Third Presbyterian Sunday Morning Bible Study - March 21, 2021

Below is the Bible Study written by Jim Rudiger for his Sunday School Class which meets at Third Presbyterian Church, Norfolk, Virginia. It's based on Romans 3.

In what part of the country were you born?  What were the advantages of being born there?  The disadvantages?  Sometimes we take some of that part of the country with us.  We take the accents, the culture, the likes and dislikes.  Sometimes that’s good and some times it’s bad.  What is the good?  What is the bad?  Although my grandfather and grandmother  immigrated here long after the War Between the States (as I was taught to call it), it only took one generation of their family to adopt all of the southern culture along with a distrust of anybody above the Mason-Dixon line.  After college I worked in Pittsburgh and the people there loved to hear me talk.  It was like cheap entertainment.  They were particularly fond of me saying “house”, “mouse” and “about” (Pronounced "hoowse", Moowse" and "aboowt").  They never seemed to get tired of asking me questions that had answers that were guaranteed to include one of these words.  Then would come the instructions in how to properly say “house”.  Just to show them, I would make sure my southern accent became very broad and peppered with lots of “you-alls”.  I have to say with pride, a year held captive in Yankee territory never got me to change from saying “hoowse”.

In our study today, Paul deals with the question of people who felt that their birth gave them an advantage.  There is no question that who your family is can brings with it advantages.  If you are a Rockefeller or Kennedy there is money enough to go to all the right schools, to meet all of the most influential people, go into politics, and generally have a better life than the rest of us.  But there are Rockefellers and Kennedys who failed because they just weren’t up to what their names demanded.  Being a Rockefeller or Kennedy is not going to guarantee success.  It just opens the door for you.  What Paul was talking about were the Jews who felt like being a Jew was enough.  The fact that you were a Jew meant that God was on your side and that you had a special claim on God.

Obviously, Paul had received word that there were Jews in the church in Rome who accepted Gentiles just as long as they became Jews first.  This was creating a problem in the church.  You see, just a few years before, the emperor kicked all the Jews out of Rome.  Who did that leave to be members in the churches?  Non-Jew Romans.  In other words - Gentiles.   Now, not many Gentiles wanted to go through circumcision when the Gospel they had received spoke only in believing in Christ.  The Good News that they had heard didn’t mention anything about becoming a Jew first.  So Paul, a man who would have been described as "a good Jew", sets the record straight on what it really means to be a Jew.

Romans 3:1 Then what advantage has the Jew?  Or what is the value of circumcision?  2 Much, in every way.  For in the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.  3 What if some were unfaithful?  Will their unfaithfulness nullify the faithfulness of God?  4 By no means!  Although everyone is a liar, let God be proved true, as it is written, "So that you may be justified in your words, and prevail in your judging."

Listen up!  I'm going to let you in on an important secret.  I can assure you that this is the truth, because I got from a preacher who knows me well enough to know I don't take to fibbin'.  Paul has a word that he loved to use.  That word is "for."  When Paul uses "for", he is telling us to sit up and pay attention, because there is some thing we need to understand. He asks two questions;   What value does circumcision have in a Jew's life? Is there an advantage to being a Jew?  After the questions, he hits them with a "for" so hang on.  The road might get a little bumpy."

He then answers his own questions.  It’s like Paul is having a news conference and reporters are firing questions up at him.  The first question concerns what was the value of circumcision.  When did the Jews get circumcision?  And why did they get it?  As part of the covenant with Abraham.  It was a sign of man’s agreement with that covenant.  But in Rome the act of circumcision represented the complete adherence to the ritual law observed by faithful Jews.  You see the act no longer had God as it’s focus but man.  The Jews had taken a very sacred act of submitting to God's authority and transformed it into an act of submitting to man’s attempt to satisfy man. 

As far as if Jews had an advantage, Paul says, "They sure do."  To say that Jews don’t have an advantage is to deny all of the Old Testament.  But, the advantage they had was to be entrusted with the oracles of God.  The oracles mean the holy scripture.  What Paul underlines is that God intended that the Jews hold scripture in trust for future generations.  God didn’t give the Gentiles the job of safeguarding scripture.  Jews were picked for this job.  So in a way, Jews had an advantage over Gentiles because they were to be the custodians of God’s Word.  

