At the Bible study this week, we looked at the rest of Romans 2 and the start of Romans 3. These verses continue to focus on the law and what this means to both Jew and Gentile as Paul systematically builds his argument leading to the conclusion that all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s law and are therefore in desperate need of a Saviour.
So often we see that religion can lead to complacency, a belief that we are automatically saved and free from God’s wrath, not because of His grace and mercy, but because of… something else. Our goodness. Our merit. Who we are. The Jews so often fell into the trap of believing that it was their historical ancestry and the fact of circumcision which made them righteous and that, at times, led to them looking down on everyone else, instead of seeing that their ancestry was in fact a sign of God’s mercy and was intended to be a guiding light to all nations. Paul exposes the fallacies in that thinking in Romans 2:17-28, remarking that “A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.” As the Message paraphrases these verses, “It’s not the cut of a knife that makes a Jew. You become a Jew by who you are. It’s the mark of God on your heart, not of a knife on your skin, that makes a Jew.”
In case this argument seems irrelevant to Western Christians, it’s an attitude that has so often plagued churches too. The moment we believe that actually, we’re not that bad and it’s everyone else who deserves God’s judgment, we are on a slippery slope. If we believe that by knowing God’s word, that by having the Bible, we automatically gain entry into God’s favour without that having any impact on our lives, we are falling into error.
Paul, in these verses, looks at other issues too: what about those who have never directly heard of God? What about young children who die? Are they automatically condemned? These are difficult issues, but in Romans 2:12-16, Paul talks about ‘the requirements of the law being written on men’s hearts’ and we have to understand that it is not up to us to judge the state of other people’s souls; God’s judgment will be fair and true and will take everything into account. As he says in Romans 3, ‘Let God be true and every human being a liar’ (Romans 3:4).
Ultimately, Paul highlights some human arguments (see Romans 3:5-6) which will be developed further in Romans 6:1-15, along the lines of ‘let us do evil so that good may come of it.’ This argument is invalid and is a travesty of a true understanding of the meaning of grace. We cannot taste the wonder of God’s grace and mercy and take it for granted or believe that we have done something to deserve it. Instead, we stand in awe and tremble, amazed at His love, awestruck at His generosity, grateful for His mercy.