Romans Chapter 2
Verse 1 “Therefore thou art inexcusable O man, whosoever thou art that judgest; for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.”
Chapter one has to do with God’s judgment of man collectively by the manifesting of divine wrath in the gospel. The gospel demands a righteousness of man which he cannot attain because of his spiritual failure in nature. There is no way back to righteousness at that level. Divine revelation brings out his hopeless state in the world. Paul deals with humanity by-and-large rather than with individuals specifically. The humanity to whom the message of God in the gospel comes, is shown by it to be inextricably bound up with evil and man is judged worthy of death.
Paul now turns to individuals, for the gospel is addressed to such. There is no social gospel unto salvation. “O man”. Paul now speaks in the singular. The message from God comes to man first to point out that he is inexcusable for the way in which he has responded to God in nature.
It is characteristic of men to condemn their own weakness when they see this in others. The fact that man passes judgment upon immoral practices shows that a knowledge of good and evil acts in him and that righteous judgment is called for upon evil practices. This inward knowledge of good and evil condemns man’s sinful nature, the universal source of such deeds. “That in which thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself”.
Verse 2 “But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.”
In unfolding the subject of the revelation of wrath in his gospel, Paul proceeds in this chapter to show the principles upon which God’s righteous judgments are based. His judgment is unaffected by privilege or dispensation, being upon Jew or Gentile. Here Paul does not credit man with the insight that the judgment of God is according to truth. We know, i.e. we the apostles who preach and those who believe the gospel. God had revealed Hmself in creation and had so made man that what can be known of God should have governed his life, despite the presence of sin and evil in the world. It follows that if God remains true to His revealed character, He will judge all that falls short of His righteousness and glory in man’s response. This judgment of God according to truth is known in the gospel.
We are held responsible for sinful practices as a way of responding to God, allowing for the universal possession of a sinful nature. The gospel brings the nature of man’s error toward God to light. He is found responding to God from a heart of sin rather than by the spirit which God has given. The judgment of God, made known in the gospel, is according to truth. It is according to God’s own, and revealed, assessment of good and evil. God has not yet in fact openly judged humanity. Judgment has come into the world but in the form of a message of divine revelation.
Verse 3 “And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?”
The man, that is every man, who has condemned his own nature by judging it as being evil in its activity in others, is now addressed by this new gospel. Men do not see divine judgment now at work. Man is condemned by the message of the gospel, however, for reading the wrong message into this. Men have come to think wrong thoughts about God and now, in particular, about His faithfulness to His truth on earth. Men think there is no judgment from God because it has not yet appeared. This is because it is not in the outworking of divine purpose that it should appear until the gospel, the means of escape, first appears. Thus men live out their lives under a spiritual miscomprehension. Man only regards the present things, the things that are seen. Thereby he is deceived spiritually.
Verse 4 “Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”
God does not descend in open judgment upon particular acts of sin. One act of sin against God would qualify a man for eternal judgment. By refraining from so acting, God is manifesting His goodness, forbearance and longsuffering, before He manifests His wrath. Divine goodness has now acted in the gospel to reveal wrath from heaven before He manifests it in power on earth. In his gospel Paul again addresses men. This time he asks men to judge whether they are despising the riches of His goodness. Man is now being judged by God not for moral, naturalistic failure but as to whether he thinks wrongly about the situation in which he is found as a result of the coming of the gospel (v.3), and as to whether he despises the provisions of the gospel.
What God has revealed is the riches of His goodness, etc. By not directly and immediately judging men for sin as it manifests in his deeds, He is demonstrating that there are riches of mercy in Him of which inexcusably guilty men may avail themselves. Even as the offended party, God shows that He is longsuffering and able to bear with the spiritual frailty of men.
The gospel then points out to men that they do not know the goodness of God that leads men to repentance and that their despising of it leads to wrath. That there is kindness of God is made known in creation by His non-intervention in wrath hitherto. How and why this kindness operates is revealed in the gospel. Here, however, it is only pointed out to man that he has not learned that God’s goodness is directed toward leading him to repentance. So the preaching of the gospel to man is first directed toward him to manifest his spiritual failure and to show that there is kindness in God toward him, even for his spiritual ignorance and rebellion. This kindness can lead him to repentance from his past failure and set him right toward God.
