PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

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Verses 1-8 God is faithful

At the end of Chapter 2, Paul said:- ‘Jew and non-Jew are both sinners’. Now we think about Paul and a Jew, and they talk about these things. (Verse 1) The Jew would not be very happy to hear what Paul had said. If Jew and non-Jew are both sinners, how is the Jew better off? So in verse 2, Paul begins to answer this. He says:- ‘First of all’. This is better than:- ’To begin with’ in the R.S.V. Paul here does not get round to a second or third.

If you look at 9:4 and 5 you will find there a list of eight ways in which the Jews are better off. Yet they are not better off because of what they have done for God. It is not law and works. It is all what God has given to them. So it is all about grace. Paul says here that God trusted the Jews with His Word. That was a great honour for them. They should have loved God’s Word and read it. They ought to have obeyed God’s Word and shared it with other people. True, they did take great care of it for long ages, so that we can now share it. We too must make good use of God’s Word today.

Then in verse 3, Paul says that some of the Jews did not believe. That does not mean that God will not be faithful. [3.1] Paul says:- ’It is not as though God’s faithfulness is still there, but not at work. It is still at work’. (Verse 4) We believe that God will be true to His Word. We believe that He will keep all His promises to the full. Even if this means that no man speaks the truth, that is far better than to question God’s truth.

Paul now uses the second half of Psalm 51:4. Psalm 51 is the great psalm which David wrote after the worst sins of his life. It tells us about his great sorrow which he felt because of his sins. It shows that he does not trust in the great things that God had done for Him. He trusts only in God’s grace and mercy. He asks God to forgive him. He had sinned against Uriah the Hittite and against his wife, Bathsheba. Yet he says:- ’Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned’. David judges his own sin. Then he adds these words. All men will have to say that God is right when He speaks at the day of judgment. When God goes to law with men, it is always God who wins the case. [3.2]

We know many things best because they are different from each other. We know the difference between darkness and light. So (verse 5) we know God’s righteousness better because we are sinners. Yet we do not add anything to God’s glory. We do not do Him any good by our sins. If our sins did God some good, then God might be wrong to punish us. Paul does not feel at all right when he asks:- ’Is God unjust’? The very thought is out of place. That is why he adds that he only uses a human argument here. It is the dark unbelief of the Jew (verse 3) which lights up the faithfulness of God. So verse 6 says ’No!’ The ’world’ here may mean all men, both Jew and Greek. ’Judge’ may well mean more than to say to men:- ’You are right‘ or ‘You are wrong’. If God did not at last show His great anger against sin, He could never bring about good order in the world. What Paul says is that God could not be unjust.

In verses 7 and 8, there are two questions. Really Paul answers them in Chapter 6. They are questions which Paul heard. He had to answer them when he preached the Good News. People said to him:- ’God is full of grace. He is so good. He forgives sins freely. So if we sin more, we give God’s grace more work to do. We give Him more sins to forgive. Really we do God good’. These are bad ideas. Down the long years of the church’s story, they come up from time to time. We still need to guard against them.

So we need to be quite clear. Good Christian teaching always calls on people to repent and to leave their sins. It always calls on people to be pure and holy. Anyone who says (verse 8):- ‘Let us do what is wrong, so that God may make good come out of it’ - is quite wrong. See Isaiah 5:20. Verse 8 also shows us that some people said that Paul gave out bad teaching. This may have been because they did not understand him properly. Perhaps they had not heard Paul. They only knew what other people had told them about him. Still, we must learn to be very clear in what we teach. And we must not be surprised if people say things about us which are not true.

Verses 9-20 Scripture judges all men too.

People at Rome might say to Paul:- ‘You look at people. You see what they do and how they live. You may be right in what you say. You think that we are all sinners. But that is not good enough for us’. So in these verses Paul brings together words from several places in the Old Testament. They are another proof that we are all sinners.

