Rom 2.17-29

what sets us apart

Romans 2.17-29

Jason Procopio

We should all be able to relate to today’s text, because we’ve all had parents, and many of us are parents. At least once in the life of every parent (and often more than once), we’ll find ourselves doing something that is totally ridiculous.

It’s been a hard day; you’re tired, your kid is tired. And when you ask your kid to do something completely normal, like put his shoes away, he gets mad and yells at you: “NO!” And you lose it. You lean down, you get in his face and you say, “DON’T YOU DARE YELL AT ME! WE DON’T YELL IN THIS FAMILY!”

If you’re a parent and you’ve done this, I love you, and I’m not condemning you; I’ve done it too. You’re in a safe place. But you have to admit that when you see it from the outside, the hypocrisy in that moment is so obvious that it’s comical. It’s ridiculous, but it happens all the time: we tell our kids not to do things that we do ourselves.

That’s the dynamic at work in today’s text, but in a much broader sense.

Think back to the end of chapter 1. Starting at v. 18, Paul describes how God’s wrath has come upon humanity for their blatant disregard of God as Creator of all things, and then he describes what that rebellion against God—that the Bible calls sin—and its consequences look like.

This was a slick move on Paul’s part. It was a set-up. Remember the context of the church in Rome. You have Jewish and Gentile Christians living together, trying to figure out how to be one cohesive body with their vastly different backgrounds. Just like in any family, when you get people that have different contexts and cultures and put them together in the same place, there’s going to be some friction.

So when they receive Paul’s letter, it’s being read aloud in church. Imagine what must have happened when the reader got to chapter 1, v. 21 (he’s talking about humanity corrupted by sin):

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

That’s the point where, very likely, many Jews in the room turned to the Gentiles and thought, You hear that? He’s talking about you.

In the last half of chapter 1, Paul kept referring to “them”—they did this, their minds were darkened, God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. To which the Jews would have been nodding: Yes, that’s right.

But then in chapter 2 verse 1, with no transition, Paul flips it:

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges.

YOU. Not them, you. And the “you” here is almost always singular, not plural—he’s turning the tables on them all, as individuals, confronting each Jewish Christian with their possible hypocrisy. The Jews think he’s talking about the Gentiles, but he says no, you’re guilty too.

And then he talks about how it works, why the Jews are just as guilty as their Gentile brothers and sisters—that’s what we saw with Arnaud last week.

He’s talking about judgment—one Christian judging another Christian. Jewish Christians are taking external sign-markers that they think proved they were righteous, and using those markers as a way of judging those who don’t practice them.

So Paul is putting them in front of the problem they are in if they do this. He tells them in v. 13 that it is the doers of the law who will be justified. But there are none! Jews have the law and can’t follow it. Gentiles have the law written on their heart and they reject it.

We’re all in the same trouble.

A Look in the Mirror (v. 17-24)

So on the basis of all that, Paul turns specifically to the Jews now (or rather each individual Jew; he’s still speaking in the singular), and calls them to take their searching eyes that judge others, and to turn them on themselves.

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; 19 and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—

Stop there for a minute. You can see what he’s doing; he’s setting them up again. He’s repeating things that the Jews have absolutely said to themselves, even if only on a subconscious level.

When Paul refers to “the law,” he’s talking about the Law of Moses. If you don’t know the story, after delivering the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, God brought them to the wilderness and transmitted a long set of laws to Moses, the man who was leading the people. This was their law, governing civil and religious life in Israel—and it had been their law ever since.

So these Jews to whom Paul is speaking have grown up with the law; it’s been built into the DNA of their families for literally thousands of years. They memorized the Torah as children. They know it really well.

They know that their God, Yahweh, is the only true God.

They know his will, because he wrote it down and they memorized it.

They approve what is excellent, because the law has told them what is excellent, and they agree.

So of course, they can think of themselves as models for others to follow. They are able to teach others what it looks like to follow God, because in their law they have the embodiment of knowledge and truth.

There is a confidence that comes with such thinking that is, in many ways, a very good thing. When you know what is right, without a shadow of a doubt, then you can remain firm in that knowledge. But such confidence can also be blinding.

V. 21:

21 you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

Now, it’s true that most people in the church of Rome could look at that list and say, “I don’t steal. I don’t commit adultery. I don’t rob temples.” And Paul would agree. He’s not being that specific, but rather taking them back through their collective history; when he says, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” in v. 24, he’s citing the prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 52; this hypocrisy is not new.

