By
1.
INTRO:
1.1.
In our last study, we looked
at verses 21-30 of chapter 2.
1.1.1. Paul continued to expound upon his theme that having God’s approval
over a person’s life has nothing to do with his nationality, race, cultural
traditions, family heritage, station in life, etc.
1.1.2. Paul began to confront the Jews directly pressing them to consider
whether or not in their religion that they said one thing, or commanded people
to do one thing, and then did another thing themselves, i.e. whether or not
they were hypocrites in their religion.
1.1.3. We saw that Paul has been setting the foundation in this book for the
doctrinal truth that all men are sinners and cannot save themselves, and thus
they need a Savior.
1.1.4. We saw that the Jews thought that because God had given as a sign of
the Jew’s separation to God the performing of circumcision upon the males that
this guaranteed them favor with God.
However, Paul told the Jews that circumcision of the flesh meant nothing
because what really mattered to God is a person’s circumcision of the heart,
i.e. the attitude and obedience of the heart by those who take God’s Name.
1.2.
In our study today, we are
going to look at verses 1-12 of chapter 3.
1.2.1. Paul will begin to ask some thought provoking questions, such as:
1.2.1.1. Does the Jew have any benefit over the Gentile when it comes to
spiritual matters?
1.2.1.2. Does the unrighteousness of some of God’s people cause the forfeiture
of God’s faithfulness to everyone else?
1.2.1.3. Is God unrighteous in inflicting wrath?
1.2.2. Paul forestalls an objection some might have had if they believed that
he gained some kind of personal advantage by the gospel message that he
preached.
1.2.3. Finally, Paul will begin to declare all men to be unrighteous and
utterly corrupt throughout. In this
book, Paul will eventually bring us to see that because of our sinfulness that
we are all in need of a Savior in Jesus Christ.
2. VS 3:1-2 - “3:1 Then
what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? 2 Great in
every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” - Paul asks his readers what
benefit or blessing before God comes about as a result of someone being a Jew
2.1.
In verses 1-8 of this chapter, Paul deals with
objections that people could make for not receiving Christ.
2.1.1. The better
we Christians become at answering people’s objections to receiving Christ, the
more effective witnesses we shall be.
2.2.
The Jews knew that they had special advantages over
other peoples due to their being chosen by God to be his people, however since
Paul has just explained that the unbelieving Jews will suffer God’s wrath the
same as the unbelieving Gentiles, Paul
seeks to answer an objection or question that a Jew who had been reading this
letter might be asking about whether there was any advantage at all in being
Jewish? The Jews knew that they alone
had been called as God’s people but now Paul’s letter has placed them under
God’s wrath alongside the heathen Gentiles, so Paul asks what if any superior
advantage before God a Jew might have over a Gentile?
2.3.
Paul explains here that the Jews had a tremendous ‘advantage’
over the other peoples of the earth because of the fact that God had given them
the Old Testament scriptures, those which he here calls ‘the oracles of God.’ However, this advantage of the Jews would
only be gained by them if they walked in obedience to God’s Word and if they
came to faith in Christ as their Lord and Savior. Remember, everything in the Jew’s Old
Testament pointed to Jesus, the One who is their Messiah, in the first place.
2.4.
The scriptures are referred to in the Bible as the ‘oracles
of God,’ in that they contain “the words or utterances of God,” and
this Greek word translated here as ‘oracles’ is always spoken of in the
New Testament referring to God’s utterances.
2.5.
We Christians are just like Jews in that we have also
received the ‘oracles of God,’ having the written record of God’s
utterances as contained in the Bible.
However, as Peter writes in 1 Peter 4:10-11, having been entrusted with
a stewardship along with the ‘oracles of God,’ we must be very careful
in what we say when we counsel and when we speak to others, “10 As each one
has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another, as good stewards
of the manifold grace of God. 11 Whoever speaks, let him speak, as it were, the
utterances of God; whoever serves, let him do so as by the strength which God
supplies; so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to
whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
2.5.1. Peter tells
us Christians to speak and give counsel to others in such a careful manner that
it is just as if our words are under very inspiration of God! We must be very careful in our own handling,
study and application of God’s Word to do what Paul commands Timothy in 2 Tim.
