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.