Romans 3:9-20 - All Jews and Gentiles are under sin

Romans 3:9-20 - All Jews and Gentiles are under sin

Here are some  Piper highlights and human lowlights

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One of the most important truths to hold up in the world is that all human beings, even though created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), are corrupted by the power of sin. We are not morally good by nature. We are morally bad by nature. In Ephesians 2:3, Paul says we are all “by nature children of wrath.” The attitudes and thoughts and actions that deserve the wrath of God come from us by nature. In Colossians 3:6, we are called “sons of disobedience.” We are so disposed to disobedience against God that it is as though “disobedience” is our father. We are chips of the old block of disobedience. We don’t just do sins, we are sinful. We are “under sin,” as verse 9 says. Sin is like a master or a king, and reigns over us and in us. Not that it coerces us to do what we don’t want to do, but makes us want to do what we ought not to do. We are not innocent victims of sin. We are co-conspirators with sin against God.

 

So as we look at Paul’s final, summary diagnosis in this section, keep thinking: this is good, this is good. Because for all this bad news about my true condition, there is a remedy. And the only reason for telling me the bad news is so that I will understand the remedy and take it—namely, the righteousness of God, freely given to those who really trust in Christ.

 

There are two main questions I want to try to answer in verses 9–18. One is: How does Paul support verse 9 and the sinfulness of all men on the basis of the Old Testament in all these quotations in verses 10–18? And the other is: How does he describe the state of being “under sin” in these verses? Or: What can we learn about sin, and about ourselves, and about the Gospel from the way Paul talks about sin in these verses?

 

How does Paul support the universal claim of sinfulness in verse 9 by quoting these six Old Testament passages which speak of righteous people as well as wicked people? He shows that both Jews and Gentiles are characterized as deeply corrupt and that the only way out of that corruption is by God’s gracious gift of faith and forgiveness that sets a person right with God (which, we know now, is) on the basis of the substitutionary sacrifice that would one day come in Jesus Christ.

 

How does he describe the state of being “under sin” in these verses? Or: What can we learn about sin, and about ourselves, and about the Gospel from the way Paul talks about sin in these verses?

 

1.    Ruined Relationship with God

Being “under sin” is first and foremost a ruined relation with God. Not, first, a ruined relation with other people. Verses 10–18 begin and end with this point. Verse 10–11: “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.” And verse 18: “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Everything in between these verses has to do with the meaning of sin in human relations. But at the beginning and the end being “under sin” means that we have no fear of God and we don’t understand him and we don’t seek him. Verse 11: “There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God.”

2.      Ruined Relationships with People

Being “under sin” means that our relations with people are ruined, even though God’s common grace may restrain us from treating people as badly as we might.

3.      Good News for Those “Under Sin”

4.      Finally, if this is who we really are by nature—people who are “under sin” and therefore, as Romans 1:18 says, under the wrath of God—then is it not the best news in the world that the entire point of the book of Romans and the whole Bible and of Christianity is that God, in his great mercy, has made a way of salvation from sin—the power of sin and the penalty of sin? We are just centimeters away from it. Romans 3:21–22—“But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.”

#33 - Piper - Let God be true though every man a liar - Romans 3:1-8

 

In the next sermon, #34, he talks about how difficult Romans 3:1-8 is to follow and it is verses like these that people  spin and change and use for their own glory.  They do it now. They did it back then. 

 

So, here is the final paragraph of his sermon. I think it will help bring all the meant into one bite:

 

There is condemnation of Jews and Gentiles, and there is justice. And these two things do not contradict. This is where we began. Who are they whose condemnation is just? Those who play games with the Word of God. More specifically in this case: those who see two true things in the Word of God that they can’t reconcile and deny that this can be. For them it was, on the one hand, God is faithful and God is righteous and God is true to his glory, and, on the other hand, God judges his very own chosen people and condemns them along with the Gentile world. Two truths, for them irreconcilable. What advantage then would the Jew have? So they try to reject one of these truths. And the result is sophistry—tricky reasoning, word games. Today we might call it spinning. And to this Paul says, “Their condemnation is just.”

