Reading for Friday, 2nd Week of Lent

Romans 2:25-3:18

In today’s reading, Paul takes on the central objection that faithful Jewish Christians had to Paul’s message of inclusion for Gentiles: “why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying.” Paul came to non-Jews with the good news that Jesus, by offering himself as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, had made all the Jewish rituals of sacrifice for sin unnecessary. Thus had God taken an act of evil, the murder of his Son, and transformed it into an act of supreme grace. Because of the cross, non-Jews were free from the ritual demands of the Jewish law – sacrifices, abstinence from certain foods, circumcision.

For Jewish Christians, the Law that God gave to Moses included the codes of moral behavior as well as ritual regulations. If Gentiles were free from the rituals of the law, were they not also free from the moral law as well? If God brought good out of evil in the Crucifixion, then why not “do evil that good may come?” Paul never said that. But some of his followers had, in fact, come to that exact conclusion (See 1 Cor. 5).

Paul tries to make it clear to the Romans that, whatever his reputation may be, he does not dismiss the Jewish Law. “What is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom 3:1-2). The Law was indeed given by God to Moses. And as Paul has already written, that Law was plain for non-Jews to see in the world that God made and governs. Paul has also made clear that they are responsible for ignoring the evidence of God’s law in the world around them. And the Jews are even worse off for knowing God’s law straight from the source, and going on sinning anyway.

The Law, then is the source for God’s indictment of the whole human race, Jew and non-Jew: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God” (Rom 3:10-11). So, what badges do we wear as signs of our righteousness? Political party, right doctrine, stock portfolio? I think there are many ways in which we try to justify ourselves and the compromises we make with unrighteousness. I think that Paul would be as dismissive of our ways of dividing ourselves as he was of how Jews and Gentiles divided themselves from each other.