Paul loved the Gentiles and saw how God wanted them to be saved too.  But, he always believed that the Jews held a very special position with God.  Most Jews shared this belief.  The major difference that Paul had with most Jews of his day was that he believed that the special position was a position of special responsibility while most Jews believed that it was a position of special privilege.  In thinking about this difference, I couldn’t help but think of a lot of our politicians.  Many times although they won’t admit it, they forget that their election carried with it far more responsibilities than it does privilege.  Our politicians run into trouble when they begin to stress the privilege part and avoid the responsibility part.

Can you imagine the awesome responsibility you would feel if one day God came to you and said, “Here are the stone tablets on which I wrote the Ten Commandments.  I want you to protect them and take them all over the world and let others see them.  Of course, I recognize that the ACLU will probably hound you for doing this, but, just ignore them and keep telling people about what is written on these tablets.”  That would be a heavy duty and you would be doing it all by yourself.  And the decisions you would have to make.  Where would you put them?  How would you get the most people to see them?   How would you protect them?  God is leaving all that up to you.  This would take a lot of dedicated work and many times you will be persecuted for presenting them to people.   Now contrast this with God coming to you and saying, “Look, I have these Ten Commandments, some of my best literary work.  Well, I have a job for you.  You go around and tell everybody that I told you about the Ten Commandments.  It won’t be necessary for you to tell them exactly what each one is.  Consider yourself as my agent but you won’t have to do anything,  Just sit back and collect your ten percent.”  The Jews thought their deal was to sit back and collect the ten percent.  They forgot that God’s arrangement was for them to be a salesman and not an agent.

Another question comes from the reporters during this press conference.  "All right, so the Jews are to take care of God’s Scriptures.  But what if they don’t behave?  What if they aren’t faithful to God?  If they don’t keep up their end of the bargain, does that mean that God pulls out of the deal and doesn’t fulfill his end?  Paul’s answer was short and sweet, “By no means.”  See, the problem with the Gentile converts was if the Jews were a special people whose faith revealed God, then what should the Gentiles feel when they see God’s special people sin.  If God’s people are unfaithful, should the Gentiles draw the conclusion that God is unfaithful, too, I mean, after all, the chosen people are a reflection of God.  Paul tells them that they are way off base.  God has charged both Jew and Gentile with being faithful so nobody can question the faithfulness of God.  It isn’t a matter of “us “ or “them”. Jew and Gentile are all in the same boat.  And if God’s people violate the covenant, God will remain steadfastly faithful.  How do we remain faithful to other people?  Most of the time our faithfulness to others hinges on their faithfulness to us.  Somebody doesn’t keep their word and that gives us the license not to keep ours.  Our faithfulness to others may be conditional, but God’s faithfulness to us is unconditional.

Just as Paul was sure that the Jews had a special position with regards to God, he also was sure that God had every right to condemn the Jews.  They had their special place.   They had their special promises.  But this doesn’t make them immune from being called on the carpet.  The very fact that in spite of all the special places and promises, they were unfaithful to God.  This made their condemnation even greater.  It is a sad fact that the more chances we have to do right, the greater the condemnation when we do wrong.  But Paul was sure of another thing, too.  Even if most of the Jews were unfaithful, there were some who remained faithful.  They may be small in number, but, through their faithfulness, they really represented the chosen people.  All of the others had lost their special place and would be condemned.  This doesn’t mean that God is totally rejecting Israel forever.  That they have been written out of the will.  It does mean that another door has been opened and that door is open to the Gentiles.  And God may be using Gentiles to reconcile the lost Jews to the Lord.  When that happens, Gentiles and Jews will be united and be one in Christ.  Being the chosen people makes Jews special.  Anything special bout being a Christian Gentile?  Jews were given the responsibility of bringing God to the rest of the world - evangelizing the Gentiles for the Lord.  Now the roles are reversed.  Gentiles will bring God’s saving grace to the Jews.