Verse 5 “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”
There are two possible results for man, from God’s way with him, by which He is realising divine purpose on earth. The first is repentance. The second is hardened impenitence. An impenitent heart is, in God’s sight, the natural state of man as a result of his spiritual failure in the world, apart from the coming of divine revelation to him. The gospel now reveals that if men persist in spiritual hardness toward God they are thereby treasuring up to themselves wrath. Riches of goodness is revealed to operate in God toward men in His dealings with them. The hardness of an impenitent heart is also revealed to operate in man toward such a God. It is further revealed in the gospel that persistence in such a response to the God who will judge according to truth, stores up in Him wrath which shall be poured forth upon them in the end.
Paul now speaks of a day of wrath for humanity. Wrath in God is not an eternal part of His nature. It is a power which has been begotten – and stored up hitherto in longsuffering – in God by the resistance which the spirit of evil produces in man to the realising of divine purpose. A day is revealed to be coming in the experience of man when God shall openly intervene in creation to resolve all the spiritual, eternal issues in which he is involved. The day is also described as a day of revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Then there will be an unveiling to man of the eternal power of God to separate between that which He righteously judges as good and evil.
Verse 6 “Who will render to every man according to his deeds.”
In that day of wrath and revealed righteousness, God shall render to every man according to his works. God will act in the power of His stored-up wrath and in the power of His righteous judgment upon every man that day. These powers from heaven shall render to every man according to God’s righteous assessment of the merit of his works.
Verse 7 “To them who by patient continuance in welldoing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life.”
Paul then proceeds to reveal how God assesses good and evil, how He will distinguish between works which are good or evil in His sight. Just as there are two effects now produced by the gospel in man toward God, i.e. repentance or hardening, so also there will be seen to be two categories of men in that day. There are those who will receive eternal life as a reward and those who merit wrath. Men will be judged according to their submission to, or rejection of, truth as it has been shown to man since the world began. The judgment of the world, of the quick and the dead of Revelation 20:12, is in view and not the judgment of those who receive the gospel. There is no judgment for those who are in Christ Jesus, Rom.8:1.
Those who by patient continuation in welldoing seek for glory, honour and incorruption will receive eternal life in the day of judgment. This has nothing to do with Christianity in the present time. A christian is now the present possessor of eternal life. Patient continuation in welldoing is the good of verse 10. The evil is in verse 9. God judges some men on earth as continuing patiently in the pursuit of spiritual good in their lives. Those who will in that day receive eternal life are in patient continuance of a good work. It does not say that men must attain to complete moral perfection to gain eternal life. As before, the good work is a spiritually good work. Such men seek after God, ‘lest haply should they find’, as Paul revealed at Mars Hill, speaking in this vein concerning the God of nature.
In patient endurance in the face of present difficulties and fleshly limitations they seek for glory and honour and incorruptibility (not immortality). Glory is Godward, honour manward and incorruption inward. Every man has a sinful nature which is bound to act. What is sought by God is a response to the truth in their reasoning and conscience, which governs the conduct of their lives. The patience suggests the knowledge of sin within, of the difficulties without and of reliance upon a God who they know to exist, rather than upon that which they themselves are in their sinful nature. Such seek for that which is spiritually above all that is found in nature in its present chaotic, unblessed state. They seek the transcendential, knowing that the present state in which they suffer in patience is both transient and transitional. Eternal life is now revealed in Paul’s gospel to be God’s reward for such as live by their conscience and reason toward God.
Verses 8-9 “But unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew First, and also of the Gentile.”
The second category is comprised of those whose lives are governed by the dictates of their sinful human nature. They do not see beyond man and regard him as being purposeful in himself. They see that which is made as merely existing for the fulfilment of their own desires and ends. They are contentious Godwardly, disobedient to the truth inwardly and obey unrighteousness in their dealings with others. They are contentious in that the whole tenor of their lives is opposed to the revealed will of God’s throne. It is not that they have committed certain moral sins but rather that they have acquired a certain character, which is opposed to God and to the eternal purpose for which He had created and formed man in His image and likeness. They are disobedient to the truth in the way in which they pursue their mortal lives in the present world. In the face of God’s provisions and arrangements for man in creation, disobedience is inexcusable. That some men will receive eternal life by a true response to God’s gifts and calling in creation is a condemnation of the disobedient. Their lives are willingly given up to the designs of evil. They obey unrighteousness and do not merely do morally or socially bad deeds in ordinary human weakness.
