Romans No.4 Who is a jew?

So here is Paul reeling round on those who might be objecting to what he has to say because they feel that they are rather super-spiritual themselves and don't require such a gospel as Paul is proclaiming. So Paul whips round and he addresses the objector to the argument that he's putting forward. Verse 17 Romans 2. Now you, if you call yourself a Jew, if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God, if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law, if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.

Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. If those who are not circumcised keep the law's requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker. A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.

No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God. The emperor Napoleon was once asked if in two words he could vindicate his belief in God, and his response was historic.

He simply said, the Jew. Historically, you see, there is no reason why the Jew should exist as he has throughout history. I mean by that that there have been so many attempts to eliminate from this world the Jewish race.

It is nothing but a marvel, a miracle that we still have Jews with us. Hitler's attempts in the 1930s, late 1930s, early 1940s, had had several precursors, several attempts to eliminate the Jewish race from the world. In a very real sense, they are the most remarkable people and always have been since they were identified as a race from their ancestor Abraham.

They're very proud people, a very nationalistic people, a people whose raison d'etre, whose reason for being is one of utter solidarity. They work together wherever they are, in Moscow, in New York, in their home country of Israel. There is that which marks them out as a very significant people.

And yet, you know, nationalism can be taken to an extreme, not just by the Jews. It was taken to an extreme by Hitler. It can be by the Americans.

It was, I think, in the Victorian era by the British. Appropriating, reckoning for yourself certain privileges over against anyone else, as though you happen to be the best race. Now, it seems to me that there was a perversion of nationalism, of nationalistic philosophy, that was abroad at the time when our Lord's ministry was taking place in Palestine, as far as the Jews were concerned.

They believed, and rightly so, that they were children of Abraham. Wrongly, however, they adduce that because they were children of Abraham, they were in a sort of unqualified relationship to God, which meant that he was on their side over against other nations. It was a perversion of theology, a complete misreading, not only of the teaching of Abraham, but more particularly the teaching of Moses and the rest of the prophets.

Now, this teaching had come in its absolute form into the thinking of the Pharisees, and it was that group of religious elite that often contested the teaching of our Lord Jesus. And in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of John, you find our Lord engaged in a heated dialogue with the Jews. He was endeavoring to show their need of repentance, their need of salvation, their need of spiritual emancipation.

And they, in turn, were impugning our Lord. They were insulting his person. They were questioning his legitimacy, and they were even reckoning that he was demon-possessed.

The 52nd verse of John 8 indicates that. And our Lord Jesus went on to show them, and it's all part of his argument in that eighth chapter, that being a descendant of Abraham only has value if the qualities for which Abraham stood were reproduced in the life of his descendants. In other words, it wasn't a question of, Abraham is our father, therefore we can live as we please, but rather, does the life that we live indicate we are true descendants of Abraham? Because Jesus said, God can create descendants of Abraham from these stones which are in front of you.

The thing that is important is not being a descendant of Abraham as such, but rather having a spiritual lineage, a comparable faith with that of Abraham. Now, what he had to say was so offensive to the Jews, to the Pharisees, that not only did they say that the Lord Jesus was demon-possessed, but they wanted to slay him. Why do I introduce my address this evening from John 8 and from the perspective of Napoleon's answer to how would you prove that God exists? Well, for this reason, you see, when you come to the 17th chapter of Romans 2, you see how the Apostle Paul is capitalizing upon the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is showing in his attempt to indicate that the whole world is guilt before God, he's showing the precarious position of the Jew who believes that because he has the Mosaic law and in his body the mark of circumcision, he is therefore in a right relationship with God.

Jesus the Savior wouldn't admit to that when he was accosted by this teaching by the Pharisees, and neither will the Apostle Paul. But for Paul, what he argues in this passage is a complete turnaround, because no one was more nationalistic than the Apostle Paul at one stage in his life. You remember in his pre-conversion days, he was a Pharisee, one of this religious elite, and his achievements as a Pharisee and his glory in his historical benefits were such that he would boast about the fact that he was a Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and that he, the Apostle, was in no sense behind any of the other Hebrews by birth.

