Romans 1 (Part 3)

Romans — Steve Gregg

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Romans 1 (Part 3)

RomansSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg explores the message and context of Romans 1 in a thought-provoking discussion. He notes that the overarching theme of Romans 1:16-17 is that the Gospel is the power of God's salvation for all those who believe it. He also suggests that some interpretations of Romans may overlook the cultural and historical context in which it was written. Specifically, he posits that chapters one and two of Romans should be understood in the context of the tension between Jewish and Gentile members of the church in Rome.

Transcript

So, we were talking about, at great length, Romans 1, 16-17, where Paul summarizes what is essentially the message of the book of Romans, and in a brief space, tells us that the Gospel is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes, and in it, God's righteousness is revealed. It's a righteousness that comes to everyone by faith, as he says, Habakkuk said, the just shall live by faith or faithfulness. We won't go into that any further today.

It's too deep and we don't have time. We'll move along. Now, many things I say about many passages of Romans are pretty standard things that you'll hear wherever you hear Romans taught, by Protestants anyway.

But there's a few places where I see things considerably differently. And we come now to one of those places. I told you that there is a standard, popular outline of Romans that teachers usually follow, which I followed and was taught, which you find in many commentaries.

And that is that, remember Romans 1-8 is seen as a presentation of salvation, of which the first three chapters are devoted to showing us that we're sinners. And then chapters 4 and 5 lay out justification by faith, and chapters 6, 7, and 8 lay out sanctification. And so, it is sometimes said that in the space between chapters 1-8, Paul begins by showing us our need for salvation, and then he talks about the different aspects of salvation, justification, and sanctification in the following chapters.

Now, with only a little bit of variation, I agree with that general outline, but I do believe that something important is missed in most treatments of this first three chapters. And that's largely because Christians often read the Bible with the mind to prove a theological position that they consider to be orthodox, and which they want to find proof for. And Romans 1 provides usable texts, so does Romans 3, that seem on the surface to perhaps support certain notions that have become standard notions in evangelical Christianity, which notions, by the way, I agree with, but which I don't think are necessarily supported in these texts.

My concern is not to support or debunk any particular religious system, so much as to just see what the text says and see where that leads us. And persons might be suspicious of a disclaimer like that, because they think, well, everybody wants to promote their doctrines. Well, I don't as much as some people do, because I personally don't care if you agree with my doctrines.

I'm not into making a community of agreement about certain doctrinal points. I'm much more interested about standing before God someday and having to say, I gave you the opportunity to teach. How did you do? And I want to say, I did it as honestly as I could.

And so what I did is I looked at the text, and if a verse didn't support a doctrine, even a doctrine I liked, I wouldn't use it to support that doctrine, because I wanted to say what the Word of God says wherever I could. And in this respect, it may seem like I disagree with some of the doctrines that are commonly taught from these passages, when in fact I may not disagree with the doctrines. I'm just saying they're misreading the direction of the passage.

They're drawing from the passage points that are not Paul's points, in my opinion. Now, the main thing about the standard outline is that the first three chapters of Romans are about universal guilt and that they divide up as follows. Chapter one establishes Gentile guilt, the Gentile world's guilt.

Chapter two establishes the Jewish world's guilt. And chapter three ends up by just summarizing that everybody, Jew and Gentile, are guilty. And near the end of chapter three, there's a string of verses, six verses from the Old Testament that Paul exerts from talking about how wicked certain people are.

And those verses are often the favorite verses for those wishing to establish the doctrine of total depravity. Now, while I have no doubt whatsoever about the universal sinfulness of man, I don't think that those verses at the end of chapter three are really, I don't think Paul's trying to make the point that theologians popularly use them to make. And I don't think the verses do make the point.

But we'll worry about that another time. The same is true about chapter one. Verses 18 through 32.

Generally speaking, this is seen as a description of the guilt of the Gentiles to be followed in chapter two by a description of the guilt of the Jews. And by covering the Jews and the Gentiles, you've covered all the bases, so you've basically got all humanity are guilty. Now, once again, I believe that all humanity are guilty, Jews and Gentiles.

I agree with the doctrine. But it's possible to miss where Paul is going with his argument. Remember, I don't think that Paul wrote Romans as a tract, as a sort of a four spiritual laws, a Romans road for people to follow for evangelistic purposes.

Some people do see it that way. I think he's writing a letter to real people who have something going on in their church that needs some adjustment. All the other letters of Paul are that way, and there's no reason to doubt that Romans is.