His point is that for each of you, there is something in the law that you don’t follow. No one gets it right all the time. But on top of that, you’re acting as though you do get it right, and condemning others for getting it wrong, because you’re just as bad.

And that’s just talking about the big, sweeping things; what we see the people of Israel do throughout their history can also be seen in the lives of individual Jews. Because the Law doesn’t just address civil codes and norms; it also addresses morality. Have you ever lied? Have you ever desired your neighbor’s wife or home? Have you ever loved anything else more than God?

You see, he’s giving them proof of what he said all the way back in v. 1:

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.

Remember back in chapter 1 when he talked about how humanity rejected the Creator although they could see his hand in creation? and how because they could see his hand in creation, they are “without excuse” (Romans 1.7)? Seeing him use the exact same word in v. 1, but this time centered on you, not on them, would have been a shock. The things he listed at the end of chapter 1: unrighteousness, covetousness, malice, envy, strife, gossip, slander, arrogance, disobedience… These things the Jews accuse the Gentiles of doing…the Jews are doing them too.

Now it’s easy for us, twenty-first century Christians in Paris who don’t come from a Jewish background (at least most of us) to read this and look down on the Jewish Christians in Rome. But I don’t think I have to do a lot of work to convince you that we're no better.

Most Christians will come to a point in their lives when they feel like they’ve “got it.” If you’ve grown up in church, it’ll probably come even more quickly. You’ll look at your life and you’ll think, I’ve read my Bible, I know what it says. I’ve got a good handle on these things. You’ll feel confident in your knowledge, and you’ll even think, Yes, I could be a model for someone to follow. I can show new Christians what this looks like.

And that’s at least partially true. Thankfully, God does teach us over time. He teaches us to know him and live for him, and hopefully we can be models for others to follow.

But we’re not perfect. None of us gets it entirely right.

The confidence we feel as we grow in our knowledge of the Bible and of the Christian faith can blind us to our own inconsistencies. And we can find ourselves in situations in which we condemn someone for something they’re doing over here, and practice the very same things ourselves over there, and not even see it, because we’re so supremely confident in our own knowledge and place in God’s family. Like the parent who tells his children not to yell by screaming it at them.

We’ve all done this. Our confidence in our knowledge of the Bible, and in our own spiritual maturity, can blind us to our inconsistencies.

Paul’s going to continue in the following verses, but before we get there, we need to take a moment and confess our own inconsistencies before God. Because I know that as I’ve been speaking many of us have thought of at least one Christian we know who does this. But Paul isn’t calling us to point this lens at other people, but at ourselves. Do I do this? Am I inconsistent?

And the answer, for all of us, is yes.

We’re going to stand and sing a song of confession, and then we’ll come back and keep going.

What Sets You Apart (v. 25-29)

Before the break we saw that our knowledge of the Bible and of our faith can give us confidence as Christians, and that is a good thing. But on its own, if it’s not applied properly, it can be dangerous too, because our confidence can blind us to our own inconsistencies, and without even realizing it, we can become hypocrites.

In v. 25, Paul takes this idea and applies it to a very specific Jewish practice that is really important: the practice of circumcision.

Now if you’re new to the church and this seems like an astounding non sequitur, I completely understand why you might be confused. But it’s not a change of subject. When the people received the law from God, they also received a set of physical markers that were meant to distinguish them from the other, pagan peoples around them. And perhaps the most important of these physical markers was circumcision: it was their physical sign that they belonged to God’s people.

This distinctiveness is important: in the Old Testament we constantly see God saying, “Don’t be like the other nations. Be distinctive. Be like me.” Circumcision was a physical sign that was meant to reflect a spiritual reality: through circumcision they were physically different from the pagans around them, and because they had God’s law and belonged to his people, they were meant to be different all the way down to their core: the character of God’s people was meant to reflect God’s character.

But over the years, that second part got lost for many of them. It’s understandable, because (no matter how we feel about the practice), circumcision is a lot easier than consistently living a holy life. A few seconds, and it’s done. Obeying the commandments (have no other gods, respect the Sabbath, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t desire your neighbor’s wife, etc.), over the course of your entire life, is a lot harder to do.

