Studies in Romans

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 29, 1908

Studies in Romans

Rom. 3: 9-20.

OUR study in Romans last week was on the first eight verses of chapter three. From those verses it may be learned that God had set the Jewish nation to be the light of the world, but many of them were only hypocritical professors, and so dishonored the name of the Lord. But, regardless of their unfaithfulness, the Lord was ever faithful, and when the judgment is finally reached, the course that the Lord has pursued will be fully and clearly vindicated. The next verses in the chapter are the following:

"What then? are we better than they? No, in nowise: for we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin; as it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none that understandeth, There is none that seeketh after God; They have all turned aside, they are together become unprofitable; There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one: Their throat is an open sepulcher; With their tongues they have used deceit: The poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways; And the way of peace they have not known: There is no fear of God before their eyes. "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for thru the law cometh the knowledge of sin." Rom. 3: 9-20.

Many of the Jews in Paul's time were mere whited sepulchers; they were by no means living up to their profession of godliness. And when the Lord gave the inspired words quoted above He knew that many in later times would become very hateful toward the Jewish people and that they would be looked down upon as inferior. They have been condemned all thru the ages, and are still condemned to-day, because they crucified the Christ. In condemning another there is always the implied, and often the expressed, thought that we hold ourselves above such things as we condemn. The persons condemning the Jews would have it understood that they would not reject and crucify the Lord if He were here to-day.

But those who condemn the Jews for rejecting Christ, and yet who do not do the things that Christ teaches, should note particularly the opening words of the apostle in the foregoing quotation. He says, "Are we better than they?" then he answers his own question with the unequivocal utterance, "No, in nowise: for we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin."

Unregenerate humanity is the same in all nationalities. The Jew who held to the forms of Jehovah's worship, but who did not lay hold on its vitalizing power, worked himself up to the place in his own hypocritical imagination that he even dared to sit in judgment to condemn the perfect life of the Christ of God. The truth of God had been committed to that nation; they had been made the depositaries of the law of God; heaven's choicest blessings had been given to them; the very Old Testament Scriptures that we now possess, and from which we learn of the Messiah whom the Jews crucified, were given to us by them and thru their prophets. But possessing all that wealth of perfectly and clearly divine truth did not save them, for the simple reason that they rejected its life and power and held to its mere forms.

"There is none righteous, no, not one." "With their tongues they have used deceit: the poison of asps is under their lips." This statement is true of every individual who has not been cleansed by the blood of Christ, or who does not continue to live in the strength and power of Christ. And because all, both Jews and Gentiles, are in this condition, these important words are given: "Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God: because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight; for thru the law cometh the knowledge of sin." verses 19, 20.

The law of God, then, brings the "knowledge of sin." In the light of that righteous law "every mouth" is stopped and all the world is "brought under the judgment of God." "Because out of works of law [marginal reading, A.R.V.] shall no flesh be justified in His sight." In order for men to be found just by the law, they would have to be free from ever, in the slightest degree, transgressing that law. The law can not find a man just when he has violated its precepts. And since "there is none righteous, no, not one," it follows that the law must always hold the sinner under condemnation.

The very terms in which the law of God is expressed are so manifestly clear, and they show that law to be so perfectly just, that no sinner can stand before God and find fault with His law. But as has been shown, particularly in the verses from Romans that were studied last week, the danger is not so much to the sinner who feels and senses his guilt. Such a sinner will be more than likely to flee to the great Fountain that has been provided for the cleansing from sin, and thus have his life, by the power of God, brought into harmony with the law of God. But the nominal professor who holds to the forms of Christianity, yet who does not possess its life of power, is the one that is in great danger. He is the one who is liable to make the same fatal mistake now that the Jews made in the times of Christ and of Paul.

The readers of this journal who have been studying the prophecies with us are aware of the fact that God has foretold the same conditions of formality and lack of living faith among the professors of Christianity in these last days that were so characteristic of the Jews in apostolic times. And hence there are many in these days who are making their boasts of being followers of the Lord, as did the Jews of old, but who are deceiving themselves; they will bring upon themselves the same judgment that they are now pronouncing upon the Jewish hypocrites of apostolic times.

Those Jews back there who rejected Christ were full of sins and hypocrisies; we can see that matter perfectly plain. But they did not see it with sufficient clearness to cause them to turn from it. And the reason they did not see it was because they did not carefully consider the law that they professed to keep. They were made the depositaries of God's law, and claimed great things for themselves in the doing of the law. They had the law bound about with much formality and many ceremonies that they observed. But still they were gross sinners and base hypocrites. If they had studied closely the depth of the spirituality and the refinements of the pure life that were required by the law that God had committed to them, they could have seen their mistake, and the way of escape thru the Gospel would have set them free.

We may see and condemn the course that was pursued back there, but if we do the same thing now we are only condemning ourselves by condemning them. For what was wrong in them then is also wrong in us now. It was "thru the law" that the "knowledge of sin" came to them then; it is thru the same law that the knowledge of sin comes to us now. It was necessary then to look into the law so as to sense the guilt of sin and feel the need of the Gospel remedy; it is just as necessary now to look into the same law to reveal our sins so that the Gospel remedy may be applied to us. T.