Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
Continuing his argument in the letter to the Romans that sin is universally present in all human beings, Paul turns to examine the moral performance of his own people, the Jewish nation. Warning of the danger of spiritual pride among those who have high moral standards, he shows how compromising it can be of the credibility of our faith if we fail to practice what we profess. Rob Yule, Senior Minister of Greyfriars’ Church, preached this message at Greyfriars’ Classical Service on 22 April 2007.
In Romans 1 Paul surveyed the decadent morality and moral depravity of the Greek and Roman society of his day. In Romans 2 he turns to examine the moral performance of his own culture, the Jewish nation. Judaism in Paul’s day attracted many converts or proselytes from the Gentile nations, because of the high moral standards and exemplary family life of Jewish people. But being morally upright can also lead to sin — the sin of pride, all the more insidious because the proud person may be unaware of it.
Religious pride is just as insidious today. Rightly or wrongly Christians are often perceived to be critical or judgmental. Often the language of Christians breathes an attitude of superiority and looking down on others. ‘We don’t approve of that.’ ‘We are the true church.’ ‘We are born-again.’ ‘We’re concerned for social justice.’ ‘We are Spirit-filled.’ ‘We are Bible-believing.’ ‘That church is dead.’ ‘They are immoral or unbelieving.’ Pride is a special danger for morally upright and religious people. While looking down on others you can easily become blind to your own faults.
In his album O Mercy Bob Dylan sings of ‘The Disease of Conceit’: ‘There’s a whole lot of people dyin’ tonight / from the disease of conceit. / There’s a whole lot of people cryin’ tonight / from the disease of conceit….’
Conceit is a disease
That the doctors ain’t got no cure.
They’ve done a lot of research on it
But what it is they’re still not too sure.
There’s a whole lot of people in trouble tonight,
from the disease of conceit.
There’s a whole lot of people seein’ double tonight,
from the disease of conceit.
Further demonstrating his case that sin is universal, Paul now shows that the spiritual sins of the religious are even more reprehensible in God’s sight than the more obvious sensual sins of the irreligious, since they dishonour God’s name and bring his cause into disrepute (2:23-24).
For Paul this was a highly personal issue, since it was the kind of sin from which he himself was set free when he was converted. He mentions two grounds for Jewish religious pride in his day:
The law was an expression of the Jews’ unique relationship with God (2:17). Paul says to his fellow Jews that there is no value in having the law and being in a privileged relationship with God if they don’t keep the law and live in accordance with that special relationship. Hypocrisy, double standards, failing to practice what they preach, dishonours God and brings God into public reproach (2:23-24).
It always causes me heart-searching to remember that some of the leading atheists of the last two centuries have been products of formal, hypocritical, religious upbringing. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche influenced Nazism — with his extolling of strength and contempt for compassion. He was the son of a Lutheran clergyman. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin — responsible for the Great Terror in which millions of peasants, engineers and professionals perished in the purges — was once a student in a Russian Orthodox seminary.
When we Christians fail to practice what we preach, we bring God’s cause and the reputation of the whole Christian community into disrepute. In New Zealand this will be forever associated with the tragic case of the Rev. Graham Capill, founder and leader of New Zealand’s first Christian political party, the Christian Heritage Party, widely known for his campaigning on moral issues, who was sent to prison for molesting children. That high-profile case seriously damaged the public image of the Christian church in New Zealand.
A Jewish example of this occurred in early 1994. A Jewish medical doctor in Hebron, Israel, without giving anyone, even his own family, any indication of his intentions, suddenly attacked a Muslim mosque with a machine gun, killing 36 Palestinian Arabs. The ‘Hebron Massacre’ — as it became known — was widely condemned, especially by the United Nations and the Arab world (even though, hypocritically, the United Nations — an organisation set up ostensibly to protect Jews — has yet to condemn one massacre of Jews by an Arab terrorist, in Israel or anywhere else in the world).
