Or, Favorable Conditions with Disastrous Consequences
Scripture: Romans 2:17-24
Date: January 23, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
One surprise that keeps surprising me in Scripture is how much God gives. When we talk about His attributes, we ought to connect them to His generosity, His magnanimity. Omniscience applied means He gives with perfect knowledge, who needs what and who will respond how. Omnipotence applied means He gives with complete power, the only limits are ones He sets Himself. Righteousness applied means He gives what is fitting, never evil or tempting to do evil.
Creation is a gift. God was free to make or not. Our status as those who bear His image is a gift, not shared with stars or suns or seas (Psalm 8:3-4). Gender differences, marriage relationships, generational and occupational fruitfulness are from Him and through Him and to Him. We have no blessings we have not received.
He gave Adam and Eve a garden full of food, and He gave them a glorious opportunity to learn obedience by not eating from just one tree. They lost paradise by not accepting the God-given limitation, and “natural” men have been foolishly refusing to thank God since (1 Corinthians 2:14; Romans 1:21).
It doesn’t stop God from giving. He keeps giving sun and sight, oxygen and lungs and trees, rain and harvests. He gives more than necessary things, He gives natural things such as male and female, and enjoyable things such as baseballs and beaches and barbecues. God keeps giving, and that increases the guilt of those give credit to someone else.
Among other things God has given, there are some obvious and transcendent, albeit untouchable, principles and moral laws that are not social constructs. Whatever words men use as labels, physical laws are gifts, like gravity. Moral laws are also gifts, a sense of right and wrong built into the universe and into individual consciences. Hammurabi and pirates have codes, and men have an integrated and active judging mechanism. This is not a product of materialistic evolution, it’s a gift.
There was a particular people that God chose specially to whom He gave even more gifts. He blessed them with detailed revelation, with His own Word, with explicit guidance and prohibitions and rules for appropriate consequences for worship and life. God blessed them with truth about how things work, about His own character, about how to see the world in light. They truly were a people gifted by God with favorable circumstances (notwithstanding Lewis that “favourable conditions never come”), and for too many, it led to disastrous consequences.
That people were, and are, the Jews, the nation of Israel. They are the explicit group addressed by Paul starting in Romans 2:17.
What we’ve seen in the epistle so far is that God’s wrath is being revealed on unbelievers who abuse and pervert God’s gifts so that they don’t have to thank Him (1:18-32). Then there were some more sophisticated persons who I called judgy-pants on purpose because it pokes at their pretension. They have an elevated judging function that seems to work great, except on themselves (2:1-16).
Now in verse 17 Paul pushes his own people’s buttons, hard. These people had more, and more special, gifts. They were first class gifts, and those who wielded them without faith became first class hypocrites. In verses 17-24 Paul goes after their boast in the law, and then in verses 25-29 he goes after their boast in circumcision.
There is a pattern in verses 17-20 and 21-24: if…then. The syntax is called a conditional statement. Part of the reason I’m calling them first class hypocrites is because in Greek this “if…then” is a first class conditional construction. What that means is that the “if” can be assumed true. These are first class gifts, unique to Israel, and this is not the last time in Romans that Paul details them.
That also means that while there is application for church people, the target audience is Israel. We are the Gentiles mentioned in verse 24, who can actually see the privileged position of the Jew and how damnable of a position they’re in apart from faith in the gospel.
”If” starts verse 17 and governs six gifts in the condition.
First, if you call yourself a Jew. It’s a special label, an ethnic and religious identity given and here self-acknowledged. It’s a shortened form of Judah, which means “praise,” and that irony will become (painfully) clear in verse 29.
It is interesting that Paul pulled out the second person “you” in verse 1 to the judgy-pants and again in verse 17 to the Jew, whom we might call the OG judgy-pants. Jesus spent His harshest words on those who measured others the harshest. As I like to say, you don’t break up concrete with a toothpick. The Jews should have known better because they actually had the truth.
The second (if) you rely on the law is a claim that the law was their foundation. “Law” is the key word in these verses (repeated five times in verses 17-24). Paul uses law with a number of references (such as the Ten Commandments, the Torah, the whole OT) but here it is a catchword for the special revelation from the Lord. Possessing the law wasn’t enough. They were using the mirror (of the law) as a place to situate their pride, rather than how it should have been used, to show them how ugly their pride was.
Because of the law, third, they made their boast in God. Under other circumstances this is the right thing (Psalm 34:2; Jeremiah 9:23-24; 1 Corinthians 1:31). But boasting in God here is apparently boasting in their own godly facade not the God of their faith. They were walking under His banner while actually behaving in their own manner.
