THE BOOK OF ROMANS CHAPTER 2:1 – 3:20
THE DISCOVERY OF SIN AND GOD’S WRATH

God told Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house. (Read Jeremiah 18:2-12). There he observed a potter who was forming a lump of clay into a beautiful vessel. But the clay would not cooperate with the Potter, who at last determined that it must be formed into a lesser and more crude vessel.  At that, the Lord God posed the question to Jeremiah, ‘Who determined what manner of vessel the lump of clay should be?’ The answer is that the clay determined its final value and use, as the clay said, “…we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.” [Jeremiah 18:12]  This answers to Matthew 21:43 and Acts 13:46; 28:25-28.  And answers to Paul’s statements to Jews in Romans Chapters 2 & 3.

This analogy in the Book of Jeremiah answers as well to the Gentiles’ response to God in Romans chapter one… “Because when they knew God (in that God revealed Himself, though in lesser light, to them in Nature and conscience), they glorified him not as God, either were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” [Romans 1:21]  In the last of Romans 1:18-32, the giving up the Gentiles in body and soul to immorality was discovered in their persistence in idolatry. Their sin, Paul declares to be open and blatant. Now Paul turns to the Jews in the 2^nd Chapter of Romans, continuing in the bad news of the Gospel; the Righteousness of God being the Wrath and Judgment of God which rests on all men; (when apart from and/or without Christ) for that which is born of the flesh is flesh. And now he will disclose the form of their (the Jews’) sin. He will contrast the sin of idolatry responsible for the immorality of the Gentiles that manifest in open and blatant licentiousness, with Israel’s sin of idolatry, which manifests in secretive and religious hypocrisy. The intent is to put these Roman Believers both on the same ground…sinners subject to God’s Wrath.

Romans Chapter 2

[Romans 2:1-6] “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”

Verses 1-3 are a continuation of the statement of Romans 1:32… “Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” Therefore any man (with a view here to the Jews who assert their godliness) will be judged for whatever he has considered wrong in others but yet does himself. You can count on this that no matter who you are, Jew or Gentile. God’s Wrath is on those who do such things (that is referring to the list of the previous chapter in Romans 1:24-31).

Verses 4-6 talk about the Jews not understanding or being unaware of the purposeful forbearance of God “…not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” Without this ‘knowing’ there is no correct perception of anything at all. Under the cloud of His wrath, works the undercurrent of the Spirit in goodness with a view to a man’s repentance. 

The Jews are held to a higher standard here when compared to the ignorance of the Gentiles who had/have not the Law or Covenant understanding. The Jews had more light, and instead of being compassionate on those who were in the darkness, they became critical and proud. Here is the birth of the ‘religious’ life, and fanciful, romantic, self-deceit. Imagining that they stand on better and higher ground with God, in that they are the circumcised seed of Abraham, in this they took pride and with it a false sense of security in the Covenants and law. And although they knew His condemnation against idolatry and immorality, they soon presumed that their position and religious works kept them in good stead with God; as God’s proprietors. Persisting in sin, they became hard and impenitent in heart (without shame or regret) as they mistook God’s goodness and forbearance from immediate Judgment for His acceptance of their vanities. Their religious misrepresentations in the end did but serve to store up wrath upon themselves to be realized in the Day of Wrath/Day of Judgment when examined in the Righteousness of God. “Who will render to every man according to his deeds…”  

There is an appointed or set Day of Wrath, which begins when His appointed time of mercy and grace in His forbearance ends. Then His Judgments of Wrath shall immediately follow upon the living of the earth according to their deeds. (No longer any forbearance.) Note that in a very real and personal sense, “the Day of Wrath’ is discovered daily. How is it discovered on a daily basis? It is the “… revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds…”  When does one receive this revelation? Hopefully they will see the revelation in the Day of mercy and grace and faith (without seeing) which is before they pass from here. Because the revelation is immediate at their death when they meet the Judgment of God, which will expose this great folly; where these have stored up wrath against themselves in this Day of reckoning. This revelation of His inescapable right judgment according to our deeds is hourly the experience of all Jews and Gentiles, who will be judged by the light that was cast across their conscience and what their corresponding actions or deeds were. God rightly then establishes our value or unworthiness based upon our doing and not doing; our deeds and our words according to our inward disposition and outward ordering of our lives. (Worthiness is not based on our dead works, which hold no weight before God, but by our works done by the Spirit. Even the smallest things done by the Spirit count, such as a timely drink of water in His name.) We should be the clay that says to the Potter, “Shape me and form me Lord, use me a vessel of honor.”

