Lent 2021 - 4th Sunday of Lent-March 14th
In chapter 1, Paul enumerates God’s spiritual blessings for us and then prays that we might be able to comprehend them. One of those spiritual blessings was forgiveness of sins and redemption by Christ. In chapter 2, Paul explains that great truth more specifically: we were spiritually dead, separated and alienated from God, because of our transgressions and sins. Later in the chapter, he talks about the consequences of this spiritual death, but for now he just establishes it as fact.
Paul says finally that Jews, like the rest of mankind (hoi loipoi, as many of his own people disparagingly called the Gentiles) were by nature children of wrath. Many have taken this to mean that we were born with a nature that made us, even before we actually sinned, subject to the wrath of God. We would have therefore in the verse not only a doctrine of ‘original sin’ but of ‘original guilt’ or ‘transmitted guilt’. It seems clear, however, that neither of the phrases children of wrath or by nature refers necessarily to the human condition from birth. Children here characterizes people of a certain type without special reference of necessity to their parentage or to what they have inherited from their parents. In this letter alone we have ‘sons of disobedience’ (2:2) and ‘children of light’ (5:8), and the New Testament provides other similar examples. By nature often refers to what is innate, to what a person is by heredity (Rom. 2:27; 11:24; Gal. 2:15), but this is not always the case. Romans 2:14, for example, shows that it can mean what people are by the habitual practices of their lives, what they are if left to themselves, not necessarily because of the inborn nature. So NEB takes it here, ‘In our natural condition we, like the rest, lay under the dreadful judgement of God.’ Furthermore, it is asked whether what is logically prior—if ‘transmitted guilt’ was intended—would be set thus at the end. Instead the regular biblical order is seen—human sin, in thought and in action, and in consequence the wrath of God. In fact, we have here in just a few clauses a summing up of Paul’s great treatment of sin and its consequences in Romans 1–3. Jew and Gentile alike have sinned against the light and the law that they have possessed and known, and so ‘all the world’ is ‘brought under the judgement of God’ (Rom. 3:19, RV).
The wrath of God comes on us in this life in two ways. At times we receive the natural cause-effect consequences of violating God’s principles. Galatians 6:7 tells us that we reap what we sow. For example, if we are sexually immoral, we may contract a sexually transmitted disease. If we are violent or angry, we may receive the hatred and resistance of those around us. At other times God may bring his wrath on us specifically, in direct divine judgment. Such instances would be difficult to prove, but examples of such temporal judgment can be found in the Bible (Rom. 1:18–27; Acts 5:5; 1 Cor. 11:30).
2:4. Against this bleak backdrop of the hopelessness of the non-Christian, Paul presents heartening news. God’s mercy restrains his wrath. He refrains from punishing us even though we are sinners. Why? This mercy flows out of his great love for us. He desires to do good for those he loves, not evil. As a result he has done three things for us.
2:8. In verse 5, Paul made the parenthetical statement, it is by grace you have been saved. Now, in verse 8, he picks up that idea and elaborates on it. Grace carries with it the idea of benevolence being bestowed on someone without that person having merited it by his actions. God was not required to offer us salvation. He would be justified in condemning all people to eternal separation from himself. In spite of the fact that our actions bring deserved judgment upon ourselves, God offered us an escape. He didn’t have to, but because he loved us, he wanted to. That is grace, and that is what saved us, or delivered us, from eternal judgment. God’s escape belongs to him and to his initiative alone. No part of it can be credited to you. The whole of salvation, the grace as well as the faith, is a gift of God.
He chose to make salvation possible in this way. He handed salvation to you. You did nothing but stick out a hand and accept the gift. Faith is exactly that. It is trustfully accepting from God what he has provided without totally understanding what you are receiving. Faith is giving up on being able to provide what you need for yourself and letting God give what he alone can provide.
2:10. As we, his children, stand on display throughout eternity, we will be recognized as God’s workmanship. “Workmanship” (poiema) is not just a result of effort or labor. It is a result of artistic skill and craftsmanship. If we could earn salvation by our own good works, we would not be a work of God but a work of our own selves. That cannot be and will not be. We were created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God determined before we were ever born. God has prepared a path of good works for Christians which he will bring about in and through them while they walk by faith. This does not mean that we do a good work for God. It means that God does a good work through us as we are faithful and obedient to him. God is at work. In faith we join him in that work to the praise of his glory (see 1:6, 12, 14).
‘Works’ have been excluded as a means of amassing merit and gaining favour with God. The gulf between God and sinful humanity must be bridged by God’s action. The new life in fellowship with God must be God’s creation and cannot be our work. But nevertheless the essential quality of the new life is good works. The preposition here (Gk. epi, AV ‘unto’, RV and RSV for) shows that more is involved than saying that good works were the purpose of the new life, or that people were redeemed in order to be a people ‘zealous for good deeds’ (Titus 2:14; cf. Col. 1:10); rather it is that good works are ‘involved’ in the new life ‘as an inseparable condition’ (Abbott). His new creation must be spoken of as being ‘in true righteousness and holiness’ (Eph. 4:24). It is of such a kind that it must and will express itself in this way.
To demonstrate this still further as being the divine purpose Paul adds concerning such good works that God has prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. This does not of necessity mean that there are particular good works that are God’s purpose for us. There can be no objection to such a concept, if it is reckoned that the foreknowledge of an almighty and omniscient God is not opposed to his gift of free will. But probably it is rather the whole course of life that is on view here. The nature and character of the works and the direction of the Christian’s daily walk (see on 2:2) are predetermined. This then corresponds closely with 1:4 which describes the end and goal of election as ‘that we should be holy and blameless before him’. R. W. Dale puts it, ‘As the branch is created in the vine, we are created in Christ; as the fruits of the branch are predetermined by the laws of that life which it receives from the vine, so our “good works” which are the result of our union with Christ, are predetermined by the laws of the life of Christ which is our life …’