And we saw that one of the main issues in the church in Rome that Paul does speak about is somewhat of a friction between the Jewish and Gentile elements in the church. So that he has to tell the Gentiles not to despise the more legalistic Jew in the church and tell the Jew who's more legalistic not to judge the Gentile who's more libertine. And this difference between the Jews and the Gentiles in their cultural tastes largely, which sometimes translate into moral convictions in their own minds and cause judgments to be made, are what Paul is, I think, for the most part, writing the letter to address.

He does so in the context of presenting the gospel in the purest way he knows how, but he's doing it for a reason to make an adjustment in the thinking of certain people who are thinking wrongly. And one of the groups that's thinking wrongly are the Jews in the church. And I mentioned this to you before in our introduction.

The Jews had been banished from Rome by Emperor Claudius in 49 BC. This letter is written about five years or six years later, and Claudius had died in 54, and the Jews, some of them, returned to Rome from that banishment after Claudius died. Well, we can easily see what impact that would have on the church, because in 49 AD, when Claudius the emperor banished all the Jews from Rome, a lot of Christians were Jews.

So the Christian Jews had to leave Rome like Priscilla and Aquila did. They were Jewish Christians, and they had to leave Rome, and Paul met them in Corinth because they had been banished by Claudius, it says in Acts 18.2. So the Christian Jews had to leave Rome for approximately four or five years. During that time, there was still a church in Rome, but it was all Gentiles, because the Jews were gone.

Claudius dies, the Jews come back, and they're not going to start the second Baptist church down the road for the Jews and the first Baptist for the Gentiles. There's only one church. So the Jews come back into the church, which for four or five years had been almost entirely, if not entirely, Gentile.

And with them they bring, of course, their cultural Judaism, their taste for kosher diet, and their disgust for unkosher foods. The charm they feel toward keeping Sabbath and toward festivals, which the Gentiles in the congregation don't have any interest in at all. And so you've now got a not only racially, but culturally mixed church that wasn't there that way for four or five years.

And now suddenly you've got this merger of these two clashing cultures, and we can see evidence in Romans that there was some friction. Now, one of the problems was with the Gentiles, and the other was with the Jews. Paul addresses the Jews first.

Why not? It's the Jew first, and also the Greek, and also he's a Jew. So he might as well speak to his own people first. Once he's, you know, nailed them, and he can do it because he's a Jew.

No one can say he's anti-Semitic. He can say whatever harsh things he wants against Jews, but he's a Jew and a former rabbi, former Pharisee. So no one can say you're an anti-Semite.

So he'll come against the Jews and their problem. Once he's done that, he's got the Gentiles on his side. They can turn to him and say, now you're doing this wrong.

So Paul's very diplomatic and very sharp in his approach. But it is generally thought that chapter 1 is about Gentiles. I'm going to suggest to you it's about Jews.

Now, it doesn't look like it's about Jews, but that's on purpose, as we shall see. Because when Paul finishes chapter 1, in chapter 2, verse 1, he says, Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge. For in whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself.

For you who judge practice the same things. Now, who are these people judging? It's obvious in verse 17, chapter 2, verse 17. Indeed, you're called a Jew.

You rest on the law. You make your boast in God. His audience in chapter 2 is clearly the Jew.

You call yourself a Jew. You rest on the law. You make your boast in God.

You think you're a teacher of babes and of Gentiles. Okay, so the Jew is the man being addressed in chapter 2. And he starts chapter 2 and says, Therefore, sir, you are inexcusable because you're judging and you're doing the same things. Now, what is he referring to? What happened in chapter 1 that entitles him to say that the Jew is judging? He hasn't mentioned the Jews at all in chapter 1, verses 18 through 32.

How did the Jew get implicated here? What you're going to find is this. Paul describes an utterly sinful people in chapter 1. As bad as they get, he mentions nothing to distinguish them racially. And he talks about their idolatry and their immorality and their debauchery.

And naturally, the Jewish reader is going to say, Boy, has he got those Gentiles pegged. That's my opinion about them too. You know, Paul's railing on these sinful people, but he said nothing to indicate that he's talking about Jews.

So the Jew's tracking with him all the way, saying, Boy, you know, Paul, you're on our side about this, aren't you? Those Gentiles are exactly what you're saying they are. But then Paul turns it on and says, Wait, I'm talking about you. You're the one doing this.

