Romans: Rebuke to the Christian Jews

"Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; if you know His will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth – you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. If those who are not circumcised keep the law's requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker. A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise is not from me, but from God." (Romans 2:17-29)

As he did with the Christian Gentiles, Paul is very severe to the Christian Jews in the church at Rome in reminding them of their past error: "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."

Obviously, Paul is determined that both sets of Christians, the Gentiles and the Jews, should remember from whence they came, the sin from which they have all been delivered. In order to do that, sometimes you have to recall the sin as well.

Regarding these Christian Jews, there seems to have been an air of superiority being demonstrated by them toward the Gentiles. Truly, after centuries of the Jews being told not to associate with the Gentiles, being told to become separate from anything having to do with the Gentiles, and being punished severely when they associated to closely with the Gentiles, learning how to associate without superiority would be a difficult thing for the flesh. It could only be accomplished as they walked in the Spirit, which Paul will go on to show them in his writing of this letter to the church at Rome.

But just as Paul demonstrated to the Christian Gentiles the importance of what is in one's heart, here also, he demonstrates for the Christian Jews that it is not the exterior that recommends you as a Jew, or as a Christian at all. It is all in the interior: it is all about obedience.

So that the inward circumcision of the heart of obedient Gentile Christians is actually far superior to the physical circumcision of their Christian Jewish brothers, if those brothers are sinning against the Lord by their superior attitudes and exclusionary practices. In fact, Paul says: "the one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you, who even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker."

Still today it is difficult for us Christians to keep from judging by exterior things: how often someone shows up at bible study, and church meetings, and at church on Sunday; or how many or few "hats" they wear in terms of Christian "service." Where the law has been abolished, we want to create new laws (legalism), rather than remain in the freedom by which Christ has set us ALL free who have believed in Him.

In all of these things, we want to compare others to ourselves, and as we find them falling behind in the number of things they are doing or are involved in, we raise ourselves up a notch or two in our own estimation. Such judgment is so faulty, for we are measuring by externals rather than internals.

We cannot see how much time a person spends in prayer at home, or in study of the Word, or in ministering to others outside of our church circle, yet, if they are not "conforming" to our measurement standards within the church, we judge them as lacking spirituality, while we judge ourselves to be much higher on the spiritual ladder. In fact, the opposite is true as long as we continue to judge externals while also forgetting from whence we came.

Sin is an equalizer. None of us is superior in any way to another. We have all sinned. We will still sin from time to time as we grow; there should not be deliberate sins, but there will be sins of ignorance as we learn to walk in the light which we each have been given, which varies from one to another.

But if we forget what the Lord has delivered us from, it becomes easy to judge one another, seeing ourselves as whitewashed, but others as still spotty with dirt. When the reality is that apart from Jesus Christ ALL our own righteousness is comparable only to nasty menstrual rags before a holy God:

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." (Isaiah 64:6)

I hope the church at Rome heeded Paul's words, repented of their superiority – on both sides of the ethnic divide – and joined together in brotherly love; for these dividing issues would soon be seen to be nothing in light of the terrible persecution and sufferings that they would share equally in under the horrific reign of the Roman Emperor known as Nero.