Romans 3:1-18, Commentary
Jun 16th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3: Intro, 1-18, 19-31, Summary | 4 | 5 ]
The search for verses in Romans that are relevant to the Doctrine of Total Depravity continues.
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 faithlessness 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.” But if our injustice serves to confirm the justice of God, what should we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) 6 By no means! For then how could God judge the world? 7 But if through my falsehood God’s truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? 8 And why not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), “Let us do evil so that good may come”? Their condemnation is deserved! 9 What then? Are we any better off? No, not at all; for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, 10 as it is written: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one.” 13 “Their throats are opened graves; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of vipers is under their lips.” 14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery are in their paths, 17 and the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Okay, this should be good.
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3:1-2 — Finally, after a chapter of being told how they, like their Rich Idolatrous Oppressors, had done things worthy of the death penalty, and how their Gentile brethren, on the other hand, did was was right instinctively because they had God’s Law written on their hearts, Paul’s fellow Jews in the Roman church hear a “comforting word.”
They weren’t completely wrong to think that belonging to the children of Abraham was something special. God had specifically entered into communications with their ancestors, and had entrusted them with keeping those communications.
You have to wonder, therefore, how Paul’s Gentilre brethren are feeling now. . . .
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3:3-4 — Furthermore, Paul’s Jewish readers don’t have to worry that they’ve lost their special status before God because of the misdeeds of their ancestors. God has stuck with their people.
Then Paul cites two passages from the Psalms: 116:11-12 and 51:4. At least, the NAS and JB both claim that the part about everyone being a liar is an allusion to Psalm 116:11, and both cite Psalm 51:4 as the source of the, “So that you may be justified in your words, and prevail in your judging,” quotation.
The “you” in that quotation is God (see Psalm 51:4). God can justly judge whomever He wants, especially if everyone is a liar, and therefore deserving of judgment.
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3:5-6 — Then Paul, ironically, points out that what justifies God in judging everyone is that everyone is guilty of something worthy of being judged for. (If we weren’t, then God’s judging us would be unjust.) So God is justified in His judging by everyone’s being unjust. So, God’s justice is based on our injustice.
So, God’s justice depends on injustice, and that makes it sound like God is unjust.
But, Paul says, don’t try to play that logical game; that’s a sophism, not a valid argument. The reason God gets to judge people is that He is just. He wouldn’t need to exercise justice if it weren’t for injustice (you don’t need courts if there are no criminals), but He doesn’t need injustice to be just.
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It makes you wonder whether someone was actually making that argument. “God can’t judge us for being unjust, because it’s our injustice that justifies His judgment; and, therefore, He needs us to be unjust for Him to exercise justice, for Him to be just! Gotcha!”
On the contrary, Paul says, God is legitimately the judge of the whole world, and the fact that judges only judge injustice doesn’t mean that justice depends on injustice.
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3:7-8 — Continuing on in the voice of his hypothetical oponent, Paul says, essentially, “God gets to exercise justice by judging my lies, and therefore gets to look just because I’m a liar. So, aren’t I doing something good for God by being bad?”
Paul’s response to this seems to essentially amount to:
Give me a break! And no, that is not what I teach. Sure, I think that our sins are the occasion for God’s grace; but you’re confusing occasions and causes. Our sins don’t cause God to give us grace. Therefore, our sins don’t cause God to look graceful; God chooses to be graceful all on His own, in response to the occasion of our sinfulness.
However, God could give us more than we deserve (i.e., could give us grace) even if we didn’t deserve to be judged. Sin is not the only occasion for grace, and therefore the exercise of grace does not depend on sin! God doesn’t owe us anything “in return for” getting to look graceful by giving us grace!
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3:9-18 — Then, in v. 9, Paul finally achieves equilibrium. Ultimately, even given the Jew’s special position as inheriting God’s revelations, they are in exactly the same position as the Gentiles. Everyone’s a sinner.
The word “power” isn’t in the Greek text, that I can tell. It just says, “under sin,” not “under the power of sin.” (See the ESV, HCS, KJV, NAS.)
Then Paul lists a bunch of quotations from the OT. They are, in order:
However, in each of the passages Paul quotes, the writer exempts himself from the people he is describing. It’s a specific group of enemies or wicked people who are like this, not everyone, and especially not the author of each passage!
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There are only two passages that seem to talk about everyone.
The first passage is taken from Psalms 14 and 53, which both distinguish between the “everyone’s” who are evil and “no one’s” who are good, and the godly people of Israel. The everyone/no one refers to all the ungodly evil people who are oppressing the Israelites.
The other passage is describing everyone in Israel at the time of the writing (it’s the passage from Isaiah). And yet even there, Isaiah would not number himself among those who go around murdering people!
The universal quantifiers they employ (“all,” “everyone,” “no one”) are purposeful exagerations, and obviously so because the authors of each passage do not include themselves in the “all,” the “everyone,” or the “no one” they are talking about!
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The passages are written as they are for rhetorical effect, not for laying down doctrine. In their original contexts, they are clearly not expounding a doctrine of original sin or total depravity or anything of the sort. They’re complaining about or yelling at a specific group of people who are living wickedly.
Likewise, Paul’s point in using these verses is not to expound a doctrine of original sin or total depravity, but to prove his point that neither Jews nor Gentiles are in a better situation than the other group.
Both groups have a history of having to deal with wicked people in their midsts (as Paul had pointed out with regard to the Jews in particular, earlier in the chapter [v. 3]). The fact that Jews had the direct revelation of the Law, and the Gentiles had the Law written on their hearts, did not keep certain groups among them from turning to wickedness.
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Therefore, it’s not merely having the Law (whether in writing or on the heart) that keeps people from getting themselves into sin. Sin can and has “dragged off” people from both groups (both Gentiles and Jews), showing that merely having the Law is no protection. Both are vulnerable to sin (both are “under [threat from] sin”).
And therefore, neither group has any advantage over the other. They are in the same boat, standing on the same ground. They are equals.
And that’s the point Paul is trying to get to.
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