You judge people. You're doing those things. And you'll find as you look at chapter 1 in that light, that throughout the chapter, there are indicators that he's talking about the Jews without using the word Jew or anything very explicit, because he refers again and again to things in the Old Testament.

He even practically quotes phrases from the Old Testament that are about the Jews, as we shall see. Now, what he's doing here, I believe, is similar to what Nathan the prophet did with David. David was guilty of something, but he is blinding himself.

He's justifying himself somehow and blind to his own guilt. He had sinned with Bathsheba, and in the case of Uriah. And Nathan comes to him, and he doesn't just come and say, David, you've sinned, and you need to repent.

David might have repented, but when you come with that kind of a direct approach, it's possible he'll give his back up, and he's already justified himself. He'll say, Nah, you know, these are extenuating circumstances or whatever. You often cannot get a man to make a judgment about himself objectively if he is already justifying himself in his own mind.

When you confront him, you'll just find out the way he's justifying himself, because he'll verbalize it to you. But if you can get him on your side by making him think you're talking about somebody else, then he's objective. He's going to judge the case objectively.

So Nathan comes to David and says, David, there was a man in our community who had a really poor man, but he had one little sheep, and it was like a family pet. The kids loved it. It slept in bed with them.

It was like a family dog, a little sheep. And the man across the street, he's a wealthy man, had a big flock of sheep, but he had a guest come at night, and he wanted to feed them, so he went over and stole the sheep from his neighbor, killed it, and fed it to his neighbor. Now, David had spent many years as a shepherd risking his life to keep sheep from being stolen.

He was a shepherd. You know, he faces bears and lions to keep sheep from being stolen. His blood runs hot over the issue of, you know, hanging's too good for those horse thieves, or sheep thieves, you know? I mean, he's a former shepherd.

He's got it in his blood, and Nathan knew how to get it to come out of David. This man stole a sheep from a guy who had only one, and he had plenty. And David, of course, is a little excessive.

He says, the man shall die. Of course, under the law, the man wouldn't die. The man would have to replace four sheep for a sheep, according to the law, but David's just a shepherd at heart, and he's reacting somewhat emotionally, but also somewhat objectively.

He sees there's a horrible guilt here. He says, that man shall die. And Nathan said, you're the man.

I was just describing you. You had plenty of wives, and you took your neighbor's only wife. You know, you're more guilty than the man you just condemned.

But you've uttered a judgment objectively against a crime, and you're the committer of that crime. So you have condemned yourself with your verdict, with your sentence. Jesus did the same thing to the Jews when he was telling about the vineyard owner in Matthew 21.

At the end of Matthew 21, there's a parable. Jesus said there's a man who had a vineyard, planted a fruitful vine in it, and built a hedge and a tower and all that in it, and he leased it out to tenants. And it was their job to take care of the vineyard and give him some of the grapes at the end of the vintage year, so that was the rent they would pay.

So when it came vintage time, the owner sent his servants to the tenants, said, okay, where's the vintage? And the tenants beat up the servants, kicked them out of the vineyard. He sent more. They treated them the same way and killed some of them.

And finally, he said, I'm going to send my son this time. They won't do that to my son. And when they saw the son, they said, this is the heir.

Let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours. And so they killed him. And Jesus said to the audience, what do you think that vineyard owner will do to those people who did that, those tenants? And the answer from the audience was, he'll miserably destroy those wicked men and lease out his vineyard to others who will give him the fruits in due season.

And Jesus said, essentially, well, you're the men. The kingdom of God is taken from you and given to a nation that will bring forth the fruits in its season. Because Israel was God's vineyard to bring forth the fruit.

And he said in Isaiah 5, 7, the fruit he was looking for was justice and righteousness. The prophets, God's servants, came again. And he said, where's the fruit? Where's the justice? Where's the righteousness? God gave you a law.

He's given you protection. He's put a hedge around you against your enemies. And where's the fruit he's supposed to get out of this? And they beat up and killed the prophets.

He sent more and they did the same thing. Finally, he sent his son to them. And they did the same thing to him.

See, it's Jesus telling the story of Israel, acting like he's talking about somebody else. So the people of Israel could objectively say, those men are wicked men. They should be utterly destroyed and the vineyard should be taken from them.

And Jesus said, I agree completely. You're the man. And so that's how Nathan nailed David.

That's how Jesus nailed the Pharisees. That's how Paul nails the Jew here. He's describing somebody.

