God’s Justice and Mercy

Dr Peter Masters — Romans 3.1

Here are the tremendous advantages of being a Jew, not a pagan, that would draw Jews to seek transformed hearts and lives. But so many of them preferred to preserve only the outward trappings of religion. Is this the case with many ‘nominal’ Christians today?

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Romans chapter 3 verse 1. Our title will be God's justice and mercy. What advantage then hath the Jew? Or what profit is there of circumcision? Well, the question may well be asked. The apostle has been saying the end of the previous chapter, chapter 2 verse 28, he is not a Jew which is one outwardly. Neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. Outward religion is no good. And there were countless Jews for whom their religion was purely outward. It was a show. It was a performance. It was an obedience to the ceremonies beginning for the males with circumcision and then the worship and the sacrifices, but it wasn't in their hearts.

They were not sincere with it. They didn't know its meaning and they weren't interested in its meaning. They had no real relationship with God because many did. Many were, as we would say, saved. repented of their sin, listened to the preaching of Moses and all those who followed him and the prophets, read the ancient scriptures, and from their hearts repented of sin, and believed in a coming savior that God would in the future disclose how it would be done, but sin would be removed through the great descendant that was promised in the garden of Eden and to Abraham and the patriarchs, a coming descendant prophesied throughout the Old Testament.

No one has ever been prophesied other than the Lord Jesus Christ, his birth and existence, his work and ministry, his ascension, the fact that he was divine God come to earth to be our savior. No historical figure in the history of the world has ever been prophesied that he would exist in such a form and manner and so on. And Christ has been prophesied countless times through the Old Testament. But they didn't believe in him. They didn't expect him, the majority. So he is a Jew. Verse 29 of chapter 2, which is one inwardly from his heart. And circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, a changed heart, one who is now walking personally with the Lord and relates to him.

So there's a redefinition of the Jew. True Jews or ethnic Jews. Yes, they may be ethnic Jews, but are they true Jews in the sight of God? They may not be. And very often the majority were not. Well, in the light of that, in the light of the fact that so many of the Jews missed salvation, the question is asked chapter 3 verse 1, what advantage then hath the Jew, if countless among them can be lost spiritually, what advantage did they have? And the apostle answers this in verse two. Much tremendous advantages, many advantages in every way, in all manner of ways. So we're going to explore what they were.

Chiefly, he says in verse two, meaning firstly, first on the list. It's that kind of chiefly in the Greek. much in every way first and foremost because unto them were committed the oracles of God. Don't worry about the word oracles. It simply translates the Greek which means utterances. The utterances, the words of God, these were committed to them to obey, to love, to treasure, to preserve and guard and keep. Would they would they honor this word? the oracles of God chiefly because so many of the advantages flowed out of the utterances of God, the word of God and there were others beside the Jews as a people.

God took an entire ethnic group to deal with them in a very special way. You could say, though this is not the whole picture at all, you could say they were a kind of batch sample, a sample of humanity through which God would show certain things. For instance, today people say, "Oh, but if God were to show us some miracles, we'd believe in him." That's what they say. If God were to somehow show himself, why does he keep himself invisible? If we were to show himself, we would believe in him. If he would do really dramatic things to us, for us, then we believe in him.

But of course, God has done all that. He took a sample people and to them he showed demonstrations, miracles, astonishing things in their history. and he defended them and he kept them. He gave birth to a nation and that nation he miraculously preserved them and when they disobeyed him and strayed from it, he delivered them and he delivered them from Egypt in a totally miraculous manner. They were able to defy the power and the armies of Pharaoh in Egypt and go free. And he kept them through the desert wastes for 40 years and fed them miraculously and all kinds of things, miracle after miracle, astonishing.

And what was the result? They all believed in him. No, they murmured against Moses and would take his life if God hadn't intervened. Man's always the same. He says, "Oh, God, if you show me this and do that and do that, it wouldn't make any difference." The heart of human beings is hard against God. We resist him and oppose him. So the Jews were God's for centuries special people a batch sample and he blessed them and he appealed to them and pleaded with them and showed them nonstop kindness. And yet they rejected and turned away from him and went to idols and any alternative as we do today.

We listen to anyone who can spin us a yarn or a thousand theories to try to show us that the world could have come about by purely rational forces. that chance events brought everything into being from nothing. That completely inanimate unintelligent forces combined to produce the human mind and all its complexity and sophistication and the power of reason and the mastery of beauty and all kinds of things. It's just a sheer accident and we're ready to believe it because we want an alternative to God. So we'll take it. We'll accept it. And all human heart is just the same. But here we see it in the Jews of old.

