Romans 2

Romans 2:17-3

Section 2. (Romans 2:17-29; Romans 3:1-20.)Accusation of the Jew by the law in which he confides. The apostle turns now, therefore, to the Jew, to show that he too comes under the universal sentence. The one who has sinned without law perishes without law; the one who has sinned under law is judged by the law: will the law then be favorable to him? will he be able to stand while the other is condemned? Here the apostle shows, what the Lord had before declared to them, that the very one who accused the Jews was that Moses in whom they trusted. They knew Cod’s will indeed, only the more defiantly to set it aside: for as the people of God His Name was blasphemed among the Gentiles through their misconduct. In comparison with them, circumcision and uncircumcision must often be accounted the reverse, if the heart were what God valued. After guarding which from the abuse that might be made of such an assertion, Paul goes on to produce the very sentence against them of the law they claimed as theirs; which proved indeed the whole world under sin. Moreover, this was not the failure of the law, but its entire success in what it came to do: for by the law was to be the recognition of sin.

1. The Jew with his knowledge of the will of God did no better than the moralist among the Gentiles. Very far from being outwardly a rebel, he yet completely misunderstood his own condition, and therefore the character of that law on which he “rested,” -where no true rest was possible. So too in God he gloried, as One who had made the Jew the depositary of all the light and knowledge in the world. God and His law were owned by him, but not in subjection of heart to render Him the obedience due, but as contributing to the loftiness of his position in comparison with all other men. The Gentiles were but for him the blind, walking in darkness, foolish as undeveloped babes.

The Jew was the full treasury of all that the Gentile lacked. In fact, he had the form of knowledge and of the truth as the law gave it; but the breath of life was absent from the form: in morals he contradicted his own teaching, glorying in law and transgressing it, so that the light he held but the more clearly showed his misdeeds, and dishonored the name of his God among the Gentiles, as He Himself by His prophets had declared (Isaiah 52:5). 2. What was the necessary result in His estimate who could not be content with the mere outside of things, but looks upon the heart? Was circumcision of no use because of the dishonor put upon it? No, but that could not be counted such which was united with the transgression of that which it pledged one to keep. And the uncircumcised person keeping the commandments of the law would before Him be counted as circumcised. Israel, in fact, never contained all the sheep of the Lord’s flock, as we know; and the apostle will presently remind us that Abraham himself was an example of the faith that might be in one uncircumcised.

How indeed would the obedience of the uncircumcised condemn the man who, having both the letter of the law and circumcision also, yet violated the law! Plainly then, one must place what is internal and spiritual before what is external in the flesh. The true circumcision is spiritual and of the heart, and constitutes the true Jew, whose “praise”* is found with Him who sees the heart.
3. All this to us seems simplicity itself; but it was not so simple to those whom it seemed to strip of all their special, divinely-bestowed privileges. The apostle therefore here notes the objections that might be raised to it -objections which purported to be founded on God’s own character: for if there were indeed, as this appeared to say, no superiority in the position of the Jew, what then did all that He had done for them amount to? for why had God separated him from the nations, and guarded this separation in so many ways? The apostle asks therefore the question on his own part, What is the superiority of the Jew? and what is the advantage of circumcision? Truly a strange question, which would argue how little, save material for self-importance, the questioner had found in it. But Paul answers with his whole soul that there was “much everyway”; but he mentions emphatically one chief advantage that the Jews had, and that was a trust committed to them, and not for their own sake only, -“the oracles of God,” His own words uttered by a human mouth-piece.