He doesn't say who it is. He gives the impression it might be the Gentiles he's talking about. So their guard is down.

They're tracking with them and saying, yes. And at the end he says, but that's you. You just judged them.

But that's you I'm talking about. You do those things. You've just condemned yourself.

It's a good way to get someone to make an objective self-judgment. So where I differ from most commenters, they almost all believe that Romans 1 is talking about the Gentiles. So did the Jewish reader think that.

But I'm going to point out to you where Paul gave hints all the way through that he was talking about the Jews in the first place. Let's read the whole passage first quickly. Verse 18 for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness because what they may be, what may be known of God is manifest in them or some translation say among them.

For God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made. Even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened, professing to be wise. They became fools. They changed the glory of the incorruptible God to an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.

Therefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness and the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forevermore. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions for even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.

Likewise, also the men leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lusts for one another. Men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error, which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things, which are not fitting being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, their whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful, who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also approve of those who practice them.

Now, that's a pretty ugly laundry list of sinful men. But which men are in mind here? Now, I want to make this clear. In my suggestion that this is not about the Gentiles, I'm not saying the Gentiles weren't this way.

This could be a good description of the Gentiles as well in many respects, but not as much as of the Jews, because it starts out by saying they knew God. When did the Gentiles ever know God? I mean, when Paul came to Athens, one of the most philosophical religious cities around, he said, I see you're all very religious, but I'm here to tell you about what you call the unknown God. You don't know God.

This God that you worship ignorantly, I'm here to tell you about Him. They had many gods, but the one God they should worship, they didn't know. But Paul says the people he's talking about did know God.

They knew God. Their problem was not that they didn't know, but they didn't like to retain God in their knowledge, he says. And, so, who but the Jews really knew God? Now, it's true he doesn't mention the law and the revelation.

He doesn't mention any special revelation. He just mentions the creation. You know, from the things that are made, you can know about God.

Well, the Jews knew that way too. Certainly, they had special revelations that the Gentiles didn't have, but if Paul had mentioned the special revelation, it would have given away the game. They'd know he was talking about them.

But the Jews and Gentiles alike can know from the creation that there's a God. The Jews, after all, David wrote in Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament shows forth his handiwork.

Day unto day utter his speech. Night unto night shows forth knowledge. The knowledge of God has been made known through his creation to the Jews as well as the Gentiles.

True, the Jews had additional benefit of special revelation, and Paul's going to bring that up in Chapter 3, but he doesn't mention it here because that would give it away, I think. This is what I think. He says again in verse 21, they knew God, but they did not glorify him as God.

They were not thankful. Now, it says in verse 22, they were professing to be wise. In Chapter 2, he tells his Jewish readers that they think they're wise.

Because over in Chapter 2, verse 19 says, you are confident that you or yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes. They obviously are professing themselves to be wise, and yet, in their rejection of God, they're fools. He says in verse 22, professing to be wise, they became fools.

But then in verse 23, they changed the glory of the incorruptible God. This phrase is used twice in the Old Testament of the Jews. If you look at Psalm 106, verse 20, talking about Israel, just going through Israel's history here.

He says, well, verse 19 says, they made a calf in Horeb. This is talking about the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai. They made a calf in Horeb.

They worshipped a molten image. They changed the glory, or it says they changed their glory, who is God, into the image of an ox that eats grass. So, Israel changed their glory.

They exchanged, by the way, the word changed is the word exchanged. What they did is they exchanged God, who is their glory, the glory of God, they exchanged that for idols, is really what it's saying there. In Jeremiah 2, in verse 11, God says, has a nation changed its gods, which are not gods, but my people have changed their glory to what does not profit, in other words, to idols.

They've changed God, who was their glory. Israel was God's glory. The glory of Israel was that they were God's people.

They owned God in a special way. The Gentiles didn't. God wasn't their glory.

They had their own gods. But it's Israel that changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the image of corruptible man and so forth, as Paul says in Romans 1, 23. And then in verses 24, 26, and 28, Paul uses a phrase, God gave them up or gave them over.

Twice he says he gave them up in verse 24 and 26. And in verse 28, he gave them over, but he gave them up to do what? To do their own thing. He gave them up to follow their own lusts.

Now, by the way, I want to say that when Paul began this section, the first thing he said was the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against ungodliness of men who suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. The wrath of God, he didn't say will be, but is. Right now, you can see the wrath of God revealed from heaven against people who suppress the truth.

