There Is No Gospel in Romans 2 | Theocast

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Hi, this is John. Today on Theocast, Justin and I are going to do a deep dive into Romans chapter 2 and look at passages of scripture that sound like our good works really do justify us.

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They play a role, a part in our final standing before God. And how is it that we can read this in light of passages that say the opposite, that we're saved by grace?

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We're going to really wrestle with how this has been interpreted badly, and we're going to use very good tools like law gospel distinctions to go down into the text and really understand the context.

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What is Paul trying to do in Romans chapters 1 through 3, and specifically look deep at Romans chapter 2.

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Our conclusion is there is no gospel in Romans chapter 2. Let us explain. Stay tuned.

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If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed pastoral and confessional perspective. Our hope and joy today is to clarify the gospel and to reclaim the purpose of the kingdom.

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Your hosts today are Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and I'm John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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It's good to be for those of you listening. This is the new year for you, and there's a lot of anticipation and excitement maybe for you about the new year.

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For Justin and I, this is the last week of the year for us before we go on Christmas break.

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So, you know, it's an interesting time of year for us, but, you know, we record in advance.

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It's a sprint to the finish. It's a sprint to the finish. So, happy New Year's to you and Merry Christmas to us, and we'll get it all sorted out in the new year.

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But a couple of things we're excited about by this time, probably already happened, we'll already be in California.

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Justin and I are going to California to go to the Westminster Cemetery Conference to learn about faith, which

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I'm excited about. I don't remember the exact title of the conference. Do you? It's definitely centered around faith and the objectivity of our faith.

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So I'm pretty excited. We're going to get time to spend time with NoCo Radio, Mike Ebendroth, The Pactum with Pat Ebendroth and Mike Grimes, and then the

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Heidelcast with Dr. R. Scott Clark. So that's going to be fun, doing a collaborative podcast with them, and that'll be coming out,

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I'm sure, within the next few weeks. So you can stay tuned to listen to that. And then Justin and I are going to be on a podcast that we're not going to announce yet.

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It's secretive, but it's pretty, pretty exciting. So people may know by now, but yeah, we're not going to announce it today,

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I guess. Who knows? The trip is good. I mean, we're going to the conference, but the conference is kind of just an occasion for like -minded guys to all descend upon one place.

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So we're going really to spend time with brothers who have encouraged us in the faith and who we have gotten to know over recent years.

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We're going to try to do some mashup collaborative content that we hope is encouraging for people, build relationships, all that good stuff.

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Hopefully get to see Adriel Sanchez, for those of you that don't listen to Core Christianity. So haven't seen him in a while, so it'll be good.

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I'm looking forward to it. I know, it's been since 2019. Yeah. It's been that long. Wow. It's been a long time. You know, let them know we're coming.

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So a couple of other things. We got some new merch. There's these cool tumblers that are now in the store and come with a straw or whatever.

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Got some new coffee mugs, bigger ones. Just a straw or whatever. Yeah. It's a straw, metal straw, whatever. I guess you could use it as a weapon if you want.

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Dual purpose. Dual purpose. Oh, gosh.

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Some new shirts. It's the end of the year, guys. Lord, help us. It's our last week in the office before Christmas. New hoodies, if you want to go there and get a hoodie.

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It is hoodies. And from my understanding, one of the guys that works with us now is a guy that works with us and does graphic design. I think it's going to be working on some new shirts for Theocast.

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So I have no idea what he's producing. Stay tuned for that. But I know many of you love the

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Trust Christ and Calm Down. And you know, we haven't done a giveaway in a while, Justin. We should give one of those shirts away here in the coming weeks.

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It'll be fun. You said it, John. Yeah, I know. I like giving stuff away. It's fine. We've already wasted enough time.

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Justin, today is going to be good. I'm excited. I'm excited.

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It'll be good. We're talking about Jesus and the Bible and the law and the gospel. Can it get any better than that?

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I mean, seriously. It's true. I mean, people want to know why what we're talking about is relevant, right?

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You guys are just going to open the Bible and talk about it. And of course, we think that the scripture is relevant, but the subject matter today is worthy of a conversation.

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So you've seen the title. There is no gospel in Romans 2. And that sounds,

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I don't know, blasphemous, strong to say, but it's true. And we're going to look at the early chapters of Romans today, most pointedly portions of Romans 2, because there's some confusion that exists, at least in our day.

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I have found, I'm preaching through Romans, full disclosure, I'm preaching through Romans right now at Covenant Baptist Church. And as is so often the case,

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John, I have found that my favorite conversation partners when it comes to preaching through books of the

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Bible often are long dead. And that has certainly been true with respect to Romans.

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The contemporary commentaries, not every one of them, but by and large, the commonly recommended evangelical commentaries on the book of Romans have been a disappointment.

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And the old stuff, John Calvin, Robert Haldane, Charles Hodge, those guys have been of great encouragement to me.

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I'll leave that there. I don't need to get too technical and shop talk and geek out on commentaries and whatnot.

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But I bring it up for this reason. There's a lot of contemporary confusion around some of the content, particularly in Romans 2, especially there, even in verses 6 through 13, if I'm going to really hone in on it, where people seem to be confused as to how to understand what

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Paul is writing there, that God will render to each one of us according to our works and to those effectively who do good and seek good, he will reward with eternal life.