2:15, “15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who
does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.”
2.6.
Having received the ‘oracles of God,’ we
Christians must be diligent to study and apply God’s Word in our lives and
press on to spiritual maturity in Christ.
The author of Hebrews wrote about this in Heb. 5:12-13, “12 For
though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone
to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come
to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is
not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 But solid
food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to
discern good and evil.”
2.7.
Paul asks the question concerning what the benefit of
circumcision is, however he does not answer this question directly. It is probably the case that Paul’s answer to the first question about the
advantage of being Jewish also covers this second question about the advantage
of being circumcised.
3. VS 3:3-4 - “3 What
then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness
of God, will it? 4 May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every
man be found a liar, as it is written, “That Thou mightest
be justified in Thy words, And mightest prevail when
Thou art judged.”” - Paul asks the question of whether or not the
rebellion and unbelief of some will nullify God’s faithfulness, and then he
answers the question with a resolute, ‘No’
3.1.
In these two verses, Paul answers a question (doing so
by asking a question) which some Jews might have used in order to justify their
not following God’s will for their life and coming to faith in Christ. Some Jews may have thought in their hearts
that if some unfaithful and disobedient Jews ‘did not believe’ that
their unbelief somehow would make God not fulfill His Word to the rest of God’s
people, i.e. if it would ‘nullify the faithfulness of God?’ However, it is a foolish thing when people
think this way because after all truth is truth, whether or not any person or
group believes and/or practices it themselves.
It is a fact that 2+2=4, whether or not a person chooses to believe it
to be true or not, and in the same way the truth about God from His Word is a
fact whether or not your or I or anyone else chooses to believe it to be true.
3.2.
Paul answers this objection concerning the nullifying
of God’s faithfulness by the unfaithfulness of man by also saying that in
essence God alone is reliable to do whatever He says that He is going to
do. No man can be relied upon to always
to do what he says he is going to do, even a good man. However, God will never be ‘a liar’
and say one thing and do another because He is God and must always do exactly
what He says that He is going to do.
God’s promises as well as His threats can therefore always be trusted
and relied upon.
3.3.
Paul quotes David from Psalm 51:4 in his psalm of
confession of sin after his affair with Bathsheba, in order to show that God’s
Word shall always be faithfully carried out by Him. David wrote the following in Psalm 51:4, “4 Against
Thee, Thee only, I have sinned, And done
what is evil in Thy sight, So that Thou art justified when Thou dost
speak, And blameless when Thou dost
judge.”
3.4.
In Psalm 51, David was saying that God was absolutely
right and justified in revealing his sin with Bathsheba to him through the
prophet Nathan who came to him and rebuked him.
In these verses in Romans, Paul is putting forth the general principle
that God remains faithful to carry out the Word which He has spoken, regardless
of whether or not men believe or submit to His Word.
3.5.
In 2 Timothy 2:13, Paul discusses one of the facets
about God that I am so appreciative for and that is the fact that even when I
at times in fickle and faithless to Him that He remains faithful to me for he
is not as a man who is subject to being changeable and impetuous, “13 If
we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.” There are a number of scriptures that tell us
that God is “immutable” (does not change), including :
3.5.1. Numbers 23:19, “19 “God is not
a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He
said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”
3.5.2. 1 Samuel
15:29, “29Also the Glory of
3.5.3. Malachi 3:6,
“6 “For I, the Lord,
do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.”
3.6.
Also, sometimes churches and/or denominations can be very
foolish and think that God is somehow dependant upon them in order to work and
function in this world. However, they do
not realize that God does not need them, and in fact He is complete and content
in Himself without anyone, and thus He does not wait upon any church or group
in order to perform His works in this world.
In fact, if a church does not follow His leadings, then they will find
in short time that God has abandoned performing a work through them in order to
perform a great work through a group that is simply willing to honor Him, let
Him be God, and follow His leading in their ministries.
4. VS
3:5-6 - “5 But if our
unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The
God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He? (I am speaking in human
terms.) 6 May it never be! For otherwise how will God judge the world?” - Paul asks his readers whether or not their
‘unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God’
4.1.