In what way is that wrath of God revealed? I believe he tells us when God gave them over. God's wrath is not seen always in fire from heaven, just him taking his hands off, saying, I'm gonna let you go your own way. His own people, he intervenes to stop them from going.

Like a man does his own children. You see your child going toward your busy traffic, you run and intervene. If you give up on your child, you just let him go.

The meanest thing you can do is to give your child over to do his own thing. And God was Israel's glory. He was their protection against evil, against disaster and so forth because he gave them laws.

He took care of them, but they rejected him. And so he just gave them up to do their own thing. And this expression that God gave them up, you'll find in a couple of other places, both applying to Israel.

In Psalm 81, again, Psalm 81 is summarizing some of Israel's negative history. But in Psalm 81, and verse 11 and 12, God said, but my people would not heed my voice and Israel would have none of me. So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart to walk in their own councils.

It specifically says in the Psalms, God gave Israel up to walk in their own ways. And that's what Paul says that God did to these people under consideration. Also in Acts 7, when Stephen is giving a sermon, which is also recounting the history of Israel in his sermon.

In Acts 7 and verse 42, Stephen says, then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven as it is written in the prophets. So the Psalms and Stephen both say about Israel that God gave them up. And so says Paul about the people he's describing.

God gave them up. God gave them up. Now, interestingly enough, in verse 18, the beginning of this, he says that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.

I believe God giving them up is the revelation of his wrath. The fact that he's letting them go is the proof that he's angry at them. His wrath is revealed means it's visible.

You can see it. But God's wrath is on those who suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. And this matter of suppressing the truth has specific application to Israel.

In 1 Thessalonians 2, which Paul also had earlier written before Romans, 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul tells the Thessalonians who were Greeks that they were experiencing persecution from their fellow Greeks, just like the Jewish Christians in Judea were suffering from their Jewish countrymen persecution. And he says this in verses 14 through 16, Paul says, For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God that are in Judea, in Christ, that's the Jewish churches. For you also suffered the same things from your own countrymen, just as they did from the Jews.

Now, mentioning the Jews who were unbelievers, who persecuted the Jewish Christians, the anti-Christian Jews, here's what Paul says, who killed both the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, have persecuted us. They do not please God. They're contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved.

Isn't that suppressing the truth? Paul's trying to preach the truth to the Gentiles and the Jews are forbidding it. They're suppressing it. So as always, to fill up the measure of their sins, but wrath has come upon them to the uttermost.

Notice wrath has come. He's not talking about some future day of wrath. They are already the recipients of ultimate wrath because they suppress the truth.

And that's how Paul begins Romans 1.18. He says, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven. It's a present reality that you can see, if you know where to look, against those who suppress the truth. And he describes them.

They knew God. They turned from God. They changed His glory.

God gave them up. These are all terms that the Bible elsewhere uses about the Jews themselves. Although Paul doesn't say anything that wouldn't also possibly be, in some sense, true of the Gentiles, it is less true of Gentiles than of the Jews because they didn't know God.

The Gentiles didn't know God before this. God didn't give them up because He never had them under His leadership, under His guidance. He gave Israel up.

And then he goes on to talk about, of course, how, you know, how depraved and how debauched they got. It doesn't take much reading of the Old Testament to see that that's exactly true. Even the references to homosexuality are interesting because, you know, in the book of Judges, there's this story about this man, a Levite who had a concubine and he was passing through a certain Benjamite city, a Jewish-Israelite city, and the men of the city surrounded the house and wanted to rape the man.

And instead, they took his concubine in exchange and raped her to death. These are Jews. I mean, that sounds like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Sodom wasn't Jewish. Sodom were Gentiles. But the Jews did exactly the same things, almost identical.

What is Paul saying? Paul is saying, no matter how dark a picture you paint of Gentile sin, if that's what you want to see it as, Jewish people, they've been right on the same track with the Gentiles, the only exception being that they knew better. The Gentiles didn't know. They were ignorant.

But the Jews knew God and did not like to retain the knowledge of God. They wanted to change God, the glory of God, for idols. What I see here is not some kind of a generic depiction of human guilt, but a specifically targeted description of the history of Israel, avoiding as much as possible distinctive elements that would give it away that he's talking about Israel.