To them, indignation, wrath, tribulation and anguish will be meted out at the revelation of the righteous judgments of God. It is not a final extinction but a state of eternal existence of the soul, rather than the body or the spirit, who lives in unrighteousness. He will continue to do so after the pouring forth of divine wrath in such a way. He that does unrighteousness, let him do unrighteously still, as in Revelation 22:11. These things shall be upon every soul that works the evil. The eternal good which now exists in the world is the truth that can be known of God by man. The evil is the spiritual lie which evil perpetrates upon man so as to deny God and thwart the establishing of His purpose. Man had, under the influence of the spirit of evil upon his soul, built up a system of organised evil, of organised religion, which appeals to the desire of his heart and not to the understanding of the spirit. Thereby he has arrived at a false conception of God.
The judgment revealed here is of Jew and Gentile, not of those who are in Christ. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. The Jew is put first, due to his sin in the face of revealed truth and not just truth in nature. The good, the truth of God and man’s righteous response to it in the world, is intangible but is contained in the things which God has made and that which He has given to the Jews. The evil is what is tangible, wrought by man in his use of the things which God has made, for evil designs. Man is involved in the conflict between good and evil in the world. In the gospel it is revealed how good will triumph over evil in the world. “He shall bring forth judgment unto victory”. Man will share either in God’s triumph or in the defeat of the spirit of evil, depending upon whose influence he had been governed by in his mortal life. When the eternal issues have all been resolved in creation, the soul of man will continue to exist under the influence in which he had acted on earth. God’s power to remove spiritual evil takes the form of wrath and indignation upon men who are involved in it.
The effects produced by the exercise of this power will be tribulation and anguish on every soul that works evil. God is Spirit. The power of evil is also a spirit. Man is however a soul. This is a form of life which is governed by influences from above, the spirit which is in him and by earthly influences, in that it now exists in a body. Soulish life is an eternal form of existence. The souls of men will go on existing, in the sphere of evil or in that of good. These two realms will be separated eternally as a result of the day of wrath. Then evil will eternally be under the rule of divine wrath and indignation. Every soul of man which has become, and remains, involved in spiritual evil in the present time, will exist in tribulation and anguish. This involvement, or otherwise, will be assessed by God according to the principles being revealed here by Paul in his gospel.
Paul is thereby revealing God’s eternal purpose in creating the world, of causing evil to act in it and of causing men to become involved in these eternal issues. The gospel reveals how soulish life is eternally purposeful to God. Man will occupy a supreme place in the enjoyment of supreme good in creation. This is because God Himself became a man. So the soul of man will also occupy a supreme place in God’s eternal restraining of evil. This is the lake of fire. The spirit of evil works in every soul which is contentious, disobedient and unrighteous in refusing the divine provisions by which man might live in a positively purposeful way.
Verse 10 “But glory, honour and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew First, and also to the Gentile.”
Paul now sets forth the place in God’s eternal counsels of those who work the good by following after truth. Working for good has to do with building up that which God has provided for man at a spiritual level. There are now three systems which are of God’s establishing on earth. Firstly, there is man in whom there is a spirit, dwelling in the realm of creation and providence. Secondly, there is the Jew in the system of law. Thirdly, there is the christian system which the gospel establishes. These systems are in effect ways in which man can approach to God, come to know Him and serve divine purpose.
Glory, honour and peace describe the state in which everyone who works present spiritual good shall live eternally. They will be given eternal life and be brought into heavenly conditions in which they will enjoy it to the full. They shall live in God’s life in every spiritual blessing in such an eternal state. That is, in the present time God is fitting those who do His work for such an eternal future. They sought after glory and honour and incorruptibility during the time when evil also wrought on earth. Then they will enter into a state where these things will be fully realised. Then evil will also have been eternally restrained by divine judgment so that it can never overthrow this state.
Men will then realise their highest place before God – in glory. They will be fitted for the presence of God in blessing and not be rejected by righteous judgment. Then also will the cause of all dishonour done to humanity be removed. Man’s appreciation of his true honour before God will be perfect and complete. “What is man that Thou honourest him?” Peace lies in the enjoyment of God’s eternal blessing. This will be enjoyed in human existence, man alive in eternal life, in which blossoms forth every divine attribute in such a heavenly state of blessing.
God will then have resolved the issues of good and evil in creation in the day of judgment. Meanwhile, spiritual good and evil co-exist and humanity is inextricably involved; his eternal place will depend upon the relationship he now assumes toward either. The Jew will have a special place in the mediation of eternal blessing in creation if he is found worthy in response to God under the law. Then the Greek also will be caused fully to enjoy all the blessings which shall result in creation once God’s ways in it have been completed.