Verses 7-10 To daily apprehend God is to discover the need to be dissolved by Him, that He might establish us. (By killing us, He grants us life.) To those then who continue patiently in well doing, in the light they have received, with an eye to His righteous judgment, they will receive glory, honor, and immortality (in the hope of the resurrection). But to the contentious who refuse to obey the light they have received, and unrepentantly continue in wrong living and doing, that day will manifest unto them as God’s indignation in wrath, tribulation, and anguish. These possibilities are set in concrete and will be administrated without partiality according to deeds, to every man; to the Jew first, and also the Gentile. 

Verse 11 “For there is no respect of persons with God.” In death all faces are unmasked, all false sense of securities realized. All callings and shunned privileges are past.

Verses 12-13 God knows how to judge men for deeds; good or bad, regardless whether they are mere hearers and breakers under the Law or doers (of either Old or New Testament), or those without the Law (New or Old Testament) who follow or disregard the inward witness of conscience and the outward testimony of God in the material things created. That which He designed before creation to speak of His invisible Power and God-ness to be made evident to all mankind.  “I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.” [Jeremiah 17:10]  And this idea of accountability is repeated to Christians in Revelation 2:23… “And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.” For it is not the mere hearers in either case (Jew or Gentile) that “shall”  (yet in the future) be declared righteous by God, but only the doers.  (Read James 1:21-25) Of course we are not talking about the gift of righteousness which was imputed to us by Christ for eternal life, we’re talking about God justifying us (or punishing us) according to our works in regards to eternal quality of life. 

Verses 14-16 When the uncircumcised Gentiles do unknowingly what the Law requires their consciences, they are a law unto themselves.” Gentiles, who do the law without its awareness, but by conscience, will be justified in that Judgment Day.  (Here, if we be not mistaken, establishes the possibility of the ‘lawless’ or ones without law being brought to judgment at the great white throne, yet pass through it redeemed.  Revelation 20:13… “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.”)

“In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men (not just that which is overt as is the general case of Gentiles but the covert sin of the Jew) by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.” This entire statement is in line with the Gospel of Paul presented on Mars Hill; where he declared God was now no longer going to allow men to live in relative ignorance in limited light, but now is calling all men to account, because He has appointed a Day in which He will judge the earth in true righteousness by and in the light of the Man that He resurrected out from among the dead. (Acts 17:22-31) So Paul was making it clear to the Believers in Rome that the Wrath of God and sure judgment was a part of the Gospel that he preaches, in deliberate contrast to what was being slanderously said by others that he was teaching. That false report being that the Gospel of Jesus Christ lent itself to licentious behavior. (Romans 3:8… “And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.”) Not that this was Paul’s Gospel, his exclusively or that it was given to him first and only; for at the core of Paul’s Gospel, that decree he states here, was that also of Psalms 96:10-13 which said, “Say among the heathen that the Lord reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the people righteously. Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice Before the Lord: for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth: he shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with his truth.” And that of Psalms 98:7-9… “Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together Before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.” So Paul’s gospel isn’t the gospel that God gave Paul to give to the New Covenant believers, it was the gospel that had already been formulated in the Old Testament. 

Verses 17-24 “Behold, you are called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law…”  These and more are the deep and beautiful realities of the blessings of God upon the Jews. And thereby having more light than the Gentiles, you presume to instruct and judge others according to the Law, you make your boast in being a peculiar people indeed and knowing the Law, but you have failed to instruct yourselves, who then knowing the truth of the law, break it secretly yourselves; dishonoring God and condemning yourselves as hypocrites. For this “…the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written.” (See Isaiah 52:5)

Verse 25 These Jews attempt to justify themselves before God’s Righteousness based upon a superior calling. They boast that they “are those circumcised partakers of the Abrahamic Covenant”, but Paul declares circumcision worthless as breakers of the law. And they, although circumcised, are considered as uncircumcised when they knowingly disobey the law.  They address God from the darkness of the fallen nature in idolatry, in a self-righteousness that cannot be justified before His Righteousness (neither Jew nor Gentile). Why? Because it is not our heritage or mark on our bodies that justify us. Nor is it he that approvest the Word of God that is justified; but by our deeds and words that we will be judged. (Romans 2:5-6 and 2nd Corinthians 5:10… “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”) Here it should be very clear that all Christians will stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ and that they will be judged by their works. But many have taken the opium of religious lies that satisfy them unto apathy, and when they awake, they will have to face the reality that there is an accounting before God. 