But when you look back, you say, wait, he was. Because all these things are said about them in the Old Testament and the New, too. So, that's why when he gets to the end of it, he can say, therefore, you, O man, who is the Jew, he says in verse 17 of chapter 2, you are inexcusable.

You are the man I've just been describing. You were on my side when you thought it was the Gentiles. Well, now you can make an objective judgment.

You agree these people are worthy of death. Well, you're them. You have condemned yourself because you do these very things.

By the way, one other thing I would point out that kind of points toward the Jews in this respect is that in verse 32, 132, he says, knowing the righteous judgment of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but approve of those who practice them. Now, who knew the righteous judgments of God? The righteous judgments of God were his law, actually. In Psalm 119, quite a few times the expression, your righteous judgments, your righteous judgments is a synonym for your law, your commandments, your statutes.

Psalm 119 repeatedly refers to God's law as your righteous judgments. The Jews knew the righteous judgments of God in the law, in the statutes. But though they knew the righteous judgments of God, not only that these things were bad, but they even knew the penalty that God had prescribed, that they're worthy of death.

You see, these people he's describing are not Gentiles. In many respects, their history parallels the history of Gentiles, but with more culpability than the Gentiles themselves even had. Now, I want to just show you real quickly over to Romans 3. We're going to come to that separately in another lecture, but we're still in the same discussion.

I believe that in these chapters, I think the first four chapters of Romans, Paul is trying to deflate the racial elitist arrogance of the Jews, because they felt they were better, not because they were better, but because they were circumcised. And so he brings that up quite a bit. Circumcision, what's that matter if you don't keep the law? Even the uncircumcised man, if he keeps the law, he'll be counted as circumcised, he says later on in Chapter 2. But the point is, the Jewish mentality, which we can hardly relate to, we might think, well, the Jews were better than the Gentiles because they had those nice laws in the Ten Commandments.

Those weren't the laws they boasted. They didn't boast in the Ten Commandments. Most Gentiles had those laws, most of them.

Murder, adultery, theft, those were illegal in most societies, Gentiles as well. What was distinctive of the Jewish was not the moral commandments. The laws of Hammurabi in Babylon had the same moral commandments.

What the Jews had distinctively was circumcision. That's what was the mark of their covenant with God. And as long as they were circumcised, that's what made them different, they thought.

You could be a good Jew or a bad Jew, but if you're circumcised, you're one of God's people. A good or a bad Gentile is still a bad guy because he wasn't circumcised. To the Jews, circumcision was the very definition of being in Israel.

That's why they were called the circumcision. And the Gentiles were called the uncircumcision. That's what they called it.

Remember when Paul speaks to the Gentiles, he says, you who were called the uncircumcision by those who call themselves the circumcision. That's in Ephesians 2. The Jews called themselves the circumcised. We're the circumcised ones.

And that's why Paul has to come down on them at the end of chapter to say, a man's not circumcised outwardly of the flesh, he's circumcised of the heart. He's not a Jew who's one outwardly, he's a Jew who's one inwardly. The point here that Paul's making through this whole section is, you Jews are boasting in something that you think makes you superior to Gentiles as a class.

Because you as a class are circumcised and they as a class are not. But look, when it comes down to real moral behavior, Jews as a class are not particularly an improvement over the Gentiles as a class. All the things that the Gentiles have done that are despicable, the Jews have done too.

Which means that for you to think you're superior to other people who aren't circumcised is a delusion. And that is where he's going through chapters one through four. But in chapter three, which we'll jump to just temporarily, we'll come back to it in a few lectures hence.

In chapter three, he begins chapter three by saying, what advantage then has the Jew? Now he's just said at the end of chapter two, being a Jew outwardly doesn't matter. It's being Jew inwardly. Being circumcised outwardly doesn't matter.

It's being circumcised outwardly. You think when he says, what advantage has the Jew? He's going to say none. Get off your high horse.

You've got no advantage being a Jew. But he says the opposite, much every way. Oh, what? Well, chiefly you have the oracles of God.

The scriptures were given to you Jews. Now that is an advantage. What advantage is there? Well, there is an advantage.

God has given you privileges that no one else had, especially the scriptures. But then he says in verse nine, what then are we better than they? Okay, we Jews, we have an advantage they don't have. We have the oracles of God.

Yes, there is an advantage to us being Jews, but are we better than they are? He says, not really. And that's where he lists off six scriptures from the Old Testament, talking about how wicked people are. But it just so happens that every scripture he lists in its context is talking about Jewish wicked people.