But look at the advantage. What advantage then hath the Jew? Well, first and foremost then the oracles of God revelation. God revealed himself to them and his truths and his words. He taught them why the scriptures are full of this. He taught them how the world came about. He taught them what his purpose was. He speaks about origins. He speaks about the emergence of human life. He speaks about in the scriptures the fall of man into sin. It's the only explanation. By the way, you cannot explain human nature apart from the biblical account that we were made with a moral consciousness, a knowledge of right and wrong, and we fell.

And so we ended up in a pathetic state without the help of God under his judgment, unable to keep even our own standards. totally unable to all the time honor our own inner knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. desperate to rewrite even our consciences so that even at the level of parliament as we often mention God's standards of holiness and what is written in our consciences is rewritten in acts of parliament. Wrong is made right and right is made wrong. We're trying to get away from God and his standards and create for ourselves an alternative all the time. And so it is here.

What advantage then hath the Jew? He has the explanations of God. God explains life, the fall of man into sin, human nature, and what now makes it work and tick. God's way of redemption, what he can do for us, how he will send a savior, how he has sent a savior, the atoning death of Christ to take away sin from all those who trust in him. It's all in the scripture. It's in the Old Testament. It's in the New. What advantage has the Jew? So much light, so much understanding. If only his he'd listen. Then the Jews were given laws. The laws of God. Yes.

The commandments and many others alongside them. And then civic laws, the so-called case laws of Israel, which made them a refined nation. if they kept them. An orderly nation, a nation where people respected one another and had boundaries they wouldn't cross and honored each other's property and labors and paid each other properly and so on. God gave them all the most sophisticated spiritual laws to love God and obey him. Human laws to regulate their society. What advantage does the Jew have? So many advantages which the pagans didn't have. They live barbaric lives by comparison. There were some law systems but they were cruelly enforced and they didn't lead at all to the dignity of the peoples.

Such dignity that we have in the world today in western society and elsewhere comes only because it comes through the Bible and through the Christian tradition and the Jewish tradition before that. It doesn't come from the heart of man. So God gave his word and he gave messengers, the leaders of the people, people like Moses and his successors, the prophets, great teachers, then giving them the scriptures. The scriptures are full of history, full of examples. The Jews had examples in their scriptures of how to live. How God blesses faith and obedience. How he punishes disobedience, abuse of his commandments and his laws. All the examples are there for them to note and learn from and follow.

The Jews had advantages of sophistication and instruction. They had the miracles as I've mentioned to help them to build their faith and they took the notice demonstrations of God's goodness. They had what we call types of Christ, a system of worship that was full of visual aids, types of the coming savior in whom they must trust. They were taught by word. They were taught by pictures if you like. They had security. And God said remarkable things to the Jews. He said, "Look, you will never have horses and chariots. You will never have the total arsenal of weaponry of the Gentiles, the pagans, because I want to demonstrate my power.

And if when they attack you, you take the simple elements of war that I've given you and you pray, then I will overthrow your enemies. And whenever that happened, he did. For when he forsook them, they forsook him. He withdrew his hand of support. Such demonstrations they had of security if they would look to God and defense and times in their history of great advance and accomplishment. On account of that, they had so much and so much to draw them to the Lord. The that the Old Testament of the Bible is so much God's beckoning to them, his motioning to them, come and trust me.

So would they would they believe him, obey him, trust him, seek him, come to love him, and prove him? No, they did a strange strange thing. They said two things at once. We believe in the scriptures, but alongside that they said we will not obey the scriptures. We will not follow the scriptures. We will not observe them. They said both things at once. How can that happen? What happens today? There may be people here. And you say, "I believe in God. I believe in the word of God, the revelation of God." But you don't obey his call to repent of your sin. You don't obey his call to come to him and give your life to him and seek his forgiveness and his complete remaking of you, the conversion of you so that you know him and walk with him.

You don't follow his commandments seriously and believingly. You're not a man or a woman of prayer. Perhaps you come to church once a week. It's a formality. You like the Jews. It's all on the outside. It's all a sort of outside Christian respectability and nominal belief in some of it. Like the Jews, we believe and we believe in the scriptures and the way of worship, but we don't believe all the details. We want our own lives, our own moral liberty, to do as we like, to go our own way, to have whatever we want, be whatever we want. We don't want the guidance of God and the help of God.

You can believe both things together. A nominal Jew, nominal Christians. There are lots of nominal Christians, but they don't have life. That's why we sang sang that great hymn of Wesley. I kind of believe, but don't let me stop there, says the hymn. Let me truly find Christ and the power of God and a new life. What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? much because there is the teaching and the laws and the demonstration of God's power and all the things that beckon and draw the kindness of God, the drawing appeal of God to the heart, but they derided it and defied the details and discarded it.