Verse 26 So if a Jew’s hypocrisy makes him as uncircumcised, shouldn’t a Gentile who keeps the righteousness of the Law be considered as the circumcised?

Verses 25-27 Circumcision barely would profit if the Jew were to keep the law, but he being a breaker of the law, is no different from the unbelieving and uncircumcised Gentile. But on the other hand if an uncircumcised Gentile, ignorant of the law but by sensitive conscience kept it, would he then not be considered circumcised? Being uncircumcised is the natural way of nature, and if he that is without the advantage of the Covenant of Circumcision yet fulfill the law, being thereby found more righteous, the Gentiles righteous behavior then would judge the unrighteousness of the religious Jew, who knows the letter of the law and is circumcised yet callously transgresses the law. 

Verses 28-29 Paul hereby stresses the point of the Jew and Gentile being on the same ground in the bad news of the Gospel, that all are condemned sinners; all fall short of God’s Righteousness. Those who live by faith in God (Jew or Gentile, in the greater or lesser light) shall be found justified when God judges. That man can be justified without the Law is not a New Testament understanding, it was something God had done since the Fall.  Those who, in patient faithfulness, continue throughout their lives in well doing; these are those who show they have the spirit’s work of the inward man, a circumcision of the heart, not something they can boast in. This is in contrast to self-righteous Jews who foolishly represent that they are circumcised law keepers and superior as such. They thereby declare themselves deserving of God’s wages. Not so Paul says; His justified are faithful in well-doing. They do right acts (this is righteousness) in humble awareness and gratitude in praise to the Almighty Creator, outside the law.    

Romans 3:1 It sounds to the Jew as if Paul is making no differentiation between the Jew and the Gentile. Verse 2 The Jew then predictably asks the question, “WHAT advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit circumcision?”  Paul says, “Much in every way, chiefly that unto them were committed the oracles of God.” Is Paul backtracking after having put Jew and Gentile on common ground? No. As it relates to satisfying God’s Righteousness, they both utterly fail. As it relates to appointed calling, the Jew far exceeded the Gentile. (Note: though there were other advantages, he limits them here to having been given the Word. In that they were the First-Born of God {Exodus 4:22} and were thereby appointed the priesthood. Although the First-Born is always appointed and had/has precedence, he was not necessarily in the end preferred nor the recipient of the rights of the First-Born, as was the case historically with Esau and Jacob and presently with Jew and New Man. It should be understood from Scripture that there is such a thing as an advantage appointed but not possessed.

Verses 3-4 The implied question is, ‘What good did that do us?’ Paul goes on to say; though some (or even the majority) of the Jews did not believe in the oracles of God, especially those which have to do with the Messiah Jesus, yet the advantage for the Jew to have the oracles was: First; in that not all Jews rejected the oracles of God and some were saved by them, and then some were the first to promote the truth (to this, the Jewish Believers in Christ in Rome could testify). Secondly; although many Jews were unbelievers (rejecting Jesus), and were thereby unfaithful representatives of the Truth, and even bring slander upon faith in God, that does not make the oracles of truth any the less true or without effect. For God’s oracles shall be found to be true and every man that opposes them a liar. Paul quotes here for example the greatly loved David in the 51^st Psalm; that in the midst of God’s judgment on him, he declares the justness of God’s Wrath and God’s desire for contrite brokenness. But yet in showing grace and mercy to David, who sorrowfully repented, God has been put in a questioning light, as if God’s action belies His own Word, by supposedly treating David contradictory to His own oracles. That is to say, He did not answer David’s sin in accordance to the Law of Moses as supposed, but in the Law of the spirit; in “the just shall live by his faith”. Nevertheless, contrary to their thinking, by the Scriptures’ recording of David’s and other Jewish saints’ sins, God’s oracles thereby declare all men sinners and held captives to sin, and are in need of Salvation from sin. Christendom only focuses on getting salvation from hell, but not at all on the fact that we need salvation from sin. Salvation has to do with sin. This was clearly held forth in the Old Testament Oracles (see verse 10 “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.”). And in the end, all those who critically question and blaspheme God “Who… darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge…” will be found to be liars when He sets forth to do all truth in the Oracles of God, that will then answer to the libels of unbelief.