They are not descriptions of the Gentiles. And the reason he lists the scriptures is because he's just asked the question, are we Jews better than the other people? The answer is no. As it is written, bang, bang, bang, hit them again, hit them again with these scriptures.

What are they proving? That we Jews are not better than Gentiles. These scriptures are describing Jewish people, showing that they are not superior morally in general to anybody else. And after he's quoted all those scriptures in verse 19, chapter 3, 19 says, now we know that whatever the law says, and by the law, he means the scriptures he's just quoted.

Technically, he's using the word law to mean the whole Old Testament. We know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, who are they? The Jews. You see, he's quoted a bunch of scriptures about the wickedness of certain people.

He says, now this is in your law written to you. Whatever the law says, it's written to you who are under the law. This is about you guys.

The whole list of scriptures, far from being Paul's attempt to give Calvinists a proof text for total depravity, is simply trying to prove that Jews are as bad as anybody else. And although some of the scriptures he quotes use hyperbole. For example, there's none that seeks after God.

Well, David's an exception to that. And David's the one who wrote that. In Psalm 14, there's none that seeks after God.

Well, isn't David a seeker after God? He must not be speaking absolutely. Later in the same Psalm, he says, God is in the generation of the righteous. But he's just said in the opening verses, there's none righteous.

So obviously, when David said there's none righteous, there's none who does good, there's none that seeks after God, these are poems. These are diatribes. These are hyperboles saying the world's going crazy.

There's no one going right anymore. These are prophetic denunciations. They're not theological statements per se.

Theologians always want proof texts for a doctrine. David's not giving proof texts. He's basically saying, I can't believe that my people are so far gone.

There's no one doing the right thing. Everybody's going the wrong way. And that's what all these passages are.

Actually, five of them are from the Psalms. One's from Isaiah. But they all have the same function.

They're prophetic. They're not intended for theological textbooks. They're intended as prophetic outcries against the people of Israel.

And while, of course, it's true that almost all these things would apply to Gentiles too, that's not the point. The point Paul's making is these things, in fact, apply to Israel because it is true of them as well as the Gentiles. Let's not worry about the Gentiles.

Everyone knows they're bad. You don't have to make a case for Gentiles being idolaters. They all are, except for the Christian ones.

You don't have to make a case for Gentiles being immoral. They're all immoral, except for the Christian ones. Paul's not trying to argue for Gentile guilt.

That's a given. He's arguing for equal guilt to the Jews, and therefore his whole diatribe in the first four chapters is directed toward the Jew who thinks he's better than Gentiles just because he's part of this circumcised group that God set aside for himself. Yes, you did have advantages, but you didn't turn out any better.

Does the Jew have advantages? Yes, much advantages. Are we any better? Not really. And that's his case.

Now, again, how does this differ from... I said I differ a little bit from a lot of ways of looking at it. I don't see Paul as just trying to make a theologian's proof textbook for trying to prove universal depravity, certainly not total depravity. These verses actually don't prove total depravity.

First of all, if anything, Paul says these apply to the Jews. So if they taught any total depravity, it would just prove total depravity of the Jews. We'd have to work it out for the Gentiles some other way.

But even the verses that sound like total depravity, there's none that seeks God, are hyperbole, because David, who says it was himself an exception, and there were others that he knew. The Bible speaks of many people who seek God. You get a concordance out and look up seek and see how many dozens of texts talk about people who seek God.

And so to say there are none that seek God. Now, I'll tell you what the Calvinist says about this is, well, the elect seek God, but he's talking about the non-elect. No, he's not talking about the non-elect.

It begins, God looks down from heaven to see if there's any among the children of men who do good. It's not talking about the non-elect. It's talking about the human race.

He doesn't distinguish between elect or non-elect. He's simply making a decrying the human race, especially that one that David could see, which is the Israelites around him. They, you know, God's not seeing anything that he likes here.

Well, there'd be exceptions. He liked David. He liked some other people, but the general outlook is gloomy.

And as poets often do, and the Psalms are all poetry, so are the prophets. They hyperbolize a little bit to make it, you know, make an impression. But the purpose of Paul quoting this is not to try to establish the case for a toll depravity where there's not a single person on earth who seeks God, but that there's not a race that seeks God.

The Jews thought they were the race that seeks God. Sure, some of the Jews among them didn't. And some Gentiles actually did.

Cornelius was certainly seeking God. He wasn't a Christian. He was a Gentile.

