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As if on cue, the Mockingbird blog is beginning a series called “Why Then the Law?”  It looks like it could be interesting.

Most of us, if not all, have had religious tradition handed down to us and have been taught false, religiously minded ideas about the law in teaching that actually encourages us to embrace the law as a useful guide to Christian living. What could be farther from the truth? ~ Mick Mooney, God’s Law Apart From Grace, p. 35

One of the weird things about law is that just the fact of adhering to a certain set of standards—whether you can actually keep them yourself or not—makes you more apt to feel superior to those who don’t acknowledge your particular code. Look around at our culture, and you can see that it’s true. The ultra-conservative Christians act as if they’re superior to the general less-moral population, and the liberals act as if they’re the ones higher on the evolutionary scale. Vegans believe they are superior to meat-eaters, and so on.  You don’t even have to be all that extreme; if you believe in a certain set of moral principles, however “normal” they may be, you will tend to believe that you’re superior, even if you fail to keep your own moral code.

The 1st Century Christians were no different. What Paul tries to point out in the first few chapters of Romans is that 1) God’s law is apparent to everyone; 2) You can’t become righteous by keeping the law anyway; and 3) everyone fails to keep God’s law, so we’re all toast regardless of whether we try to follow laws or not. What we have is a level playing field, Jews, Gentiles, whatever.  Righteousness is not a matter of keeping the law—any law—but comes as a gift of God’s grace.

So, whenever someone uses a law—any law—to judge someone else, they first must subordinate themselves to God’s law, for which they will fail, rendering themselves ineligible to judge anyone else. So, for example, using Romans 1 to judge gays doesn’t work. All you have to do is turn to Chapter 2, verse 1, and see that any attempt to judge anyone else means you’re actually engaging in self-condemnation.

Romans 2 is deadly. It’s clear we are all condemned. It doesn’t even help if we were to be circumcised as a Jew, or not; for the circumcision that matters is not physical but spiritual.

Now by the end of Chapter 2, the Jewish Christians must have been feeling pretty bad, for Paul seems to be telling them that their Jewishness is essentially worthless. Moving into Chapter 3, Paul says that being a Jew is important because it shows the faithfulness of God; however, that doesn’t make them any better off (v 9), because as I said, we’re all toast under the Law, whether it’s written or natural.

The Good Stuff

Now Paul gets to the good stuff when he gets down to verse 21:

    But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
(Romans 3:21-25 ESV)

This is a pretty meaty section, and unfortunately, verse 23 is often taken out of context, actually separating the phrase “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” from “and are justified by his grace as a gift.”  To me, to separate these 2 phrases is unconscionable. But of course, it’s hard to get some “sinner” to feel really bad about his lot in life when he’s also told that his justification—in other words, his state of being declared righteous—has been given to him as a gift.

Why withhold the Good News? For one reason, it’s really hard to control someone once you tell them that their righteousness is solely resulting from the work of Jesus, not by their own work, or by obedience to any law or religious system.  And as Paul had written to the Galatians, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” This is scary stuff to someone who feels a need to control you. As Mick Jagger sang, “I’m free to do what I want, any old time.” (He of course was not entirely correct, as the so-called “freedom to sin” is not freedom at all.)

In case there’s any doubt, in verse 28 Paul lays it out clearly: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”

But in the closing verses of Chapter 3, it starts to get a bit confusing as Paul also says that we don’t overthrow the law by faith, but uphold it.  Paul is not hinting that we can gain anything by keeping the law; to the contrary, justification by faith affirms the fact that we cannot obtain righteousness through keeping the Law.  For it is the Law that condemns us, that declares our unrighteousness and our need for grace. As Paul explains later, in Chapter 5, the Law was actually given so that our sin would increase! This only makes sense, as the more laws we have, the more we find that we are breaking. The Law is important, but only for the purposes for which it was given; and it wasn’t given to make us righteous.

For that, we need grace.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17 ESV)

The Great Misunderstanding

I expect that Romans Chapter 1 is the most misunderstood chapter in the Bible.  I know that I misunderstood it for many years. As I’ve mentioned before, one of the problems is that we tend to read chapter by chapter, and without the clues in chapter 2, it’s easy to jump to exactly the wrong conclusions, even as to the most quoted verse in Romans, 1:16.