So my closing exhortation is: Don’t play games with the Bible. Be as careful as you can in handling the Word of God. And when you can’t reconcile one true thing with another. Wait and pray and study and seek the Lord. In due time, they will be reconciled.

 

This is so true... And the next sermon will explain why God allows hard texts.

 

#34 - Piper - "Why God inspired hard texts" - Romans 3:1-8

So, Piper takes a break from exposition of Romans and decides to deal with the question of why God gives hard texts (and I think this sermon was one of the catalysts for his “Think” conference and book that just came out:

 

“Instead, I want to do something I haven’t done before in the eleven months we have been working through this letter. I want to step back from the text and ask: what are some of the implications—for life and culture and history and worship—of the sheer fact that God has given Christianity a Book and a text like this and built the Church on it?

 

In other words, what was unleashed in the world by the fact that Christianity not only declares salvation from sin through faith in Jesus, but that Christianity also builds its message and its ministry and its mission on a Book, the Bible, and on books in the Bible like the Letter to the Romans, and on paragraphs in the letter like Romans 3:1–8? What personal and cultural and historical impulses were unleashed on the world when God inspired Paul to write a paragraph like Romans 3:1–8 the way he did?

 

Now you may ask, Why are you asking that question here? Couldn’t you ask it at any paragraph in the book, or in the Bible? What is stirring you to ask that question here? There are two answers at least. One is this: I found this passage to be about as hard a paragraph to deal with as any in this letter. The difficulty of following the train of thought in this paragraph is enormous. I just listened to a sermon on this text by Martyn Lloyd-Jones from forty years ago in London. He commented at the outset that this is one of the most difficult paragraphs not only in Romans, but also in the whole Bible.

 

I wrestled so hard trying to figure out how Paul’s argument worked here, and I prayed so fervently that God would give me light and guard me from error, that I felt forced to ask, “God, what does this mean, that you have ordained that such a difficult paragraph to be in your Word? What am I to learn from this?” Someone might say, The difficulty is our problem, not God’s; if we were more spiritual, and more docile, we would not find God’s Word so difficult (which is true up to a point). You must remember, however, that the apostle Peter said in his second letter, “Our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him [not in folly of intellect, but in wisdom given by God!], wrote to you, as also in all his letters … in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:15–16).

 

What God Unleashed with a Word Foundation

Let me mention four things and then balance them with the less complex side of the gospel. Four things: desperation, supplication, cogitation and education.

1. Desperation (A sense of utter dependence on God’s enablement). I see this in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” The natural man (all of us without the Spirit’s work in our lives) should feel desperation before the revelation of God. He needs God’s help. Well the same thing is true of spiritual—but finite and fallible and sinful—people like me, when I meet difficult texts of God’s Word. I should feel desperation—a desperate dependence on God’s help. That is what God wants us to feel. That is something he has unleashed by inspiring difficult texts.

2. Supplication (Prayer to God for help). This follows from desperation. If you feel dependent on God to help you see the meaning of a text, then you will cry to him for help. I see this in Psalm 119:18, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wonderful things from Your law.” Seven times in one psalm the psalmist prays, “Teach me your statutes” (119:12, 26, 64, 68, 124, 135, 171). Or as Psalm 25:5 says, “Lead me in thy truth, and teach me.” By inspiring some things hard to understand, God has unleashed in the world desperation which leads to supplication—the crying out to God for help.

3. Cogitation (Thinking hard about Biblical texts). You might think, “No, no, you are confused, Pastor John. You just said that God wants us to pray for his help in understanding, not to think our way through to a solution.” But the answer to that concern is, No, praying and thinking are not alternatives. I learn this especially from 2 Timothy 2:7, where Paul says to Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will grant you understanding in everything.” Yes, it is the Lord who gives understanding. But he does it through our God-given thinking and the efforts we make, with prayer, to think hard about what the Bible says. So when God inspired texts like Romans 3:1–8, he unleashed in the world an impulse toward hard thinking. Alongside desperation and supplication there is cogitation. Which leads finally to …

4. Education (Training young people and adults to pray earnestly, read well and think hard). If God has inspired a Book as the foundation of the Christian faith, there is a massive impulse unleashed in the world to teach people how to read. And if God ordained for some of that precious, sacred, God-breathed Book to be hard to understand, then God unleashed in the world not only an impulse to teach people how to read, but how to think about what they read—how to read hard things and understand them, and how to use the mind in a rigorous way.

Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2, “What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Impart understanding to others, Timothy, in a way that will enable them to teach others also. In other words, the writings of the apostles—especially the hard ones—unleash generation after generation of education. Education is helping people understand something that they don’t already understand. Or, more accurately, education is helping people (young or old) learn how to get an understanding that they didn’t already have. Education is cultivating the life of the mind so that it knows how to grow in true understanding. That impulse was unleashed by God’s inspiring a Book with complex demanding paragraphs in it.

 

Balanced by Simplicity

Now, I said earlier that I wanted to balance this with another kind of impulse from the Bible that flows from the less complex side of the gospel. How shall we do this? Perhaps it would help to do it like this: consider that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16), and that God is God (Isaiah 45:22; 46:9). In the truth that God is God is implied that God is who he is in all his glorious attributes and self-sufficiency. But in the truth that God is love is implied that all of this glory is moving our way for our everlasting enjoyment.

Now those two truths unleash through the Bible very different impulses. And we will see that a balance is introduced here, lest we make of Christianity an elitist affair, which it definitely is not.

That God is love unleashes the impulse of simplicity, and that God is God unleashes the impulse of complexity.

That God is love unleashes the impulse of accessibility, and that God is God unleashes the impulse of profundity.

That God is love encourages a focus on the basics, and that God is God encourages a focus on comprehensiveness. One says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). The other says, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

That God is love impels us to be sure that the truth gets to all people, and that God is God impels us to be sure that what gets to all people is the truth.

That God is love unleashes the impulse toward fellowship, and that God is God unleashes the impulse toward scholarship.

That God is love tends to create extroverts and evangelists, and that God is God tends to create introverts and mystics.

 

My prayer for this sermon is this: first, for believers, I pray that seeing these different impulses in Christianity—and particularly in the inspiration of a Bible with hard things and simple things—you will embrace both of them. If you lean toward one side (as all of us do), that you will be respectful and affirming to those toward the other side. And that you will cherish the fuller manifestation of God in his Church and in the world. And may we help each other embrace all that God means to unleash by his Word in the world.

 

 

Steve Allen

ACTION Zambia

www.aliveinafrica.com

 

 

#32 - Piper - Who is a true jew - part II

Piper continues a look at the true jew and answers the question, “Why do we want to be a true jew?”

 

Paul says in verse 26 that the uncircumcised man (the Gentile) will be regarded by God as a circumcised man (a true Jew) if he “keeps the requirements of Law.” “So if the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?” So it isn’t circumcision that makes you a true Jew, it is keeping the requirements of the Law—that is, it is understanding what the Law was really all about and being changed by it in the heart and living out God’s purpose for man taught in it (see 1 Corinthians 7:19).

 

This is amazing. The reason it’s amazing is that what Paul is trying to show is why Law-keeping—Law-fulfilling—makes one a true Jew, and his answer is all about internal change, not external activity. He says, in essence, that Law-keeping or Law-fulfilling makes you a true Jew because it is not mainly an external thing, but an internal thing. It has to do mainly with the sense of the heart and not the seeing of the letter. It has to do mainly with praise that comes from God in secret, not the praise of man in public (see Matthew 6:4, 6, 18). That is what the Law is really all about. Otherwise the argument doesn’t work.

 

So the point is that a person is a true Jew—a true part of God’s redeemed people—if he fulfills the Law, that is, if his heart is circumcised by the Spirit to love God. Deuteronomy 30:6 promised, “The LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.” That’s what Paul is talking about here, and you don’t have to be a natural-born Jew, he says, for it to happen to you.

