Romans 2

Read Romans 2.

            I alluded to this yesterday, but part of what Paul is arguing in Romans is that God has been faithful to His promises to Israel. He has to make that case because as he writes to the Romans, the church is becoming more and more filled with Gentiles and Israel seems to be more and more left behind. So, he started in chapter 1 by demonstrating that all humans are in the bondage of sin. Today, in chapter 2, he addresses himself to a hypothetical Jew when you says, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you do the same thing” (v. 1). Within the argument of Romans, this is not just a general “Don’t judge” moment, but a specific statement about the presumption of superiority of Israel. Now, it can certainly be understood in a generalized sense about anyone who presumes but understanding it in its original context explains where Paul goes next, namely, that God’s praise and judgment are dispensed on all human equally (vv. 6-11).

            It also offers us an important insight into the next verse, in which Paul uses the word “law” for the first time in the letter. This is one we Lutherans need to pay some attention to. We have been taught since catechism days that law is the opposite of gospel, and that it refers to the Bible’s overarching statement of God’s will—what we must do and not do, the message of condemnation when we don’t do it, and the ultimate judgment the sinner faces. All of that is true enough, but if we pay careful attention to Romans 2:12, we come to see that law, in this context, means Moses’ law.

            See, Israel didn’t see Moses’ law as a great burden or a condemning word. They saw it as an honor: they had been chosen to be God’s unique people! In Romans 9:4, Paul himself notes the receiving of the law as one of Israel’s great privileges. The problem was that Israel, by Paul’s day, was using the Law as a bragging point, about how God loved them more than the Gentiles. So, Paul has to demonstrate that Moses’ law does actually condemn Israel, that they’re not actually keeping it. In this way, Paul is fundamentally carrying on the message of Jesus, who continually warned the leaders of Israel that their way of understanding what God’s will was was wrong.

            The real bombshell in all of this is at the end of the chapter when Paul blows open the doors of who exactly belongs to God’s holy people: “A person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.” He’s going to come back to this in subsequent chapters.