Pages

Sunday 4 September 2022

Romans 3:1-4 - Let God be true

3:1,2

Paul has shown that the Jews are just as bad as the Gentiles, and are in exactly the same boat. He now deals with supposed questions relating to this. The first one is “is there any advantage in being a Jew?” And, related to it, is there any value in circumcision? The answer to both of these is “much in every way”. First of all, the Jews were “entrusted with the oracles of God”. The problem was that the Jews saw this as privilege, rather than responsibility. This is a fault that we can make with the gospel. 


3:3,4

Does it mean that God has failed? The Old Testament is stuffed full of promises concerning Israel. Are these now null and void? Does it mean that God was lying, or that His promises were of no value? Paul emphatically denies this. Again, we come to a fundamental problem that the Jews had, and one that is common to all humanity. They thought the problem lay with God. Humanity is very keen to blame God. But it was not God who failed, but the Jews, and humanity in general. God would be shown to be righteous in His judgements. Indeed, when Ezekiel was in exile God showed him just what was going on in Jerusalem, and why His judgement upon them was entirely just.


No comments:

Post a Comment