Verse 11 “For there is no respect of persons with God.”
Paul in his gospel now addresses every category of man alive in the world in the sight of God. He now sets forth how the coming of the gospel affects men who lived in God’s other established systems before its coming. There is no respect of persons with God. This is a fundamental judgment which is revealed in the gospel. Every individual lives in possession of a sinful nature in the sight of God. The activity of this nature exposes him to the righteous judgment of God if in it he responds to God’s arrangements and provisions. God cannot have respect to any man’s person because of this fundamental sinfulness, which prevents him from being accepted by God’s righteous standards. God has provided a righteous means, in creation and in the law, by which man can find acceptance. This does not lie in man’s power, to make his own person acceptable to God.
Verse 12 “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law.”
The sin being condemned is sin against the divine light given to men, either in creation or in the law. It is not a question of specific sins violating specific laws. Rather it is the righteous judgment of God, assessing men’s lives and activities in the light of the possible relationships established by God’s provisions in creation or in the law. Those who have sinned in this respect shall perish. This neither means that all will perish nor that some have not sinned at all. It is how the life is governed by the particular revelation of God which shall determine the judgment made upon it in the day of judgment. If man sins against the truth apart from the law he shall perish as a result of the day of wrath and righteous judgment. To sin is to miss the mark, in this case the purpose for which God had established a system of truth apart from the legal system. This was that God might be glorified as the God of nature by man. Those who will be judged to have failed in this will perish. The evil spiritual identity which such men assumed shall perish from the world of glory and blessing, which shall be established as the result of God’s work apart from the law. Yet such will not be judged with the wrath and indignation as shall overtake those who will be judged to have failed under the law.
As many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by law. This is what the Lord Jesus declared to the Jews. The words which Moses spoke shall judge them, as in John 5:45. It does not say in this connection that they shall perish but rather that they shall be judged. The law of Moses rightly understood, shall be the law by which the righteousness of every Jew shall be tested. Those who do not live according to the Spirit of law shall be judged unworthy of blessing.
Verse 13 “For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.”
The hearers of the law are the Jews who hear the letter of the law. Yet in receiving the letter of the books of Moses, the Jews are brought under a greater spiritual responsibility, as well as opportunity, than the Greeks. There are those in this category who will be justified, not because they do all the law but because they are law-doers. Under the law they are responsible to the revelation of God, the Spirit of truth in it. They honour the obligations arising between themselves and God as set forth in the law. Again, it is not a question of sinless perfection according to the letter. In such, a spirit is acquired and developed which realises the inability of human nature to live by the letter, but also the spiritual perfection of the system into which God has brought them. By the law can no flesh be justified, 3:20. The flesh, i.e. human nature, is condemned by the law. Ideally it confers the new nature, man living by word which has proceeded from the mouth of God. Such will be held as just, even in the day of righteous judgment, but not by the works of the flesh.
Verse 14 “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.”
Paul now proceeds to describe what the law of the law is which justifies. This is applicable alike to the cases of the Jew and Gentile in their relative places before God. Paul describes the means of justification in the law, rather than by the law in the flesh. There are Gentiles who do the things contained in the law by nature. The things contained in the law is the revealed truth of God and the revealed truth about man. The goodness and mercy of God is presented in it, as also is the exceeding sinfulness of sin existing and active in man.
The work of the law is therefore to appreciate the person and work of God who justifies, and the nature of the flesh in God’s estimation. The Gentiles who do the things contained in the law arrive at the same conclusion by the revelation which they received, as the Jews should have done in the law. They are by nature, by the system of truth God has established for them in creation, which includes their own nature, a law to themselves. A Gentile who is, and will be judged to be, justified before God by the law written in the spiritual province of creation – consciousness – realises the greatness and goodness and practice of God, as well as the inherent tendency of man to err. He is not in fact justifying himself by seeking to live a naturally blameless life in the flesh; such is spiritual pride and hypocritical ignorance. He justifies God for having established such a system. The true, justifying knowledge of good and evil is of the nature of the God of creation and of self in practice. Nations who so respond in practice toward God are a law to themselves. The nations may not be aware of all that is involved . This is irrelevant. The truth as God sees it, objectively, is being presented by Paul.
Verse 15 “Which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.”
