both Jews and Gentiles, reject God he allows them to reap the harvest of what they sow. They do not just face future judgment, they face God’s wrath and judgment in the present. When people, when communities, when nations reject God, God turns them over to their own desires and wills which stands in stark opposition to God’s people who live by faith according to God’s will and the leading of his Spirit (a truth Paul will discuss thoroughly in chapter 8). The very conditions in which nations and people groups find themselves are not the display of their own wisdom that they think but a sign of God’s wrath, guaranteeing their final rejection of God and the final judgment before God.
To put it simply, God made human beings in his image to represent him and rule over his creation (Gen. 1:26-27), bringing him the appropriate glory and worship in the process. This is the purpose of man. As a result of sin, man surrendered vital aspects of that image (Gen. 5:3) which destroyed man’s ability to achieve that purpose. Human groups that have exchanged their proper desires and appropriate wisdom for lies are sad displays of that loss of purpose. They have, as Paul says, “exchanged the truth about God for a lie,” and lost the full measure of what it means to be human. When the true desires of love for God and other humans is distorted into sexual impurity, humans are feeling God’s wrath in the present whether they realize it or not. When humans exchange genuine worship of God for idolatry, it is the result of our loss of purpose as God’s image bearers rather than the cause of it.
This exact logic is what leads Paul to an ever-so-brief discussion of homosexuality and lesbian behavior. It is not that he is horrified by homosexuality more than other sins. Modern religionists have often used this as an explanation to wipe away Paul’s arguments and excuse homosexual behavior. They claim that Paul is merely demonstrating a culturally biased Jewish abhorrence for homosexuality that no longer fits in our enlightened society. But neither this groundless argument nor such hateful behavior towards homosexuals (truly, telling someone they are fine when they are engaged in image destroying behavior is the worst kind of hate) does justice to Paul’s line of reasoning. Paul is arguing about exchanging our created purpose for a distorted one. He argues that this living a distorted purpose is the result of rejecting God and God giving humans over to their own twisted lusts as a sign of judgment. Paul is using homosexuality as an obvious demonstration of what happens when humans exchange the true God for idols. When that happens, our genuine humanness is exchanged for becoming something less than our designed purpose as human beings. But what if they are born with that proclivity, some might argue? Paul has answered that. If they are born with certain proclivities then, in their rebellion against God, God has turned them over to these tendencies (the same way he has any other sin listed in this passage) rather than rescuing them from them. Remaining in that state is a sign of separation from God not the cause of it.
Sexual Perversion, then, like any other rejection of God’s intended order and purpose is an anticipation of the judgment of God, not the cause of it. The rejection of God is the cause of our condemnation, the resulting sin from that rejection is the sign that God has turned us over to our own will and that we stand in his wrath. To get this all straight we need to think in terms of the final destination of those in Christ. We are, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18, being transformed back into the image of God by being in Christ. Jesus was the genuine human being (see Ps. 8) and the process of us walking in the Spirit (Rom. 8) and being transformed into his image (see also Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:10) anticipates the final transformation when we will be fully restored to the intended state of genuine human beings (Phil. 3:21; 1 Jn. 3:2). Because the life of Christ is the destination, living by faith in that life is the anticipation or the demonstration that we will receive a vindication or justification from God at the final judgment. In the same way, the ultimate punishment for those outside of Christ is the complete loss of God’s image and the purpose of genuine humanness. Thus abandoning the state of genuine humanness for which God made us is a demonstration and anticipation that we already stand in God’s judgment, just awaiting the final verdict.
This is not a politically correct message in our culture, especially when we see that Paul Paul describes societies turning to homosexuality as a penultimate example of a society that has completely rejected God and standing in the state of judgment and wrath, but a necessary one. As we look through these verses we can be frightened at how much they sound familiar. We know these people. We live, we might even think, in this country; a country that has already rejected God and thus stands in his judgment, as demonstrated by already being given over to image-destroying behavior. But we should take great care to not become arrogant and begin to angrily look down on “everybody else” thinking that they are the cause of the problems; we should be very aware of this dangerous sort of Pharisee-like attitude. As theologian Tom Wright has pointed out, the line of good evil, of genuine humanity and idolatry doesn’t run between countries or neighborhood, but quite frankly, it runs right down the middle of our own hearts. We each have the potential to give ourselves over to this kind of degrading behavior.
