Gospel conversations often provide unanticipated diversions. You've probably had it happen to you along the way. You begin to discuss the nature of God with little incident. But then you begin to pinpoint the sinfulness of man and one's separation from God and the reality of eternal condemnation. You press the necessity of reliance upon Christ alone for righteousness before God. You show that there's no acceptance with God apart from faith in Jesus Christ.
Then it happens. Though you had directed the conversation on the gospel, the person sensing the weight of conviction and the solitary way to God through Christ alone balks. He doesn't tell you that he balks but he does so by trying diversionary tactics. It's the first move in warfare when your opponent has the upper hand. Divert! Move the pressure away from the center to a peripheral focus.
That's when you begin to get questions about the plausibility of Stephen Jay Gould's ideas on evolution; the details of why the Crusades 800 years ago provide enough rationale to reject anything that is Christian; the injustice of tribal groups in Africa, South America, and Asia being judged by God in spite of having no churches; and even occasional theological diversions about election or hell or judgment.
Is it that these questions have been burning in that person's mind for years, and now that he has a genuine Christian's ear, he can now unload and find answers that have troubled him? Quite likely, that's not the case; rather it is more likely that he feels the heat of the gospel and is groping for anything to chill conviction and turn the conversation.
Now, what does this have to do with our text in Romans 3? We must not think that Paul wrote generically. He wrote to real people with personal, lively issues at the heart of his letter. Though he deals with objections throughout Romans, at this point, he seems to deal specifically with diversions from the gospel.
Let's think about where he's taken us. First, he sets forth his thesis that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to all that believe—Jew and Greek; and that the righteousness of God necessary for right standing with Him is found in the gospel alone. Second, he must demonstrate everyone's need for the gospel of Christ. He does so by explaining the practice of sin among the Gentiles and God's consequent judgment. But the Jews are not off the hook by reason of their heritage or religious practice. They, too, face God's judgment for similar sins, even if done in a more respectable way. Finally, the clincher came when he explained that relying upon one's Jewishness or circumcision does not erase transgressions before God. Transgressors face judgment. The real Jew is not one with outward trappings of conformity to moral and ceremonial law, or even the marks of circumcision but rather, the real Jew is one circumcised in the heart by the Holy Spirit in regeneration. Religious privilege is no foil against judgment.
Then the diversion begins! That's the subject of these verses. Paul gives us a clear model for dealing with gospel diversions. Let's consider this text in three arguments that Paul's imaginary objector poses by stating the diversionary proposition and how the Apostle answers.
Let's review where Paul has been with regard to Jews. He seeks to establish that Jews possess no claim of righteousness because of their Judaism. The primary way that he does this is by bringing them to the stark reality: "for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified" (2:13). Possessing the Law, does not equate with righteousness before God. Further, the Jew thought that due to his possessing the Law and his schooling in the Law he maintained an edge over the Gentile. Paul agreed, with one caveat—that they practice of the Law. Even though they boasted in the Law, because they were transgressors, they dishonored God and the Gentiles slandered God's name due to their hypocrisy (2:23-24). Yet more, surely circumcision would count for something! Yes, indeed, Paul told them—as long as you are not a transgressor of the Law. In that case, "your circumcision has become uncircumcision" (2:25).
Do you see what he's doing in each argument? He returns to his thesis in 1:16-17 concerning righteousness. Unless one is righteous enough to be accepted by God then he remains under condemnation. Justice—or legal righteousness—must be served by the universal Judge. One can add all sorts of religious claims to his spiritual resume; but if he is not righteous enough to be accepted by God then his claims are futile. He, therefore, is in need of the righteousness of Another. That's where the gospel points us to Christ alone.
Paul may have encountered the kind of objection that he introduces. Some commentators suggest that these might have been Paul's own diversions before he came to Christ. The first diversion implies that Paul rejected Judaism outright. Though brought up in the strictest traditions of Judaism, as a Christian, he no longer cared for the Jews. Of course, he later continues his rebuttal against such charges by declaring that he was willing to be damned, if possible, for the salvation of his Jewish kinsmen who had so many advantages toward understanding and applying the gospel (9:3-5). Paul insists, "You've missed the point of what I've been saying. I'm not counting out the advantage in terms of understanding and opportunity that belongs to the Jew. Rather I'm demonstrating that all of these advantages do not make the Jew righteous before God."
