WWUTT 1186 What Advantage Has the Jew? (Romans 3:1-3)

Romans 3 and the Jew’s Advantage

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Jew and Gentile. No one gets any preferential treatment. Well then what advantage is there to being a Jew? Much in every way, when we understand the text.

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Here's our host, Hester Gates.

Thank you, Becky. Well, today we are back in our study of the book of Romans, and we're up to chapter 3. So I'm going to begin today reading Romans 3, verses 1 through 20. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome.

Then what advantage has the Jew, or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?

By no means. Let God be true, though every one were a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say?

That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? I speak in a human way. By no means. For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God's truth abounds to His glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?

And why not do evil that good may come? As some people slanderously charge us with saying, their condemnation is just. What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.

As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good. Not even one. Their throat is an open grave.

They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. So I hope that reading that much context kind of catches you back up again with where we were in our study of Romans before we paused for the Holy Week, the Passion Week study that we did last week.

The Jew, Circumcision, and the Oracles of God

So here in Romans 3, Paul basically comes to this argument, what advantage is there to being a Jew? Where we have been thus far in our study, at least starting in Romans 1 .18, Paul labors here in his apologetic argument to bring all men under condemnation.

Whether you are a Jew or a Greek, everyone is under sin. You have sinned against God. You have broken his law, whether you are aware that you've done it or not. Whether you had the law or you didn't have the law, you have sinned against the Lord.

And any judgment that he brings upon you, he is just in bringing. There is no one who is good. So when we get to Romans 3, it's like he brings the summary all together. First, the apostle Paul was talking about how men the world over are wicked and unrighteous, and they practice unrighteousness, pursuing lawlessness in rebellion against God.

Then when Paul gets to chapter 2, he makes sure that the Jew understands, hey, you have no cause for boasting. For though you were given the law, you didn't keep the law. You broke it. So there's even less reason for you to be boasting before the Lord since you knew what his righteous decrees were, and you did not follow them.

And when you judge somebody else who is not as righteous as you are, you condemn yourself because you haven't been keeping the things that you are condemning someone else for. So then when he gets to chapter 3, verse 1, given that he's brought Greeks and Jews under condemnation before God, no one is righteous.

So given that he's made that argument about Greeks and about Jews, and he's about to summarize it all up, but we haven't gotten quite there yet. He's still talking about Jews as he's talking about how the Jews had the law, but they didn't keep it.

So they themselves are also under condemnation before God. Therefore, what's the advantage of being a Jew if the Gentiles did not have the law, but they still sin against God and they will be condemned?

And the Jews had the law, but they still sin against God and they will be condemned. Then what's the point? What's the point of being a Jew if no matter what, whether we had the law or we didn't have it, we're still under condemnation before God?

So what advantage is there to being a Jew? Well, Paul responds to that question. It's a rhetorical question. Like he knows as he is writing, as he is presenting this argument, what some are going to say.

And he's encountered this before because Paul has been a debater. He's debated in the public square. He's gone into the synagogues and he's preached there. He's read from the Old Testament scriptures.

These are the arguments that get brought up to him and he responds to them. So if everybody, whether they are a Gentile or a Jew, is under the judgment of God, then what's the advantage of being a Jew?

And Paul says here, much in every way. So he asks this in two questions. Then what is the advantage of the Jew? What advantage has the Jew or what is the value of circumcision? Because this was the way we closed out chapter two.

Paul said in Romans 2, 25 for circumcision indeed is a value if you obey the law. But if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. And eventually he gets to this argument in verse 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. Paul is saying anyone can be a Jew if you are transformed from the heart to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

If the spirit has cleansed you of unrighteousness, has taken out that heart of stone and given you the soft heart, causing you to walk in God's statutes and being careful to obey his rules, just as was prophesied in Ezekiel 36.

If this is the Gentile who has done this, who has become circumcised of heart, just as the Jews were told to be, but we're not. Therefore, their uncircumcision become circumcision before God. They are regarded as those who are keepers of the law because they have been transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And this goes back to the thesis statement that Paul made to this letter to the Romans. Romans 1 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Remember that because this was testified and preached first to the Jews before it was preached to the Greeks. So then the Greek can even be a Jew. The Greek can be a child of God, can be among the people of God because he's circumcised in heart, may not even be circumcised in the flesh.

It doesn't matter as long as he's circumcised in heart. That's really what matters. It's not by following the law. It's by the spirit, not by the letter. So given that that's the argument that Paul has just presented, he's used circumcision for this argument, then what advantage is there to being a Jew or what is the value of circumcision?

Because if being a Jew does not qualify you before God any more than being a Gentile, and if circumcision or keeping the law doesn't save you, then what's the point of either of these things, being a Jew or having circumcision?

