What Of Example?
WHAT OF EXAMPLE?
ROMANS 2:17-21
How discerning are we really?
This passage is ironical. Human pride, the most elusive and persistent of human vices, can turn into a boast even the grace which should humble and the privilege which should inspire lowly gratitude. It transforms the standing with God which the sinner has done nothing to merit or to win into a claim to excellence.
In 2:18 the grounds of the Jews’ pathetic boasting was reviewed. They knew the will of God and “approved what is excellent.” Discernment and perception are needed if we are to judge right and wrong (see also Romans 12:2; Philippians 1:9-10). The meaning is literally “testing out things which differ.” It referred, in common Greek use, to auditing and scrutinizing the accounts and conduct of office. The Jews had the Law, which prescribed for them the clean and the unclean. It was a fact that, as no other nation, they had a notion of the holiness of God. It was true that they were, or could have been, “a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of children …” Such enlightenment should have made their nation what it was from all time designed to be—a missionary people. Isaiah had glimpsed and preached that truth. It was part of the promise to Abraham (Isaiah 45:22; 52:10; Genesis 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14). It was a privilege and a responsibility. To corrupt it into a theme for pride was a terrible sin.