The first few words of verse 9 are not easy. [3.3] You may find that English Bibles are a little different from each other but it does not really matter. In God’s judgment, Jews are not better than other people. Sin rules over both Jews and Greeks (rather than ‘Gentiles’ here). Paul means that sin rules also over all the other kinds of people in between Jews and Greeks. Indeed, sin rules over us like a king (5:21) but God will change that! He will rule over us by His grace.

So verse 10 begins by saying that no one is righteous - not even one person. See Psalm 14: 1-3 and Psalm 53:1 and 2. These two Psalms are very much alike. Now we know that there is one Man who is righteous, the Lord Jesus Christ. But the man who wrote the Psalm lived hundreds of years before Jesus came into the world. (verse 11) Well, maybe no one is righteous in what they do but perhaps they at least understand what God wants. No! and they do not even try to find God. (Verse 12) If there are no great examples of prayer, perhaps at least some men lead good lives. But no. A car which ‘swerves’ off the road only a little is soon in the ditch. Men ‘swerve’ a little from the right way, and together they go bad. They are worth nothing (Ecclesiastes 7:20).

(Verse 13) It is not only what men do. What they say is wrong too (Psalm 5:9; Psalm 140:3). We try to lead other people into wrong ways by what we say. Our mouths are not just open, but there is poison hidden in them, like the hidden poison of a snake. Verse 14 comes from Psalm 10:7. It adds the idea of the mouth which is full of evil. Verses 15-17 come from a dark, sad part of Isaiah (Isaiah 59: 7 and 8). Words turn into sinful actions and they are not slow. Sin wants to work quickly. Sin destroys the happiness of other people and fills their lives with sorrow. Sinners do not know the path which leads to peace for themselves or for other people. [3.4] So in verse 18, Paul finishes with some words from Psalm 36:1. When we see that human life is full of evil, there is only one reason for it. ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes’.

If we think that Paul is too hard here, it is because we do not know how holy God is. Also we do not know our own sins. Now we could look at all those Old Testament verses, and learn a great deal from them. At the very least, look at Psalm 36, and see how it changes. The first verse is dark, but the last part is full of light and joy.

Verses 19 and 20 tell us why Paul has written these verses. We might say:- ‘How does this help anyone? What good does it do to tell people how wicked they all are’? Now you can look at Romans 11:32 and Galatians 3:22 and find the same teaching. Paul speaks about ‘the law’, which here means ‘the Old Testament’, from which he has gathered these verses. The law speaks first to the Jews. If the Jews can not argue with God that they are righteous, then no one else can claim to be righteous.

You can hear how people argue with God in Matthew 7:22 and 25:44. They have lived and died. God has called them from the grave to stand in front of His judgment seat. Still they talk away about how very good they are. Paul says that every mouth will be shut. There will be silence in God’s court. Everyone - ‘the whole world’ - will be put on trial in God’s court of law. Verse 20 begins with some words from Psalm 143:2 ‘No human being’ or ‘no one’ here is really ‘no flesh’. ‘Flesh’ in this place means man in his weakness as he stands before God. Paul then says two great things which matter a lot in his argument.

a) We should, of course, try to do God’s will. We should keep God’s Law. Yet whether or not we keep God’s Law, God will not say in His court of Law that we are righteous. ‘Law’ here may mean mostly the Law as the Jews thought of it.
b) Then Paul says why this is true. What God’s Law does is to wake us up so that we know that we are sinners. Paul calls this ‘the work of the Law’. Here we must think of God’s Law which teaches us what is right and what is wrong. So then we often have a wrong idea of the purpose which God had when He gave the Law to men. It was not to make us righteous in God’s sight. It was to show our sins to us.

Verses 21-31 The righteousness which comes by faith

So now Paul begins some great verses which set out the Good News. In verse 21, he says that there is a righteousness which comes from God to men. God says that those who have faith are ‘not guilty’. God has made this known to us. It comes from God. It comes to all who have faith in Jesus. It comes to them through faith. This is not because men could not know the righteousness of God through the Law. They could know His righteousness. but that knowledge would lead only to God‘s great anger against sin. It would not lead to righteousness for men.

