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?