As I mentioned at the outset of this book, the theme
of Romans is “The Righteousness of God.”
God’s righteousness is revealed in the book, both in His dealings with
men in judgment as well as His dealings with men unto salvation through Jesus
Christ and His death on the cross. In
verse 5, Paul talks about men’s unrighteousness demonstrating the righteousness
of God.
4.2.
Another rationalization that Paul states that people
may make concerning why they do not receive Christ as their Lord and their
Savior involves the fact that God’s ‘righteousness’ is demonstrated by
people’s ‘unrighteousness.’
4.2.1. People sin
in ‘unrighteousness,’ and yet God in righteousness has instead of
condemning and destroying man, provided the way for their sins to be forgiven
and atoned for by sending His Son, as Paul wrote about in Rom. 5:8, “8 But
God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners,
Christ died for us.” God did the
righteous thing in giving His Son for the sins of the world, yet in contrast
unrighteous man lives in sin. In this
way is the ‘righteousness of God’ demonstrated by man’s ‘unrighteousness.’
4.2.2. However,
some people may think that by God overlooking men’s sins that God is ‘unrighteous’
however it is instead the case that Jesus suffered the horrible punishment that
was due for each of our sins because God’s righteous wrath was poured out upon
Jesus because He was acting as our substitute.
4.2.3. Some people
object to God judging by saying that if God in ‘wrath’ performs judgment
on unrepentant men then that action of God demonstrates that He is unrighteous. I have heard people say, “God could never
condemn anyone to hell.” However,
the Bible tells us otherwise. The Bible
teaches us that God is merciful and loving and doesn’t want to punish us, but
at the same time He is also holy and just and must punish sin. This dilemma though was resolved by God
sending His only begotten Son to suffer His full wrath against sin so that He
could then forgive us of our sins and make us His people through the shed blood
of
4.3.
Paul says that when he is stating this objection of
men concerning the ‘righteousness of God’ that he is ‘speaking in
human terms,’ in other words he is speaking in the way in which unbelieving
men think and talk. Paul answers this
objection of unbelievers (that God’s punishment of wrath makes Him unrighteous)
by saying in essence that this objection is rediculous
since if God were ‘unrighteous’ then there would be no way that He could
‘judge the world,’ and we know that Jews and Gentiles alike have a sense
of the fact that one day God will judge this world which has rebelled so
consciously and determinedly against Him.
Plus, God’s word often refers to a coming day of judgment which it often
refers to as “the day of the Lord.”
It is an unusual day for God one in which He will judge all men and
separate the sheep from the goats, those who are His people from those who are
not.
5. VS
3:7-8 - “7 But if through my
lie the truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I also still being judged as
a sinner? 8 And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm
that we say), “Let us do evil that good may come”? Their condemnation is just.” - Paul asks his readers to remember that in
teaching the truths that he has taught in this book that this doesn’t preclude
him from any of God’s judgments for like every other man he is also judged by
the Law to be a sinner
5.1.
Paul answers another potential objection that his
detractors might have of him in what he writes in verse 7, saying that in
effect, he has nothing to gain from the gospel message which he is preaching,
because, after all, he himself is not exalted to a better position before God
as a sinner than any other person on earth.
Paul was not exalted in any way by the gospel message because he was
also judged to be a sinner and condemned under the Law, and, he also needed to
be saved by God’s grace just the way anyone else needs it to be saved.
5.2.
As Paul states in verse 7, ‘the truth of God [as
found in the gospel] abounded to His glory,’ for in the gospel message
which Paul preached and taught only God can get any glory, since by no works of
man shall he be able to save himself.
5.3.
Another objection that people evidently had held
against Paul was that when he preached salvation by grace through faith, that
he was saying that people should continue to sin and do evil because that would
just promote receiving more grace. In
5.4.
Paul mentions lastly that those who falsely slandered
him as saying that it was OK to sin willfully after receiving God’s grace, will
suffer a just condemnation before God for their lying and general
unrighteousness.
5.5.
