Romans 16.18-The Judaizers Do Not Serve Christ But Their Own Stomach And Deceive The Naive By Their Smooth Talk And Flattery
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Thursday August 19, 2010
Romans: Romans 16:18-The Judaizers Do Not Serve Christ But Their Own Stomach And Deceive The Naive By Their Smooth Talk And Flattery
Lesson # 548
Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 16:17.
In Romans 16:17, Paul warns the Roman believers to watch out for those who cause divisions and temptations to sin and apostasy contrary to the doctrine they’ve been taught and that they were to avoid them.
This group of individuals were the Judaizers and their legalistic teaching is what caused divisions in churches and believers to sin and apostatize.
This evening we will note Romans 16:18 and in this passage, Paul presents two reasons why the Romans were to watch out for the Judaizers and their legalistic teaching and avoid them.
Romans 16:17, “Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. 18 For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.”
Romans 16:18 presents two reasons for the previous warning and command in Romans 16:17.
“Such men” refers to those individuals Paul warns about in Romans 16:17 that cause divisions and temptations contrary to the teaching the Romans received from their pastor-teachers.
Though Paul does not explicitly identify these individuals, his teaching in Romans chapters 2-4 does strongly suggest that he is referring to the Judaizers since these chapters are designed specifically to refute their legalistic teaching.
Further suggesting that Paul is referring to that which is caused by the Judaizers’ teaching is that Paul’s epistles and the book of Acts reveal that the Judaizers’ caused divisions in the churches that Paul established from Jerusalem to Illyricum.
In particular, their teaching caused divisions in Galatia, which Paul addressed in the Galatian epistle.
Lastly, in Romans 16:18, Paul uses the noun koilia, “appetites” to describe these individuals who cause divisions, which is the same word he uses in Philippians 3:19 to describe the Judaizers.
“Are not slaves” is composed of the third person plural present active indicative form of the verb douleuo (δουλεύω) (thoo-lev-owe), “are slaves” and the emphatic negative adverb ou (οὔ)) (oo), “not.”
The verb douleuo refers to the status or the condition of being servants of the Lord Christ.
The verb’s meaning is emphatically negated by the emphatic negative adverb ou, which emphatically negates the idea that the Judaizers possessed the status or condition of being a servant of the Lord Christ because they caused divisions in the body of Christ and temptations for members to sin and enter into apostasy.
“Of their own appetites” is composed of the articular dative feminine singular form of the noun koilia (κοιλία) (kee-lee-ah), “of…appetites” and the genitive third person masculine plural form of the reflexive pronoun heautou (ἑαυτοῦ) (owf-too), “their own.”
The noun koilia means “stomach” and contains the figure of “synecdoche” of the part where the stomach of the Judaizers is put for their strict adherence to the dietary restrictions of the Mosaic Law.
Paul is being sarcastic with his use of this word.
He is referring here to the Judaizers’ fanatical observance of the dietary laws of the Mosaic Law, which is how he uses it in Philippians 3:19 in the same manner.
Philippians 3:17-19, “Brothers, all of you continue being joint-imitators of me and continue observing carefully those who are living in this manner just as all of you continue having us as an example because many, about whom I often told all of you, but I now say even weeping, are living as the enemies of the cross of the Christ whose destiny is certain destruction, whose god is the stomach, and whose glory will certainly result in their shame, those who are continually occupied with earthly matters.”
Many expositors identify these individuals in Philippians 3:18-19 and Romans 16:17-18 as antinomianists because of the presence of the word koilia in both passages, but the antinomianists were not causing divisions by being immoral degenerates or being self-indulgent.
Rather, they were causing divisions in the church by attempting to impose the ritual of circumcision upon the Gentile believers (Acts 15; Gal. 5) and by imposing the observance of laws of food that were a part of the oral traditions of the Rabbis and were not a part of Scripture (Col. 2:16-17).
If you recall, in Romans 14, Paul addressed the proper attitude to the dietary restrictions of the Mosaic Law, which the Judaizers insisted upon.
So Paul is saying that the Judaizers serve the dietary laws of the Mosaic Law rather than Christ since they do not adhere to the Lord’s teaching concerning these dietary laws (See Matthew 15:10-20; Mark 7:14-19; Acts 10:1-15).
Romans 16:18, “For such men are slaves, not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites; and by their smooth and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.”
“By their smooth and flattering speech” indicates that smooth speech and flattery were the means by which the Judaizers deceive immature believers.
“The hearts of the unsuspecting” is composed of the articular accusative feminine plural form of the noun kardia (καρδία) (car-thee-ah), “the hearts” and the articular genitive masculine plural form of the adjective akakos (ἄκακος) (ah-ka-koce), “of the unsuspecting.”
The noun kardia means “hearts” of believers who are naïve and denotes that aspect of the soul, which circulates thought or mental activity and is where one’s frame of reference and memory center resides.
It is also the place where one’s vocabulary and the classification of thoughts reside as well as the conscience where the norms and standards reside.
A person’s entire mental attitude circulates in the kardia as well as the subconscious where various categories of things that shock or impress from adversity, sin, failure or disappointment are located.
Also, it contains the volition, which enables a person to make decisions.
The adjective akakos pertains to being unsuspecting or naïve with regard to possible deception (Louw and Nida, 31.34).
It obviously refers to an immature believer because a mature believer has his senses trained by the word of God to discern good and evil (see Hebrews 5:14).
The word refers to believers who are deficient in godly wisdom because they are either ignorant of the Word of God or they are not fully educated in it and therefore trained to discern false teaching from accurate teaching.
To summarize, in Romans 16:18, the apostle Paul presents two reasons why the Romans were to watch out for the Judaizers and their legalistic teaching and avoid them.
The first is that they do not serve Christ but their own stomach, which contains the figure of “synecdoche” of the part where the stomach of the Judaizers is put for their teaching of strict adherence to the dietary restrictions of the Mosaic Law.
The second reason why the Romans were to watch out for the legalistic teaching of the Judaizers and avoid them is that they deceived the spiritually naïve or immature by their smooth talk and flattery.