3: The Person With The Bible: Guilty (2:17—3:8)
3: THE PERSON WITH THE BIBLE: GUILTY (2:17—3:8)
As Paul in 2:17 begins addressing the Jews directly, remember that, in present-day terms, they represent people who have the Bible. We who have the Bible on our shelves, we who have the church in our midst, we who have the culture that grew out of the Reformation: Is this enough for salvation?
Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God . . . (2:17)
“Restest in the law” should remind us of what we just read from Zephaniah 3:11. Paul is addressing people who take pride in the fact that God’s “holy mountain” (Zeph. 3:11) is in their midst. They “rest” on this fact.
. . . and knowest his will . . . (2:18a)
What do the Jews have? They have the Bible. As Paul will say later, “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God” (3:1-2). The main advantage the Jews had over all other people was that they had the Bible. They knew God’s will (2:18). They were resting upon it (2:17). There was a serious problem, however: Having this special blessing had made them proud. And that’s exactly where so many people are today. Look at all the cathedrals in Europe. People hear the cathedral bells. Isn’t that enough? They have their children baptized, christened, and confirmed. They have church weddings. Isn’t that enough?
You find the same mentality in America. We have a higher percentage of people belonging to churches than ever before in history—more even than in earlier times when people really believed something! Yet God is saying to the Jew back in the first century but also to many people in our own time that all of this Jewish (or Christian) heritage doesn’t amount to one grain of sand. All it does is condemn you more!
Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law; and art confident that thou thyself art a guide to the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law. Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written. (2:17-24)
How terrible! Here are the Jews, who were supposed to show the image of the living God before a lost world (2:19-20), and yet they saw their mission mainly as a basis for pride (2:17, 23). We see the same problem among Christians today. What would you guess is the most difficult thing a missionary faces when starting a new work? I don’t know of a single missionary who would disagree that the greatest problem they face is the people who have been there before them and have been equated in the people’s minds with the name Christian. When Livingston tried to preach the gospel in Africa, he had to deal with the fact that the people associated Christianity with the Portuguese, who had been slave traders in that part of the world. Until recently the biggest problem missionaries faced in Muslim areas was that the Muslims, who were not supposed to drink wine, associated Christianity with the wine merchants who profited by selling a commodity the Muslims could not sell. When people who have the Bible—be they Jew or Christian—behave in such a way, instead of bringing light, they’re bringing darkness.
We usually associate the word missionary with Christianity, but the Jews of Old Testament times were themselves in a sense called to be missionaries. The book of Jonah is the best illustration of this. When we think of Jonah, of course we think of the great fish, but Jonah’s story is important mainly as an example of Israel’s failure to proclaim its missionary message. Jonah was told to go and preach to Nineveh, but instead of accepting that missionary call he got on a boat sailing in the opposite direction from Nineveh.
Ezekiel also speaks of Israel’s failure in its mission: “Thus saith the LORD God; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her. And she has changed my judgments into wickedness more than the nations, and my statutes more than the countries that are round about her” (Ezek. 5:5-6a). God had put Jerusalem in the midst of the nations for a purpose. Israel’s purpose was to speak of God’s existence and His character, and to call other nations to God. Jonah is an outstanding example of Israel’s failure to do this, but he is not by any means the only example. The Jews were to be a testimony to God, but instead, says Ezekiel, they were quite the opposite. From the time of the Babylonian captivity, the Jews were scattered throughout the known world. Jewish synagogues were established throughout the known world. If only they had stood for God! But as Jonah illustrated and as Ezekiel said and as Paul is saying in 2:17-24, they had done the exact opposite. When Solomon dedicated the temple, he declared that it would become the “house of prayer for all people” (see 2 Chron. 6:32; Isa. 56:7; Matt. 21:13). But it turned out to be quite the opposite.
The temple was to be a testimony to the world that God exists, that He is really there. The reality of God should have been seen in the righteous lives of the people who worshiped in His house. It should also have been seen in the way God protected His people in battle. This being a fallen world, God’s chosen nation from time to time would need His protection in battle, and He intended to give them that protection as a testimony to the nations. But because of their sin, God stopped protecting them, and the other nations could now say, “Their God is just like any other God.” Israel’s immorality caused other nations to blaspheme God (2:24), and when because of their immorality God stopped protecting them, this caused the other nations to blaspheme God all the more. Israel was to be a living demonstration of the fact that God is there. Instead, because of their sin and consequent string of defeats in battle, the other nations said, “Israel’s God is not there.”
