God’s Answer to Man’s Misguided Thinking
7/2/06 | Richard Van Dyke | Romans 3:1-8
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Series: By Faith Alone
Let’s review where we’ve been so far in Romans. We’ve seen Paul’s discussion of God’s wrath against man’s sin in chapter 1:18-32. Chapter 2: 1-16 discusses principles of God’s judgment ; verses 17-29 talks about the Jews false sense of security in their Jewishness and the rite of circumcision. After Paul has shown man is condemned in his sin and has lumped his unbelieving Jewish brothers into that group, there’s an obvious question in chapter 3:1: “What’s the advantage then of being a Jew?” Paul will begin to answer that in verse 2 and then get sidetracked and not finish his answer until chapter 9 verse 4.
As Paul anticipates other objections to his gospel by the Jews, he uses a technique we call diatribe. In diatribe, a teacher sets up a dialogue with his critics or students, first posing and then answering their questions. Barrett says “It often becomes easier to follow Paul’s arguments if the reader imagines the apostle face to face with a heckler who makes interjections and receives replies. We should conclude that Paul’s questioner is Paul himself-Paul the unconverted Pharisee. Thus Paul the Pharisee and Paul the Christian are in a debate with each other.” In anticipation of the objections from the Jews, Paul will then ask and answer four questions, the first one being, “What is the advantage of being a Jew & of being circumcised?” From a non-Jewish perspective, we might wonder if there are any advantages to being a Jew. As John Macarthur notes: “Their history has been a saga of slavery, hardship, warfare, persecution, captivity, dispersion and humiliation. They were slaves in Egypt for 400 years and wandered in a wilderness for 40 years; the northern Kingdom was decimated by Assyria, and the Southern Kingdom taken captive for 70 years. They were later conquered by Greece and eventually Rome destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 70 A.D. Almost 1900 years later the holocaust saw 6 million Jews exterminated.
But to the Jewish mind at the time Paul was writing, they considered themselves God’s chosen people and would have thought of passages like Deuteronomy 10: 14-15: “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today.” And Deuteronomy 14:2: “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.”
Paul’s response to their question is found in 3:2 “There is much advantage in every way. First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God.” Think with me for a few minutes about a few of the blessings of having God’s Word.
First, it’s through the Word of God that we are converted. Listen to these verses: Psalm 19:7: “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple”; I Peter 1:23: “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” And II Timothy 3:15: “And how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
Not only are we converted through the Word, but second, it’s through the Word that we are convicted and corrected-II Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
Finally, it’s through the Word that we’re comforted-Romans 15:4: “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” You might remember Hans Christian Anderson’s story “The Emperors New Clothes” where the king’s pride led him to stand before his subjects totally naked until an innocent child says, “The emperor has no clothes.” The Jews may have envisioned themselves righteous through circumcision and adherence to the Law but Paul has shown them their spiritual nakedness while at the same time reminding them that God had indeed blessed them if they would only understand. Paul is reminding us that the Jews & we are responsible for the revelation God has given us.
Paul continues this diatribe technique by asking and answering a second question: ”Will a lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?” There’s a play on words here which is more obvious in the Greek and might be rendered this way: “If some to whom God’s promises were entrusted did not respond to them in trust, will their lack of trust destroy God’s trustworthiness?”
God made numerous covenants and promises with the Jews. Because they were unfaithful, would he break those covenants and promises? The mistake that the Jews made was in believing that God’s unconditional promises and covenants applied to the whole nation at all times. Paul clarifies this in Romans 9:6-7: “It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” In other words, God is faithful and keeps his promises to those who respond in faith, and those who don’t respond in faith can’t nullify God’s faithfulness to the faithful.
So Paul is able to answer this question in the strongest of terms: God forbid-may it never be-never in a million years-absolutely not. (v4). God cannot violate his own character. Paul adds: “Even if every human being were a liar, God would still be true”. In other words, if all mankind were to agree that God had been unfaithful to his promises, it would only prove that all men are liars and God is true. To prove his answer, Paul quotes David in Psalm 51:14; after David had committed adultery and murder, Nathan the prophet confronted him and David, rather than denying his sin agreed that he had done evil and agreed that God is a blameless judge. So second, Paul is reminding us that man is responsible for the results of his own unbelief. “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19) Paul addresses this idea of faithfulness again in Romans 9:30-32: “What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.” Hebrews 4:1-2: “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.” The Jews wanted salvation to emphasize an adherence to the law and participation in the right of circumcision to count for more than simple faith and a dependence on God’s grace. (this was the same debate which is recorded in Acts 15:5-11). Yet if they themselves were not faithful to the law, they still wanted God to faithfully keep his promises.
