Romans 2:17-29

In the previous section, Paul spoke of the judgment of God, the day of wrath which was coming when God's final judgment against sin (and his reward for righteousness) would be poured out. His main point there was to remind the Jews that that judgment would be fair and impartial. Now he brings his argument, so far as it specifically concerns the Jews, to a conclusion with words of stringent and ironic condemnation.

Paul is drawing out the position of the Jews in the first several verses of the passage. Like his description of the Gentiles at the end of chapter 2, this description would not have been true in every particular of every individual Jew. But this was a general sketch of this character or, rather, of their claims. In verses 17-20 he lists seven things about the Jews.

(1) Their identity. “Thou art called a Jew.” Being a Jew was their identity. It meant that they were one of the chosen people, the seed of Abraham; that they had a descant that traced back into antiquity, and, specifically, that they were part of God's special covenant.

(2) Their confidence. “Restest in the Law.” The word 'restest” means “to lean upon, to refresh oneself back upon.” (Robertson's Word Pictures) The idea is to put one full weight on something, to have complete confidence that that thing will bear you up. When someone jumps out of an airplane, they restest upon their parachute. A mountain climber restest upon his piton and rope. The Jews rested upon the Law, that was their confidence--whether, as legalists, they rested in their own fulfillment of the law, or, as nomists, they rested merely in the fact that they had the law, the point is that this was their confidence.

(3) Their Glory. “Makest thy boast of God.” They gloried in God. They were the chosen people of God. So far from denying God as the Gentiles did, they felt they had an almost exclusive interest in God. They knew and acknowledged God. 

(4) Their knowledge. “And knowest his will.” Over and over we have this point repeated. For Paul, the thing that differentiated the Jews from the Gentile was this knowledge. They had God's revelation. The Gentiles had a revelation too, but it was obviously inferior to the Jewish revelation. We as Christians owe a good deal to the Jews and their revelation. But the point to remember is that they knew God's will; they knew the scripture, they had Moses and the prophet.

(5) Their discernment. “And approvest the things that are more excellent.” The idea behind that phrase in Greek has to do with testing things that differ. That is, of being able to discern the gold from the dross, the good from the evil. The point is that because they had God's law, they were able to discern good and evil and right and wrong much more clearly than the Gentiles.

(6) Their education. “Being instructed out of the law.” Again, emphasizing the fact that they had the law, they knew the law, they studied the law.

(7) Their privilege. “And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.” In other words, the Jews felt that because of their possession of and knowledge of the law, of knowledge and truth, that this put them in a position to teach others, to dispense the truth to others.

Note that not all of these things are bad. Honestly, most of them are good. It seems that God had chosen Israel specifically for this reason--that they could maintain His revelation and become a light to those who are in darkness. Paul's contention is not necessarily that these things are bad or even that these boasts are untrue. The Jew did possess a knowledge of God's law. The problem comes in with verse 21 where Paul puts the whole matter in a brief epigram: “Thou therefore which teast another, teachest thou not thyself?”

What could be more absurd than this picture of a preacher who does not practice his own preaching? What could be more futile than a man who spoke out in condemnation of thievery and then walked out the back door and started picking pockets? What is more laughable and at the same time more despicable than the man who condemns a thing on Sunday and then practices it on Monday? What is more mentally frustrating than the picture of a preacher condemning adultery and then running off with the organist? 

We should look especially at the end of verse 22: “Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?” The word sacrilege literally means robbing temples. And there is certainly a picture of irony there--of a man who condemned an idol and yet was willing to make money off one. But more likely it does mean simply sacrilege and has a reference to the way the Jews treated the temple at Jerusalem, turning into a den of thieves as Jesus said. And there is a strange connection between that idea and idolatry. Because while the Jews were not, at this time idolaters, by treating God's temple lightly they were treating as if God were nothing more than an idol. Lewis Carroll complained about Christians speaking of religious things lightly and jestingly, commenting that when we do this we are speaking “With no consciousness, at the moment, of the reality of God, as a living being, who hears all we say.” Sacrilege is different from idolatry in theory but in practice, they are the same--because sacrilege means treating God as if He were no more than an idol.

Stepping back from that verse and looking at the passage as a whole we have to keep in mind the picture that Paul is saying. Obviously, not all the Jews committed robbery or adultery or sacrilege, though some of them did. But the point is this: merely having the law is not enough if you don't obey it. It doesn't matter how strongly you can condemn thievery; that does not justify being a thief. The Jews' advantage was that they had the law--but that advantage would do nothing for them without obedience to the law.