Now a Jew might not like this at all. He might ask Paul:- ‘So do the Old Testament Scriptures have no place in this? After all, they are the Word of God’ So Paul adds that the Law and the Prophets spoke about this righteousness. ‘Law and Prophets’ here means the whole of the Old Testament. They point forward to the Good News.

Verse 22 begins to show us how our Lord Jesus Christ fits into all this. He is righteous; He kept God’s Law. So He has a righteousness which He does not need for Himself. He can give this righteousness to us although we are sinners.

God gives this righteousness to me. It is worth our while to ask whether in this verse ‘through faith’ means through our faith in Jesus or through God’s faithfulness to Jesus. In any case, this righteousness comes to all who believe, that is, to all who have faith. The ‘all’ here means both Jew and Greek. And it takes in all other kinds of men in between. When Paul says there is no ‘distinction’ or difference, he means between the Jews and other peoples.

Now of course there were many and great differences between them. Paul means that they are all sinners before God. He means that there is not one way of Salvation for the Jew and another way for the Greek. It is sin which divides men from each other. The grace of God brings them together and makes them ‘one in Christ Jesus’.

So verse 23 says again that ‘all men’ have sinned, whether they are Jew or Greek or something else in between. We can think of ourselves as we walk up to God. Sin trips us up and we fall down. If there was a man who had no sin, God would give him glory. There is such a Man. It is the Lord Jesus Christ! God has given Him the glory. We cannot have the honour which God has to give. The things which we have done are full of sin. They cannot make us righteous. God will not say that we are ‘just‘, that is, ’justify’ us, because of what we have done.

So in verse 24, Paul tells us how we can become righteous. It is nothing to do with what we have done for God or even for one another. It is all because of what Christ has done for us. So Paul says these things about God’s way:-

1. What God does, He does freely. We have no price to pay. Righteousness is a gift to us.
2. It is by God’s grace. God loved us while we were still sinners. He did not wait for us to make ourselves better.
3. We are ’redeemed’. Sin had power over us. Christ paid the price so that we should be set free from the power of sin. Now we are free to be the servants of God; but His service is perfect freedom.
4. This redemption comes to us only through the Lord Jesus Christ. In the next verse, Paul tells us how this comes about.

So in verse 25, Paul says these things about the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. God has put Him forward or ‘presented’ Him. Everyone ought to know about Jesus and most of all about His death. God has not hidden it or kept it a secret.
2. When He died on the Cross, Jesus made an offering to God or ‘sacrifice’. Blood here speaks to us of the death of Jesus. Yet this was not just a sacrifice, for it was of a special kind. It was to take away God’s anger against sin.

Our English Bibles use words like expiation, propitiation and atonement. Paul used the Greek word ‘hilasterion’. None of these words is easy, although ‘atonement’ is often explained as ‘at-one-ment’. As we go on, Paul will help us to understand this better. We need to remember these things:-

1. The Bible teaches (Hebrews 9:22; Leviticus 17:11) that God will only forgive sin if blood is poured out. There must be death. There must be the sacrifice of a victim.
2. Jesus only was great enough to offer this sacrifice. He is both God the Son and the only sinless man. He needs no sacrifice Himself, but when He died, He died to take away the sins of all His people down the long ages.
3. The death of Jesus fitted in with God’s will. It happened at God’s time and in God’s way. It happened because Jesus was willing to put up with pain and shame, and to go through death, so that sinners could be saved.

Now there is a rather different way to look at these words. Some people may not be happy about it, but many fine Christians think this way. [3.5] In the Old Testament worship, the Jews had first a great Tent or ‘Tabernacle’. Later, they had a Temple building instead. You can read about the Tabernacle in the Book of Exodus from Chapter 25 onwards. It was a place for God. It was not a place for the people to meet in, like a church.