The next logical question that someone might ask them is, “If I am unrighteous-so what-won’t my unrighteousness highlight God’s righteousness?” (Verse 5). This question comes up again in Romans 5:20-6:2. The question simply paraphrased is, “Doesn’t the gospel appear even more glorious the more sinful we are?” John Macarthur in his commentary in this passage says the argument might sound like this: “If God is glorified by the sins of Israel, being shown faithful himself despite the unfaithfulness of his chosen people, then sin glorifies God. In other words, would God strictly forbid something that brings him glory? And if man’s unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, why does God punish sin? The God who inflicts his wrath is not unrighteous is he?”
Note that Paul hastens to add in parenthesis that this is far from his idea, but it’s the way the unsaved might think and it’s the conclusion the Jew would come to as he criticizes Paul’s gospel of grace as opposed to keeping the law. Paul is saying “this is human logic; not divine wisdom.”
Paul again has a strong answer in verse 6: “May it never be.” It’s impossible for God to be unjust in his judgments. If he were, then he wouldn’t be able to justly judge the world. But the Jews knew Genesis 18:25: “Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” A major theme of all the prophets is that of God’s judgment and the Psalms also refer to him as a judge (Psalms 50:6; 58:11; 94:2). To impugn God’s justice is to undercut his competence to judge.
Not only is man responsible for the revelation God has given him, and he’s responsible for the results of his unbelief, but in verses 5 & 6 man is responsible for his actions which God will judge. We’ve talked about this judgments on several occasions thus far. We said that God will judge believers at the Judgment Seat of Christ (II Corinthians 5:10); this judgment is for the purpose of receiving rewards for how we’ve lived once we became a Christian. But we also said that God will judge unbelievers at the Great White Throne Judgment described in Revelations 20:11-15 where they will be condemned to hell for their failure to accept Christ’s death in their place.
The last question and answer in our passage this morning is found in verses 7 & 8: “If my lies enhance God’s truthfulness and my evil results in good, then why am I condemned as a sinner?” This is really a development of the previous argument. Charles Hodge states it well when he says, “According to this reasoning, the worse we are, the better: for the more wicked we are, the more conspicuous will be the mercy of God in our pardon.”
This argument is called antinomianism, which is a disregard for God’s law. The sense of the argument goes like this: “If we are saved by grace through faith, entirely apart from any works of the law, then what does it matter whether we live righteous lives or not? In fact, isn’t it good that we sin, because then God is given even greater glory as our Savior.”
These critics of Paul and his message were accusing Paul of teaching that the more wicked a person is, the more he glorifies God and the more faithless a person is, the more faithful he makes God appear. These were not hypothetical misrepresentations, for Paul adds in parentheses: “as we are being slanderously reported and as some claim that we say.”
Simply stated those who wanted a strict adherence to the law and an insistence on the right of circumcision, were saying that this gospel of grace that Paul was preaching undermined God’s law and was an encouragement and a license to sin. Paul has a very direct response rather than an answer to this question; he states: “Their condemnation is deserved.” Jude adds a similar thought in verse 4 of his book: “For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord”.
So Paul defends the gospel here against misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Paul took these Jewish objections seriously and responded to them. He saw the character of God was at stake and so he reaffirmed God’s faithfulness to his promises, God’s justice as a judge, and God’s glory which is promoted only by good and never by evil.
Several years ago the 21-year-old son of one of the European ambassadors to the United States struck and killed a middle-aged working woman with his car. He was charged with murder, but when he claimed diplomatic immunity, the charges were dropped. He had been arrested four times in the previous 30 months. Each time, he claimed diplomatic immunity and was released. Because his father holds a privileged position, the young man cannot be brought to judgment in the United States for his offenses.
Some of the Jews of Paul’s day felt that because they were children of Abraham, they enjoyed a kind of “diplomatic immunity” from God’s judgment. They did not like Paul’s teaching that Jews, like Gentiles, are under God’s wrath because of their sin.
Paul reminds us that man, Jew and Gentile alike, is responsible for the revelation God has given him; that man is responsible for the results of his unbelief; that he is responsible for his actions; and that man can never do evil that good may come.
Do you hear people today making these arguments for their immoral lifestyles? Do we even use some of these excuses to justify our sins? God holds us responsible for who we are and what we do and how we respond to his grace. Listen to Paul’s advice to Titus in Titus 2:11-14 & 3:4-8.