Fourth, they know his will, which brought a kind of security, especially compared to the pagan pantheon of private and petty gods. Knowing God’s will connects, fifth, that they approve what is excellent because you are instructed from the law. Not just orthodox, but “altidox,” high on the law.
The sixth has its own special snark against their superiority complex: if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, and instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—.
People like this are sure that they are real gifts to society. They’ve convinced themselves that they are on a mission from God, maybe mini-messiahs or mediating-messiahs, bringing vision and illumination and wisdom and maturity (or at least lectures).
For sake of argument, all this is true. Just as God gave knowledge of Himself in creation to the Gentiles, so God gave to Israel knowledge and truth in His Word. They were given light and were to be a light to the nations in darkness (Isaiah 42:6-7). They were in a first class condition, and it was very favorable.
Now the door swings shut and the “then” smacks them in the head with four rhetorical questions making an obvious conclusion, though verse 23 states the obvious conclusion anyway, and verse 24 keywords on a Scripture verse to nail the door shut.
The first question may cover the other three, it is the hypocrisy summarized: you who teach others, do you not teach yourself? Because, you really should, and if you want us to take your teaching seriously, you first. Teachers are judged with greater strictness (James 3:1). They waxed eloquent about their excellent smoke detectors while their pants were on fire.
The next three questions are specifics from the law that proved the point. While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? These two questions come from the second table of the Ten Commandments, both of which relate to private property, both of which, apparently, they weren’t obeying.
You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? This connect with the first four of the Ten, though “rob temples” could be understood in a couple ways. It might refer to not giving God what He deserves, which is a way that Malachi confronted Israel. But in Israel there was only one temple, and Malachi said they were robbing God (Malachi 3:8). Paul says these were robbing temples, plural. So an alternative may refer to making money by selling or supporting the idol business even though claiming to abhor idols (see also Deuteronomy 7:25-26). The abhorring went right up to the man purse.
Then the final rebuke: You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. Boast in it? Keep it! You boast in your wife? Don’t hire a prostitute. Talk about the law? Don’t live against it. (Richard Baxter basically wrote a whole book against pastors for doing something similar).
The Scripture quote comes from Isaiah 52:5 (LXX), “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” A Gentile didn’t have to be a God-fearer for the point to stand. It would be like if Trump said, “Wow, that’s quite a log in your eye.”
It highlights the hypocrisy-meter in every human. It also depends on a worship assumption: people behave in a way that reflects their god. If all a Gentile knew about God came from watching these Jews, they would think God was a pretentious, judgmental, kill-joy who had a different standard for others than for Himself. But that’s nothing like the true God. That’s blasphemy. And that blasphemy is disastrous. This is the anti-chief end of man. It offends God, and it offends Him in His name.
The Jews thought of themselves as having a sort of sanctimonious immunity, and this sort of attitude is regularly insufferable.
Paul moves toward resting his case that all are guilty (including the Jews who were God’s chosen nation, Deuteronomy 7:6) and that all need the righteousness of Christ that comes by faith (Romans 3:19-20, 21-22).
By way of application, our capital C Covenantal brethren are exposed to similar temptations to boast in, or be slack about, their status of being “in the covenant” rather than submitting to God’s righteousness by faith (see Romans 10:3). Being in the covenant by birth, and justifying complacency because of it, is a covenantal temptation.
In a less formal way, the temptation relates to anyone growing up in the church, attending church, graduating from a Christian school, etc.. People familiar with the language of righteousness, people who enjoy piling on in discussions about cultural degradation, who applaud the judgment on the unrighteous in chapter 1, who have five Bible apps are on their phone, but are blind to their own self-righteousness, ought to beware their privileges.
The message for all is: Come to Christ!
One final application: if it is true that others can assume that our behavior reflects our God, then we must have no fear in giving good things to our people (kids, neighbors, even enemies). This not only includes tangible things, but education, truth, a culture of right and song, of faithfulness and production (not stealing, or just consumption), of embodying the Father’s kindness. No sanctimonious, no stingy.
It is necessary then to teach them how to receive all these things from the Lord Christ, with thanks to Him and in His name. They, with us, have received blessings, and by faith let us be known for first class good works that others would glorify our God (Matthew 5:16).
It is easier to show gravity by dropping a bowling ball than it is to prove it with a formula. Love is like gravity, except that it is easier to define than to demonstrate. Let us be those who love not just the Word, or who love in word/talk, but in deed and truth (1 John 3:18). In this case dropping the ball is good.
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9–11, ESV)