04.07. LESSON 7

LESSON 7

Three questions, which Paul deems of sufficient importance to justify a suspension of his argument on universal condemnation long enough to consider, are found in Romans 3:1-8. These questions grow naturally out of Paul’s withering castigation of the Jews, and should be taken as Jewish protests against his teaching. However, they involve much vital, changeless truth.

First question: If Jews are equally condemned with Gentiles, what is the profit in being a Jew? This question betrays fleshliness, for the one who asks it sees profit only in what contributes to his pride and self-importance. Paul answers that the primary advantage of the Jew is that he is "entrusted with the oracles (utterances) of God." This advantage leads into countless other advantages, several of which he names in Romans 9:4-5.

Second question: Does God’s fidelity depend upon man’s fidelity? The immediate import of this question is: since God is bound by covenant to Abraham and Moses to bless Israel, will he not violate his covenant if he condemns Jews? Therefore, unless God be a covenant-breaker, unfaithful Jews will be blessed because they are of the covenantal people. With this same old sophistry, which John the Baptist and Christ labored to correct, the Jews try to refute the charge that they are condemned. They forget that God promises to curse unfaith just as he promises to bless faith; and that fidelity to his word requires him to fulfill both promises. Paul, jealous of God’s honor, shrinks from the very thought of God’s being unfaithful in the cry, "God forbid," and quotes David to the effect that he confessed himself to be a liar that God’s justice in punishing him might be manifest. Hence, men in justifying, or excusing, their sins dishonor God!

Third question: If sin shows up God’s righteousness, is not God unrighteous in punishing sinners? This question gives Paul a chance to teach some deep moral lessons, which our modern world needs. As he has already shown the Jews that, inasmuch as Gentiles also have law (Romans 2:15), their contention that mere possession of law is sufficient proves too much; likewise, again this proves to much; it makes the Jews themselves ridiculous, for it blots out all moral distinctions, even unto saving the heathen world. How the haughty Jews would toss their heads and fume under this boomerang! In truth, could this question be answered in the affirmative, not universal condemnation, but universal salvation would follow, for God restrains the sin that does not praise him (Psalms 76:10).

Paul’s unqualified answer to the question is that sin is wholly without merit; that it is evil not only in consequences. but its nature is lawless, and evil; that it remains evil even when God overrules to bring good out of it, as in the case of Joseph and his brothers. That in "commends God’s righteousness is incidental; expediency can never justify a thing that is sinful. God does not need sin in operating his universe, and when he weaves it in, he but demonstrates his sovereign righteousness, unity, wisdom, and power. To make a sin a virtue tumbles the moral world upside down into chaos. As a triumphant climax, Paul tells the Jews their reasoning is so foolish and morally crooked that they unwittingly vindicate him. That is, if Paul’s false doctrine gives them their occasion (as they say it dogs) to uphold God’s covenantal truth, Paul is not guilty, for by their reasoning his unrighteousness is commending God’s righteousness. Paul concludes his answer to the quibbles of the Jews by cleverly reminding them that their logic which would justify him if he taught it were all right to "do evil that good may come," is so utterly false and wicked that those who slander him are justly condemned.

Three lofty, abiding truths emerge from these parenthetic verses: first, by giving primacy to "the oracles of God," they help us properly to evaluate and appreciate the word of God; second, by giving permanency to the wholly admirable exhortation, "Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar," they magnify God’s unvarying, eternal truth and trustworthiness; third, by teaching that men who say, "Let us do evil that good may come," deduce an immoral conclusion from false premises, slander godly men, and deserve condemnation, these verses declare the reality and penalty of sin, and the stability and grandeur of the moral order.

Argument for Condemnation Concluded
(Romans 3:9-20) In Romans 3:1-8, Paul answered the Jews who believed, since they were sons of Abraham, they were not condemned along with all the other nations of men. Now in these verses, he shows them that their own sacred scriptures teach the condemnation of all men, especially of the Jews because they have the advantages of possessing "the oracles of God." His first quotation from David gives God’s verdict of universal sin, not on Jews only, but "upon the children of men" (Psalms 14:2-3). God’s appraisal of mankind just preceding the Flood, "The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them," is the same when he speaks much later through David, Isaiah, and Paul. And still "That which is born of the flesh is flesh—the flesh profiteth nothing" (Jesus). With scriptures from David and Isaiah, Paul makes a mosaic of man with respect to both his nature and his practice. Men are "by nature children of wrath" (Ephesians 2:3), fallen, decayed, and rotten at the core. As there are no good fallen angels, just so there are no good fallen men. "None is good, save one, even God" (Jesus). "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 18:9). The citadel of human personality is in the hands of the enemy. God cannot use natural men in his spiritual kingdom until they become spiritual men by a spiritual birth. Men need to repent of what they are as well as of what they do (Romans 3:10-12). With respect to practice and conduct, men are in word, corrupt, deceitful, uncharitable, and blasphemous (Romans 3:13-14); indeed, murderous, destructive, cruel, and warmongers (Romans 3:15-17). In Romans 3:19-20, Paul holds his just completed graphic picture of man’s depraved nature working itself out through his bodily members up before the Jews and asks: "Do you see what your law does for you?" He tells them what law can, and cannot, do. It reveals wounds for which it has no remedy; it smites, but cannot heal. When he tells them law has neither office nor power to justify, he demolishes their last refuge, and hopes to move them to plead guilty and throw themselves upon the clemency of their beneficent Judge.

Questions