Paul reminds his readers, that there is, in a sense, a final step to this image-robbing depravity. It is one thing to lie, to hate, to steal, to degrade and then to know that you have engaged in evil behavior and feel guilty about it. There is hope for the one who feels guilt. But it is another thing entirely when communities begin to exalt degrading and sinful behavior as good. What is left for a society that has called good to be evil and declared evil to be good (Isa. 5:20)? Nothing but the final judgment that will confirm the present reality, as Paul is about to demonstrate in the next chapter. But before we turn the page on this section we should be clear that what Paul is done is to show that both Jews and Gentiles stand firmly separated from God. The outpouring of God’s wrath and judgment will be well deserved. But, of course, that’s not the end of the story. Paul is not primarily defending God’s righteousness in judgment but in the pronouncement of the gospel. Before he can get to that, however, he has laid out the need for a solution of some type apart from what has existed before. And that is exactly what we have in the gospel.
Devotional Thought
How does it change your perspective to know that people living in their own wisdom rather than God’s are actually an anticipatory sign of their rejection of God? How does it change your perspective on evangelism?
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Romans 1:18-23
God's Wrath Against Sinful Humanity
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles.
Dig Deeper
Young parents usually look forward, with great anticipation, to their first child being born, but there’s often something that they don’t know. It’s something that most of the older parents around them do know but it’s one of those things that has to be experienced to be fully understood. Parents love their children and there is nothing quite like watching new parents fall in love with their precious little bundle in ways that they could never even have imagined. Yet there is something that they will learn as the child gets older about discipline. It can be quite difficult for a new parent to imagine ever having to discipline their sweet little baby. They love them so much that all they can do is think about loving them and showering them with affection. We’ve all probably been around parents, though, who still act like that as their child nears 2 or 3 years old. Everyone around them can see a naughty little toddler that desperately needs discipline, except for the parents who refuse to see that and continue to treat their child like a perfect little angel. And in this lies the truth that each parent must come to learn at some point if they are to be a good parent. If a parent is really going to love their child, they must discipline them. They must stand in firm opposition to the sin and evil that manifests in their child’s life even at a young age. You cannot truly love a child with disciplining them in love as well. You just can’t.
Paul has begun to explain why he wants to come to the city of Rome and the church there to proclaim the gospel of the risen Messiah. He wants to come to build the church up and help them forge the genuine kind of unity between Jews and Gentiles that the gospel demands and that is only truly available in the kingdom life. In order to do that he is writing this letter to them to explain that aspect of the gospel and to explain the justice of God. Paul is going to explain to them how the resurrection of Christ and the gospel that proclaims that fact demonstrates the covenant faithfulness of God. It shows that God is just and explains what God has been up to all along. But a very real part of that justice, faithfulness, and love of God is his wrath. Centuries ago, Christians talked often about the wrath of God, sometimes too much perhaps. But these days, Christians seem hesitant to talk about God’s wrath at all. They want to only talk of his love, grace and kindness and think that any talk of wrath or justice doesn’t fit into that picture. Yet what we must realize is that the same principle that holds true for parents holds true with God. If God is good and if he is just, two things that we believe him to be, then he must stand opposed to evil. If God does not unleash his righteous wrath on evil, then he is not a good God at all.