And Paul says in verse two, much in every way. So this is not quite like Jesus saying in Matthew 5, 17, I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. Okay. It's not quite like that, but it's kind of a similar statement.

With Paul saying that I'm not abolishing here the things that have been taught to the Jews, but rather trying to help you understand that all of this was pointing to a better way. And that's Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

No one gets to the father, but by him. Jews and Gentiles both can get to the father, but the Jew first, and then also the Greek. Why the Jew first? Because again, the Jews were the first to hear this.

They were the first to witness it. They were the first to receive the testimony of the gospel of Christ, and then were commissioned to take that gospel to the world. So the Gentiles have any and all reason to be thankful and appreciative of Jews, for it was from the Jews that the savior came, and then the gospel was commissioned to them to go out and share it with the Gentiles.

That many Gentiles may even come in and become part of the family of God through the hearing and believing of the gospel. Therefore, there's the advantage of the Jew. They were given this first. They were the first to receive the oracles of God.

They were the people of God that God called out of slavery in Egypt, and what God did for them was even a type. It was a shadow of what he was going to do for anyone who came to faith in Jesus Christ.

We would be called out of slavery to sin, and we would be set free in Jesus, who has broken the shackles as we were chained to the passions of our flesh. We were enslaved to those things, and he has broken those chains and set us free to worship God.

We're not even under the penalty for the sins that we had committed anymore. We were enslaved. We were in chains, and we were waiting our sentence, the judgment of God that was to come upon us because of our sins.

But by faith in Jesus Christ, the chains are broken. We've been set free from the prison that we were in, and now we are out in the daylight, in the spring, worshiping our Lord Jesus Christ and celebrating his goodness and his glory forever, because God is good, not because we did anything good.

And that's, of course, where Paul is going here next, making sure we all understand no one is good. He's going to summarize this again. There is an advantage to being a Jew, but you still need to know.

Nobody is good, not even one. No one does righteousness. God alone is good, and it's because he is merciful that we have received this grace. So we go on again, Romans 3, 2. What advantage has the Jew?

What is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. And again, circumcision of the flesh was pointing to a fulfillment of even this law, this covenant sign that God had given to his children, to Israel.

The fulfillment of that was in Christ. And by faith in Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit of God, and we are circumcised from the heart. So even that covenant sign that God gave, which was an act of obedience that was done in the flesh, even that was supposed to be symbolic of something that happens in the heart.

What you do on the outside is reflective of who you are on the inside. At least it should be. With the Pharisees, it was a different story, because if you remember the seven woes in Matthew chapter 23, Jesus said to them, you wash the outside of the cup, but the inside's still dirty.

You are whitewashed sepulchers, whitewashed tombs. You look great on the outside, but on the inside, you're full of dead men's bones. So the Pharisees had lost the point. They thought that, you know, as long as we're doing all this stuff, then we're righteous.

Well, they weren't even doing on the outside what was a reflection of what was on the inside, because they weren't circumcised in heart. They were practicing circumcision, they were demanding circumcision, but they themselves were not circumcised.

So you definitely have that problem going that way. But again, the covenant sign that God gave to Abraham, to Abraham's descendants, to the children of Israel, this was supposed to be a reflection of who they were in heart.

Doing it on the outside was not their salvation. Their salvation was by grace through faith, just as it is for us. God is gracious to us. It is by faith in Jesus Christ. That is how we're saved, not by our works.

But our works will demonstrate that we have been changed from the heart. The works do not save us, but they will be a demonstration of the salvation that we have in Christ and the sanctification that we are receiving as we walk in Christ.

Faithfulness, Covenant Signs, and the Security of Christ’s Sheep

So verse 3, what if some were unfaithful? In case I didn't finish up verse 2, to begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. So it is to the Jews were given the law, the prophets, the understanding of all of these things that point to Jesus Christ.

And we should be deeply appreciative of that heritage, that this is where our faith has come from. It started among the Jews, and then it has been extended to the Gentiles by the grace of God. And it is in Jesus that the nations are united before God.

Verse 3, what if some were unfaithful? What if some Jews were unfaithful? So they're unfaithful to God's promises, his covenant, and they have to be cut off. Because that's really what the covenant of circumcision was showing.

That's what it was testifying to the children of Israel. If you remain in my covenant, if you do what I say of you, then I will be faithful to you. This is God speaking to his children, I'm summarizing, but it's God speaking to his children in Israel.

If you're faithful to me, I'm faithful to you. If you whore yourself out with other gods, and you do what the pagans do, and you even go halfsies, you know, I'll dabble in this religion over here, but I'll still also worship God.

God says, no, you are uniting yourself with a prostitute, and I will cut you off. So everything that was even symbolic of circumcision and where on the human body that occurred, and even that this was only among the males, because this pointed to the fact, it pointed to headship.