The great advantage of the Jew, the great advantage of the nominal Christian, you do all same with the Catholics. Now, the Catholics and the priesthood, well, what's the Catholic Church? It says it believes the Bible. Catholicism says, "Yes, the Bible is the word of God. Just like the Jews of old, it's all important. But then they say something completely contradictory at the same time. They say, "But we also believe in the traditions of our church and what the leaders and the popes and the councils have said down the centuries and we believe them as well as the Bible." Yes. But the traditions, the doctrines made up for the church of Rome completely contradict the Bible.

And it where they do so much the worse for the Bible. The tradition always trumps. It's always more important. So if the Bible says you can only be saved by believing in Christ that he came to suffer and die to take the punishment of sin for sinners who repent and who appeal to him for life and then he by his spirit will remake them and draw them to himself to know him and to walk with him. You've got to believe in him. That's the only way. Your works can't do it. Once you're a converted Christian, you voluntarily try to perform good works to please God.

But it's not a way of salvation. But the Roman Catholic Church says nonsense to that. You will be saved by coming to mass receiving absolution from by from the priests from mother church. The church must give it to you. The church is all important. Not Christ alone of you and your works. You've got to earn it, deserve it by being very Catholic and very religious. So you say you believe as a Catholic, you say you don't believe, you believe the church for preference. It's the same here with us. How many I wonder have not really come to Christ for new life and forgiveness. It's just a nominal belief and you don't receive the details, the doctrines, the teaching and act on it and obey it and seek the Lord.

Well, there's a lot of excuses made for this, and I won't touch on it in detail today, but look at verse three. For what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? That's very interesting. Some don't believe. Many of the Jews didn't believe. Many nominal Christians today don't really believe in Christ as savior. But you can't say to yourself, "Well, all right. According to you, I haven't made it. I'm not saved. I haven't taken free salvation from God. I'm not going to heaven. I don't have life." Too bad. But God won't condemn me because I kind of believe in him.

I half believe in him by your standards. Well, surely he won't condemn me. For what if some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the faith or faithfulness is the Greek of God without effect? What Paul is saying is this. Do you think you as an unbeliever will cause God to change his mind so that God says, "All right, I spoke about my holiness and my justice. I called you to come to me. I warned you that if you didn't come and you rejected me and spurned me, I would have to judge you and punish you because I am holy and I am pledged to punish and destroy sin.

But you think because you don't believe, I will say, "Oh, I've changed my mind. I won't punish you after all. I will let you off because I'm prepared to be kind. God won't do that. God cannot do that. He is holy. He is perfect and holy and just. He will punish sin. He's called us to accept a free salvation. Christ has come from glory to suffer and die to take our punishment for us. He's provided. If we reject that, he must punish. What if some did not believe? Do they think we could put in that their unbelief will make the faith of God without effect?

In other words, God will never do it. He will never judge. That's what people think. Oh, but I I kind of believe in God. I don't think he'll judge me. Of course, he will. Of course he will because he's holy and perfect. You know, our time is almost up. I'm just going to turn you for a second to second Timothy chapter 2. And these words in verse 13 where Paul says the same in writing to Timothy. If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself. Some people read this entirely the wrong way. If I believe not, he will be faithful and save me anyway.

That's not what it says. That's a nonsense interpretation. If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful to his word, he will punish. He cannot deny himself. He cannot deny his holiness. He cannot cease to be holy. Not even for a minute to let sinners go. He cannot deny his perfect justice. He's gone to great lengths with the Jews and with us to call us, to woo us, to appeal to us. If we won't respond, he must be faithful to himself. We're under judgment. We should go into everlasting perdition. We shall lose everything. We shall get, if you like, this is the perfect democracy. We shall get what we voted for.

Get rid of God. I kind of believe in him, but I don't want to obey him. I don't want to be saved. I don't want to live for him. I don't want to find him. I don't want my sins to be forgiven. I want to keep them. I will disobey him. He's done everything to appeal. We are responsible for the fact that we have to be judged in the end. So here in Romans chapter 3, you see the mercy of God, but the inevitable judgment of God if we will not have mercy. What advantage then hath the Jew? Well, in ancient times over against the pagans, the Jew had tremendous advantages.

The word of God, the kindness of God, the mercy of God, the appeals of God, what profit is there. Tremendous wonderful things God did for them. Many responded, but many, many never responded. And for them, no excuse will do. There's only judgment. So that's our message for this morning. I'm sorry if I've had to emphasize the judgment. Just look at the mercy. And that mercy is for everyone. If only we will come to him.