A Look At Romans 2:17-24

by Wayne http://sweetjazzycat.blogspot.com/


Romans 2:17-24 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God (18) and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; (19) and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, (20) an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—(21) you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? (22) You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? (23) You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. (24) For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”



Paul, in this passage was speaking to the Jews who were relying on the law and boasting in God through their possession of the law. While they had a knowledge of the law and thought themselves righteous because they taught others the precepts of the law, they failed to confront the fact that they themselves broke the law. They were attempting to justify themselves before God, through the law, and considered themselves righteous before God by affirming and teaching the law. The fact that they didn’t obey the law perfectly was either not realized or deemed unimportant in their own eyes.



In this passage, Paul is objecting and pointing out the error of their thinking. They had failed to be sanctified through law keeping for the purpose of justification, and Paul is giving them the bad news of their blaspheming God before Gentiles for dishonoring God by breaking the law.



Sanctification through law keeping for the motive of justification is guaranteed to be a 100% failing proposition. Yet, many people today think that law keeping for the purpose of sanctification is the proper way for a Christian to pursue sanctification. In this view, the law points a sinner to Christ to be saved by faith and Christ sends the regenerated Christian back to the law to be sanctified. Paul acknowledges the law is right and good later in Romans, but he goes on to assert that sanctification is through the Spirit of Christ and not the written code. Praise God that grace upon grace saves and also sanctifies sinners. Grace points sinners to Christ for salvation, and grace points Christians to Christ for sanctification.
Posted by jazzycat at 3:23 PM

2 comments:
mark pierson said...
Yes, Paul makes it clear that the law was to point people to Christ, period. Any Christian who thinks themselves not holy enough to claim salvation as their own has no concept of the grace that came through Christ. On the other hand any Christian who is satisfied with how they measure up to the law (which would require them to do some serious watering down of the severity of its demands) has taken their eyes off of Christ and their need for HIS righteousness in their lives. The Bottom line is that our eyes belong on Christ and only on Christ.
April 03, 2009 10:02 AM

Single Issue Voter

For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
(Romans 3:28 – ESV)

Paul anticipated what critics might say and then answered the charges. In perhaps similar fashion, when speaking of the glory of the great doctrines, you might hear someone say something like this. “Well this all just too abstract for me, what does doctrine do for me right now, how can I get a grip on what it means for today?” Okay, lets “go there”.

Let me start by saying that doctrine is the tool that helps you grow. It is a process, and it becomes applied as we live out life, not as we take them like a pill, but as we plant them like a seed. We see the doctrine, and what it says about Christ and about us, and we meet that with our faith, and it blooms as fruit in our lives. We don’t just look at it and then write it down or fill out some form, we believe it and become conformed into His image, from glory to glory as we see and believe it more and more (2 Corinthians 3:18).

It happens best within the context of a local church community but it is not an impersonal thing, but a very personal thing where the great doctrines make a great difference in our everyday living. And these particular doctrines are all-important, not only for our justification, but for our sanctification, our growth in grace, and we must understand that Jesus is the source of your life, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 1:30). Now let me just bring these doctrines right into your personal life right now, okay? So how does this filter out into giving God glory in my life? I’ll just apply this to one area that many have trouble with, perhaps all of us at times.

Many people measure their spirituality based solely on their self-control in one area or another. If they are “being good” in that one area that they are struggling with, then they feel spiritual, if not, then they feel like a failure spiritually. It is all or none, in a sense. It can be hard to help people find balance when they gauge the health of their relationship with Christ on a single issue – such as their sexual purity, anger issues, their thought life, or something else. Now we don’t want to give license to licentiousness or to excuse or encourage a lack of effort to control the self life, but instead of thinking solely about one issue as a measure, consider the whole life, are you advancing anywhere at all, in many areas, perhaps even in most areas?

If you are a “single issue voter” this may be why you fail to see your relationship with Christ as it is, a growing and complex dynamic of repentance and faith, based on His works, His love, His steadfastness. When a single issue carries so much weight the guilt and shame of failure can overwhelm a person. It also may be the reason why you neglect other areas, and as a result the whole life, spiritual and otherwise, suffers. Pay attention to your failings, sure, but don’t give them any more weight than they ought to have, and keep thanking God for the victories He has given you, and pray for more, all the while counting on this fact: it is not what we did, it is what He did that counts. The single issue has been forever settled in your favor.

Yes the sin is a problem, but it can lead to a greater problem because it can lead to more failure. The greater tragedy is not the failure of the individual sin, but when it leads to the failure to get back up, to be so swept away with guilt and shame that we let it bring us back down, away from any chance of victory. We settle for settling into a rut of routine spirituality, thinking that this is all there is, and we let the devil win, keeping us from becoming more solid in other areas as we lose the fight with this one issue. However, we must realize that the mark of faith is not that I don’t fail but that I do fight.