While by itself, Romans 1:16 seems to be a great verse to encourage the timid among us to be a strong “witness” for Christ to the world. And while that application is not unfair, this was not Paul’s point. Paul was actually writing in the context of preaching the gospel to the church. Today, as in the 1st Century, humans like to imagine themselves capable of success in their spiritual lives, and on the other side of the coin, they like to be able to judge and condemn others who don’t meet the imagined Christian criteria.

The Gospel literally blows that all to hell.

So when Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel,” he is telling the Romans that he takes no pride in pseudo-spiritual achievements, instead proclaiming a message that brings power for salvation, and a righteousness “of God,” which is received by faith, not by meeting any religious criteria. And through his quote, “The righteous shall live by faith,” he rather brilliantly lays the foundation for what is to come.

The Law Fails as a Viable Criterion

The Roman church was made up of Christians of both Jewish and Gentile descent. The Jews obviously felt somewhat superior as they had an obvious claim to a cultural and spiritual heritage that the Gentiles couldn’t claim. A large part of this was due to the fact that the Jews were God’s Chosen People, and the Law of Moses had been given to them. They had been law-keepers for generations. The Gentiles were, in the eyes of the Jewish believers, lawless.

Before I go any further, I’d like to recommend a great little book on the first 3 chapters of Romans, God’s Grace Apart From Law by Mick Mooney. I read it not too long ago, and there’s a good change that I’ll steal one or more ideas from him without realizing it…

Not unlike many Christians today, many Jews of the 1st Century believed that one could gain righteousness by keeping the law. And, since the Gentile Christians had no law, they had a lot of righteousness to catch up on.  So, Paul takes them on a logical journey, first explaining—and brilliantly so—the concept that we call Natural Theology. Through nature, God’s law is revealed, and the heathens show they understand it when they adopt any sort of moral code.

    For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:18-20 ESV)

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… (Romans 2:14-15 ESV)

3 Words: Context, Context, Context

Chapter 1 (again, brilliantly) shows how the unrighteous suppressed the truth, and how that led from sinfulness to sinfulness, a seeming condemnation of Gentile lawlessness. However, as  Mooney writes on page 60,

It is of the utmost importance for us to understand the purpose Paul had in writing about ‘unrighteousness’ in the opening chapter of his letter, how it has been used to cause so much damage by religiously minded Christians who have taken this part of Paul’s letter and used it out of context to condemn people in the world. … That was never Paul’s intention for writing it; in fact, Paul’s intention was the complete opposite!

While Romans 1, especially verses 26 and 27, seems perfect for using to call down judgment on a few unpopular sins, we soon see as we turn the page to Chapter 2 that this is not what Paul had in mind at all.  As Mooney continues,

Paul’s true intention was to make clear to the members of the church that they had no right to judge anyone. Rather than being judgmental, their focus should have been on living their lives out of a position of grace.

For Paul says in verse 1 of Chapter 2, “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.”

The Basis for Fellowship

You may have heard the rather lame definition of fellowship as “fellows in the same ship.”  Well, what Paul is saying here is that both Jews and Gentiles are in the same boat. Both received God’s laws, either through the formal Torah, or the more informal natural law. And, both Jews and Gentiles failed by falling into the same sins.  Therefore, both Jew and Gentile are equal on both counts; there is no basis for pride anywhere to be found, and neither is there any basis for righteousness, based on human achievement.  Neither is in a position to judge or claim superiority; in other words, “All have sinned and fallen short…”

It seems that the church today has come no further than the 1st Century church. Christians who have no natural ties to Judaism have stolen the Old Testament Law (as it was never given to Gentiles, Gentiles have no rights to it) and use it both to claim a works-oriented righteousness, and as a tool to condemn others.

However, Christians have no right to do so, regardless of their heritage. The only thing the Law can do for you is to show you your own sin. So, as they say, good luck with that.

As Paul will continue to demonstrate, any news predicated on meeting any kind of criteria is bad news.  But wait! There’s more…