The declaration of the gospel, the risen Messiah putting the broken pieces of the world back together, doesn’t make much sense unless we understand clearly that the world has rebelled against God without just cause. If the gospel is the announcement that, in Christ, God has shown himself to be faithful to his covenant in restoring his good creation and blessing the world then his opposition and wrath against evil is absolutely part of his justice. Paul is not just talking about the condemnation at the second coming and judgment of the world (which Paul will get to in the next chapter) but there is anticipatory judgment throughout history or to put it another way, the history of the world reveals the ongoing judgment of the world. The wrath to come and the wrath that is currently being revealed in history stand as twin testaments to the condemnation under which all those outside of Christ stand. The coming of the gospel doesn’t relieve this wrath for those outside of Christ but actually increases their guilt. The same life revealed in the gospel is also the very standard of judgment though whom the whole world will be brought to account. Whether the world embraces or suppresses the truth, the fact is that everyone will be judged either in the life of Christ or by the life of Christ. In verse 18, then, Paul sums up succinctly what he will describe in more detail in the rest of this passage. The gospel not only reveals God’s righteousness in salvation but also in wrath as human beings intentionally reject God and his plan and so stand rightly condemned in the present, a condemnation which, as Paul will show in chapter 2, will be confirmed at the final judgment.
In verses 19-20 Paul makes it clear that societies do suppress the truth but individuals are still responsible for their own situation. Simply because societies suppress the truth about God does not render its subjects guiltless before God (we would do well to remember here and throughout the letter of Romans that Paul is usually thinking in terms of societies and people rather than strictly individuals). The fact is that God has made certain things about his existence and our responsibility to carry out his will but humans have refused to honor God appropriately. God has revealed himself through his creation to all men, but we should be careful to note that this knowledge of God revealed in nature does not, in itself, have the power to save. This knowledge of God only renders humans more guilty and makes us more aware of the wrath that has been revealed against humans in opposition to God. The appropriate response to God’s revelation would have been unfettered worship and gratitude towards God (although that would not by itself save humans) but mankind has consistently refused.
Mankind was made in the image of God which means that man was designed by God to represent God to his creation and take dominion over that creation but man forfeited that image by engaging their own will rather than following God’s. As part of that original image God gave humans an instinct, a natural desire to worship, but rather than worshiping appropriately our creator, mankind turned that desire into idolatry and began to worship everything but the one, true God.
As Paul explains this human pattern he seems to be drawing upon echoes from Genesis 3 as well as the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Adam and Eve had been created in the image of God but rather than obeying God’s word and following his will they listened to the temptation to exalt their own will and seize upon fruit that would make them like God (Gen. 3:6). They went clutching after wisdom that was not theirs and got nothing but foolishness, destruction of their purpose, and God’s wrath instead. This disease of misplaced wisdom did not end with Adam and Eve nor did it merely extend to pagan nations while not touching Israel itself. No, Israel, from the very beginning, demonstrated the same problem. Immediately following God’s powerful and miraculous rescue from slavery, Israel responded with false wisdom as they “exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass” (Ps. 106:20) Just as Adam and Eve exchanged the image of the creator for the lie of gaining wisdom by doing their own will, all of mankind has exchanged the image of the creator for worthless idolatry and called it wisdom.
The beginning of all this is that humans suppress the truth about God which leads to futile thinking. It leads men to “call evil good and good evil” (Isa. 5:20) and to exalt that which is really foolish as though it were wise (see 1 Cor. 1-4). The rejection of God leads to distorted thinking and this distorted thinking leads to calling the rejection of God wisdom and rejecting God further. Thus it creates a vicious cycle from which there is no hope of escape if left to our own devices. This common plight of distorted thinking looks ahead to Romans 12:2 where Paul says that part of the solution of the gospel is that in Christ we are called to and given the ability to transform our minds and break the patterns that the rest of the world around us follows.
Futile thinking has a further ramification, though. It leads to a darkened heart. In biblical vernacular, one’s heart was the seat of the will or motivation. Paul’s line of argument is that mankind has rejected God, which leads to distorted thinking beyond the original distortion of rejecting God and that this grasp at wisdom that is not ours leads to a distortion of the will. The history of humankind is the long, sad history of humans listening to their own darkened wills rather than God’s. Our very hearts, the deepest part of our emotions, constantly bids us to rebel against God and seek our own satisfaction.