If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more, says Paul in Philippians 3, circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee, as for zeal, persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. You see, that was his attitude, but now there's been a complete about turn after his conversion experience, and when in Romans 2, he is demonstrating that the Jew as well as the Gentile needs the gospel, he reproduces what used to be his own mindset on what was Paul basing his hope of salvation. Well, all of these things that he now begins to criticize in this passage of great satire, which is even an advance on Shakespeare's speech about the Jew, you remember it in The Merchant of Venice.

If you call yourself a Jew, if you rely on the law, if you have this benefit and you have that benefit, then why in the name of God do you behave as you behave? What is Paul trying to show here? That the Jewish heresy of believing that possession of the law in and of itself would guarantee salvation was to their own spiritual destruction as a nation. Some people wear lucky charms, don't they? I mean, you find Christians who have a cross on their lapel, or a lady, or perhaps a man for that matter. It's in these days for men to wear gold necklaces.

I'm not exactly in the height of fashion myself in regard to that, but it happens. Now, I'm not suggesting that no one can wear a cross with sincerity, but what I am suggesting that a lot of people who wear crosses do so because they feel that there's some sort of safe conduct that is a result of wearing that cross. It has some sort of magical influence.

The mere possession of a cross, the mere possession of the law, this is what Paul is arguing against. Having the law in and of itself is of no value to the Jewish nation whatsoever unless that law is fleshed out by the way people live. So you see in his opening verse, now if you call yourself a Jew, if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God, if that is all that you have to cling onto, then really you're in a very perilous situation.

You're looking upon the law of Moses. That was the first five books of the Old Testament, and particularly the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. You're looking upon this as though it were a magical charm, and possession of this in itself has no saving value whatsoever.

The law has inbuilt limitations. He goes on to tell them, doesn't he? Let's take a reading from verse 21. You who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? What is Paul in effect arguing? He's saying that you must practice what you preach, because in the sight of God, it is submission to the law that is important, not possession of the law.

Now push that through from a Jewish context into an evangelical gentile context. The hearing of the gospel is in and of itself of no value. Even mental assent, I'll be as bold as this, even mental assent to the gospel is of no saving consequence if it is not fleshed out in terms of the way that you live.

This, you see, is the apostle Paul's teaching qualified by the epistle of James. We are justified by faith, but real biblical faith is pragmatic. It works itself through.

It changes a life. It changes attitudes. The man who promotes a moral code as being good, admirable, and should be lived up to by the rest of society, and does not attempt to live up to that moral code himself, is guilty of the charge of hypocrisy.

So you see, when you widen it out, it's not just the Jews who can have a magical attachment to the law that we need to have in mind, but informed people regarding the gospel who perhaps have a magical approach to church attendance and listening to addresses. You can listen to an address or addresses by the cartload, and if it makes no difference in the way that you live, then not only are you deceiving yourself, but your very lifestyle can cause other people to blaspheme God as a result of your poor example. Verse 24, as it is written, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.

Paul is quoting from the Old Testament, and he's quoting a malpractice centuries gone by, and saying that that is reproduced by the Jews in his day. So you could be a Jew with the law, you can be a television evangelist in the States, controlling a multi-million pound company, you can be a respectable church attender here in the United Kingdom, and still be as far removed from a right relationship to God as the pagan in the heart of the jungle. Is it not what Paul is saying? Now why is he saying it? Well you see, he wants to identify what a true Jew is, and a true Jew has nothing to do of necessity with a physical pedigree going back to Abraham.

What a true Jew will have as a similarity between him and Abraham is a desire to do the will of God. Abraham was obedient, he believed God, and God credited that to Abraham as righteousness. Now it wasn't just the law that the Jews misinterpreted in terms of its saving value.

There was something else that caused them to stand out against some of the nations, though not all of the nations in their day, and I am referring to the physical mark of circumcision, which the male child would have in his body a few days after his birth. Circumcision by very definition was a surgical operation, a cut. Now it wasn't the cut in and of itself that had value.

The value was in what the cut represented. Let me give you an excursion into the meaning of the word Pharisee. It's not in your notes.

