UNIFORM LESSON FOR August 5, 2018
Scripture passage and lesson focus: Romans 2:1-16
The focus of our Bible study shifts from passages in the Gospels about the justice Jesus taught to the justice the apostle Paul describes in his letter to the Romans. That letter is reliably dated to 55 or 56 A.D., approximately 25 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus but 25-35 years before the Gospels were written.
Understanding the letters of Paul nearly 2,000 years after they were written is a challenging task. Paul, a Pharisaic Jew whose allegiance to Jesus came about as the result of a life-redirecting encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the Damascus road, wrote theologically profound but also very practical letters to new congregations that were inventing what would develop into Christianity.
The letter to the Romans was written to a congregation Paul had not established but hoped to visit. It constitutes a carefully argued statement of the gospel Paul preached for some 20 years to Jews and gentiles throughout Asia Minor and Greece. As an itinerant missionary, Paul used his knowledge of Hellenistic Judaism and the Greco-Roman world to shape his witness to the reality of salvation in Jesus Christ. Paul struggled to proclaim God’s redemptive act in Christ that brought about freedom from sin and death for both Jews and Greeks. That redemption demonstrates the righteousness and justice of God (Romans 1:17).
Romans 2:1-4 — God’s just judgment
Paul introduces himself as a servant of Jesus with a desire to visit the Roman Christians in order to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul declares that his gospel is good news about the power of God that is able to save sinful humanity. He identifies idol worship, immorality and a whole catalog of sins against God that render human beings deserving of death.
Paul goes on to say that people who pass judgment on those who commit the sins he has just enumerated are equally guilty because they themselves commit those same sins. Using a well-known technique of Greco-Roman philosophers, Paul addresses his readers with rhetorical questions ending with: “Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”
Romans 2:5-11 — God shows no favoritism
People who are judgmental toward others are accumulating God’s condemnation on themselves, Paul asserts. Using a phrase from the Hebrew Scriptures, Paul says, “The day of God’s wrath” will come when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
God will repay people according to their deeds: eternal life for those who do good, but wrath and fury for those who seek only their own good and do not obey the truth. Evildoers will experience anguish and distress. Those who do good will enjoy glory and honor and peace.
This will be true for the Jew first, but also for Greeks, because God shows no favoritism.
Romans 2:12-16 — God’s law applies to everyone
Does God expect Jews as well as gentiles to obey the law? How does the law of God apply to everyone?
Certainly God’s law applies to the Jews, who have been under that law since God gave it to Moses at Sinai. It is not enough merely to have heard the law, Paul reminds his readers. It is doers of the law who will be justified, that is, declared to be right before God.
Paul now asserts that gentiles instinctively (that is, by nature) obey God’s law that is written on their hearts even though they do not have the written Law of Moses. Their consciences testify to God’s law, so in effect they are a law unto themselves. Paul may have in mind a passage like Jeremiah 31:33, which says that God’s new covenant has placed the law on the hearts of the covenant people. Perhaps Paul is including gentiles in God’s covenant people.
Whether by virtue of the written Law of Moses that Jews possess or by virtue of the gentiles’ God-given consciences that testify to God’s law, all people will be judged by God’s law. As 2:12 says, “All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.”
The judge who will examine the secret thoughts and deeds of all people is Jesus Christ. Paul’s message is addressed to Jews and gentiles since “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Paul proclaims that God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ declares that all who have faith in Jesus are justified before God.
For discussion: God’s law is Paul’s standard for truth and justice. What happens to those who “are self-seeking and who obey not the truth?” (See Romans 1:18-25) Do you see any evidence of that in modern society? Do you think the church encourages people to be judgmental? Why or why not?