The great Tent had two parts. The first part was the Holy Place. The priests went in to it every day. Then there was a heavy curtain, and beyond that was the Most Holy Place. This was so holy that only the High Priest could go in. Even he only went in once a year. There was only one thing in the Most Holy Place. Look at Exodus 25:10-22 and you can read about it. The Covenant was the Agreement which God gave to His people, Israel. The ark was a special box. The Jews had to make the top or lid for the box (Exodus 25;17) from gold.

This lid or cover is often called ’The Mercy Seat’. The one day in the year when the high priest went in to the Most Holy Place was ’the Day of Atonement’ We read about this in Leviticus 16. The high priest had to take with him some blood from animals which he had sacrificed. See Leviticus 16:14-16. He had to drop some of the blood on the ’Mercy Seat’. All this was a picture of the way in which blood could cover over sins. Of course, the blood of animals was not good enough for this. Only the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ could ever really cover our sins.

So many people think that verse 25 means that Jesus is the real Mercy Seat. In the Old Testament God hid the Mercy Seat away. Only one man saw it, and he only saw it on one day in the year. In the New Testament, God put Jesus forward or ‘presented’ Him when He died on the cross. The body of Jesus, when He died on the cross was the real Mercy Seat. This was not just a picture to help us to understand what God meant. Here at last, God really did cover over our sins and take them away. We claim this for ourselves ‘through faith in His blood’, that is, of course, the blood of Jesus. [3.6]

We might ask:- ‘Why did God the Father put Jesus forward like this’? Paul begins to answer this in the second half of the verse. Perhaps the question is really:- ‘Why did God leave it so long? Why did God not do it sooner’? Paul says that God put forward Jesus in order that we might see how righteous He is. God had given His law to men. Now He gives a new and greater law. This law (Romans 8:2) says that the man who has faith in Jesus is righteous. God is righteous to Jesus first, then to us but verse 26 says more about this. So although God gave the Law long ago, He was not quick to punish people when they broke it. (Ecclesiastes 8:11 and 12.)

(Verse 26) Isaiah 45:21 says that God is both a just or righteous God and also a Saviour. If He is a Saviour then He must be a God Who saves lost sinners. Our minds do not find it easy to put these two truths about God together. Only when we see the Cross and that Jesus died for us, can we bring them together. We shall look at Romans 11:22 which teaches this, later on. [3.7]

Paul has rather forgotten to argue with the Jews since verse 20. In verse 27 this starts again. Paul asks:- ‘Where is boasting’? What shall we say to the Jew who says how very good he is. He says that the Jews are God’s own people. He says that they have the Law of God. All this is ‘boasting’. The Jew may say it to men. He may even say it to God. Paul says that it is shut out. There is no room for it. There is no place for it in God’s court of law. The door has been shut and locked and ‘boasting’ is on the outside. ‘Through what law was it shut out? Was it shut out by the law of works? No, it was shut out through a law of faith’. A ‘law of works’ would say: ‘This man has kept the Law and done good things. So it is right that God should give a reward to him‘. A law of grace will never say that.

(Verse 28) Paul has done his sums. He has it worked out. God declares to be righteous the man who has faith in Jesus. It is not a matter of good works or of keeping the Law of God. [3.8] (Verse 29) There are not two Gods, one for the Jews and another one for other nations. If there were two ‘Gods’ their way to save people might not be the same. There is one God for the Jews and the same God for other nations. He has one grand way to bring salvation to men of both kinds (verse 30). Paul says that God will justify the Jews by (‘ek’ - out of) their faith and the nations through (‘dia’) their faith. Some people have tried to find a difference between ‘by’ and ‘through’ faith. Yet Paul says that it is the same faith which saves all men.

(Verse 31) The Jews who spoke to Paul might say:- ‘What force is left in God’s Law? What you teach about faith saving us means that the Law is now no use to us or to God’.(See note 3.1 on ‘katargeo’ which Paul again uses here). Paul will not have this. ‘Not at all!’ In the next chapter, Paul will talk about Abraham. God built the Law on what He had done in Abraham’s life long before. And Abraham was the Man of Faith. The Law of Moses rested on Abraham’s faith.