The Pharisees came from a religious party in intertestamental times, that is centuries between the writing of the Old Testament and the New Testament, called the Khazadim. That's a Hebrew word which comes from the verb to separate. The Khazadim were the separated ones.

Eventually that movement merged into Phariseeism, and they retained the same idea as being the separated people of God within the Jewish family. Now in a very real sense, historically, all the Jewish people were to be reserved exclusively for the Lord. You only have I known of all the families of the earth, says Amos in the third chapter of the prophecy that bears his name, and he is right in saying that because when Moses was led to bring the children of Israel out from the land of bondage and move them to the borders of the promised land, he taught them time and time again, particularly in his preaching in the book of Deuteronomy, that they were to be a marked out people for the Lord, and the thing that would mark them out was holiness.

Moses taught that circumcision, the physical right, had a value, but there was more to it than just the physical right. He talked about the circumcision of your heart. Now you could have your flesh circumcised and your heart not circumcised, and you were in trouble.

Moses taught that, Jeremiah teaches that, and now Paul advocates exactly the same argument. Circumcision has value, verse 25, if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. I give you the illustration in the notes, to which there's no need to turn just at the moment, of a marriage ring.

Why is a ring, or why are rings exchanged at a marriage service? Well, it's not so much the importance of the value of the gold. I mean, it could be a curtain ring for that matter, couldn't it? It's the circular nature of the ring that has the symbolic value, if you like, of unending love. Do you take this man as your husband? Do you take this woman as your wife? Will you, in a very special sense, keep him, keep her for you as long as you both shall live? And they say, I do, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

And when they've exchanged the rings, when they've taken their vows, they are pronounced as man and wife, and they each will wear that ring, symbolizing the unending love, all right? Now, let's project what happens, alas, in one third of marriages, and perhaps more in our country. Let's pass over a year, or two years. The unending love, well, it has ended.

The vows that were taken, they have been broken. But the ring still exists on the finger, fourth finger or wherever it's worn. Now, the ring has lost all its marital significance.

It might be for a jeweler, but in terms of the marriage service, and in terms of what they went through a year or two beforehand, it's an utter mockery. It has absolutely no significance whatsoever. It needs more than a ring to keep your marriage intact, not so.

Similarly, you see, this is the argument of Paul. It doesn't matter whether you've been circumcised, if your life is not matching up to the symbolism of the circumcision. You can be a Jew who possesses the law, who knows the Ten Commandments, who has in the tassels at the hem of your garments little bits of scripture wrapped into those tassels.

You can walk down the streets with them. You can stop and pray at street corners. You can make a pretense to be religious.

But if you do not have real, true religious experience in your heart, then all your religiosity is an utter charade, and you are just like the uncircumcised. Now, where Paul advances and becomes more daring than Moses and Jeremiah in the scriptures that I inverts his logic. You see, he said that if you as a circumcised person do not live by the law, you become, in effect, uncircumcised.

He also goes on to say in verse 27, the one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you, even though you have the written code and circumcision are a law breaker. What's Paul there saying? He's saying that the Gentile, who has an understanding of the moral basis of the law, faithfulness to God, honorable in his dealings with his fellow men, who recognizes that his conscience has spoken to him the way in which he ought to live, and he lives by his conscience, he then, in the estimate of God, becomes as though he were circumcised. So it's possible for the law-possessing, circumcision-bearing Jew, in the eyes of God, to be completely distant from the Lord, and for the Gentile, who doesn't possess the law, who doesn't have the mark of circumcision upon him, to be very near to the Lord to the extent that he might be considered a son of God in a right relationship to the Lord himself.

Now, you see, this is most important teaching, for us to grasp from Scripture what basically a true Jew is. So, verse 28, it's relentless logic that Paul builds upon. I love getting into Paul, because he's got such a logical flow in all that he says, as he's moved along by the Spirit.

He's shown the bankruptcy of a Judaism that looks upon the law and circumcision as though they were magical charms. And now he defines what a true Jew is, and who, by extension, is really a son or daughter of Abraham. A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.