Paul has finished off his basic complaint against the Gentile nations (he will soon turn his eye toward the Jews as well), a charge that has been exacerbated by the revelation of the gospel. Humans were made in the image of God and called to represent him, do his will, and worship him have turned instead and rejected him, sought our own will, and turned our basic worship instinct into idolatry, claiming that to be wisdom rather than the true foolishness that it is. The charge has been set in this cosmic courtroom scene and the results of this rebellion are the topic of the remainder of this chapter.
Devotional Thought
Do you see the exercise of your own will as a freedom of yours, a good thing, or as the sign of rebellion against God that it is? Jesus’ model prayer in Matthew 6 calls for us to seek God’s will rather than our own. What does that mean for you on a daily basis?
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal human beings and birds and animals and reptiles.
Dig Deeper
Young parents usually look forward, with great anticipation, to their first child being born, but there’s often something that they don’t know. It’s something that most of the older parents around them do know but it’s one of those things that has to be experienced to be fully understood. Parents love their children and there is nothing quite like watching new parents fall in love with their precious little bundle in ways that they could never even have imagined. Yet there is something that they will learn as the child gets older about discipline. It can be quite difficult for a new parent to imagine ever having to discipline their sweet little baby. They love them so much that all they can do is think about loving them and showering them with affection. We’ve all probably been around parents, though, who still act like that as their child nears 2 or 3 years old. Everyone around them can see a naughty little toddler that desperately needs discipline, except for the parents who refuse to see that and continue to treat their child like a perfect little angel. And in this lies the truth that each parent must come to learn at some point if they are to be a good parent. If a parent is really going to love their child, they must discipline them. They must stand in firm opposition to the sin and evil that manifests in their child’s life even at a young age. You cannot truly love a child with disciplining them in love as well. You just can’t.
Paul has begun to explain why he wants to come to the city of Rome and the church there to proclaim the gospel of the risen Messiah. He wants to come to build the church up and help them forge the genuine kind of unity between Jews and Gentiles that the gospel demands and that is only truly available in the kingdom life. In order to do that he is writing this letter to them to explain that aspect of the gospel and to explain the justice of God. Paul is going to explain to them how the resurrection of Christ and the gospel that proclaims that fact demonstrates the covenant faithfulness of God. It shows that God is just and explains what God has been up to all along. But a very real part of that justice, faithfulness, and love of God is his wrath. Centuries ago, Christians talked often about the wrath of God, sometimes too much perhaps. But these days, Christians seem hesitant to talk about God’s wrath at all. They want to only talk of his love, grace and kindness and think that any talk of wrath or justice doesn’t fit into that picture. Yet what we must realize is that the same principle that holds true for parents holds true with God. If God is good and if he is just, two things that we believe him to be, then he must stand opposed to evil. If God does not unleash his righteous wrath on evil, then he is not a good God at all.
The declaration of the gospel, the risen Messiah putting the broken pieces of the world back together, doesn’t make much sense unless we understand clearly that the world has rebelled against God without just cause. If the gospel is the announcement that, in Christ, God has shown himself to be faithful to his covenant in restoring his good creation and blessing the world then his opposition and wrath against evil is absolutely part of his justice. Paul is not just talking about the condemnation at the second coming and judgment of the world (which Paul will get to in the next chapter) but there is anticipatory judgment throughout history or to put it another way, the history of the world reveals the ongoing judgment of the world. The wrath to come and the wrath that is currently being revealed in history stand as twin testaments to the condemnation under which all those outside of Christ stand. The coming of the gospel doesn’t relieve this wrath for those outside of Christ but actually increases their guilt. The same life revealed in the gospel is also the very standard of judgment though whom the whole world will be brought to account. Whether the world embraces or suppresses the truth, the fact is that everyone will be judged either in the life of Christ or by the life of Christ. In verse 18, then, Paul sums up succinctly what he will describe in more detail in the rest of this passage. The gospel not only reveals God’s righteousness in salvation but also in wrath as human beings intentionally reject God and his plan and so stand rightly condemned in the present, a condemnation which, as Paul will show in chapter 2, will be confirmed at the final judgment.