In fact, that privilege came with a price. An American cartoonist wrote: With great power comes great responsibility. The Jews' blessing of having the law came with great responsibility. The Jews felt that God would let them off easy because they were the chosen people. Paul says that they will be judged more severely for that reason. Because as those who had God's law, as God's chosen people, they were God's representatives--and so their sins, rather than being LESS serious, were actually more serious. By breaking the law, they were dishonoring God and causing God's name to be blasphemed among the Gentiles.

In 2 Samuel 12:14, following David's sin with Bathsheba, Nathan told David: “[B]y this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme...” This is the same idea as what Paul is saying in our text—that because of the sins of the Jews—or one specific Jew, in David's case—it had caused an occasion for enemies to criticize and attack the name and character of God. And I bring up this specific story for a reason. Richard Dawkins was attacking the whole character of religion and specifically the OT and one of the things he used to prove his point was the story of David and Bathsheba—proving that religion was bad because David was a man of God and that was the kind of thing he did. In other words, all the way to today, the name of God is being blasphemed among the Gentiles because of David's sin.

It is a grave responsibility to be known as God's people.

All of that brings us down to verses 25-29. Paul's language is a little intricate, but his point is clear enough. When we lived in Tennessee, somewhere my mom got a magnet to stick on that outside of our dishwasher. It had two sides: Clean and Dirty. The idea was that when you ran the dishwasher you would turn it to the side that said Clean, so everyone would know that the dishes inside had been washed. And then, after you emptied and started feeling it with unwashed dishes, you would turn it to the side that said Dirty. That was the theory, but in reality, people usually forgot to turn it around so that the label on the outside often did not match what was on the inside.

And obviously, the reality which that sign represented was more important than the sign. Nobody would take out a plate crusted with dried food and grime and say: Well, this must be clean because the magnet on the outside says it is clean. Conversely, if you had watched the dishwasher run its cycle, seen the silverware glistening with the sheen of cleanliness, examined them with a microscope to confirm that there were no microbes clinging to them--then you would treat them as clean, even if the sign said they were dirty.

Circumcision was a symbol, a sign of the separation of the Jews--that they had been set apart from the world and were God's special people. But if they broke God's law, then that sign meant nothing. And if the Gentiles followed God's law, then they were truly separated from the world and were God's special people, even if they weren't circumcised. The Jewish covenant was important, but it could not replace actual obedience and an actual relationship with God. 

Paul makes this point with a pun. Verse 29 sums up the passage: “He is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” The word Jew comes from the name Judah, which became the dominant of the 12 tribes. And Judah means Praise. Leah gave him that name out of her praise to God for giving her a son. The Jews were born out of praise for God and they were a nation dedicated to preserving the praise of God. But if they wanted to receive praise from God, recognition from God--in short, if they wanted to be truly Jews, it had to be by true, sincere obedience, not merely by reciting the law and engaging in circumcision.

In short, Paul is making this point: God's standard of judgment for the Jews and the Gentiles is exactly the same, except that the Jews had the added responsibility of having God's revelation and being his representatives. The Jews could not hope to escape God's judgment simply because they were Jews. We turn again to this picture of the wrath of God being revealed from Heaven against the unrighteousness of man. In this matter, Jews and Gentiles were in exactly the same boat. The wrath of God is revealed against the unrighteousness of MAN--that is, mankind. Not merely Gentiles and not merely Jews. Whatever distinction existed between them might be important in some contexts, but in this matter, it didn't. Both had a law, both needed to obey the law, and both would suffer God's wrath for breaking the law. God is no respecter of persons.

And as Christians, as those who are part of an organized, Christian church, we have to remember this principle. Because this applies to us as well. We have God's law. We are part of an organization dedicated to preserving and propagating that law. It can be easy to look down on those outside the church, on a world that is rapidly becoming less and less knowledgeable about God and about right and wrong, on a world that is approaching the description of Romans 1. And of course, we do need to preserve God's law--BUT we have to remember that that, in itself, does not make us accepted by God. God will judge men by the same standard, whether they were in the world or attended church every Sunday. The question isn't merely whether we have known God's law but whether we have obeyed it--and that is the same question every man must answer regardless of background. God is no respecter of persons. And if we have given in to unrighteousness and ungodliness then the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against us.