Romans 3:19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be held accountable to God.   20 For"no  human being will be justified in his sight" by deeds prescribed by  the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

Did you notice?  Two more "fors". If Paul is going to speak about the Jews then he has to address the law.  To the Jew, the law was their key to heaven.  If they could list all the “don’ts” and then follow them, then they would be assured of getting in.  Do you believe that if a person has never been arrested then he has never broken the law?  Don’t we sometimes break the law and never realize it?  You see, the Jews felt that if they avoided getting arrested, then they were justified.  Before we get too down on the Jews, they were just trying to find out how to have a right relationship with God.  How to feel at ease, at peace, at home with God.  They wanted to find something that would give them a map with absolute rules that could be followed and they wouldn’t have to think about it. 

Paul sorts the legal stuff in these verses.  The law is the Mosaic Law.  Now Paul knew all about the law.  He had studied the law and until that day on the road to Damascus, was admired and respected as a Pharisee.  You see, a Pharisee  did everything he could to obey all of the law.  That's a big responsibility.  Paul says the law speaks to those who are under the law.  That means that if the Jews imposed this law on themselves, then they were obliged to live under it.  When our congress passes a law, then we have to live under it even if it isn’t a good law and there have been plenty of bad laws.  Paul then states that “every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be accountable to God.”  In using “every mouth”, Paul includes Gentiles and Jews in the breaking of the law.  Paul felt that the law’s prime purpose was to let us know what sin is.  Nobody, neither Gentile nor Jew, could keep all of the laws, so everybody failed the test of the law.  But that is exactly why the law was given.  To show us that we were not capable of keeping all of the law all of the time.  We need help.  If we were able to keep all of the law, we could boast that we had forced God to save us.  By our own strength and will, we had gone down the check list and found ourselves justified.  God is left out of the picture.  God is there only to sit in the stands and cheer us on.  A mere spectator with little input in our righteousness.   Because no one is capable of carrying out all parts of the Law, no one can boast about how he pulled himself up by his own boot straps and became righteous.  There are no self made men among the righteous.

Paul believed that the law can identify sin but was not very good at preventing sin.  The use of the law then is to make man aware of his sin.  It shows a man his own weakness and where his sin is but it doesn’t do a thing about that sin.  This being so, then the law is totally unable to save anybody since sin, even though identified, would still be there and sin is what separates us from God.  Does this mean that we are shut out from God?  As Paul would say, “By no means.”  You see, the way to God is not the way of the law, but the way of grace.  The law is about works, but, our salvation is about faith.

Romans 3: But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  For there is no distinction,  23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified  by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,  25 whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.  He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26 it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.21-26

Paul now discusses righteousness before God.  It is Paul’s argument that Jesus makes this righteousness available to you and I.  He does this through our belief and trust which we call faith.  And it is through that faith in Christ that God accomplishes what we cannot achieve for ourselves.  That salvation which we want and couldn’t get through the law was given to us as a gift in Jesus Christ.  The best part of this gift is that it is extended to all believers.  It isn’t restricted to only the Jews but now includes Gentiles as well.  God now looks at us as if we are good people even when our actions shows us to be bad.  God has justified the wicked who come to Him in faith.  But how do we know that God is really like that?  We know that God is like that because Jesus said so.  Jesus came to tell us that God loves us, bad as we are.  He came to tell us that we are sinners, but are still very dear to him.  

Friends, when we discover that, and believe that, it changes our whole relationship with God.  We might sin but will never be the same old sinner.  It makes us conscience of our sin, but we are no longer afraid because we know that if we come to God, ask for forgiveness and turn away from that sin, the God we come to is a God of love and forgiveness.  We are righteous not for what we have done, but because we believe with all of our hearts that what Jesus told us about God is true.  And this is what is meant by Justification by Faith in Jesus. 

For those in Rome, the distinction between Jew and Gentile is erased.  It is no more.  Both Jew and Gentile serve the same Lord and their salvation rests on the same faith in Jesus.  For centuries a tremendous gorge separated God from his people.  Through works, the people tried to build a bridge over that gorge, but they were never able to get one that was strong enough.  There were always weaknesses - sins - that caused the bridge and all who were on that bridge and depended on it to fall into the gorge.  Now we have the perfect bridge across that gorge.  And our faith in that bridge will never be disappointed.  It is there for all the ages and the only toll we have to pay is our faith in the builder - Jesus.  We accept Jesus, walk across that bridge and we stand righteous before God.

