Romans 3:1-20: Objection? Overruled

Scripture Reading

The New King James Version Chapter 3

3 What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? 2 Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. 3 For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? 4 Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written:

“That You may be justified in Your words,

And may overcome when You are judged.”

5 But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? (I speak as a man.) 6 Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world?

7 For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? 8 And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.

9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.

10 As it is written:

“There is none righteous, no, not one;

11 There is none who understands;

There is none who seeks after God.

12 They have all turned aside;

They have together become unprofitable;

There is none who does good, no, not one.”

13 “Their throat is an open tomb;

With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;

“The poison of asps is under their lips”;

14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”

15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;

16 Destruction and misery are in their ways;

17 And the way of peace they have not known.”

18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

The word of the Lord (Thanks be to God)

You may be seated.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.

Objection!

In our last lesson on Romans, we looked at Chapter 2, watching the Apostle Paul pull the veritable rug out from under his Jewish opponents after their likely satisfaction with hearing Paul’s condemnation of the Gentiles we saw described in Chapter 1. Paul not only told them that they were hypocrites (they teach against the very things they themselves do), but that they also had the same disease as the rest of the world and their Jewishness (highlighted in outward circumcision) was worthless to assist them in their standing before God on the Last Day.

So, you can imagine in the passage for today, that his Jewish listeners in Rome might have some objections to what he said in chapter 2. And so Paul magnanimously (or graciously) lets them speak for a moment before their objections are completely overruled by the judgment of God.

But before we consider the details of Romans 3:1-8, it will be helpful for us to lay the scene out a bit more. Up until this point in the letter, Paul’s argument has primarily been the honorableness of the Gospel of God that he preaches. As I will continue to remind you, Paul told us that his Gospel is more honorable, more righteous, because it brings the apocalyptic final judgment into the hear and now; wrath to every unbeliever, salvation to every believer - for the righteousness of God is given us, beginning and ending in faith.

And Now that we have gotten to chapter 3, it has become ever apparent that Paul’s not only revealing the outcome of the Last Day as already starting in the Gospel; he’s also placing all of us in the courtroom with God on the Last Day. This is the big reveal of chapter 3. In giving the Gospel to those who are in Rome, Paul wants them to imagine themselves in the courtroom, standing before God, for the final judgment.

From the Scripture reading, you just heard the language of being judged, that charges had already been brought against both Jews and Greeks, and that the guiltiness of all the world is established by their violation of the Law of God.

In other words, Paul is telling his listeners that they have been brought into God’s divine courtroom and the judge is seated to arbitrate their fate.

On a slightly lighter note, has anyone ever watched those live courtroom shows on cable TV with the people that have no attorneys? It’s usually a mess that unfolds as both sides present their narratives. You can imagine the scene, Paul has just told one defendant in the case that their parent’s payment to the guy with the knife doesn’t count in the courtroom for anything if they are just going around breaking to Law. And what happens anytime one of those judges tells the defendant the truth? They usually start to object or start to complain about how they are being treated or they might accuse the other side of wrongdoing to deflect from what they clearly did wrong in the matter.

What are you saying, Paul? Are you saying the Jews are no better? Wait a minute, aren’t you a Jew? And isn’t what you are saying antisemitic?

You see, it’s worth noting right now that my entire descriptions of what is going on would trigger some our modern day Bible scholars. In our day, not only does New Testament scholarship largely discount the historic reading of Romans by most Christians, especially those in our Reformed tradition… these scholars have significantly been shaped by what we commonly call the Post War Consensus.

It is no secret that the advocates of what has been termed the New Perspective on Paul were doing their dead level best to enhance the “Jewishness” of the Apostle Paul in light of what they regarded to be the failures of German Bible scholarship that dominated the Western world leading up to the second world war. And who started the Reformation? Martin Luther, the German monk. So you can image how scholars today have dismissed Luther and most of the other Reformers in their writings on the Apostle Paul because of this Post War Consensus.

This has ultimately led many of them to not only distance themselves from the clear courtroom language (claiming that Paul’s only trying to defend God from being put on trial), but they have also repudiated the doctrine of imputation, altering or completely rejecting what we have historically called the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (that God reckons us righteous on account of Jesus’ work in our place - we will talk more about that in the coming weeks).

And they didn’t merely reject it, they exchanged it for a more narrow view known as covenantal nomism or covenantal faithfulness (saying that God’s not doing courtroom stuff, but simply being faithful to the covenant, and it has nothing to do with imputation).

In other words, these scholars have largely put the kibosh on anyone still writing to defend Paul’s clear usage of courtroom language in his letter to the Romans because they think it’s antisemitic and that we as Western Christians need to have much higher view of the Judeo in our Christian culture.

Talk about a lightening rod in our current debates! But what do I always say? Don’t get distracted!