Three interacting faculties in men are now described by Paul – the heart, the conscience and the reasoning. When these are governed by the knowledge of God they cause a true response in man to the eternally purposeful work of God. Such demonstrate that God has written purposefully in creation, even before He wrote the law. They show that the work of the law had been written in them, not that the law had been written. Man has a nature, by divine design, which is a product of the purposeful work of God. The eternal purpose for which God has created, the eternal conditions which He will ultimately bring about in creation, remains sure despite the fact of evil and man’s sinful involvement in it. Man retains the capacity to be blessed by the work of God even if he cannot bring eternal blessing into creation by fleshly efforts. By giving man these three faculties, God has given to him the means by which he will receive the blessings of God, i.e. the gift of eternal life in the day of judgment.
The heart is the conscious part of man’s soul. In it God has written His work. In itself the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked, by divine definition. This is a spiritual rather than a moral judgment. Yet God’s work in writing the work of the law in it has not been effaced by evil. Some Gentiles show this to be so, again by divine definition. There is a desire for good which has been written in the heart of man. This projects itself into man’s consciousness. However, he may lack the inherent power to bring it about in practice. The supreme good in nature is the work of the law as written by God. The vessel which contains it, the heart of man, is marred by evil. This need not, and ultimately will not, affect the good itself. The purpose for which God has so worked will be realised by His own powers. They are not dependent upon the natural emotions of man’s heart.
The second purposeful faculty in man is his conscience. Their conscience bears witness to the fact that God has done a work in them. By Adam’s act of spiritual disobedience in partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil , man involved himself in the issues of good and evil already existing in the world, even in the garden of Eden itself. Yet thereby man acquired a spiritual power which he did not possess originally. It was in fact according to God’s predeterminate counsel and foreknowledge that this would take place. The truth of the knowledge of good and evil and the conscience it developed in man was good of itself. God had himself planted it in the garden. By possessing a conscience, man is involved in and made aware of the existence of a spirit of good and evil. God uses this faculty to bear witness to man that higher issues are involved in his life and work in God’s creation than materialism.
Thirdly there is the reasoning power in man, the critical intellectual faculties of the spirit which God breathed into him. Ideally, man’s reasoning power will determine his course of action when on the one hand his heart desires and on the other his conscience acts. This is particularly the case in relation to the higher spiritual issues in which he is involved, i.e. in his relationships toward the God of nature and His truth in the world. Their reasonings, or thoughts, will either excuse or accuse them for the righteousness of their response to God in the course of their activities in the conduct of their lives Godwardly. These three interacting faculties may accuse his manner of life and lead him to repentance and the acknowledgement of the truth, or they may excuse his carrying on in a spiritually sinful response to God, thereby men not being governed by and not wishing to be conformed to the truth.
Verse 16 ”In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.”
Paul has then, in a parenthesis, shown the possible means whereby a man may be just before God. He then places this question of justification in relation to the day of judgment. In the gospel it is revealed that God shall judge the secrets of men according to the principles revealed by God. God shall then judge the secrets of men. God’s assessment of man’s life is not according to that which is seen by man and judged by fleshly judgments. His hidden thinking concerning God and how he ought to respond to God will be brought to judgment. As God sees so He judges and His judgment is right, as in John’s gospel. The judgment will be according to the gospel, which God gave to Paul to deliver to both Jew and Gentile. Such humanity will not be judged as to whether they have heard and accepted the message of the gospel.
All judgment in that day will be committed to the Son. God shall judge by Jesus Christ according to Paul’s glad tidings and not according to worldly, naturalistic judgments. Jesus Christ is God who Himself lived in humanity so that He might be qualified to judge men in perfect righteousness.
Verses 17-19
Paul then turns to the Jews in the system of revelation into which God had set him. There are three things in the ideal of Judaism. In verse 17 Paul sets forth what they were nominally or ideally as called of God, called a Jew. This had to do with the law and with God Himself. They rested in the law and boasted in God. In verse 18 Paul sets forth what they were internally as a nation; their national place before God and the gifts which God conferred upon them, in spiritual potential the knowledge of God’s will and the ability to distinguish between good and evil by means of the Old Testament Scriptures. In verse 19 Paul reveals that God’s gifts and calling of Israel set them into an official place in the world, wherein the nation ought to have conferred the knowledge of the truth upon others.
Verse 17 “Behold thou art called a Jew and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God.”
The Jew had been set on earth by God ideally to be the people of God and a people for God. The advantages and privileges of Israel are so enumerated by Paul as to show that they also had great responsibilities along with these. There are overtones in the form in which Paul describes the blessing of the Jew. He says that they were named a Jew. This could mean that they were nominally Jews or were true Jews in the spiritual sense. Judah, praise, ideally sets forth Israel as being in true praise or appreciation of the God who had revealed Himself to them.