We Christians must have it resolved in our thinking
that salvation will bring glory only to the Lord since it is completely by
God’s mercy and grace that anyone shall be saved. Man deserves the fires of hell for his
punishment in willfully breaking God’s Laws time and again, and there is no one
who can even begin to make a case for himself of having never broken God’s Laws. Those who try to find their justification
before God based upon their own works primarily think of their future potential
for performing perfect obedience to God’s Laws.
They do this because if they look into the past, they know how they have
sinned and failed to obey God. However,
even if a person began living completely in obedience to God’s Laws beginning
today, it still would not make up for the fact that they have in the past
broken them, and thus they would still be held accountable to God for breaking
His Laws in the past.
5.6.
Isaiah wrote in Is. 42:8 about the fact that God says
that He will not share His glory with another, and salvation through Jesus
Christ only brings glory to God for man has no righteousness in himself to
deserve to be saved, “8 “I am the Lord, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.”
5.7.
God has brought us as Christians to salvation through
His Son, rather than justly destroying us, in order that He might be glorified
and display His glory to the world. Paul
wrote about this in 2 Cor. 4:6, “6 For God, who said, “Light shall shine out
of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”
5.8.
When we accept the gospel message and receive Christ as
our Lord and our Savior, God gets all the glory. The legalist who tries to be justified before
God based upon his works rejects the gospel of grace though Christ because it
would humble him and take away his own glory.
6. VS 3:9 - “9 What then? Are we better than
they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all
under sin;” - Paul asks
the question of whether the Gentiles are better than the Jews
6.1.
Paul begins this verse by asking the question, ‘What
then?’, as if to say, “What must I say further having completed and
sufficiently justified my case for all men, Jews and Gentiles alike, being
under sin?” Paul has already proven
in chapter 2 that the moral and the immoral Jew were under God’s condemnation
and held to a greater accountability for having His Law (by which they would be
judged). He has likewise shown in
chapter 1 that the immoral Gentile is under God’s condemnation, as is the moral
Gentile (chapter 2). Paul is therefore
now going to bring to a final conclusion his argument that all men are depraved
and found completely under the power and condemnation of sin.
6.2.
In this verse, Paul for the first time identifies
himself as a Jew, as he uses the word ‘we’ in reference to himself and
all other Jews. He asks the question, ‘Are
we better than they?’ The ‘we’
refers then to the Jews, and the ‘they’ refers to the Gentiles (Gentile
is what the word ‘Greeks’ really refers to).
6.3.
The unbelieving Jews were in no better position that the
unbelieving Gentiles, thus Paul answers his own question in this verse with a
negative, and then says that he has already “charged” in this letter
that all men are ‘under sin.’ By
saying that all men are ‘under sin,’ Paul means that all men are under ‘the
power of sin,’ being influenced by it in every area of their lives. In this book of Romans, Paul will later begin
to build our understanding of what a life lived in the “flesh,” rather
than the “Spirit,” means experientially.
Men are sinners by nature, that is, they have a sin nature that is
constantly pulling them down into the mire of sin and unrighteousness.
6.4.
In Gal. 3:22, Paul wrote, “22 But the Scripture has
shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be
given to those who believe.”
6.5.
From this verse, you can see that by saying that all
men are ‘under sin’ that there is no way that a person could ever by his
own righteousness obtain a relationship with God or have a justification before
God.
6.6.
People in the world of unbelievers today are trying to
convince themselves and others that in reality they are good people. When their actions do not display that
goodness, then they have some lame excuse for that happening. However, the Bible teaches that man’s
problems in life are mostly brought on by himself and are the result of his
sin, and therefore the only hope for men is to receive Jesus Christ as their
Lord and Savior and begin to live a life that crucifies that sin nature.
6.7.
Sometimes we Christians forget the place from which we
have come. Having received God’s offer
of underserved grace and mercy as a sinner and received salvation, we
Christians can sometimes begin to think that there is something special about
us and that it is for that reason that the Lord saved us rather than
others. We can begin to think that
somehow we deserve God’s favor. We can
begin to judge others and look down our nose at people who haven’t obtained
that position where we think we are stand spiritually. However, Paul writes here that all men are in
the same place before God as sinners, and therefore we Christians need to
always realize that there is nothing which we have received from God that we in
reality deserve. The fact is that apart
from God’s mercy and grace, what we deserve is the fires of hell, just as all
unbelievers do.
