“Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,
‘That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.’
“But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us… And why not do evil that good may come?”
After spending all of chapter 2 undoing the theological superiority of the Jewish religion that he had left behind to follow Christ, Paul was acutely aware that he had painted himself into a corner. There are true Jews who are not Jews but Gentiles; and the Jews of Israel are not, by virtue of their race or religion, true Jews. But Paul had to step carefully since he was an Apostle of Israel’s Messiah, who was of necessity a Jew by birth, Jesus Christ. After all, if Israel is deconstructed what good is a Jewish Messiah? Paul then begins chapter 3 by putting forward three tricky questions that uncover the vulnerability of his teaching. Though it will require the whole epistle to answer these questions, he states them at this point because his adversaries have been making hay. What are the three questions? First, “Does the Jew have an advantage?” Secondly, doesn’t Jewish unfaithfulness nullify the covenant God made with Abraham? Thirdly, why should anyone be condemned as a sinner if sin makes the glory of God shine all the brighter?
Let us begin with the first question:
“Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?”
This question logically follows from chapters 1 & 2 since Paul showed that both Jew and Gentile – in other words, the whole human race – has rejected the Lordship of God. Human history whether Jewish and Gentile is a history of unfaithfulness and the rejection of God. And yet Paul has a recurring phrase that indicates a Jewish advantage: “To the Jew first and also to the Greek.” The Gospel, he wrote, is the power of God to save, as well as the wrath of God that brings judgment upon all mankind – to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Does there remain a Jewish advantage and if so what is it? Paul’s answers, Yes!
“Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.”
The chief advantage for Israel is that God entrusted her with his Word, which Paul and others would understand to mean the Old Testament. “Oracles” is not the best translation and it should read either word or words of God. The Greek word for entrusted is built on the word for faith or faithful or faithfulness. God entrusted his written Word, his direct revelation that we know as the Old Testament, to the Jews. That is their chief advantage over all others.
But you may say, “Is that really such an advantage? After all Paul said in chapter 1 that God’s eternal power and very divinity may be known without special revelation – through the creation – naturally, not supernaturally. Granted that having the Old Testament is good, but if we can know God through creation without special revelation then we can also be saved without special revelation.”
This objection that natural theology or natural law is sufficient for salvation entirely misses Paul’s point in chapter 1. He never asserts that the Gentiles could be saved by natural law, but only that natural law condemned them. Apart from the written Word of God, the Old and New Testaments, natural law is useful only in a negative manner. In chapter 2 and in other places St. Paul refers to an element of natural law that we know as human conscience and this provides us with a good example of how natural law functions.
The Greek word for conscience literally means “a persisting thought.” The idea is that this inward awareness, which we call conscience, is a God-given monitor or even a governor of behavior. People who are big on natural law put a lot of stock in conscience. Nonetheless Paul never presents conscience as a governor for behavior, but always as a witness after the fact, after one has acted. Conscience is a testifying witness excusing or accusing one’s self after the fact. The old saying, “let your conscience be your guide” is flawed because we are flawed by wounds of the fall. Our intellectual faculty was wounded and thus darkened by the fall of Adam, which means, everything else being equal, our intellectual faculties – attentiveness, reason, insight, and understanding – are all severely battered and bruised by the fall. But to make matters worse, everything else is not equal because all our other faculties, for example our passions and our volition, are sorely wounded as well. So passions like our appetite for sensual satisfaction and our fears take turns as our governor based upon the principle of the squeaky wheel. As my father-in-law would put it, we are in a mess that we cannot get ourselves out of. This is why your conscience cannot rightly govern your behavior; it works, there is a voice within, but it is unreliable without Christian instruction.
There is a scene in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer that illustrates this point. Tom became good friends with a run-away slave named Jim and as they spend time together on the Mississippi Tom became quite fond of him. But Tom’s conscience was troubled because he thought it was sinful to help, much less be-friend, a run-away slave. He decided to do the right thing according to his conscience and he wrote a letter to Jim’s owner, Miss Watson, to tell her where she could find her slave. Then one night on the boat Jim told Tom that he was the best friend he ever had and his only friend. Tom did not want to mail the letter, but his conscience was killing him and he was afraid of going to hell. The turning point comes when Tom picks up the letter: “I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:”All right, then, I’ll go to hell”- and tore it up.”