So many of them started resting on their laurels and depending entirely on the external signs of Judaism, like circumcision, as their primary way of affirming they belong to God. Which meant that anyone who wasn’t circumcised, you kept at arms’ length. (Don’t ask me how they checked whether someone was circumcised or not; I have no idea, the question has bugged me for years, and I don’t want to speculate. Why God chose circumcision as the physical sign for his people is one of the most confusing questions in the Bible for me.)

But Paul says that there’s a problem with their thinking. V. 25:

For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. 26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? 27 Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law.

Remember, circumcision was supposed to be an outward sign pointing to an inward reality. The inward reality is that they were God’s people, called to obey his law and become like him. So if that inward reality is absent, if obedience to God’s law is absent, then circumcision means nothing.

It’s like wearing a Harvard University sweatshirt when you don’t go to Harvard. If you want that outward sign to mean something, the inward reality needs to match: you need to be 100% consistent, otherwise your own standards condemn you.

And the problem is, none of us is consistent. In fact, many of those people you consider unrighteous because they’re not like you are actually more righteous than you are, by your own standards. That’s what he’s getting at when he talks about a man who is uncircumcised keeping the precepts of the law: if someone has the inward reality that circumcision is meant to reflect, that’s more important than actually being circumcised.

Now here’s why this is such a serious issue: it’s dangerous to trust in something for anything other than its intended goal.  You can trust that a life preserver will protect you, but only from drowning—not from being hit by a car. You can insist on the importance of circumcision, and that’s fine—circumcision had its place in Jewish life. But trusting in circumcision, or any other outward sign, to put you in good standing with God is pure folly; God never said it worked that way.

It sounds silly when we abstract it like that, but this is more insidious than it seems. He’s talking about taking something that exists as an external sign marker, and making that sign marker a ruler by which we measure someone else’s righteousness.

How do we do this today?

One way we do this today is through denominations. We’re a Baptist church, and we celebrate that and we truly believe that the Bible instructs us to baptize people upon profession of faith in Christ—that means we don’t baptize babies. This is something we affirm without apologies. We 100% believe that we are right about this.

However, it is easy for us to look down at Christians who do baptize babies and consider them less Christian than ourselves. We do this a lot, most of the time unconsciously. We take things that act as sign markers (baptizing babies or not baptizing babies, speaking in tongues, or not speaking in tongues) and make them arbiters of virtue, ways to tell if someone is truly righteous.

I’ve argued in favor of denominations in the past, and I still stand by what I said; denominations are a good thing, because there are so many disagreements over secondary issues that if we were all mixed together in the same church, it would be chaos. That’s one of the challenges we have in our church, because we have so many people coming from so many different church backgrounds.

But it’s easy to take the good principle of denominations, which provide order in the church, and take it too far. We can see if we’re taking it too far by considering questions like, How often do we pray for our charismatic brothers and sisters? How often do we pray for our Episcopalian brothers and sisters? There’s a lot we would disagree about on a lot of issues, and I have serious questions concerning their practice in certain areas. But how arrogant is it to question their righteousness because of these things?

Paul’s point here is that no one gets it right. We are all inconsistent, we are all incoherent. External markers are not a bad thing; baptism is an external marker; Communion is an external marker. These are good things. But if you’re going to lean on external markers as a way of demarcating yourself, you had better make sure that the internal reality matches that external marker.

And Paul nails that point home in the final two verses. V. 28:

28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

If I could modernize the language a bit: just because your body is circumcised doesn’t mean your heart is. Just because your body is baptized doesn’t mean your heart is. It is not circumcision, or baptism, or any outward sign, that saves us.

It is God who saves us.

This is the whole message of the gospel. God saves us when we cannot save ourselves. He takes on flesh and lives a perfect, human life according to the law, perfectly fulfilling the law for his people. He takes our sin on himself and perfectly satisfies God’s wrath by letting himself be punished for us, in our place.

And God applies the finished work of Christ to our lives when, by his Holy Spirit, he transforms us from the inside. The prophet Ezekiel calls it receiving a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone. Jesus calls it new birth. In Colossians, Paul calls it resurrection. In Titus, he calls it regeneration.

Here, he calls it circumcision of the heart.

It all comes down to the same thing: it is the internal reality that the external sign points toward. The Spirit opens our eyes to the truth of God and the beauty of his gospel, and gives us faith to follow him. Every external sign is a marker to point back to that reality.