6.8.
We Christians also need to realize that apart from
God’s grace in our lives that we could end up doing anything that the wickedest
of men might do.
6.9.
We Christians are to do good works for the Lord,
however these are not to be done in order to make ourselves pleasing to
God. They are rather to be done out of
gratitude to the Lord for having mercy upon us and saving us regardless of our
being in a spiritually depraved and fallen state.
7. VS 3:10 - “10 as it is written,“There
is none righteous, not even one;” - Paul tells
us that no one is righteous before God
7.1.
Quoting either Psalm 14:1-3 or 53:1-3, Paul now begins
a long list of condemning accusations aimed at all men which establishes their
complete depravity and unrighteousness before God.
7.2.
In this verse, Paul writes that in and of himself
there is not a single person on the face of the earth who is ‘righteous,’
and for emphasis he adds, ‘not even one.’ God alone is righteous, and the only
righteousness that man ever possesses is that which is imputed to believers
through Jesus Christ.
8. VS 3:11 - “11 There is none who
understands, There is none who seeks for
God;” - Paul tells us that no one
understands or seeks for God
8.1.
In the first part of this verse, Paul writes that
Spiritual understanding, knowledge of God and His will, is possessed by no one
in and of himself and his own ability to understand. The only understanding that a person ever has
is that which God by His grace and mercy has revealed to him.
8.2.
The second accusation from the Psalms that Paul makes
about mankind from this verse is that ‘there is none who seeks for God.’ Man in and of himself does not and has no
inclination to seek to know and understand God.
If a man finds God it is ‘only’
because God has sought him out, and he has merely responded to the hound from
heaven who has tracked him down. We can
see this very clearly from the very beginning of man’s rebellion against God in
the garden of Eden. God came after Adam
and called out, “Where art thou?”
Adam and Eve had made fig leaf underwear and were hiding from God
because of their sin. Sin drives a
person away from God, and in that state man would always remain if it were not
for the fact that God in His mercy and grace seeks man out to reconcile him to
Himself through the mediation of God’s Son, who is man’s kinsmen redeemer and
sin-bearer.
9. VS 3:12 - “12 All have turned aside,
together they have become useless; There
is none who does good, There is not even
one.”” - Paul tells us that all people
are useless and none of them do good
9.1.
First of all, in this verse Paul writes that ‘all
have turned aside,’ that is, all people have turned away from walking in
the righteous path that God has for them to walk in, and this is due to their
sin.
9.2.
Secondly, in this verse Paul makes the accusation from
scripture that, ‘together they have become useless,’ that is to say, all
of mankind lumped together so as to sum up all of their good qualities, is
worth nothing in the sight of God since they are all “under the power of sin.” The entire mass of humanity outside of Christ
is worthless to Him, being under His wrath.
9.3.
The third accusation against man in this verse is that
there are ‘none who does good,’ ‘not even one.’ In God’s sight the good things that an
unredeemed person may attempt to do does not appear to God to be something that
is in fact ‘good,’ and that is because of the vessel itself that is
performing the act, and the motives of his heart, are “evil” and not ‘good’
at all. The motives for many good works
are wrong and since God looks at men’s hearts not just their actions, the works
of many are always unacceptable and defiled before the Lord.
9.4.
In our next study, Paul will begin to reveal the
remedy for our sins in Jesus Christ.
This is the greatest story that has ever been told about the greatest
man that has ever lived and the greatest gift that has ever been given!!!
10.
CONCLUSIONS:
10.1.
As we consider this study and how we need to apply it
to our lives, we need to be thankful to God for His mercy and grace. We so deserved judgment and condemnation but
the unthinkable happened. God looked
beyond our sin and saw our need and sent His only begotten Son to come and pay
the debt of sin that we owe to God. Oh,
what debtors we are to God
10.2.
Remember to praise God for His faithfulness that is
unchanging in our lives, for His being faithful to you even when you are
unfaithful to Him. Thank the Lord that
He never changes and that we can always count on the Lord to come through with
every word He speaks, every promise He makes, and also every threat He
makes. Trust the Lord with all of your
heart because of His faithfulness.