Notice the question from his objector: "Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the benefit of circumcision?" 'Paul, you're saying that all of the long history belonging to the Jew is futile.' The objector goes back to Jewish nationalism and ethnicity. These were descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They received the covenant promises. They were delivered from Egypt by God's mighty hand. They inherited the Promised Land by God's mighty power. They were the people of King David and the Prophets. Surely, this would count for something!
Then there is the matter of circumcision, the sign of the covenant made with Abraham; surely, those circumcised are accepted by God on the basis of that covenant sign.
The error made by the Jews, and the common error continued by people from every Christian religious tradition and denomination, is that of substituting religious status for right standing before God. It continues the low view of God, as though righteousness doesn't matter, that many of the Jews had embraced. In spite of holding the name of the Lord holy, they thought that as long as they had religious status, all would be well. So, whether it is ceremonial law and circumcision, as with the Jews, or baptism, church membership, infant baptism, or communion with Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants, it remains the same error of substituting form for substance, religious works for righteousness. None of that removes the guilt of our sins or imputes to us sufficient righteousness to stand before God.
Paul responds to the dual questions: "Great in every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God." Now, we expect that Paul will add second, third, and fourth reason to this first one. He does—but not here. We have to wait until chapter 9:3-5 to get the balance of the list. Yet it is significant that he places of primary importance that Jews "were entrusted with the oracles of God." God gave the Jews His Word! No other nation received the revelation of God. The Lord overlooked the educated Egyptians and Greeks, the cultured Babylonians and Phoenicians. On the mountain, God revealed Himself to Israel, not only on tablets of stone but also by the divine voice coming from the mountain that burned with fire while wreathed in smoke (cf. Exodus 19). The Assyrians, Amorites, and Amalekites had no such advantage. None of the other nations had the history of God working by mighty signs and wonders in their midst: the plagues in Egypt, parting the Red Sea, water and manna in the wilderness, crumbling the walls of Jericho, conquering mightier and stronger nations.
This remarkable advantage of responsibility meant that the Jew was to do something with "the oracles of God." He was to hear, believe, and heed. He was to learn from the promise that God would raise up a Prophet greater than Moses; that God would write the laws on his heart and not on stone; that God would dwell among them, not in temples of stone but the temple of the heart. Yet, just having "the oracles of God" did not make the Jew righteous.
We can easily fall into the same pit. We have the Bible translated many times over in our language. We have thousands of study tools within easy grasp. We have multiplied houses of worship, Bible studies, discipleship groups, and every thing imaginable to help one understand the gospel. But many stop with admiring the privileges and not seeing the intent of them all—to point us to the only righteousness that will stand before God.
Now the diversion takes a shot at God's character. Again, Paul waves them off as having missed the point of what he had already explained. Indeed, the Jews failed to keep the covenant. They lived as transgressors of the Law. The problem was never on God's part but on the part of the transgressors of the Law (2:25), just as in the same way the problems surrounding the Crusades were never God's problem but rather that of misguided zealots. Judging God (as though we have a right and ability to do so) by those misrepresenting Him is simply a diversionary tactic to escape the pressure of the gospel on the soul.
That's what the objector sought to do—to place God in a bad light because His people did not all believe in Him. This shows a low view of God and elevated view of man: 'God just can't quite pull things off the way that He proposed; He just can't find a good enough team to win the game He planned.' "What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? May it never be!"
The Lord's purposes are much bigger than Israel! In His mercy, by sovereign choice, He saved many among them. Over Israel's history, we see the evidence of God's saving grace snatching them out of paganism and revealing Himself to them. He worked mightily in them and through them. He provided for their needs and gave them a physical inheritance as a picture of something much grander in eternity.