They rested in the law. The verb implies to rely indolently or complacently. They rested in the unquestioned fact that the law as they interpreted and obeyed it was of God. Hence their form of obedience to it marked them off from the other nations as the people of God. Paul is about to call them into question as to whether their national obedience to it was real., particularly in the sight of God.
They made their boast in God to find glory in God but also to boast about it. Boasting is a valid response provided it is based upon truth. The real question was whether God honoured their boasting.
Verse 18 “And knowest His will and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law.”
The Jews knew the will. They professed that God had revealed His will, His purpose and demands to them. This revelation came to them in the form of the letter.
They discerningly approved the things that are more excellent. They had a mind which could distinguish between good and evil. On the one hand this might signify that they had great wisdom because of their religion. In this wisdom they could tell what God approved and disapproved. They had their dietary laws distinguishing between clean and unclean. Yet on the other hand, something far greater spiritually was involved in their national life and blessings than the wisdom which distinguishes between good and evil at a natural level. The true Israel had things of heavenly, eternal excellence. The Jew boasted that he had wisdom by being instructed out of the law. Ideally, he had a spiritual mind formed in him by the law so that he might interpret the Word of God fully and perfectly.
Verse 19 “And art confident that thou thyself are a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness.”
The Jew is confident that the Jewish nation was a leader of the blind. He was persuaded, with or without good reason. Again, Paul in his gospel is really calling him to question the tenets of his faith, to see if he has good reason for his confidence. They were set by God in the world to be witness-bearers to the less favoured – the blind, those in darkness, the foolish babes. These are Gentile nations who had a lesser revelation of God in the spiritual realm opened up to them in nature. The question is whether they were so in a spiritual or natural way. Are they really, in their national religion and rule, Judaism and Zionism, a leader, a light, an instructor and a teacher in a true and effective way? Paul proceeds to show that the nation is being judged by his gospel as having missed the mark of God’s calling.
Verse 20 “An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law.”
The gospel credits the Jew with having a form of knowledge. The form is the full embodiment. The question is whether they had arrived at the full knowledge of the revealed, eternal truth embodied in the letter. That which may be known of the God of Israel is manifested to them in the Old Testament Scriptures. They are held spiritually responsible to respond aright to this, just as the Gentile nations are in their sphere.
They also were characterised by and held responsible for possessing the form of the truth in law. This also corresponds to the Gentile position, except in a far higher realm spiritually. The truth of God as held by the Jew is to hold the truth in righteousness.
Verse 21 “Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, doest thou steal?”
Having thus defined the position of the Jew in relation to God, Paul now proceeds to question him concerning his response to the gifts and calling of God. “Thou then that teachest another” etc. Here the Jew is presented in his religious activities. He is engaged in the work which he believes God has given him to do as a teacher of those who are ignorant. In these verses Paul is charging them with spiritual folly, theft, adultery and sacrilege as a nation and not merely as individuals. Even in the way in which they interpret and practice the law they are found to be in sin. They miss the eternal purpose of God’s callingand they sin against eternal, rather than natural truth.
‘Do you fail to teach yourselves’? This is the way in which they go about their vaunted work in teaching others. So also Paul commanded Timothy; “give heed to thyself and to the teaching that it be of God”. The nation is held more guilty spiritually than the other nations in their ignorance by their boast to be a teacher of the foolish, when it had failed to arrive at the knowledge of the truth. Its naturalistic Judaism and Zionism, their worldly system, in practice precluded them from being taught the truth.
The Jew who preached that men should not steal, preached that God meant this only in a literal, natural sense. The law by which they served God in their system was one which guarded worldly property. They had forgotten about God’s property, the divine content of a nation which is ideally the depository of revealed truth on earth. As the Lord Jesus revealed, Luke 11.52. the hierarchy, in following the accepted pattern, had taken away the key of knowledge. They were robbing God of the eternal product He desired by having given them His truth in His system of law.
Verse 22 “Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, doest thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest idols, doest thou commit sacrilege?”