Verses 5-8 Three contentious questions are posed by the Jews (but can be applied to Gentiles):

1. If our unrighteousness commends God’s Righteousness, isn’t God unrighteous for taking vengeance against us for our unrighteousness? 
2. If the truth and grace of God hath more abounded because of my lie, unto His glory; why then am I judged a sinner having done that service for God? 
3. Why not Let us do evil that good may come?

The absence of any direct answer, other than the obvious being, “How then would God be able to justly judge the unbelieving World?”

Verse 8 Paul quickly destroys their misguided reasoning, and without further comment, other than saying that those who put these things forward are those “…whose damnation is just.”  Paul dismisses the logic.

Verse 9 The Jews asked, ‘Does our perceiving the continuing fidelity of God, even in the faithlessness of man in His oracles, excuse us or give us advantage over the Gentile sinners?’ No, in no wise. As Paul has just shown them from the oracles of God that Jews and Gentiles alike, ARE BOTH HELD CAPTIVE UNDER SIN (by a foreign power).  Giving the Law to the Jews did/does not help them with satisfying the Righteousness of God. On the contrary, it just exposed their unrighteousness more clearly, as it would have the Gentiles had it been first given to them. 

Verse 10-17 None righteous, no not one. Is this Gospel of bad news something new and surprising? No, as we said before, it is Written… “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” (Psalm 14:2-3; 5:9; 140:3; 10:7) The Wrath of God is upon all because there are none righteous, none with understanding, none that seek God…none; neither Jew or Gentile. What does that mean? It means that mankind is held captive to sin, and when man is confronted with God’s Righteousness, no man is found righteous. NO, NOT ONE.  

Verse 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (See Psalm 36:1) This is the diagnosis of the ‘none righteous.’ The sin dominating over fallen mankind, that there is no fear of God (in the world, or in the Church, or in the Jew), is the greatest obstacle of the “brooding” Spirit. The earth is full of this dynamic of no fear, but without fear of God, wisdom has no starting point. Every man, Jew or Gentile, unregenerate or regenerate (thinking about how having no fear of God is promoted in the “once saved always saved” doctrine), has this contemptuous disposition spawned of sin, that which spoils the clay in the Potter’s hands. Jesus trusted no man, and that being because He knew what nature was in all man, that which made him unreliable and distrustful. Humanists say that man is basically good but does evil things….Christ said: all men are evil but can do good things. (Luke 11:13)

Verses 19-20 “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law (Paul here cuts off the Jews’ anticipated response; of ‘these things surely be true and due to Gentile idolaters, but not to us’. They were to acknowledge God’s Righteousness, and then to minister the truth to the Gentiles so…) that every mouth (the Jew first and then the Gentile) may be stopped (cold in justifying themselves, for the Law was/is given to accuse, convict, and silence), and all the world may become guilty (now made fearfully aware also of their guiltiness) before God  (justly due recipients of His Wrath). Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin (in preparation for the Messiah). The Law is to reveal our need for Christ’s atonement.

It is here that the bad news of the Gospel reaches its peak. And the answer to the question, “what advantage to the Jew?” is that he has the Torah law, the revelation and its impact. He has the Biblical outlook, whereas the World stumbles in blindness in the veil of flesh. Through the Torah of Law, attention is directed towards God and His Righteousness; bringing a healthy fear of Him, as He is shown forth as the Righteous King and Judge. For without the Law, there is no fear of God, and the Good News is irrelevant. If there’s no fear of God, what do we need good news from? Christians need this fear instilled in them, for they have lost the fear of God. The popular message proclaimed as a headline on a newspaper is that “JESUS SAVES!” That’s it. Christians need only to await their kingdom. But the good news is relevant to you and me. It’s not that Jesus saved us, but that JESUS IS SAVING US, and that JESUS WILL SAVE US. That’s the relevance of the fear of God. Without the knowledge of the wrath of God, there is no good news/Salvation message. Through the fear of God found in the Law, the Unknown God is first made known to the World. Paul had to put forth the bad news of the gospel of God’s righteousness and how man was lost in sin before he could get to the good news of what Christ did. Beginning in Romans 3:21 – Chapter 4, Paul will turn to the good news of the Gospel. This good news not only being that He saved us from hell, but that we are sinners needing to be saved from sin.