Man's failure to respond to God's kind revelation does not expose a deficiency in God but rather in man. That's the point that the Apostle has been making all along—and shall continue to make. God is still God. His faithfulness to His promises is not nullified by the unbelief of some. He is always true to His nature and character. To judge Him on the basis of man grossly fails to understand the transcendent God. He doesn't need anyone—Jew or Gentile. But He is pleased to show mercy to some.
Here's a typical problem, not only among the Jews, but others: thinking of God in small terms, putting Him on our level, so that lowering divine standards, one can be comfortable with his sin. Here's the rationale that Paul dismantles. 'Since God made all these promises found in the Old Testament and most of the Jews didn't take Him up on it, then I don't need to be too concerned about God. I can go on enjoying my sin without consequence or need for righteousness.' But there's a fatal flaw to such an argument, and that is treating God like one of the boys rather than as Creator and Sovereign.
Paul uses the strongest repudiation in his arsenal to the questioning of God's faithfulness to His promises. "May it never be!" Absolutely, positively not! "By no means!" (ESV) "Of course not!" (NLT) In other words, if that's the way that you've sized up God's character, that He unjustly condemns those that He did not have the power to incorporate into His promises, then you've totally failed to understand Him. There's no question about God's trustworthiness—such consideration is pure folly because it contradicts the nature of God as true and faithful. He is never to be compared with humanity whose tongues keep deceiving, whose lips are poisonous as vipers, and whose mouths are full of cursing and bitterness (3:13-14).
Here's an important point that Paul gives us in gospel discussions. Don't argue over folly. Dismiss it, even as Paul did. "Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar…" He puts the nature of God and the nature of man on the table. Who is the one given to lying and deceit? He has in mind Psalm 116:11 where the psalmist declared, "I said in my alarm, "All men are liars"." That's the condition of the human heart—not the divine nature.
Since the objector hints that God is not just in judging others for their sin, Paul quotes David's reply in Psalm 51:4 after the prophet Nathan rebuked him for his sin with Bathsheba, Uriah, his family, and the nation: "As it is written [literally, as it forever stands written], 'That You may be justified in Your words, and prevail when You are judged'." Puny man tries to accuse God of injustice. David comes to the divine defense (as though a Lion needed defending!). 'You are right in Your assessment that my acts and thoughts are sinful; You are right in applying judgment to my sins.'
Have you ever said or thought concerning God's actions, "That's not fair"? It's not fair that God would elect some and not others; that He would work among some people and overlook others; that He would provide abundantly for some and allow others to face famine and disasters. Here's the problem with that kind of thinking, which is exactly where Paul's objector was heading. (1) That assumes that it is possible for God to be unfaithful or unrighteous or unjust; that is a flawed assumption. We must begin with what is true of God rather than a faulty speculation. (2) That assumes that God is either incapable or cruel or both in the way that He fails to work among certain people. Again, that begins with a flawed accusation of the unchanging God, as well as, the faulty assumption that God is obligated to work savingly in everyone. (3) That assumes that I am capable of rightly assessing the mind, character, and actions of One infinitely greater than me at every point, and One who is unknowable unless He chooses to reveal something about Himself. It further assumes that I, as a deeply flawed person, am qualified to question God by making judgments against Him. "Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar." Start with the verities: God is always true; man is consistently not. Objection against God overruled!
Paul wastes no time in condemning such a diversion: "their condemnation is just." Those with this kind of warped thinking are rightly condemned from the start. Again, the objector misses the point by trying to rationalize his sinful practices. He just wants to sin more and feel better about it; so he dares to think that God finds pleasure in his sin because God demonstrates His glory in judgment.
Verse 5 deals with an absurdity. That's why Paul offers something of an apology for even bringing it up. "But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He? (I am speaking in human terms). Though God is glorified in both salvation and judgment, and though, because of His perfections, He is able to work even in man's unrighteousness to show forth His righteous judgment, to accuse God of some base motive or unrighteous act is utterly ridiculous. That kind of thinking does not take into account the nature and perfections of God. It lowers Him to a crass level of turning a blind eye to sin for the sake of glory. Paul anticipates a negative answer to his question in verse 5. "The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He?" In other words, is there the possibility that there's something devious in God; that lurking beneath the surface is some ill-motive? "May it never be!" Of course not; God cannot be God with such an attitude or practice.