In verses 19-20 Paul makes it clear that societies do suppress the truth but individuals are still responsible for their own situation. Simply because societies suppress the truth about God does not render its subjects guiltless before God (we would do well to remember here and throughout the letter of Romans that Paul is usually thinking in terms of societies and people rather than strictly individuals). The fact is that God has made certain things about his existence and our responsibility to carry out his will but humans have refused to honor God appropriately. God has revealed himself through his creation to all men, but we should be careful to note that this knowledge of God revealed in nature does not, in itself, have the power to save. This knowledge of God only renders humans more guilty and makes us more aware of the wrath that has been revealed against humans in opposition to God. The appropriate response to God’s revelation would have been unfettered worship and gratitude towards God (although that would not by itself save humans) but mankind has consistently refused.
Mankind was made in the image of God which means that man was designed by God to represent God to his creation and take dominion over that creation but man forfeited that image by engaging their own will rather than following God’s. As part of that original image God gave humans an instinct, a natural desire to worship, but rather than worshiping appropriately our creator, mankind turned that desire into idolatry and began to worship everything but the one, true God.
As Paul explains this human pattern he seems to be drawing upon echoes from Genesis 3 as well as the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Adam and Eve had been created in the image of God but rather than obeying God’s word and following his will they listened to the temptation to exalt their own will and seize upon fruit that would make them like God (Gen. 3:6). They went clutching after wisdom that was not theirs and got nothing but foolishness, destruction of their purpose, and God’s wrath instead. This disease of misplaced wisdom did not end with Adam and Eve nor did it merely extend to pagan nations while not touching Israel itself. No, Israel, from the very beginning, demonstrated the same problem. Immediately following God’s powerful and miraculous rescue from slavery, Israel responded with false wisdom as they “exchanged their glorious God for an image of a bull, which eats grass” (Ps. 106:20) Just as Adam and Eve exchanged the image of the creator for the lie of gaining wisdom by doing their own will, all of mankind has exchanged the image of the creator for worthless idolatry and called it wisdom.
The beginning of all this is that humans suppress the truth about God which leads to futile thinking. It leads men to “call evil good and good evil” (Isa. 5:20) and to exalt that which is really foolish as though it were wise (see 1 Cor. 1-4). The rejection of God leads to distorted thinking and this distorted thinking leads to calling the rejection of God wisdom and rejecting God further. Thus it creates a vicious cycle from which there is no hope of escape if left to our own devices. This common plight of distorted thinking looks ahead to Romans 12:2 where Paul says that part of the solution of the gospel is that in Christ we are called to and given the ability to transform our minds and break the patterns that the rest of the world around us follows.
Futile thinking has a further ramification, though. It leads to a darkened heart. In biblical vernacular, one’s heart was the seat of the will or motivation. Paul’s line of argument is that mankind has rejected God, which leads to distorted thinking beyond the original distortion of rejecting God and that this grasp at wisdom that is not ours leads to a distortion of the will. The history of humankind is the long, sad history of humans listening to their own darkened wills rather than God’s. Our very hearts, the deepest part of our emotions, constantly bids us to rebel against God and seek our own satisfaction.
Paul has finished off his basic complaint against the Gentile nations (he will soon turn his eye toward the Jews as well), a charge that has been exacerbated by the revelation of the gospel. Humans were made in the image of God and called to represent him, do his will, and worship him have turned instead and rejected him, sought our own will, and turned our basic worship instinct into idolatry, claiming that to be wisdom rather than the true foolishness that it is. The charge has been set in this cosmic courtroom scene and the results of this rebellion are the topic of the remainder of this chapter.
Devotional Thought
Do you see the exercise of your own will as a freedom of yours, a good thing, or as the sign of rebellion against God that it is? Jesus’ model prayer in Matthew 6 calls for us to seek God’s will rather than our own. What does that mean for you on a daily basis?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)