 

Without the Spirit we either reject the Law of God out of hand, or we change it into something we can manage. And in either case we lose, and the Law condemns us: you can become a transgressor of the law by rejecting it or by trying to keep it in your own strength. Paul calls the law minus the Spirit: “letter.” And he says in another place, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6).

So let’s put two summary equations in the corner of our picture.

 

Law minus Spirit = 1) external religious ritual (like circumcision) 2) the need for the praise of man to keep you going 3) death, because the Law becomes mere “letter,” and that kills

 

Law plus Spirit = 1) internal circumcision of the heart 2) satisfaction in the praise of God, even if no man approves you 3) life, because the Spirit unites us to God in love

 

Now what’s the point of all this? The main point I want you get this morning is this: Seek and cherish the work of the Spirit of God in your life to make you a true Jew. Our salvation hangs on this—the work of the Spirit circumcising our heart to love the Lord (Deuteronomy 30:6) 2) writing the Law of God on our heart (Jeremiah 31:33) 3) freeing us from our need for the praise of man (Romans 2:29)

All of this is what Christ obtained for us when he shed his blood to seal the new covenant

 

 

 

 

Steve Allen

ACTION Zambia

www.aliveinafrica.com

 

 

# 29 - Piper - The effect of Hypocrisy - Romans 2:17-24

This is another great message.  There is much to quote and think about, but I felt like this the entire message was summed up in one paragraph that I didn’t want to see overlooked and thus will include only this paragraph (broken into shorter paragraphs):

 

The Gospel is the good news that God has sent his Son, Jesus, into the world to set this condition right—in three ways.

 

1) Jesus came to vindicate the worth of God’s glory by living for it with all his might (John 17:4) and by dying to show that it is worth the greatest possible sacrifice (John 12:27–28; Romans 3:25–26).

 

2) Jesus came to rescue us from the wrath of God against all that dishonors his glory. He did this by dying in our place and by becoming for us a righteousness that we could never achieve on our own (Romans 3:24; Philippians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 5:21)—the righteousness that we have in union with Christ by trusting him (Romans 3:21).

 

3) Jesus came to change us into the kind of people who value the glory of God above all things and who live to show his worth (Matthew 5:16; 1 Corinthians 10:31; 1 Peter 4:11).

 

So, the reason I included this paragraph from Piper  is because it is the key to understanding where we have come so far. The issue from Romans 1:19-3:20 is God’s glory.  It has been ruined by both the gentiles and the Jews.  And it all leads to Romans 3:23 – For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 

 

And, so I will end with this Piper thought to summarize this message:

 

That is where we are this morning. No one in this room loves the glory of God the way he should. We have all fallen short. We have dishonored God. We have exchanged his glory for images. He is not cherished and treasured and admired and loved with a fraction of the fervor that he deserves. So we have fallen short. We are under the power of sin. And we are guilty before God.  Our only hope is that Christ came to change that. To vindicate the God we have belittled. To clothe us with a righteousness that we cannot provide on our own. And to change us into the kind of people who delight in the glory of God and the honor of God above all things.

 

 

 

 

Steve Allen

ACTION Zambia

www.aliveinafrica.com

 

 

#30 - Piper - The effects of Hyprocrisy - Romans 2:17-24

What is the effect of hypocrisy in the Jews?

 

They know the word but they don’t believe the word. They make the word an obedience thing and not a law thing. They use their knowledge of the word to help others, but they don’t allow it to help them.

 

Piper writes, “Love uses truth to bless others; but sin uses truth to exalt self.^”

 

So, Piper preaches, “My point is simply this: one of the reasons Paul dwells on the demonstration of sinfulness in Romans 1–3 is that we are so resistant to seeing it and feeling it. We find ways of avoiding the issue and softening the indictments and escaping the evidences of our sinfulness. And there are endless ways, it seems, to admit to a little bit of it, while not being broken and humbled by it. But brokenness and humility are the gateway to paradise, and indeed they are the road to paradise. In this life, we never outgrow our need for ever-new experiences of brokenness and humility because of our sinfulness.^”

 

So, how does this apply to Christians today?