Adam, when he sinned in the garden, the curse was given to him and all those who were descended from him. So we are born under the curse of Adam with his sin nature, because he is our federal head. When we turn from sin and we follow the Lord Jesus Christ, who kept the law perfectly, then we receive his righteousness because he is now our federal head.

So even circumcision was pointing to this headship concept, which was why it was only among men. You are either under Adam and therefore under the curse of death, or you are under Christ and you are under the blessing of life.

Who is your federal head depends on who you have united yourself to. If you are united to the world, then you're not united to God. But if you are united in Christ, then you are his bride, the church, and you are adopted sons and daughters of the father.

So this is circumcision. It pointed to all of this, and even that it was bloody and gross. I mean, every time we bring this up, surely you've got things popping in your head. Why are we talking about circumcision again?

This is gross, right? Because sin is gross. It's awful. Sin is an awful thing in the eyes of God, and we have to know that. We have to know that God hates sin. And because of our sinfulness against God, we're worthy of his judgment and his wrath, as Paul is talking about here in Romans three.

He is not unjust. He is not unrighteous for punishing us. We're the ones who were unrighteous. We're the ones who were faithless. God is always faithful to his promises. He is faithful to himself, which is why any decision that he makes is always going to be just.

Nobody is going to be able to stand before God and say, why have you done this thing to me? This is your fault. You're God. You're the one who made me this way. That's an argument that Paul is going to get to when we get to Romans nine.

I don't want to jump too far ahead. But just to stick with here, understanding we're the ones who are faithless. God is the one who is faithful. If we are in the covenant of God, if we are in the covenant by the blood of Christ and we are united with God, we will never be out of that covenant.

He will never cut us off from that covenant. If somebody claims to be part of the covenant of God but does not remain in that covenant, then they were never truly part of the covenant in the first place.

God is faithful. People are the ones who are faithless. All right. Consider these words of Jesus in John chapter 10. We'll close with this. We'll come back to talking about everyone being a liar, everyone being unrighteous.

We'll look at that tomorrow. So consider these words of Jesus from John chapter 10. Jesus said, starting in verse 25, I told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my Father's name, bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.

I and the Father are one. Let me consider for just a moment what Jesus said here in verse 28. I give them eternal life and they will never perish. My friends, if a person claims to have eternal life in Jesus Christ, but then they stop following Jesus and they go back to living the way of the world, then they never had eternal life.

It wasn't eternal. You either have it or you don't. There's no jumping into the pool of eternal life and if I die here, then I will have eternal life or jumping out of the pool and now I don't have eternal life anymore.

That's not the way it works. Is it eternal or is it not? Has Jesus given it to you or hasn't he? If you have been given eternal life in Christ, then you have it. When you die, you will spend eternity with God.

If a person claims to be a follower of Jesus and to therefore have eternal life, but then they walk away from Christianity, they're not even a Christian anymore. They renounce it or you don't even see any good fruit in them anymore.

They're not bearing fruit for righteousness. They're walking in the ways of this world. They might even say they're a Christian, but all you see in that person's life is worldliness. Then they were never a follower of Jesus and they don't have eternal life.

It was never given to them. Jesus gave the parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13, where he stated explicitly, there are those who are going to look like they're followers of Jesus for a time. They will immediately spring up, but they have no root in themselves and they will wither and die away.

So they receive the word with joy. It looks like they're a follower of Jesus, but all they had was a passing opinion. It was not a true and genuine faith. Therefore they never really were part of the covenant.

So God is not faithless for cutting them off. They weren't ever in the covenant in the first place because they were not circumcised in heart might've looked like something on the outside, but on the inside that transformation had never actually taken place.

Therefore God is never faithless in his judgment of those who fall into judgment. He is faithful to himself and he is faithful to those to whom he has given his promises and walk in those promises and demonstrate that they have the promises of God.

When they do what Jesus told us to do, Jesus said, I give them eternal life and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand and take that as a great comfort and security. Dear Christian, no one can steal you away from your savior.

He has authority overall. As I quoted yesterday in my sermon reading from Matthew 28 verse 20 verses 18 through 20 where Jesus says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. We are safe and secure from all alarms in the hand of our savior Christ.

No one, nothing can snatch us away from him. Let us pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for these words that we have read today and I pray that, uh, that they stir in us a confidence in your goodness, that we look to your grace for our salvation.

Not not looking at our works, what we have done, thinking I have to do this in order to be saved, but you are good and you are faithful and you have given us your son and it's by faith in Jesus, we've been cleansed from all unrighteousness and we have the mercies and the grace of God forever.

Looking forward to your great kingdom and our deliverance from this world into your imperishable glorious heaven. Deliver us from unrighteousness, from temptation, help us to walk in the holiness of Christ today.

We pray this in Jesus name, amen.

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