But certainly some people seek God, both Jews and Gentiles. But there is no race who as a whole are better than other races because they as a race seek God. No.

You can find many scriptures in the Old Testament about Israel showing that they don't do that. And that's Paul's point. So I think when we look to Romans as, you know, we've got a doctrine we're going to prove.

Oh, this verse really sounds right. Oh, that's a good one. That'll prove my point.

Well, it might sound like it proves your point, but it might not be something Paul would think proves your point. He's proving some other point it may be. He's going somewhere in his discussion.

He's making an argument, and we have to decide what his argument is instead of saying what argument we want it to be. What he wants to get across is that he knows very well the attitude of the smug, self-righteous, superior Jew. And while most of the Jews we know may not have that attitude, that may be because they live in a civilized, Christianized society.

Most Jews probably can't argue that they're better than most Gentiles. Most of the Gentiles they know live pretty decent lives too. But in a pagan world, where the pagans are sleeping with prostitutes in their temples to their false gods and goddesses, where they're exposing their infants that they don't want, killing them, they're entertaining themselves with gladiatorial games, it doesn't take much to look and say, we Jews are better than those people.

Because how could they not feel better? The Jews didn't approve of those horrible things, but the Gentiles seem to. But it would be a mistake, and was a mistake they made to think, because we don't approve of some of these pagan things, we're a better people, and we're a better people because we're circumcised and we're Jews and they're not. It would be to ignore the fact that some Jews don't seek God, and some Gentiles do.

We're not making a statement about every last man, we're talking about categories here. You don't think Jews are better because every last Jew is better, because you know that some of them aren't. There's Judas's, there's crooked Jews too, they knew that.

They weren't denying that there were some bad Jews. What they were denying is that that really mattered. As long as they were circumcised, they were part of the good race.

And that gave them special status. It's hard for us to relate with that, but that's how the Jew thought. Circumcision is what made all the difference.

And that's why Paul has to twice, in chapter 2 and chapter 4, he goes into the circumcision thing. He says, Abraham was a counter-righteous when he was uncircumcised. A man who's not circumcised, who keeps the law, will be counted as circumcised.

You who are circumcised, who don't keep the law, you'll be counted as uncircumcised by God. See, Paul has to press hard against this circumcision thing because it's in the mind of every Jew for centuries. We are circumcised, that's the mark of our covenant with God.

We are better people, we're a better race. God loves us because we have this mark on our skin. And Paul's saying, come on, God cares about righteousness, not cutting your skin.

In fact, if you look at chapter 2, we're going to have to quit here real quick, but look at chapter 2 real quick, where he speaks to these people who are Jewish, who are Jewish judgmental people. And I'm not really getting into chapter 2 yet, that's another lecture coming up, but I just want to jump ahead here to look at this. He says in verse 6, that God will render to each one according to his deeds.

And also to the Greek, for there is no partiality with God. You might think by saying, the Jews first, oh, God's showing partiality toward the Jews. Well, that's exactly what he's saying, I'm not doing.

Yes, the Jew had the first choice, but the Greek's in there just as much as the Jew. You do evil, you're going to get hurt by God, whether you're a Jew or a Greek. Sure, God judged the Jews first.

70 AD, their society came under destruction. The Gentile societies will have their turn as well. And when it comes to righteousness, the Jews had their chance first, Jesus came to them.

At the beginning of ministry, he said, I'm not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He didn't go to Gentiles. The righteousness and the wickedness are taken into consideration of individuals, regardless of their race.

And that's what the Jews did not know or did not want to think about. And that's what Paul's trying to get across. The Jew and the Gentile both, if they seek for glory and immortality and righteousness, they're going to be blessed.

Jew or Gentile, if you go the wrong way, you're going to be hurtin'. Jew or Gentile, there's no partiality. And that is the essential thing that the Jew never understood, that God doesn't show partiality to you because you're Jewish or have circumcised yourself.

God's going to judge each person on their merits, not on their race. And that's really the message. And that's what he's running up toward in chapter one.

We're going to look at chapters two and three separately in more detail, but we need to understand that what chapter one is saying is he's running up on this message. Jews aren't better than Gentiles. God doesn't show partiality to you just because you're Jewish.

You've got to be good as much as a Gentile has to be good. You've got to be a believer just like a Gentile has to be a believer. You can't just say, I'm circumcised and that's good enough.

It is not, not even a little bit.