Piper writes, “These Jews are people of the book. And Paul agrees with that. But there is clearly something wrong. And we, who are Christian people of the book, should be all ears and on the edge of our seats to find out what went wrong, lest we make the same mistake. There is nothing wrong, in themselves, with relying on the trustworthiness of God’s law or boasting in God or knowing his will or approving things essential. But evidently there is a way that all that can go wrong. All of that good use of the Law can be a part of what shows a person to be a sinner.^”

 

Faith in God for his gracious gift of forgiveness, and a right standing with him, and the enablement to obey his commandments. But instead, you use the law to establish your own righteousness and thus rob God of the most basic thing he demands from you, humble trust in him for his mercy. And what is this but adultery as you give your heart and trust—that belong only to God—to another? And what is this spiritual adultery except the taking of the very idols of the world and making them your own—as if to rob their temples because God himself is not good enough for you.

 

Lord, may your Word humble us from faith to love...

 

 

 

 

Steve Allen

ACTION Zambia

www.aliveinafrica.com

 

 

#31 - Piper - Who is a true Jew - Romans 2:25-29

Romans 2:25–29

For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice the Law; but if you are a transgressor of the Law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. 26 So if the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? 27 And he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who though having the letter of the Law and circumcision are a transgressor of the Law? 28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. 29 But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.

 

The essence of the Christian life is to have your heart changed in such a way that you obey by faith the moral law that God gave to us. 

 

Here is what Piper says:

In other words, behind this language of “letter” and “Spirit” is Paul’s whole understanding of the Christian life as an expression of the “new covenant.” In the promises of the new covenant, which Jesus bought with his own blood (Luke 22:20), God promises to take out the heart of stone and give us a new heart and put his Spirit within us and cause us to walk in his Law. Listen to Ezekiel 36:37b: “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (see also Ezekiel 11:19–20).

 

This promise shows that keeping the Law and fulfilling the Law are something that God promised when the Holy Spirit was given to his people in the fuller measure of the new covenant. So when verse 26 says, “If the uncircumcised man keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision”?, we should understand this of the Christian Gentile who has been given the “Spirit” and has stopped treating the Law as a dead “letter” that kills. Rather, the Law now has become the expression of God’s good moral will for life that grows like fruit from a circumcised heart of faith that the Holy Spirit has brought about. In other words, keeping the requirements of the Law is a free gift of the Spirit.

 

Piper also makes clear that our heart should be changed so as to desire to obey the law:

This makes it clear that the idea of fulfilling the Law is a Christian experience and that it really does happen, and that it happens in the lives of those who walk according to the Spirit. Christ died for us and purchased for us the new covenant blessings of the Spirit, and now He is at work in our lives enabling us to live out—not perfectly, but enough to show we trust him—the moral law of God.

 

So, Paul is saying that we need to become like Jews, and though that sounds a bit weird, he clarifies with an interesting thought:

One Person knows who we are. God. He made us. He defines us. If we are ever going to know who we are in our essence, we will learn it from God or not at all. Therefore it is a great gift to us that he should tell us that an essential part of our identity is that we are true Jews if we fulfill the obedience of faith. Don’t reject God’s good gift because you can’t see the benefits of being a true Jew. That’s the first thing I would say: God is telling you who you are. Pay attention. Receive the gift. Don’t assume you know a better thing to be than what God says you are.

And finally, I would say, you ought to want to be a true Jew because “salvation belongs to the Jews” (John 4:22), and all the promises of God are yours if you are a true Jew (see Romans 11:17–18). What a great thing it is to be able to go to the whole Bible, Old and New Testament, and know that “this is my book.” I am a Jew. These are my promises. This is my story. This is my Messiah. This is my God (Jeremiah 31:33). You can say that today—Jew or Gentile—if you will trust in the all-satisfying mercy of God in Christ Jesus and repent of your sins.