God makes a way where there is no way. There was no way for a man to be perfect and the Law pointed that out. By the deeds of the Law no man will be justified, but by faith in the person and works of Christ any man may be justified. This is the one necessary thing to salvation; you see it is God who is a single-issue voter, and He always wins the election. Have faith.

Above the Law?

He will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
(Romans 3:30 – ESV)

Although we are not under the Law we are not above it either, but rather we are more in tune with its spiritual components, a heart circumcised to believe and obey, trusting in Him and glorifying His name through our obedience; not being saved by it but being saved we fulfill it. Justification does not mean to be righteous or to make righteous but to declare righteous, for the Christian we are declared righteous based on the perfect righteousness of Jesus the Messiah. He has fulfilled the Law for us and by our faith we establish that fact.

The Law still has purposes, for the non-believer and also for the believer. It is designed to lead people to the gospel of Christ (Galatians 3:19-23) and also to indict what is not in accord with the gospel (Galatians 2:14). Using the Law lawfully (1 Timothy 1:8-9) means using it to convict people of living out of accordance with the gospel. It is for those that don’t know it and for those that should know better. That is why we use both, we give the Law to the proud and grace to the humble, both Christian and non-Christian.

Through faith or by faith means that our faith is not the ground or that we are saved on account of our faith, but that it is by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). God is absolutely holy and just, and so any justification, any declaration of righteousness, any acquittal of guilt, must be on a just basis; it must be right to do so. The penalty of the Law had to be satisfied and Christ paid that for us, and so God declares us righteous not on some whim, but because of Christ, and it is a just declaration. We are guilty but Christ pays the penalty, and then God is just in justifying the ungodly (Romans 4:5), declaring us righteous, because of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to our account (2 Corinthians 5:21).

As we see in Romans 3:24-26, the substitutionary atonement is the reason we can be justified by faith. It is faith in the person of Jesus and His finished work on the cross. With the wonderful doctrines of substitutionary atonement and justification by faith you can rest assured of your salvation, and as you cling to Christ in faith, you can conquer those voices that tell you tomorrow morning that you are a hopeless case. You don’t have to remember the names of the doctrines to remember who and what they are about. Jesus Christ dying for your sins and giving you a right standing before a satisfied God. By abiding in Christ by faith, you are not above the Law; in Christ you have fulfilled it.

Anti-Establishment Clause?

Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.
(Romans 3:31 – KJV)

Paul says none of our own works can save us, and that the Law has no power to save because men are unable to keep it. Because of this he had been accused, wrongly, of promoting a “religion” which had no morality. In answering this, Paul says that we don’t abolish the Law but that by our faith we actually establish it. How can this be, you might ask?

What he means by this is very important, because he also says in Romans 10:4 that Jesus Christ is the end of the Law to all who believe in Him. So they might say he is abolishing the Law, but Paul says we establish it by faith. That is an amazing statement, and what does Paul mean we establish the Law when he says we aren’t justified by it? How can Paul say we establish the Law when he also says we don’t have to do it? Again, how can these things be?

He means that we establish the purpose of the Law, to bring us to Christ (Galatians 3:21-24). He means that by our faith we establish that the Law is righteous, but that it cannot provide righteousness because of the weakness of mankind (Romans 8:3). We establish that its demands must be met, but that we cannot meet them. We establish that it cannot be met apart from faith in Christ, who did meet them (Matthew 5:17). We establish that people of faith now pursue the spirit of the Law by faith, as those who are already justified, and not by works, in order to be justified. By faith we establish the power of the Holy Spirit who is living in, and we can now be living out the spirit of the Law, as opposed to the mere letter, as Jesus spoke of it in the Sermon on the Mount, not in order to justify us, but to show the fruit of being justified.

We live in the love, the acceptance, and the justification that Jesus provides us as our safety, our satisfaction, our rest, and our all in all. Jesus fulfilled all the righteous requirements of the Law, and we establish that fact in our lives and in our world by our faith. Faith does not produce disobedient, lazy Christians; it produces obedient, loving Christians who follow Jesus by the Spirit from the heart. Romans 13:8-10 – love is the fulfilling of the Law. In other words, love fulfills or establishes the Law. And where does love come from? It is a fruit of the Spirit in our lives, and the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit of faith.

Being justified by faith is not an anti-establishment clause for religion; indeed it establishes the true religion. The Law points to that fact and we establish that fact by faith.