No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart. You see, exactly the point that I was making before we came to these two verses. Then, Paul, what is a Jew? Well, Paul will answer.

He will tell you, if you dig deeply into the final verse, that the actual word Jew means praise. Did you know that? It comes from a Hebrew word, yadath, praise. And actually, you can trace the word Jew back in the history of language to the term Judah.

And some of you will know, from your knowledge of the book of Genesis, that Leah was the least favored of Jacob's two wives. And on one occasion, wanting to win the affection of her husband and have greater esteem than Rachel, she rejoiced because she had brought one male child into the world. And then, very quickly after that, there was another pregnancy, and her next son was called Judah.

And from her mouth came the ascription of praise, that now she could praise the Lord, and now perhaps her husband would hold her in good favor. For the word Judah means praise. And when Jacob is on his deathbed, and he has all his sons in front of him, you remember Jacob is now an old and exceedingly old man, and he's in Egypt, and he says farewell to his sons, they come up to him one by one, and he speaks to Judah, and he says of Judah that his brethren will praise him.

And the literal rendering of the word Jew, if you translate it from the Hebrew, is one who brings praise to the Lord, and one who merits the favor of God. That's what a true Jew is. You see, in the spiritual sense, you've got to make a distinction between a Jew and a Hebrew.

It's more perhaps convenient to speak of a Hebrew in terms of the ethnic descendants of Abraham, but those who are Abraham's descendants spiritually may be Hebrews, but not necessarily so. They may be Gentiles, but not necessarily so. The thing that they will have in common, these who would claim to be spiritual descendants of Abraham, will be a like faith in God that Abraham had, a desire to cling to and work out the implications of the law, and to show by their lifestyle that they are separated, set apart for God.

Now when Paul is writing to the Ephesians, in Ephesians chapter 2, I'm quoting the authorized version of the epistle, he talks about Gentiles who have become members of the commonwealth of Israel. The NIV Bible puts it through as citizens of God's people, or something to that effect. How do you become a member of the commonwealth of Israel? Well, by acknowledging the power of the law and its demands on your life, and God's demand that you, as a result, live differently than ordinary people.

Now don't you see, my friend, you can't do that just of your own volition, can you? That's why the apostle is very clear in verse 29 to point out how all this comes about. A man is a Jew, no, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart by the spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from men, but from God.

You see, the only way I can discover Jewishness, the only way that I can enter into Jewishness, is as my heart is opened by God's spirit, I appreciate the enormity of my sin, and the tremendous grace of God as illustrated in the Lord Jesus. I appreciate the truth of the law, the Ten Commandments, that this is the way that I ought to live my life, but I admit that that law has exposed my sin, and it makes me feel more and more rotten. I'm not what I should be.

I'm not a set-apart person. I am not spiritually circumcised. These are all the thoughts that someone has in their non-regenerate condition, when nonetheless the Holy Spirit is playing into their personality, and bringing them to a point where they want to make a commitment to the Lord.

And as the Holy Spirit has full effect within someone's life, then they yield themselves entirely to God, and they appreciate that the law that they have broken has been kept by the Lord Jesus, and the mark of separation that they have never up to this point attained to, is now possible for them to embrace as they receive the fullness of God's Holy Spirit. Who then, or what then, is a true Jew? Isn't it interesting that in the sixth chapter of Galatians, the Apostle Paul says in the 16th verse, speaking to Gentile Christians, peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God. He's not there referring to Hebrews, to ethnic Jews, to blood descendants of Abraham.

He is referring to all those who live their lives in the same way as Abraham endeavored to live his. So there, you see my friend, we're through with our study this evening. The Apostle started off in the first verse by describing the gospel to us, and he said that gospel was for the Jew and also for the Gentile, and it has been his his wish to show how desperately the Gentile and the Jew need the gospel.

And when they respond to it, then in a very real sense, the Gentile and the descendant of Abraham become true Jews who can live their lives to bring praise to the Lord, and whose ultimate desire is to know God saying, one day of them, well done, you good and faithful servant. A true Jew merits praise, not from men, but from God. And the results of all this, well God gives them over to the immorality that they have opted for, and to the insularity which they have preferred.