The Jewish exponent of divine truth said that a man should not commit adultery. Their law was to preserve natural faithfulness in the nation, as if thereby the ideal could be established on earth. “Dost thou commit adultery”? In their system they had forgotten the really important and eternally significant fact of Israel’s spiritual faithfulness to the God of self-revelation, who had called them into a relationship with Himself. This had to be maintained faithfully in truth. In losing sight of these eternal realities and concentrating upon establishing natural good in the nation , they were, in God’s judgment, committing adultery with His truth. They were using it for the wrong purpose and frustrating the purpose for which God had called and gifted them nationally.
The nation in its religious practices abhorred idols. To the Jew an idol is a physical, earthly object. The spiritual fact of idolatry thus escaped their attention. Idolatry is really a power which corrupts man’s appreciation of divine truth. Their religious attitude and observance was in practice the worst form of idolatry. By it they had put that which is natural in the place of that which is spiritual. They looked upon the things that were seen by fleshly eyes and not upon the eternal, unseen things by the eye of faith. They robbed temples or committed sacrilege by the way in which they served God. They emptied the true system of spiritual Judaism of its spiritual content.
Verse 23 “Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God?”
The Jew boasted in the law. They boasted that their possession of it proved them to be God’s nation and that their service to it furthered divine purpose on earth. They had a zeal for truth but not according to knowledge. In the way in which they kept the law, i.e. literally and morally, they really broke the law. Thereby they sinned against the spirit of the law. Paul charges them with dishonouring God by transgression of the known, revealed commandments contained in the law, despite and even by reason of their devoted obedience to the law as it was understood and accepted in their worldly system. The nation was, according to this divine definition, transgressing the law. They did despite unto the Spirit of truth in their national conduct. Instead of glorifying the God who had established the system of the law by their response, they were dishonouring Him. They misrepresented the law by their religious activities, failing to obey the truth. Thereby they dishonoured the God of Israel in the course of their conduct and service in the law on earth.
So Paul charges the Jew with national failure. He had failed in all the three significant characteristics of their nationhood. They were judged
a. in failure toward God in His Person with them in the house of God,
b. in the internal order which should have governed them as the kingdom of God on earth ideally, and
c. in their testimony to others.
These things represented the nature of and reason for their national existence toward God.
So a just God had given up the nation, as a nation, for the realising of His purpose, viz. the effective establishment of the truth in power on earth.
Verse 24 “For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.”
The Jew had the national honour of being called and gifted as the people of the God of the Old Testament. The gospel reveals that they had abused and hence forfeited the place afforded to them by God in the outworking of His eternal purpose. They had used the most precious, divinely-given asset, the Word of God, to glorify themselves at a natural level. His law, His presence, His truth, were dishonoured by their conduct. They should have been the living exponents of the law. Instead, they boasted in sterile ritual and fleshly teaching. They had thereby sinned against their nationhood.
The Jew had failed
a. as to their true nationhood, which is spiritual
b. in the conflict between good and evil in creation, and
c. toward God, dishonouring Him in the face of revealed truth and knowledge.
In charging them with this, Paul is doing no more than the Old Testament prophets had done. Here he adopts the language of Isa.52:5 to declare that this prophecy remains true of the Jew.
Verse 25 “For circumcision very profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision.”
Circumcision indeed is for profit. Circumcision is the mark put upon the flesh of the Jew, signifying that he was involved in God’s purposeful intervention in the world. Ideally, it was profitable for the revealed purpose of God to bless man. It was a sign on Jewish flesh that God had promised to bless the nations and that He will do so by having a people by whom valuable work will be done for His purpose. Circumcision is of value if the Jew keeps the law; it was given to the fathers and not by Moses. Ideally, it was to characterise them so that they might keep the law which they subsequently received. Circumcision is of value if law-keeping results. The choosing and marking-off of the Jews preceded the law spiritually as well as historically. It was a means to a divine end or it was nothing. “If thou doest law”. This is the spiritual obligation into which being circumcised put them. When the promises were given the foreskin of the seed was cut off as a sign which they should have been capable of reading. The Jew was called and enabled to keep the law in circumcised flesh. This is of spiritual and not natural significance.
There was a possibility of the Jew being a transgressor of law despite being circumcised. Transgression of law means breaking of law, known and accepted as being of God. Being a circumcised Jew was no guarantee that the purpose for which God had called him would be realised. The Jew was called to live righteously according to God’s estimation of this. If he did not, in his response to God’s gifts and calling, measure up to the law, then he had been circumcised in vain. His circumcision had become uncircumcision. It had become, in his way of life, merely a spiritually futile, fleshly calling. The eternal purpose for which God had thus prepared the Jew is not furthered by such a response.
Verse 26 “Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision?”
