Romans 2: The Good News of God's Justice

Let’s orient ourselves to this part of Romans. From 1:18-3:20 Paul develops the theme of righteousness and through that theme demonstrates that all people have sinned and have disqualified themselves from God’s favor. Admitting our failure doesn’t come easy and there are various ways around it so Paul takes a few different tacks. First, he addresses the godless in 1:18-1:32 and shows them how what they consider natural and healthy is quite unnatural because sin has distorted their own understanding far from God’s intent for their life. In this chapter, he will address the “Gentile moralist” and the “righteous Jew.”

Paul’s call to each party is this: If you believe that you are accepted before God based upon your ability to fulfill the requirements of the law (whatever law that might be), then you better obey the entire thing. Not only should you obey the entire thing without any flaw, but you must do so in such a way that you obey the Spirit of that law. So obey everything fully, without any flaw, joyfully. This is the standard for righteousness and perfection. If God bent on this, where could the line be drawn? Righteousness would no longer be righteous and perfection would be reduced to “pretty good.”

Grace does not shrink the standard. It upholds the standard. Religion is a temptation to all who would seek God. Religion is wrong in this way because it reduces Godliness to external things that people can look at in order to make a judgment and find approval. What happens is that we lose our ability to relate to God for his approval and shrink our life to a bunch of duties, exercises, and meetings that make us feel like we are related right to God. Jumping through hoops like quiet times and church attendance to prove ourselves is an insult to the one who knows our thoughts, our passions and our motives. In our religiosity we become the same as the ungodly. Both of us are avoiding God as Savior; the ungodly in their unrighteous deeds and we in our righteous deeds. When we do this, we reveal our shrunken view of a holy, righteous and perfect God.

The good news that this passage alludes to is that God’s kindness leads us to something called repentance. Understanding God’s justice is good news; First, because it releases us from having to avenge. Secondly, it is good news because we can know that there is a standard for goodness, morality and purity. Upon these things, beauty, hope and love are built. Third, it breaks us from the false hope of finding our own righteousness through our deeds. It flings us to our only hope—an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Posted by Marc