Such claim against God starts with a flawed premise. So Paul makes a correction: you must understand God as God, not as man. Yet that is precisely where many draw faulty conclusions regarding God, the gospel, and eternity. They put God on a human level, thinking about their own flawed way of looking at life, and draw the conclusion that God must be just like that. The Apostle demonstrates that such thinking is totally flawed.
(1) Because He is God, by His wise and powerful providence by which He rules the world, He demonstrates righteousness even by our unrighteousness. He's not caught in a bind by man through which His glory is trounced. Rather, when we are unrighteous, God demonstrates His righteousness by judgment.
Paul has in mind two points of righteous demonstration underlying his argument. First, God is righteous in judging sinners by applying eternal wrath to them in hell. His righteousness demands (if we may use such language) that He execute justice against all unrighteousness of men (1:18). Second, and this is where the Apostle is aiming, God's righteousness is fully satisfied at the cross for all that trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross is the place of eternal justice by which God "would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (3:26). He's showing us the necessity of Christ's substitutionary death to remove transgression and apply righteousness for any that would desire acceptance before God.
(2) The one questioning the validity of God inflicting wrath (v. 5b) has ventured on impossible grounds. God, who is infinitely righteous, cannot do something that is unrighteous. That's the starting point of trying to understand temporal or eternal judgments. Paul is so concerned that we see this that he apologized for even giving such an evil suggestion about God.
(3) "May it never be! For otherwise, how will God judge the world?" An unrighteous God cannot judge unrighteousness. His propriety to judge is found in the moral perfections of His character. If God is not righteous then eternity will be infinite injustice and infinite chaos. There is no morality in the world unless there is at some point both a standard of justice and application of justice. We understand that on a temporal level. Laws affecting our community, state, and nation are meaningless without justice enforced. If breaking a traffic law will not meet with corresponding enforcement, then such a law has absolutely no meaning; consequently, it will be readily broken. In the larger picture, God's righteousness revealed in His Law is the moral standard by which He will also judge transgressors. He cannot judge if He is morally flawed. So, to accuse Him of injustice in judging others actually poses an unraveling of all morality and justice in the universe.
(4) God is glorified even in judgment. Some would object, thinking that since He is glorified then there's no reason to refrain from sin. More sin equals more glory for God in this philosophy. "But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I also still being judged as a sinner? And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some claim that we say), 'Let us do evil that good may come'?" John Stott explains, "This is the cry of the antinomian, who rationalizes his lawlessness: 'If evil behavior causes good consequences, such as manifesting God's character and so promoting his glory, then let's increase evil in order thereby to increase good. The end justifies the means" [Romans: God's Good News for the World, 97-98]. Many live with this as their guiding philosophy; yet Paul insists that this kind of thinking is perverse: "their condemnation is just."
You and I are judged as sinners because that's what we are. God's providence that works to His glory does not exclude continuing the moral justice of His creation. "For no good results can justify the encouragement of evil," writes Stott. "Evil never promotes the glory of God" [p. 98]. So, those with an antinomian (lawless) philosophy under the guise of grace totally miss both the nature of divine justice and the reality of human need for righteousness. Grace is never a license to sin; rather the opposite is true. Grace is the divine motivation and enablement to faithful obedience as followers of Christ.
Have any among us made accusations against God in order to continue in sin and reject the call to repentance in the gospel? Have you made excuses by sprinkling them with religious inferences, thinking that your religious intonations put you outside the reach of God's justice? Then think again; your position starts on faulty notions that can only lead to eternal destruction.
Righteousness—that's the key word in Romans and the essential need in our lives. No argument that we muster can substitute for righteousness or foil judgment. Don't face God's judgment without righteousness; and that righteousness is found only in the sinless, crucified, risen, and exalted Lord Jesus Christ.
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