Just as the liberal scholars want to call the doctrine of substitutionary atonement ‘cosmic child abuse’ - God the Father punishing God the Son for our sin - you and I should laugh them out of the room just as much as we should laugh anyone else out who wants to call us antisemitic for holding to the Old Perspective on Paul that our Reformed forefathers rightly understood from our passage today.

It’s also worth noting that other, more reasonable scholars have seen the significant Greco-Roman rhetorical structure of Romans 1-5 and have concluded that Paul’s argument - which says his Gospel is more honorable - has very heavy courtroom and judicial overtones all throughout because of the Roman system that everyone was familiar with in the first century.

More to come on that in moment, but first we begin with the objections to Paul’s claims in chapter 2. Look at Romans 3:1-8:

The New King James Version Chapter 3

1 What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? 2 Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. 3 For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief [unfaithfulness] make the faithfulness of God without effect? 4 Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written:

“That You may be justified in Your words,

And may overcome when You are judged.”

5 But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? (I speak as a man.) 6 Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world?

7 [But] if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? 8 And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.

9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.

Quite the list of complaints, is it not? Exactly how long is this lesson today, Pastor? Well, I have good news, the way Paul introduces these objections to us is done in such as way that we need not dwell long on them today. These are real questions, but they are asked by Paul in such a way as to generate a rhetorical silence from the objectors and (if you are anticipating something like Romans chapter 9) because he knows what he’s going to write about later in the letter.

So, in effect, Paul grants the objections to help his audience know that he is aware of them… yet he also wants them not not to get distracted. Paul is not done with giving the Gospel and that’s the most important reason he wrote the letter to begin with.

Structurally, there are essentially 4 questions and answer here in verses 1-8:

verses 1-2 anticipates the objection that Paul’s Gospel is undermining God’s covenant arrangement with Israel

verses 3-4, in concern with 1-2, anticipates the real dilemma of Israel’s unfaithfulness and how that comes to bare on God’s faithfulness, which then leads to...

verses 5-6 anticipating, in a similar but more perverse manner, someone thinking that God’s righteousness being seen more clearly by our unrighteousness might be okay for us, which ultimately leads us to

verses 7-8, that Paul’s Gospel gives everyone license to sin and actually encourages everyone to go about doing evil that good may come.

It’s all absolutely absurd, given that we know all that Paul did and taught.…

But oesn’t this sound eerily similar to everyone who objects to God’s sovereignty and the doctrines of grace (aka, Calvinism)?

Yes, in some since, this is also broadly critical of the Christian Gospel as a whole (whether you’re a Calvinist or not), but you can hear the complaints in concert when you think about what people normally say to any of us when we try to explain the Gospel and God’s sovereignty in salvation and election.

Oh, so you’re saying that the Jews are not God’s chosen people, the church is? That’s replacement theology!

Or how about: if God just chooses whoever he wants to save and they can’t do anything about it, why should they care how they live their life?

Or: That just means you don’t care about the lost because why would you need to evangelize when the elect are going to be saved anyway.

Or: Come on now, doesn’t that mean we are all just robots, and God’s just pulling our strings?

Many of you know the drill.

But notice how Paul concludes the objections. What does he note in verse 8? That many of his opponents are not simply ignorant, they are also slanderous, claiming that he’s saying things he’s clearly not saying. Thus he concludes:

These people will be condemned for their slander and do not forget; the charges of sin are universal. We are all sinners and are all rightly condemned for our sin (verse 9).

And just a word of anticipation; We are intentionally not delving into verses 1-8 today because Paul devotes Chapters 6 thru 11 to answering all these objections in detail - AFTER he is done presenting the Gospel to everyone in chapters 1 thru 5.

So you can simply wait with bated breath as you look forward to those weeks in the months ahead of us.

The Charges

Now back to the courtroom scene. If I can say anything about the objections we just heard, I want to point out that Paul’s acknowledgement of them as being heard and while then immediately setting them aside, teaches us the most important lesson of all:

God is our judge, not the other way around. You can think forward in the letter, for those of you who know Romans chapter 9…

The New King James Version Chapter 9

But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?”

This is God’s courtroom, not the people’s courtroom. In other words, we are in the docks, not God, for it is God who judges and it is we who must give an account. (for those who don’t know the metaphor, the docks are the seat in which the accused sit in the English courtrooms. For you Lewis fans, this reference comes from his famous essay “God in the Dock” where Lewis described how we modern folk have placed God on trial. A great example of this way of thinking is demonstrated in the atheistic work called “Waiting for Godot” (spelled G-o-d-o-t, therefore if you remove the o and t, the title becomes ‘Waiting on God’). In this work, Samuel Beckett makes a mockery of the story of Job and the Christian’s hope in God. And that is exactly the hubris of our own age.

