ROMANS: No One

Based on a proper understanding of the context of Romans, the opening chapters of the book make much more sense. Looking at this complex situation in Rome, Paul addresses a church with three dominant groups (which are somewhat different than the three groups of Galatia; again, this is why context for each letter is so important). The church in Rome is going to have new Gentile converts who are just coming out of their pagan ways. They will also have Gentiles who have been following this gospel for quite some time and have been transformed in their walk. Then there will be the Jews who once formed the core of this believing community.

Paul addresses all three groups in his opening three chapters. While I considered addressing these three chapters in depth, I decided against it, thinking it was well beyond the scope of this material. The discussion is full of hotly debated details and theories surrounding the nuances of what Paul is saying. Is he building a false argument against the worldviews he’s speaking to — almost as a satirical, faux dialogue? Is he speaking more literally and making an argument just as it reads? These questions are only some of those represented in newer scholarship surrounding the Pauline letters.

But this doesn’t change the bulk of Paul’s arguments in the first few chapters, nor his conclusions. Paul’s point is that all of humanity deals with the same brokenness. Whether the group is submitted to the Law or not, the same brokenness is present in all of us. We all try to live by a law of some kind, and no matter which law we submit to, we always fall short. This insecurity is the very condition to which the gospel attempts to speak.

First, Paul speaks to those corrupt pagans who have given themselves over to a Hellenistic worldview. It might be useful to review Hellenistic culture and the driving premises that lie behind their worldview. About them, Paul says this:

So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

That’s almost an exact description of the culture of Hellenism. Paul says they try to live by their own new ‘law’ that man is the measure of all things. This, however doesn’t work and Paul says their own laws are dysfunctional:

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

However, some of those Gentiles who have been rescued from such thinking might start to see themselves as quite spiritually evolved. Paul quickly turns his attention to those who are willing and able to see the fault in such kinds of thinking:

Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

Paul says that just because they are “better than those other people” doesn’t mean they don’t have their own problems. The fact that they see these things means they now live according to their own law.

For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

If they are willing to recognize a “better way,” that way now becomes their new law. Only those who obey this new ‘law’ would be justified by it. So if the person ever transgresses their own understanding (which we all do) then we can’t claim to be in much better of a situation than the pagans. They still have this haunting insecurity, a “conscience that bears witness” to the fact that they fall short of their own self-imposed standard.

But there is a third group which might be sitting there thinking they are far above this pitiful Gentile crew — the Jewish believers. But this same line of thinking applies to them under “the Law,” as in the one given by God:

But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

In the end, all of humanity finds themselves in the same predicament. They all fall short of whatever law (or Law) they are trying to live up to. If they are trying to find their justification in any system, any standard, any law, they are doomed to a conscience that testifies against them.

So our cleansed conscience, our salvation, our redemption must come from some place other than our ability to live up to a standard. It must be bigger than getting the standard right, finding the right law (or Law), or adjusting to the right moral code.