To apply a New Testament term to Jonah’s situation, because of his taking off in the other direction, the gospel was not preached to Nineveh (until after Jonah repented). Because of Israel’s frequent sin, God’s good character was not exhibited to the world. As Isaiah expressed it, instead of bringing about anything resembling a spiritual birth, Israel had only “brought forth wind” (Isa. 26:18).
Unfortunately, the same can often be said of Christians today. Too often, people of other religions who come in contact with Christians go away disgusted. Almost all the great blasphemous leaders of the world today have been instructed in our universities and have gone away untouched and disgusted. At the same time, God has often withdrawn His hand of protection and allowed people from Christian backgrounds to fall to the influence of ideologies such as atheistic communism or pagan religions of the East. Our situation is exactly parallel to that of the Jews in Bible times. Both Jews back then and Christians today have failed to exhibit to the world the fact that God really exists. Therefore, as Ezekiel goes on to say, “So, it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment unto the nations that are round about thee, when I shall execute judgments in thee in anger and in fury and in furious rebukes. I the LORD have spoken it” (Ezek. 5:15).
What a sad situation. Here are the nations; they are to look toward Israel and see that God exists. But instead, God has to judge Israel. In fact, He used these same heathen nations to judge Israel. Instead of looking at Israel and learning of God, they destroyed Israel as they blasphemed her God. And that’s what Paul is saying here in Romans 2: “In every area of life where you should have been a testimony, instead you have been sinful and proud, and therefore God has had to chasten you. And that in turn has caused other nations to blaspheme your God.”
What can we who are a part of twentieth-century Christendom do but put on the sackcloth and ashes and say, “Amen. This is where we are. We’re a cause of blasphemy. God can no longer protect us.” All of the major “Christian” nations from past history into our day have known the truth and have deliberately turned away from it. Everything that could be said against the Jews of Paul’s day can now be said against us. Instead of being missionaries, we have caused nonbelievers to blaspheme. Not only have we not preached the positive message of salvation, we have preached a negative message instead and have caused unbelievers to turn away from a God we no longer honor.
A few chapters later Ezekiel says this to the people of Judah, Israel’s southern kingdom: “Neither hath Samaria [Israel’s northern kingdom] committed half of thy sins; but thou hast multiplied thine abominations more than they, and hast justified thy sisters [the northern kingdom] in all thine abominations which thou hast done. Thou also, which hast judged thy sisters, bear thine own shame for thy sins that thou hast committed more abominable than they; they are more righteous than thou; yea, be thou confounded also, and bear thy shame, in that thou hast justified thy sisters” (Ezek. 16:51-52). Then, in verse 56: “For thy sister Sodom was not mentioned by thy mouth in the day of thy pride.” Then, in verse 61: “Then thou shalt remember thy ways, and be ashamed, when thou shalt receive thy sisters, thine elder and thy younger [Samaria and Sodom]; and I will give them unto thee for daughters.” Simply stated, Ezekiel is saying that the Jews of his day were worse even than the notorious Sodomites. Jesus said a similar thing to the Jews of His own day: “If the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day” (Matt. 11:23).
That’s where we stand in our own Christian culture today. I don’t like communism, but I believe that communist China is not as bad in God’s sight as is our own culture. We who have lived in northern Europe and North America since the Reformation have been greatly blessed by the light of truth. Yet we have deliberately turned away from it. When I hear Paul ask the Jews of his day, “Are you counting on being saved just because you are Jews, when in fact you have been a blasphemy in the face of the nations?” I am certain that God is asking the same question of the so-called Christians of northern Europe and North America today. We are a blasphemy. That doesn’t excuse the other side, the people without the Bible; as we have seen (1:18—2:16), they too will be judged. But we can’t excuse ourselves. We can’t say, “We’re the righteous ones. Surely God will protect us.” Why should He? We are a blasphemy against Him!