Now it would be normal to feel afraid when we read this, to think that Paul’s suggesting that some of these people might not be saved (so that must mean that’s the case for me too!). I don’t think he’s going that far; remember, he’s writing to Christians, and he states at the beginning of the letter (and elsewhere) that he wishes to commend them for their faith.

So he’s not trying to frighten them, but just to point out that this is how it works; this is the nature of your salvation. It’s not determined by anything external, but by the work of God in us. That will work itself out in practice, absolutely. But no one, based on external standards, can evaluate someone else’s heart. The only heart we are able to evaluate is our own.

Application: Judging Without Judging

And that is exactly what this text is calling us to do. Most of us here aren’t Jewish. We never think about circumcision. But whether we realize it or not, we all have other external markers in our minds, which we use to evaluate the hearts of others. And Paul is calling us to recognize that tendency and stomp it out: to judge yourselves, and not others.

Now inevitably, when we talk about this, the obvious question is, How do we actually do this? Because we will be faced with situations in which the Bible calls us to hold others accountable for their sin, to call them out on their sin and confront them with it.

Remember what Arnaud said last week: there’s more than one word the Bible uses that translates to “judge” in English. One means to simply evaluate facts: some things are objectively wrong, and we are called to see that, and recognize it as wrong, and lovingly point it out.

The kind of judgment he’s referring to here is the other kind. It’s a personal evaluation, on the basis of superficial markers we don’t find in the Bible, of someone else’s righteousness.

So how do we judge without judging?

Let’s take a little case study. Someone has sinned against you, or you have witnessed his sin. You are called to confront this person with his sin, for his good.

Before you ever get there, you pray. You confess your own sin to God. You go into that discussion with the right disposition of heart, which reminds you that you’re a sinner too.

And when you sit down to talk, you make it clear that you love him, that you believe his profession of faith. But because he has professed faith in Christ, he has also professed a desire to follow Christ. And to follow Christ, we must see areas of our lives which aren’t pleasing to him. The church is there to help identify these areas.

So it’s not a confrontation. The tone of this conversation should be the same as if you were saying, “I heard you’ve been having a hard week. What can I do? How can I help?” Because that’s exactly what you’re doing.

We can’t control how the other person will react; unfortunately, people often react defensively, no matter how you do it. But when we go about it this way, at the very least, some very important things are clear:

Firstly, that sin is inexcusable before God. We don’t pretend it’s no big deal, because it is.

Secondly, that you, my brother, you my sister, are loved. If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t say anything; I’d “give you up” to your sin.

Thirdly, I’m no better. That’s how I understand why this could happen—even if I don’t fully understand the specifics of the situation, I understand how it’s possible, because I’ve made mistakes myself.

Fourthly, we’re in this together. I’ll be with you as you walk through this, and tomorrow, it may be you coming to me.

Basically, this text is a call to be rigorous with ourselves, and gracious with others. We can evaluate our own hearts; we know what’s going on inside our own hearts. So we should assess our own faith, and confess our failings to God, and hold ourselves to God’s own high standards for us.

But we can’t perform the same evaluation on other people. So we can—and must—give them the benefit of the doubt. We need to help them see areas of inconsistencies and sin in their lives, if there are any, but we can’t presume to know what’s going on in their heart. Because we don’t know.

I heard Jen Wilkin give a great example of the difference this chapter—this extended command to not judge—should make for us. In v. 5-11 (which we saw last week), Paul talks about the day of God’s judgment, when “he will render to each one according to his works.” Many of us read that and we have one specific person in mind: someone who has hurt us, and gotten away with it. Someone who has hurt someone we love, and gotten away with it.

We imagine that person standing before God on that day, when everything will come to light and every hurt will be exposed, and we just smile inside, because we love the idea of everything this person did to hurt us finally being brought out into the open. Finally!—he will be exposed.

But on that day, I won’t enjoy it in quite the way I think I will, because I’ll be standing before God too, with all of my sins exposed, and every time I’ve hurt others.

Why would I want to celebrate the judgment of someone else when I’m being judged myself?

And the answer is that I’ll be celebrating my own judgment. It sounds weird to say it like that, because celebration and judgment don’t seem to go together. But I’ll celebrate it, because every time God pulls one of my sins up on the screen, he’ll say, “My grace covered this one too. And this one too. And this one too.” Every sin in my life, which gives me pain today when I confess it, will be an opportunity to celebrate God’s grace that covered that sin too.