The mass of men had wandered off into those various forms of idolatry which were continually tempting Israel also, and from which nothing but divine power and goodness preserved them too. Thus the divine Word, if it were to be preserved for the blessing of men, must be kept apart from these destructive influences, there whence its virtue might flow out around, and yet it might be secured from the prevalent corruption. Israel was in the place where these oracles were heard: how could any one ask, Where was the profit? Faith, alas, did not prevail among the professing people of God: it was a matter of public history that it did not. But what then? Would that make of no effect the faith that was found? Would God be untrue to those who counted on Him, because of the lack of faith in others? Such questions scarcely merit answer. No; “let God be true, if every man were to be accounted false;” for so David wrote of his own sin, that God was only justified by it in His words, and man, so prone to judge Him, would be overcome by Him in judgment. In fact God permits sin to appear in this way to bring men low, and make them own His righteousness in whatsoever He may bring upon them. But this only starts another question: if our unrighteousness so commends the righteousness of God, does this then make Him unable to execute judgment for that which has glorified Him? Nay, surely; for if that were so, since He makes all sins to glorify Him, restraining that which will not, no judgment could be executed on the world at all. Nay, if this were so, the principle would be just, of which Christians through their magnifying of grace were slanderously accused, that they might then do evil, so that good might come; but the just judgment of God would be in fact on those who could adopt so terrible a lie as truth. It is merely noticed here to show the folly and wickedness of what would involve such a consequence as this. 4. The apostle returns to the comparison of the Jew with the Gentile: could the Jew boast of any moral superiority to the Gentile? No, for the charge against both alike was that all were under sin. For this their own Scriptures, written under a dispensation of law, and addressed to those under it, were in unmistakable evidence. In them what the law could not do was seen; and the passages quoted give a survey, as wide as minute, of the facts of the case. The first passage, from the fourteenth psalm is connected with the statement that “the Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God.” The result is what the apostle quotes: “They are all gone aside; they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good.” The previous words plainly are an adaptation from those which speak of the search itself, changed to a declaration of the result; “there is none righteous” being again an equivalent for “there is none that doeth good,” which is repeated later.

In other quotations the apostle gives the detail of a corruption manifesting itself in every point. Throat, lips, mouth, feet, are all the instruments of various wickedness.

In the whole path are ruin and misery; -nowhere peace: before their eyes there is no fear of God. What a picture of man in nature and practice! Of course it is not meant that in every one of the children of men there is an exact similarity; or that they will necessarily be all found in any one: and God has many ways of restraint, so that what is in any of us should not all come out; but this is the race to which we belong, and any of these marks are sufficient to make plain our lineage. It is not of the Jew simply that such passages speak; it is among the children of men that the Lord is looking and making investigation, and one cannot plead that he is no child of man. The law which he has got has no plea to make in his favor, but the very contrary. It is to the people under law that all this is said; and in the Psalms and the Prophets the voice of the law is still heard, and what things so-ever the law saith it saith to them that are under the law: for this very purpose also, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be guilty before God. If the Jew, after all that God has done for him, can yet plead no righteousness that will avail before the Judge of men, then all the world is surely guilty. A poor end, you may say, to all this long education upon God’s part, -all this painstaking discipline, -all these interventions and miracles! Yes, as the apostle says elsewhere, it is all a ministration of death and of condemnation (2 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:9). But poor as the result may seem, it is to issue in that which will display the riches of God’s grace to all eternity. The truth as to man’s condition must come out, and he must be made to realize and accept it. Guilty and with his mouth stopped before Him, he will then find what God can be for him in so desperate an extremity. The law has not failed in its purpose when it has brought him to this: that “by works of law shall no flesh be justified before Him: for by law is the recognition of sin.” Alas, in all this, man is completely at issue with God. All natural religion so called is the attempt in some way, with various modifications, to make good one’s righteousness in whole or in part, before Him. Justification by works, by moralities or by ritual observances, is all that the mind of man is able to conceive as of efficacy to accomplish a salvation which God has wrought out and offers freely to him. This struggle on man’s part, ignorant of the righteousness of God, to establish his own righteousness is the history of the 4000 years preceding Christ’s coming, and the secret of the long delay. With the recognition of sin as the law is competent to declare it to him, the struggle is over, the old covenant has done its work, and we are ready for the gospel of “the glory of God, which is in the face of Jesus Christ,” and not of Moses (2 Corinthians 4:6).