Jewish reaction to the Hebron Massacre was instructive. Rabbi Eliyahu Klugman, writing in the ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem paper The Jewish Observer, described it as a double-desecration of the name of God, for it was ‘not the act of a secularised Jew, but one committed to the observance of the Torah.’ He said that it will generate ‘a revulsion for Torah among non-religious Jews, whose knowledge of the Torah is so scant that they will believe whatever they are told.’ (Inside Israel, magazine of the Jerusalem Centre for Biblical Studies, 14, 6, p. 2).
What Paul is saying here is representative of the best in Judaism. A hundred years ago, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the founder of modern Neo-Orthodox Judaism, echoed Paul’s viewpoint: ‘Do you not see how an unworthy step in your life degrades not only you, yourself, but the whole house of Israel, yes, even God and the revelation of his Word?’ (Inside Israel, loc. cit.).
Circumcision was a sign of the Jews’ unique difference from other people. Paul says that there is no value in having an external sign of separation from the world — for Jewish males, circumcision; for us Christians, baptism — if we do not have a heart consecrated to God.
This emphasis on inwardness has roots in the Old Testament itself. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 10:16: ‘Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.’ This passage may well have shaped Paul’s argument here in Romans, since it emphasises God’s impartial justice: ‘The Lord your God…the great God…shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.’ (Deuteronomy 10:17).
Our inner attitudes must match our outward actions. If our lives as Christians aren’t consistent with our beliefs, we are no better than unbelievers, and God, who is utterly fair and impartial, will judge us and hold us accountable for our inconsistency and hypocrisy.
In the Roman world, the diatribe was a rhetorical device that involved putting questions or objections from an imaginary critic in order, by answering them, to lead to a better understanding of the truth. Here Paul, using the diatribe form for the first of many times in Romans, anticipates and answers two possible Jewish objections to his argument (3:1-8):
1. If inward obedience is more important than outward observance, does this mean there is no value in belonging to the Jewish nation — or, for us, in being a professing Christian? Does the end nullify the means?
Paul replies that, on the contrary, the Jews have been entrusted with ‘the oracles of God’ — the very revelation of God and his will. They, alone of all peoples, have the privilege of mediating the knowledge of God to the world (3:1-4; in 9:4-5 he lists other privileges of the Jewish people). There is great value in having an intimate relationship with God and knowing God. This is very affirming for those who — like myself — have grown up in a Christian family and with a background of Christian knowledge.
2. If human sin by contrast highlights God’s holiness, why not do evil so that good may result? Does the end justify the means? As the French philosopher Voltaire so complacently expressed it: ‘God will forgive me; it is his trade’.
Later in Romans Paul will deal with this misrepresentation of his teaching about justification by faith. In Romans 6:1-14 he shows that the righteousness that comes by faith is for good works; that faith for righteousness must express itself in fruits of righteousness; that justification (being made right with God) must lead to sanctification (living a life for God).
Paul brings to a close his argument establishing the universality of sin. Observant Jews would have applauded his description of the ‘ungodliness and wickedness’, the idolatry and moral degeneracy, of the Gentile nations of their day (1:18-32). Now, by a string of quotations from their own Scriptures, Paul turns the spotlight on them and shows that they, the chosen people, are also ‘under the power of sin’ (3:9).
Like the Gentiles described in 1:18-32, sin has affected both their religion and their morality: they have no understanding of God or desire for God (3:11), and, as a result, have become morally worthless (3:12). Sin affects every part of life, corrupting our character (3:12), our conversation (3:13-14), and our conduct (3:15-18). Sin pervades every part of our personality.
We must never forget this: religious people, too, are sinners, dependent on God for mercy. We need to see our own errors, our own capacity for sin, and not judge others. The whole of humanity is equally guilty before God: not only Gentiles but also Jews; not only unbelievers, but also believers; not only irreligious, pagan or secular people, but religious people as well. Paul’s conclusion is that ‘there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ (3:23). Our best is not good enough, our highest falls short of God’s standard.
Rob Yule, 22 April 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
