Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Romans 3:1-20
1 Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 2 Much, in every way. For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. 3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 4 By no means! Although everyone is a liar, let God be proved true, as it is written, "So that you may be justified in your words, and prevail in your judging." 5 But if our injustice serves to confirm the justice of God, what should we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) 6 By no means! For then how could God judge the world? 7 But if through my falsehood God's truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? 8 And why not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), "Let us do evil so that good may come"? Their condemnation is deserved! 9 What then? Are we any better off? No, not at all; for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, 10 as it is written: "There is no one who is righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one." 13 "Their throats are opened graves; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of vipers is under their lips." 14 "Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness." 15 "Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery are in their paths, 17 and the way of peace they have not known." 18 "There is no fear of God before their eyes." 19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For "no human being will be justified in his sight" by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
“It scares me,” he said.
“The gap between what I know I should be doing and what I actually do … knowing that I am being looked on as a role model and knowing at the same time that I am so not anywhere near who I want to be … it scares me.” He went on to give a list of what he’d like to change about himself, all with the sole purpose of becoming more like the authors of the books we were studying, giants of the faith, men and women like Hudson Taylor, Lottie Moon, Adoniram Judson, Anne Hasseltine Judson, Billy Graham, Henrietta Hall Shuck and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. People who spent their lives serving God and taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to a world that had never heard of him. Last Sunday we heard the life stories of the women I just mentioned. Each one of them literally spent their lives for Christ, serving as missionaries in far away lands, and each of them was buried in the country they’d been called to.
My friend’s self-questioning, if not self-condemnation, was very Pauline. In fact, later in this very same letter, Paul is struggling with the same issue: chapter 7, verse 15, we find one of the better-known passages:
15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
In that sense, I suppose, he WAS emulating a giant of the faith, but perhaps not in the way he’d hoped. We can ALL make that same claim. It is an inescapable fact: there is not a single person among us who is not a sinner. Not a single one among us who has not, at some point in their lives, fallen short of the glory of God.
Paul has begun his letter to the church in Rome with one of the most gloriously strident statements in all the New Testament:
“For I am not ashamed of the Gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith”(1:16 NRSV)
In our study on Wednesday nights, Mark Olson calls that, along with the next verse, Paul’s thesis statement, which summarized in a couple of sentences what he then goes on to spell out in detail in the rest of his letter. It is those details that we are going to spend a few minutes studying this morning.
The passage I read a couple of minutes ago, chapter 3 verses 1-20, are at the conclusion of what can accurately be called a ‘diatribe’. Though the tone at the beginning of the letter is positive, which would seem to make sense, since Paul is writing to people some of whom he knows, but most of whom he does not know, so at least at the beginning there is a semblance of … politeness, if not propriety. But it only goes so far. Verse 18 of the first chapter is where the gloves come off:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.” (1:18 NRSV)
What follows is a blanket condemnation of both the Gentiles and the Jews who would be hearing the letter read. It is not a suggestion, or a hint, or a ‘read between the lines’ kind of thing. It is a literary two-by-four aimed right at their heads. Let’s just touch on some highlights of the first two chapters, shall we?
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools; 23 and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four footed animals and reptiles.
Can we reread those two verses again?
“Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for … what shall we insert here? Wealth? Security? Presence in the house of God substituting for a relationship WITH God?”
Keep reading: chapter 1, verse 28:
“And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die – yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them."
Whew! Let’s pause for a minute and catch our breath. I have to be honest with you. These verses are some of the hardest to read for me. There is an unrelenting character to them that is … discomforting. At the same time that I say that, I have to acknowledge that there is a really good reason for that discomfort, and it is that to some degree or another, that list could apply to me … some days less than others, but overall, there is nothing listed that hasn’t insinuated it’s way into my life at one point or another.
We spoke Wednesday night about that – having an awareness of our own sinfulness, our own fallen nature, well, I did of MINE, anyway. Since I’m the one standing up here, it would be best to stick to speaking for myself, when it comes to some things.
Let’s skip down a little – chapter 2, verse 4 … but first, an editorial note: beginning with chapter 1 verse 18, Paul is swinging the two-by-four at the gentile members of the church in Rome. Now, beginning with chapter 2, he turns and begins to swing the stick at the Jewish members of the congregation, who had probably, up until then, been sitting relatively comfortably, watching the gentiles squirm, since what Paul was speaking of were sins that were either being committed or had been committed by the non-Jewish believers before they became Christ-followers. It bears noting that, just as the reading of the text caused discomfort here, it could only have caused that much more discomfort in the people who first heard it read… ANYWAY … back to chapter 2 verse 4:
Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
How many of us would have considered recognition of God’s kindness to be something that is intended to lead us to repentance? What is it about kindness that would elicit such a response? If the person to whom you are showing kindness has just shown YOU a kindness, then there is an instant community – a connection that is formed when two like spirits meet. If, however, the person receiving the kindness has just finished … say … cutting in front of you in line at the grocery store, and you respond by pulling out your MVP card and letting them use it when they discover they’ve forgotten theirs, the reaction can be predicted … what is it? Discomfort. I speak from experience. You really don’t want to be caught in that situation on the receiving end of that kindness. There is no worse feeling. No more humbling, shaming feeling than when harshness is repaid with kindness. Human nature is revealed further down in the letter, chapter 12, we find this, you’ve probably heard it before:
19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." 20 No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads."
So here we are, in chapter 2, and Paul lets into the Jews, who have been ‘amening’ him for the last chapter – and he slams them just as much: beginning in verse 12 and going through verse 16, 2nd chapter:
All who have sinned apart form the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.
God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.
That is an unsettling thought. That at some point, God will judge the secret thoughts of all of us. if you want discomfort, there it is.
It boils down to this;
9 Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For "no human being will be justified in his sight" by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.Through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
Paul is telling the Jews and the Gentiles the same thing in ways that each can understand: whether you are being confronted with Christ from a background that has no point of reference with Judaic law or whether you are steeped in that law and can therefore identify any and all sins committed by omission or commission, YOU ARE STILL GUILTY and in need of Christ, through whom God was reconciling the world to God’s self.
What do we do with that? How do we, Jerusalem Baptist Church, take that message to the world without the world saying ‘forget you’, or something perhaps far more explicit?
We can take our queue from Paul himself. Let’s back up to Paul’s own greeting at the beginning of the letter. He opens, as was the custom, identifying himself as a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God. The next 5 verses are … a synopsis of what he is going to spell out in the rest of the letter. The meat of the letter is summarized in those 5 verses, but I think the conclusion of the letter is there as well. It is where he states to whom the letter is addressed:
“To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints; Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
We might be able to condense the study of Romans into those first 7 verses. It would make for a considerably shorter winter Bible Study … but here it is. After all is said and done, Paul does return to the Gospel – which is God drawing the world back to God’s self through the person of Jesus Christ.
Through him we are called to be Saints while still being sinners. How is that possible? Aren’t the two mutually exclusive?
Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who wrote extensively on the contemplative life, says in his book New Seeds of Contemplation,
“True holiness is not found by striving or in our own efforts, or by competing with others. Indeed, true holiness cannot be created by us at all. True holiness is only found by losing ourselves in Christ, as we are transformed by the Love of God living and working in us and through us in all that we do.”
“A man becomes a saint not by conviction that he is better than sinners but by the realization that he is one of them and that all together need the mercy of God!”
In that, we follow Christ’s example, found in Philippians 2;
“He became human and dwelt in the flesh among sinful human beings. In fact, he too was considered a sinner. This was his holiness, his sanctity. It should be ours as well.”
Let’s pray.
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