Every film about old stories or historical retellings are either devoid of any mention of God OR they make the divine out to be unimportant or simply unjust. For those of you who have seen or are planning to see Zach Snyder’s cinematic retelling of Homer’s Odyssey, you will unfortunately find the same things. The gods are in the dock throughout the film (except for the female gods, go figure) and, unlike Homer’s original poetry, King Odysseus is not an arrogant and prideful man, proclaiming how many cities he has sacked (he’s just trying to recover from the trauma of war), and his men are not the violent conquerors of Troy, they are kind to everyone they meet on their journey home and just get taken advantage of because the gods are so capricious and mean.

I won’t say any more about the film, but I will be happy to speak with anyone who does see it if you want to talk about the details.

But all this in our own day makes Paul’s point here ever more pressing for us to come to terms with. We, as creatures, have no right to place our Creator on trial. He’s the standard that we must conform to in our lives, and in the end, it will be proclaimed that God was true, while ever man was a liar.

In contrast to the parody of Job’s story found in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, in the real story of Job we find the response of Job that Paul himself it building towards in our passage today. Job 40:3-5 tell us:

The New King James Version Chapter 40

3 Then Job answered [Yahweh] and said:

4 “Behold, I am vile;

What shall I answer You?

I lay my hand over my mouth.

5 Once I have spoken, but I will not answer;

Yes, twice, but I will proceed no further.”

And this is where Paul takes us in verse 9 and following:

The New King James Version Chapter 3

9b For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. 10 As it is written:

“There is none righteous, no, not one;

11 There is none who understands;

There is none who seeks after God.

12 They have all turned aside;

They have together become unprofitable;

There is none who does good, no, not one.”

As you can imagine, given our modern context of Western society attempting to put God on trial… what Paul says here is simply scandalous to many in our own day. You hear that wording of ‘under sin’ don’t you?

Does that sound like you just made a mistake and needed a little nudge in the right direction? It’s like the psychologist I saw on the news one day. This woman had the nerve to address the rash of female abuses on college campuses as only happening because men were not being ‘educated enough’ about how to treat women sexually.

She clearly is not aware of the verses we are reading today!

In like manner, do you happen to know what major religion teaches the same thing? Islam. I kid you not!

Just go ask a European how that’s working out for them with their mass importation of Islamic migrants into the EU and the UK. It’s very ironic!

The Qu’ran is notorious for it’s telling of the Fall of Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve sinned, Allah simply comes to them and teaching them. All he needed to do was teach them of their mistake and guess what, they immediately corrected themselves and went about without further sin.

In other words, there is no teaching in the Qu’ran about original sin or total depravity. Mankind is basically good and merely in need of correction and education. Oh the irony, given what is happening in Europe today with Muslim gangs and European women no longer being able to walk on the streets after dark.

Exhibit A, B, and C

And to connect this together... what I’ve just given you in our own modern context, is the equivalent to what Paul gives us next in the Scriptural context. Do you doubt that mankind is totally depraved and in bondage to sin? Let me offer you some exhibits from the Psalms and the Prophets, look now at verses 13-18:

The New King James Version Chapter 3

13 “Their throat is an open tomb;

With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;

“The poison of asps (serpents) is under their lips”;

14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”

15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;

16 Destruction and misery are in their ways;

17 And the way of peace they have not known.”

18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

You might say that verses 10-12 tell us the heart of mankind under sin’s power, while verses 13-14 and 15-17 show us the words and the actions that come from the heart when it is dominated by sin. And ending with verse 18 as the capstone of total depravity: everyone does what is right in his own eyes (as they did before the great flood and at the end of the period of judges in Israel)… There is no fear of God before them.

And what does our society today say? Not to follow God’s commands, but to follow what? Your heart…

Well, whether it is Islam or modern, therapeutic deism here in America, more and more people are understanding the question: “How’s that working out for you?”

As a brief aside, this passage clearly establishes the doctrine of total depravity. For any of you unfamiliar, in the Reformed Tradition, we affirm the doctrine of Total Depravity; namely that due to Adam’s original sin, all of his descendants (you and I) are corrupted in all our faculties and out of that corruption, we are indisposed, disabled, and in opposition to the good that we should do, and inclined to the evil that we should not do.

We recently had a good discussion on this in our Books and Bourbon meeting on the topic of common grace in the writings of Abraham Kuyper, who like many other Calvinistic preachers and theologians have made a note of distinction between the terms total depravity and utter depravity. Though there are disagreements, the general consensus is that total depravity, rightly understood in Scripture, does not mean that we are as bad as we could be all the time (that’s what we can call utter depravity). But rather, we are inclined to sin in all our faculties, while God’s common graciousness to all the world with his sovereign hand of restraint keeps us from being as bad as we could be.

