The Romance of Romans--Five

Chapter 3
Now I know that you're tempted to think: "If what he's saying is true, then there has been no meaning to all it has cost the Jews for being God's 'chosen people'. What's the advantage of being a Jew in the first place?" Actually, there are many privileges- especially that God gave them the stewardship over his message to humanity through the prophetic scriptures. So if some Jews have been unfaithful to their divine calling, does this negate the faithfulness of God himself? No way! God is, and will always be, true even if all people were to contradict him. The scripture says of him, "You are always right in all that you say and you always prove your critics wrong."
I will continue to anticipate arguments based on mere human reasoning. "If our being wrong magnifies the fact that God is right, he shouldn't have any complaints and he's unjust for judging us for our wrongs." Wrong again! God is bound by his nature to approve all that is right and to condemn all that is wrong. You might respond, "If God's truth is seen more clearly by its contrast to my falsehood and he receives more honor because of it, how can he be just if he still condemns me for being sinful?" Some have taken this reasoning to such an extreme that they recommend (and have actually claimed that we have taught!), "Let's do more and more evil, so that greater good may result." This kind of thinking is truly damnable and not even worth a rebuttal!
So are we Jews superior to the Gentiles? Again I say, "No way!" I have just made it clear that Jews and Gentiles are both "in the same boat"--in bondage to sin and in need of salvation. The scripture confirms this in the Psalms, "No one is righteous in himself, absolutely no one. No one possesses intrinsic spiritual understanding or intrinsic desire and power to seek after God. Everyone has gone his own way, and embraced vanity. No one is innately good; absolutely no one! Death and decay are within them; their words are manipulative and deceitful, like the poisonous venom of serpents. Their speech is full of cursing and bitterness. They are 'quick to the kill'. They leave destruction and misery in their wake and they are ignorant about healthy relationships. Nothing is sacred to them and they don't know the proper fear of God."
Now this wasn't just written about all those Gentile folks out there. It was specifically written about Jews, for it was written in the Jewish scriptures! So every person on the earth, Jew or Gentile, needs to just shut their mouths and acknowledge their guilt before God. Therefore, no one is made righteous in God's sight on the basis of trying to obey the Mosaic law, for it was primarily given to expose sin.

Comments:

As he anticipates sharing at length about the revelation of God's amazing plan of righteousness through faith in Jesus, Paul wants to reinforce that all people--Jews, like himself, and all other nations or people groups--are in the same predicament and, therefore, the same miraculous remedy applies to all. God doesn't play favorites when it comes to ethnicity. If He gives more opportunities to one person or group, then He will also hold them to a higher standard of accountability--which evens things out when the evaluations are meted out.

One other thought that comes to mind for me as I reread this, is that "self-righteousness" is not only the gross attitude that so many religiously committed people convey out of the context of the "advancements" that they have made in their systems of faith, but it is also our attempts to make ourselves into people who are "fit for God" by our own efforts apart from the grace and power of God's Spirit granted to us in Christ. The gospel requires us to confront this tendency in the religious side of our human nature and see it for the prideful thing that it is. Self-improvement, self-effort, self-concsiousness, self-importance, self-promotion and the like, are not the way of salvation in God's economy of things and we must come to a place to where we deeply and gladly agree with this from our hearts and then freely receive and wholly rely upon what He has done for us in Jesus. Then, and only then, will we find our true self--the self that Jesus came to save.