Paul declared both the Gentiles and then the Jews of his day to be under the wrath of God. In 3:9-20 he will say the same thing in broader terms, climaxing with his much-quoted conclusion that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (3:23), which is another way of saying, “everyone is under the wrath of God.” Or as Isaiah said, “All we like sheep have gone astray” (Isa. 53:6). Who needs the Savior? The Gentile has sinned; the Jew has sinned. The man without the Bible has sinned; the man with the Bible has sinned. Who needs the Savior? It’s a very simple conclusion, isn’t it? All men and women everywhere need the Savior! And if we’re going to live in the world as it is, rather than in some make-believe world, we have to live within this circle. When people ask us, “Who needs the Savior?” we must answer, very quietly, very soberly, and with real compassion, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
As we consider what Paul says about all Jews and all Gentiles being sinners in God’s sight, it is important that we as Christians today not look down on Paul’s first-century readers as though we are somehow above them. As Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:3, we “were by nature the children of wrath,” no less than the worst unredeemed sinner. Each of us has been under the wrath of God. If we have accepted Christ as our Savior, the wrath of God is no longer upon us. But this is not because of anything within ourselves, anything in our race, or in our Christian culture. If we are not under the wrath of God right now, it is only because by His grace Christ has died for us and, also by His grace, we have accepted Him as our Savior. We cannot think of ourselves as being removed by some innate goodness from anyone who is still subject to God’s wrath. Whenever we consider God’s wrath against a sinful world, it should always be with the attitude that “This is where I myself have been, and this is where I deserve to be except for the finished work of Jesus Christ.” It is only in the environment of this humble realization that we dare proceed with our study of Romans.
Looking back a couple of verses, Paul asked his Jewish readers, “Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?” (2:22). The best translation from the Greek would be, “Thou that abhorrest idols, art thou guilty of the greatest irreverences?” Similarly, some years later, John would speak of those who “say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9). Here are the Jews, the people with the Bible, who think they are something special. Yet Paul says they are guilty of the greatest irreverence, and John calls them “the synagogue of Satan.” Again we must admit, this is surely how God looks at much of Christendom today. Claiming to be under the umbrella of Christendom, claiming to have some sort of special blessing because the bells ring in the cathedrals, because in the United States great numbers of people go to church, and yet we commit blasphemy against God as we turn from the clear teaching of His Word. It is a sober truth and we must face it: If we have the Bible, if we enjoy all the blessings it brings, and yet by our lives bring shame upon God’s name, we are guilty of the greatest irreverence.
Then look again at verses 23 and 24: “Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you.” When the man with the Bible treats it as an external thing only, it causes the man without the Bible to dishonor the God of the Bible. Surely, then, the man with the Bible is justifiably under God’s wrath.
For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. (2:25)
The external rites of religion are not enough, in and of themselves. To the Jew the crucial external rite was circumcision; to the man with the Bible in our own generation it is baptism or confirmation or church membership. But such things, says Paul, are not helpful. In fact, they are harmful; they are no more than “uncircumcision” unless there is a reality behind them.
Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfill the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law? (2:26-27)
That last phrase could better be translated, “who with the advantage of the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law.” As we noted before, Paul is not for a moment saying that the person without the Bible is justified. Indeed, because these Gentiles do not keep their own standards, they too stand condemned in God’s sight (2:1). Paul is simply saying, to the Jews of his day and to professing Christians today, “Shame on you! There are people without the Bible, people without all the advantages you have, who live better lives than you live.”
This doesn’t excuse the man without the Bible, but oh how it condemns the man with the Bible! There stands the Jew, saying, “I’m a Jew. I have the circumcision. I have all these other things.” And God is saying to him, “Yes, but look, with all the advantages you have, time after time it can be pointed out that the people without the Bible, the surrounding world that does not believe, live better lives than you do. And therefore you cause the living God to be blasphemed. This doubly condemns you. It doesn’t excuse the others, but it doubly condemns you!”
For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. (2:28-29)
External rites, whether those of Judaism or of Christendom, are meaningless unless there is a circumcision of the heart, unless God has touched the person’s heart and there is a reality to his or her faith. To live under the umbrella of Christendom, whether Roman Catholic Christendom or Protestant Christendom, and then to live lives that are a scandal in the sight of nonbelievers, to profess a faith that means nothing in our inward parts, this surely places us under God’s wrath. If Christianity is for us merely a blessing not taken advantage of, then surely God can say to us, just as He said to the Gentile world in 2:1, “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man.”