One thing has to be noted here.  Everything is done by God except one thing.  God sacrificed his son for us.  He forgives our sins.  He extends to us grace.  He promises eternal life in the best neighborhood possible.  But one thing that God won’t do for us.  We have to listen to the Gospel, mentally agree that it makes sense, and then surrender and have faith in Jesus.  All of us can thank God we aren’t under the law and don’t have to build our own bridge across that gorge.

Romans 3:27 Then what becomes of boasting?  It is excluded.  By what law?  By what works?  No, but by the law of faith.  28  For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.  29 Or is God the God of Jews only?  Is he not the God of Gentiles also?  Yes, of Gentiles also,  30 Since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.  31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?  By no means!  On the contrary, we uphold the law,

In the final verses, Paul discusses boasting.  Anybody here know someone who brags a lot?  There doesn’t seem to be any lack in what people will brag about.  What are the common bragging things?  (1) What they have.  (2) Their children.  (3) How much they know.  (4) People they know.  Most people who brag aren’t interested in what you have to say.  They just want someone there to hear them tell you how special they are.  You sit there and he goes on and on.  You try to break-in, but he keeps going.  You look at your watch, but, he doesn’t take the hint.  You get right in his face and yawn letting out a long sigh.  He mistakes your open mouth for a megaphone and yells louder.  You look behind him and wave pretending that you just saw an old friend.  You mouth, “me”, nodding your head and whip your fingers around conveying that you are leaving where you are and going where he is.  Unable to force your way into the conversation, you pat him on the shoulder and tell him you have to meet your audiologist who just entered the room.  As you walk hastily away, you can hear him saying, “And then when Johnny was seven, he got his first bike and...”  The voice is still ringing in your hears as you reach the safety of the exit.

Paul is speaking here about a person who thought that they were spiritually superior to others.  We just saw that God justifies people apart from the law.  That justification comes from receiving God’s gift of Jesus Christ.  God confirms this gift through the faith of a believer.  Therefore, justification rests on God’s actions and not human action.  To be spiritually superior, we would have to be righteous, but, that righteousness isn’t something that we can obtain on our own.  If we are depended on someone else for our righteousness, then we are no more spiritually superior than anyone else who has faith.  Even then we should be humbled by what was done for us to be made righteous.  After all, for me to be righteous, it required for the Son God to be nailed to a cross.  Is that what we are to boast about?  That we are the reason for Jesus’ execution?

Paul is saying that if you are living by the law and boast, you are to be pitied.  You still don’t realize that what you are bragging about what you are pinning your future on and that's a flawed plan.  For the Jews there were those who felt that they were better than the Gentiles because God had chosen them.  To them Paul asks the rhetorical question, “Is God the God of Jews only?  Is he not the God of the Gentiles also?”  Paul answers in the affirmative.  Now to us Christians today, this doesn’t seem like a very important issue.  But to the first century church it was a question of who was a full part of God’s people and who was only a small part.  It was a matter of whether the church had a caste system.  A system where there would be different degrees of Christianity.  It is sad that even today, there are Christian churches that believe that they are spiritually better than other churches.  Most of the differences are not caged in belief in Jesus as Savior but in the interpretation of Christian laws.  What is the right baptism?  The necessity of speaking in tongues?  How often we have communion or what the elements should be?  How they stand on social issues?  Just as the Jews in the first century church boasted of their special relationship with God, we have churches now boasting that they have the only true relationship with God because they adhere to some rule.  That faith in Jesus has to include sensitivity to other issues.  To the Christian churches today, Paul has the same message as he did to the church in Rome.  There aren’t Catholic Christians, Baptist Christians, Pentecostal Christians and Presbyterian Christians.  We all serve the same Lord and received our righteousness through God’s gift of his son.  And we access that righteousness through faith.

So in the end, it really doesn’t matter if we are southerners or Yankees because I now believe that Yankees can be Christians, too.  It doesn’t matter if we say “house” or “hoowse”.  No, in the end, what really matters is who builds that bridge for us to God.  Everybody that bets his future on Jesus is my brother and sister regardless of where they came form or what church they attend.  In our shared faith we are united and stand as one church.

Prayer: Father, you see our weakness and still love us.  You see our failures and don’t give up on us.  You take us, sinners deserving of punishment, and give us righteousness.  Now use us to bring others who you love but who don’t know you, to a saving knowledge of you.  Amen.