What is my point? Conscience needs guiding itself and without proper Christian training, conscience becomes another weight from the fall that drags us down. My overarching point is that natural law, including conscience, functions negatively and not positively. No one is saved by natural law. Paul’s rare use of natural law language in Romans is negative – to show the ruin of the non-Jewish world which did not have the advantage of the Old Testament. Furthermore the absence of special revelation is no defense; they are without excuse. This shows the great advantage that the Jew has in the Old Testament. Natural law, natural theology, conscience is made functional in a positive sense through the gift of the Bible and for us that means both the Old Testament and the New Testament. This is only one piece of the Jewish advantage but for now this is enough.
Now let’s move to the next question:
“What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?”
Israel was entrusted with the Old Testament, which is another reference to the notion of covenant. Paul’s argument that the Jews had been faithless with regard to the covenant raises the question, “Has their unfaithfulness nullified the covenant altogether?” It is important at this point to keep in mind that this talk about faith, faithfulness, unfaithfulness, righteousness and unrighteousness, as well as ideas like truth, truthfulness and lies – all that is meaningful only within covenant relations and the covenant that Paul has in mind is the Abrahamic covenant, which is meant to extend to all creation and ultimately the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. Doesn’t unfaithfulness to the covenant put an end to the covenant?
“By no means! Let God be true though every man were a liar, as it is written,
‘That you may be justified in your words,
and prevail when you are judged.’”
Israel’s history had culminated in the great apostasy, in her final rejection of the True Jew, their Messiah Jesus Christ. Would not their rejection bring an end to salvation altogether? “No. By no means,” Paul says. Israel has rejected the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but that has not brought an end to God’s covenant faithfulness. God is not ambivalent, nor is he a utilitarian, nor is he a pragmatist, nor does he need enlightening. God is God and he is the Lord of Creation and God is trustworthy, unfailing, and unswerving. And as a matter of fact Jewish and non-Jewish ambivalence and unfaithfulness only make God’s faithfulness and surety all the more brilliant, all the more full of life and all the more wonderful. Here, in the midst of human betrayal, is the definitive revelation of God’s deity itself!
In the light of Jesus Christ every man who has ever lived seems to have fallen into dishonesty and a life of illusion. Does that unfaithfulness cancel out the faithfulness of God?
“By no means! Let God be true though every man were a liar, as it is written,
‘That you may be justified in your words,
and prevail when you are judged.’”
Paul is placing before us the notion of humanity and God as opposing parties in a trial for justice before all creation, which ultimately brings to mind the final scene in which one or the other will win the judgment. Paul quotes Psalm 51: 4:
“That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.”
This has special interest for us since there are two different versions of this verse, and we have both of them in the Book of Common Prayer. Here Paul is citing the verse from the LXX, which is Greek Old Testament that was in use in his day, and this one presents the image of a trial where God himself is being judged. That is also the translation used in the Penitential Office in the Book of Common Prayer, our Ash Wednesday Office. It is also the translation used in the Greek Orthodox Church. But if you go to the Psalter in the Book of Common Prayer you will find the translation that is taken from the Hebrew not the Greek in which we alone are judged by God. But Paul uses the LXX and present human history as trial in which both man and God are in the dock and God is justified. But his justification comes about not merely by being right; this is after all not about human morality and besides that no one may actually pass judgment on God. This is about God being God. This is what I meant earlier when I said, “Here, in the midst of human betrayal, is the definitive revelation of God’s deity itself!” He is justified by his continued faithfulness to those who are unfaithful to him. And the fact of humanity’s unfaithfulness only makes God’s goodness and grace all the brighter.
And this is where the third question comes in:
“But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?”
This is the accusation made by those who opposed Paul. If what Paul says is true then God is unrighteous to inflict wrath upon sinners since sin actually brings glory to God. Furthermore, if what Paul says is true then we all ought to sin with abandon because that gives God all them more opportunity to show how gracious he is and to thus bring more and more glory to himself.
God’s faithfulness to Israel is a special instance and occasion of his faithfulness to his whole creation, the clean and the unclean. Those who bring the accusations against Paul and his theology did in fact understand what he was preaching, and it turned their world upside down: God is justifying the ungodly! The pious man is offended by God’s justification of the impious. This is exactly the point of the Gospel today: it is the sinner; the ungodly that knows he is lost and accepts God’s Lordship who goes home justified – who is found not guilty. The righteous man who actually believes that he has somehow earned the right to be with God is lost. Only God is God and Lord of creation:
“Let God be true though every man were a liar, as it is written,
‘That you may be justified in your words,
and prevail when you are judged.”
God is ever the just and faithful Judge who intends to put an end to sinful human illusions like that embraced by the Pharisee in today’s Gospel. God truth is his divinity and his Lordship over creation. He shatters our self-righteousness and self-assertion and when we accept that shattering and his Lordship we discover that we are in the hands of a gracious Judge who loves us and gave himself for us.