If that makes sense, what I want you to take note of before we conclude this passage, is that Paul very clearly teaches us that God’s hand of restraint can and does get removed sometimes. As we saw in chapter 1, 18-32, when God hands you over, you’ve got much worse things to worry about as our total depravity gives way to utter depravity.

Overruled

Okay, now let’s return to our final point in the passage today. I believe that Paul’s wisdom was excellent in his inspired decision to not get bogged down in the objections of his opponents. Because in the end, no one’s feelings, no one’s what-about-isms (that’s the people who can’t accept general norms in argumentations and say, ‘but what about such and such rare occasion?’ every time you try to tell them about a general problem with something in the world), and no one’s claim of their good outweighing their bad will make one bit of difference on the Last Day… Because in the end those things will not justify you before a holy God. In the end everyone who objects will be overruled by the Judge on the Last Day.

And this is where Paul concludes his case for man’s condition, look now at verses 19-20 again:

The New King James Version Chapter 3

19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law [comes] the knowledge of sin.

Just as we heard Job tell us about covering his mouth, commentators have noted that this physical imagery was a gesture in ancient courts. When a defendant placed his hand over his mouth, he had nothing left to say because of the weight of evidence levied against him. All he had left to do was hang his head in shame and hope for mercy.

What Paul describes here is how it will be in the final judgment. In the end, none of the complaints or the justifications of man will make a difference. Paul has shown us all that every worldly excuse will be to no avail.

If someone says, “I didn’t know any better”, they will be reminded of the natural law and the created order, the Law written on their hearts, which they suppressed in unrighteousness.

If someone says, “The Devil made me do it”, they will be reminded of what happens when you listen to the devil and break God’s commandment forbidding the very thing you did.

If someone says, “I was just doing what everyone else was doing and they told me to follow my heart”, then the secrets of their heart will be laid bare and everyone watching will know just how sinful their actions really were. As Paul already said, on that day “God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.”

But thankfully, this is a Gospel presentation. And it wouldn’t be very good news if Paul just stopped here. Every mouth has been stopped. Every excuse has been silenced. Every objection has been overruled. The whole world stands guilty before God with nothing left to say. And under the inspiration of the Spirit, the Apostle Paul authors the next two words in verse 21 that change everything… and we will hear those two words, two weeks from today.

Application

Some application for us now in light of these things:

I find it very helpful to notice that our knowledge and understanding about the Law of God come to us from Paul through the Psalms and the Prophets in his catena (or chain) of evidence in verses 10 thru 18. As others have said before, the Psalms and the wisdom literature of the Old Testament are the way we come to understand the Law of God in our lives day in and day out. And then the Prophets give us a glimpse of the day of judgment as they administer the Law with its blessings and curses for both Israel and the other nations of the World. In other words, you need the whole Old Testament to come to a right understanding of the Law of God and how it is applied in all of life. So I commend them to your regular reading. Study them as you seek to better follow God in all areas of your life. As the men have been studying Proverbs this Summer, I commend both the Psalms and the Proverbs to you for your regular devotion at home.

Which leads me to my second observation. What we find in this passage is what Reformed theologians have identified as one of three uses of the Law. The three uses are generally known as the civil use, the theological use, and the normative use of the Law (which is what I just suggested in my first point of application, go to the Psalms and Proverbs especially). But in this passage, we see specifically the theological use - ‘for by the Law comes the knowledge of sin.’ Fascinatingly, among Christians this is the least controversial use of the Law because everyone who believes the Gospel rightly can understand what Paul means here and why he is using it to explain the Gospel. As we have said before, if you don’t know you are a sinner, how will you know that you need a Savior? We should all do well to remember this in the discipline of our children and in the sharing of the Gospel with our neighbors and anyone else God places in our lives. The Holy Spirit uses the Law of God to bring conviction of sin and we must not neglect that function.

Finally, going back to our courtroom setting, this is the perfect opportunity to remind all of us that we have no hope if any of us secretly plan to stand before God by ourselves on the final judgment, when all our secrets will be made known. As we have said previously, since God has appointed the man, Jesus Christ, to judge the world on that final day, are any of you going to survive the judgment if you don’t have him on your side? As Johnny Cash beautifully wrote and recorded near the end of his life, “There's a man going around taking names, And he decides who to free and who to blame, Everybody won't be treated all the same… The hairs on your arm will stand up, At the terror in each sip and in each sup, Will you partake of that last offered cup? Or disappear into the potter's ground, When the man comes around?”

As the Apostle Paul said about God to the courtroom objectors in verse 4:

The New King James Version Chapter 3

As it is written:

“That You may be justified in Your words,

And may overcome when You are judged.”

When you stand before the Lord on the Last Day, you will be justified by his words, and you will overcome when you are judged, because the judge will be on your side. Do not forget this and make sure that your loyal faith and friendship with Jesus are your only true hope you have in your heart for being vindicated on that Last Day.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Pray with me.