As we move into the third chapter, Paul says with great insistence that his Jewish readers need the Savior because they are under the wrath of God even though they have had great spiritual advantages. Spiritual blessing, says Paul, is not an automatic result of one’s race or of one’s external adherence to a religious tradition. Any spiritual blessing we are to experience must come from a much deeper reality. Paul is parading all mankind before us—first Gentiles, then Jews—trusting that as we look at them we will also see ourselves and realize that nothing we are, in and of ourselves, can save us from God’s justifiable wrath.
What advantage then hath the Jew? Or what profit is there of circumcision? (3:1)
Paul knew of course that his Jewish readers would ask this question, no less than a Jewish person reading his words today would ask it. If Jews, just like Gentiles, are under the wrath of God, then what advantage is there in being one of God’s “chosen” people? Paul answers his own question, very strongly. Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. (3:2)
“Oracles of God” refers, of course, to what we know today as the Old Testament. The Jews’ chief advantage over the Gentiles was that they had God’sWord. They could know! In chapters 9—11 of Romans Paul will deal with the Jews in great detail. In 10:19 he will ask, “Did not Israel know?” And throughout the tenth chapter he shows exactly how Israel knew of God: They knew about God because divinely inspired people like Moses (10:5, 19) and Isaiah (10:16, 20) told them about Him. In other words, they knew because they had the oracles of God, the Old Testament.
So the question is not whether Israel knew about God. Israel did know. They knew about God in a way that people without the Bible did not know. But did this knowledge of God solve their spiritual problem? Did this mean they didn’t need a Savior? “Not at all,” says God, “because, even though you knew, you didn’t believe.” And because they didn’t believe, all their knowledge of God didn’t help them; quite to the contrary, it condemned them all the more.
Paul has approached the question of the standing of the Jewish nation before God from three different angles: Their lives are worse than those of all the people around them who don’t have the Bible, therefore they are condemned (2:17-24); they observe the external rites as God directed, but it is not from the heart, therefore they are condemned (2:25-29); they knew about God, they had the Old Testament, but they didn’t believe it, therefore they are condemned (3:1-2).
For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. (3:3-4)
Does the unbelief of God’s chosen people, in spite of all their advantages, suggest that God is faithless, or that He has broken His covenant promises to Israel? “God forbid!” says Paul. “Not at all.” God has kept every one of His covenant promises. The fault lies entirely with those who failed to believe those promises.
But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just. (3:5-8)
Paul anticipates that some of his readers might say, “If our sin makes God’s righteousness more conspicuous by contrast, is it really fair for Him to judge us?” To which Paul replies, in essence, “Yes, but this doesn’t change the matter. It’s still your own unbelief. God is still justified in condemning you, because you’ve had all this light in the Old Testament revelation. You knew about God! You knew! You had the advantage. And yet you didn’t believe.” And once again we must ask, if this is what God says about the Jews in Paul’s day, about their having the Old Testament Scriptures and yet being guilty before Him—indeed being especially under His wrath because of all the advantages they had—if this was true of the Jewish world of Paul’s day, what would God say to the world of Christendom today?
Think of the advantages we have had in northern Europe and North America. With our whole culture built on the Reformation. With the ability to buy a Bible in any 5 and 10 cent store. With our literature full of Bible quotations. If the Jews were condemned because they didn’t believe despite their advantages, what must God say to our “Christian” nations today? If the Jews had an advantage, we certainly have more! If God condemned the Jews for their lack of response, may He have mercy on us!
We who have the Bible today stand more condemned than people today who don’t have the Bible—who have only the witness of their conscience. But we also stand more condemned than those who had the Bible in Paul’s day. To have these advantages and not believe, to have these advantages and turn away from God, to have these advantages and yet to cause the name of the living God to be blasphemed. What excuse can we make? How do we expect to get away with it? When young people from all over the world come to a country like the United States to study in our universities, only to return home cynical and atheistic, should we be surprised when God looks at us and says, “You are under My wrath!”
If any people in all of history needed the Savior, it is us in present-day Western Christendom.