On the other hand, the uncircumcision may keep the requirements of the law. The uncircumcision is humanity alive in nature, apart from divine revelation. He is required by God to respond to Him in a naturalistic way. That which he is by and in nature is relevant and significant for eternal purpose, providing he meets God’s righteous requirements. These are the same requirements as are set forth in the law. In contrast to the previous verse, the definite article is used before “law”, showing that the law of Moses is specifically in view. The basic spiritual requirements, or precepts, of the law may be kept by man in the natural realm. There is provision in God’s system of approach to Himself in nature to make a man spiritual. The Jew might, however, remain merely a natural being without spiritual life and enlightenment. This is a denial of his circumcision. It is basically demanded of the Jew in the law that he become a spiritual man so that he might lay hold upon eternal realities.
A man in nature who honours the God of nature by his works and life is reckoned, or regarded, as for circumcision in the sight of God. This is put in the form of a question to the Jew so that he may confess it as being true. Thereby the Jew may also come to be spiritually enlightened as to his true calling.
Verse 27 “And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law?”
The uncircumcision by nature may judge the Jew. The physically uncircumcised Gentile may fulfil the law of Moses without even knowing it. He may live according to accepted Jewish standards and thereby show that physical circumcision is unnecessary if the law is judged merely to be a fleshly code. On the other hand, a Gentile will arrive at a deeper knowledge of God by his righteous naturalistic response than the Jew will if he regards only that which is natural in his legal observances. Thereby the Jew corrupts the spiritual significance of circumcision and the law. He looks at it manwardly and naturally rather than Godwardly and spiritually.
Paul describes the judgment of the Jew for having received the letter and circumcision in vain. Through, i.e. by means of the letter and circumcision, he is a law transgressor. Being a Jew outwardly involved the acceptance of the letter and circumcision as being of God. This basically marked them off from the rest. Godwardly, this involved the greatest responsibility. They accepted that which was God-given as such. Yet they only saw the glorification of that which they were by nature, circumcised in flesh, as a result of God’s gifts and calling. The letter kills. The flesh, even circumcised flesh, profits nothing. These can even make the Jew a law-transgressor. By literal interpretation and fleshly observation he contravenes the Spirit of truth.
Verse 28 “For he is not a Jew which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh.”
Paul then proceeds to reveal what being a Jew is in divine estimation. First he judges what is accepted as Jewishness, by those who are worldly-minded, as not being true Jewishness. He is not a Jew who is one outwardly or manifestly. Being a Jew is not something that can be seen naturally by fleshly observation. A man is not a Jew in divine judgment by accident of birth, nor does it lie in a fleshly way of life. It is not natural. Neither is circumcision in the sight of God. The cutting-off of the flesh physically in the context of a naturalistic Judaism is not that which God regards. It is not the flesh. It is not a literal but a spiritual cutting-off of human nature. The flesh is cut off in the sight of God as to the realising of the purpose for which God called the Jew.
Verse 29 “But 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.”
He is a Jew who is so inwardly, in what is hidden or secret. It is a positive, spiritual entity, seen of God and by spiritual eyes only. It is in the inward man of the heart. It consists of a man living in the life which the Word of God confers and has nothing to do with ordinary human life. This is the truth in the inward parts.
True circumcision, that which God sees and honours as such, is of the heart, in spirit. A man who is truly circumcised knows that God has finished with human nature as to the purpose for which He has called and chosen the Jew. The heart is the new nature, which is alone purposeful and profitable to the God who has revealed His Person and His work to the Jew. The spirit is the intelligence of this new life, acting in man toward God in the things which are of God. The truly circumcised, lives and acts in a new spiritual realm and not in nature. Circumcision is not in the letter. It is not the physical state, which is demanded literally of those who would live by the letter of the law toward God. That is, by divine definition, vanity.
His praise is not of man but of God. Being a true Jew is not naturally praiseworthy. Being a literal, orthodox, fleshly-orientated Jew involves rigorous legal observances and a high standard of morality. This is a praiseworthy religion and way of life. It brings out the best in man naturally so that men can regard in it a devoted life. This is not the response of a trulycircumcised heart. The truly circumcised mind heavenly, spiritual things in their circumcision. Their response is toward God and in it they live in the new life by the rule of the law which ideally governs such life. He merits praise from God in that, in his response to receiving the letter and circumcision, he effects the eternal purpose for which God has given the Jew His Word in the spiritual system of the law. “The law is spiritual” 7:14.