So how do we react to these things? How do we respond to this teaching of the Apostle Paul? Well, by this, and I'll just take a couple of moments to explain. By appreciating more the truth of who God is in all the in all the attributes of the person that he is discovered as having in scripture. You see, you can sentimentalize the love of God, can't you? Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

Now that's true, but ere long you need to build into your children's knowledge, not that Jesus loves them alone, but they have a responsibility to live as Jesus's children. And the Lord Jesus finds it very hard to love the sin that they practice, and ultimately on attaining maturity if they continue in their sinful way, then their very sin will debar them from fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ and the Father and the Holy Spirit. So we read Paul, and we're thankful for the darkness of the teaching, because it helps us to see correctly the doctrine of the holiness and the love of our God.

And what's more, it enables us to stand amazed at his grace. I've said this before, not for effect, but because I mean it. You see, for me, it's never been a problem that God loves other people.

I really do mean that. I mean, I can understand that God loves you, but I do find it hard to believe that God loves me. When I think of myself and my shortcomings, I know myself more than most people here, but not as much as God knows me.

And the incredible thing is that this God, with his holiness and his justice, despite all that I have done, continues to love me. And the measure in which he shows his love is not by blinking at my sin and pretending it doesn't exist, but by allowing the Lord Jesus to go to the cross of Calvary and there die for me, to forgive me. Now you see, we're back where we started.

This is the amphitheater. The curtain has gone up. The righteousness of God has been revealed.

Was there ever a time when one needed to see alongside the manifestation of the anger of God, the revelation of the love of God, of the grace of God, of the righteousness of God? And you see, though the last verses of Paul's first chapter to the Romans bring you almost to the depths of despair, you've got to look back to the 16th and 17th verses, and you see, despite all this, the grace of the Lord who lifts a man from the dungeon into which he has sunk, he lifts him from the mire and he brings him to himself and puts a new song within his heart so that he's taken from the mire, if you'll allow it, and put him in the choir, because he has been reconciled to the Lord as God has displayed this amazing, fantastic way in which he writes wrong. And that's basically it. In the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, to the Jew and to the Gentile, that brings back to God man who deliberately and insultingly rejected the knowledge that was inbuilt of who God is and what God is.

Through the gospel, a further revelation is given, and in the gospel, there's a magnetism that draws the likes of you and me to the Lord. Well then, how much should we not be ashamed of this gospel that can do and has done so much for all of us here? That's my understanding of Paul's message in these verses. Let's pray.

Father, we're grateful for all that you've done for us, for every manifest token of your love, but most of all, we praise you for our Lord Jesus Christ and all that he suffered on our behalf, and we ask that this gospel, which means so much to us, may be proclaimed by our lives, by our lips, until the moment comes when you take us to be with yourself. We pray for our world, help us to be more burdened, help us to be more sensitive, and through our prayers, may we move into situations that desperately need the cleansing power of the great and glorious gospel of our Savior. Amen.

Has anyone got a hymn or a song on their hearts that we could appropriately sing at this moment? For this purpose, Christ was revealed. Some of our friends are going to be leaving us in their singing of this hymn. There's a couple of songs, there's a couple of meetings still to be held, and some were in earlier praying with me in the coffee house.

So let's stand. That will facilitate folk who need to slip out and also give you a change of position. For this purpose, Christ was revealed to destroy all the works of the evil one.

Thy Saviour has overcome, so with gladness we sing and welcome his kingdom in. All the sin he has conquered, all the death victorious, all the sickness he has fired. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Jesus reigns over all. In the name of Jesus we stand. By the power of his blood we now claim this ground.

Satan has no authority here, All the servants must flee, For Christ has the victory. Over sin he has conquered, Over death victorious, Over sickness he has triumphed, Jesus reigns over all. In the name of Jesus.

In the name of Jesus we stand, By the power of his blood we now claim his ground. Satan has no authority here, All the servants must flee, For Christ has the victory. Over sin he has conquered, Over death victorious, Over sickness he has triumphed, Jesus reigns over all.