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For those who do evil and don't obey the truth, there will be wrath and fury.

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And what you have a lot of people saying these days is that Paul is talking about our obedience, and he's talking about the fact that if you're legitimately a

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Christian, that you will be empowered by the Holy Spirit to obey, and you will be empowered by the

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Holy Spirit to keep the law in such a way that what Paul writes there will be true of us, that we will have done well enough, that we would be rewarded by God for that.

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We're going to get into this in more detail in a minute. I hope for the listener, for the thoughtful people out there who tune into Theocast, that the implications of this are clear.

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If that is what Paul is writing, that we by the Spirit are empowered to obey well enough that it could be said of us that we have done good and thereby can be rewarded by God with eternal life, then the question is, or questions are raised that are of massive significance.

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Have I done well enough? Have I done enough good? How much is necessary?

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How can I know that I am saved? How can I know that I have peace with God? How can

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I know that though I trust Christ today, that I will in the end be declared just by the

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Lord when I know that I still sin? I know that the corruption of my flesh clings so closely, and I'm going to affirm that yes,

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I'm a saint, but I'm also a sinner to the extent that sin is not just something I do in my flesh.

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It's actually who I am. I have a new identity in Christ now. I've been united to him. But this sin, corruption of the flesh thing is everywhere with me, and so how could

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I be a person of whom Paul could be writing that God would render to me according to my works and that I would do well enough when it comes to my works that God would reward me with eternal life?

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Is spirit -wrought obedience to the law what Paul is talking about in Romans 2?

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I think assurance, peace with God, honesty about our condition, the whole nine,

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I think all of that stuff hangs in the balance. Our question today is, is that assertion that Paul is talking about, the

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Christian's obedience to the law, is that what he's referring to in Romans 2 or not? For those of you who might be tuning in for the first time to Theocast, I'm just going to interject here real quick and give a definition of the law and the gospel because this is what we're trying to argue for.

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Some people are saying this is the good news. If you obey, the good news is you're going to earn this position of eternal life with God.

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That you, by the Spirit, are able to keep the law. That's right. So, this is why we promote so much a law -gospel distinction, and I would say also the analogy of faith, understanding all of Scripture as it relates.

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Don't become isolationists here where we're isolating a particular passage. I do find it's interesting. I'm just going to make several comments here and then

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I'll get to the law -gospel thing, Justin, but I do find it interesting that there are all these passages that are the glorious power of God for transforming the heart and His power to save, and somehow they always get trumped by these types of passages as if these have more weight to them and more value to them than these other clear passages, and so I think we have to be careful in how we read

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Scripture, but when we're approaching the Word of God and someone says to you, there is no gospel in Romans 2,

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I think it's important that we have to identify what is the gospel, right? It's just a word meaning good news, so then you have to say, well, what is good news, and it's news of what

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Christ has done on the behalf of sinners. Christ paid for sin and earned righteousness on behalf of sinners.

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So both the forgiveness of our sins and the needed required righteousness, because God requires righteousness to be in His presence, so the forgiveness of sins and the required righteousness are granted to us by grace through faith alone, by the work of Christ alone.

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So that's the good news of the gospel. There is no due because it's the news of what was done.

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Now, the law is the exact opposite of that. The law is all potential, and it's all future, and it's all due, right?

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If you do this, which is sounding very similar to Romans 2, if we're being clear here, if you do this, then you will earn for yourself righteousness.

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The law is a declaration of what God requires, and those who do it are declared righteous.

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Now, there's something, Justin, we're going to put your sermon, Justin did a two -part sermon on this recently, and we're going to put these in the show notes if you want to go listen to it.

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And it's a very old, good phrase, but when we talk about obedience to the law, it's perfect, personal, perfect, and perpetual, right?

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It has to be that, and it's a great way of describing that. So the way

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I would first kind of initially respond to this, Justin, is that when you approach it the way in which you described, you're almost approaching the gospel as the first half only, that Christ removed the stain of our sin, and we now are set at a clean slate.

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Righteousness is now not granted to us, but righteousness is now potentially given to us by the means of the

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Spirit. So, clean slate, Spirit -empowered, now go prove your righteousness.

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Justin Perdue When in reality, the question we should all be asking is, how will any of us be found righteous in the sight of God?

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To use old—sorry about that, just going to smack my whiteboard there, just, you know, getting all excited, talking with my hands, flailing about.

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Justin Perdue Hey, I slammed the pulpit the other day, and I was like, where'd that come from? Sorry, keep going.

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Justin Perdue Bible -thumping, fundamentalist preacher, John. All right, so the question is, to use old courtroom language, when we approach

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God's bar, what's the question that is going to be asked of every person?

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And it is, are you righteous or not? And then we have to ask ourselves, all right, what is righteousness then?

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Righteousness, even Webster's Dictionary will say this, is fulfilling or keeping a divine or moral law, right?

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And so that's the question. Jew or Gentile, doesn't matter. God is not partial.

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Have you kept the law or not, is the question at God's bar. So Paul, in Romans, beginning in Romans 1 .17,

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when he says, you know, Romans 1 .16, people know, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, to the

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Jew and also to the Greek, to the Gentile, right? For in it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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So Paul is saying in Romans 1 .17 that there is one way that men can be righteous in God's sight.

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There is one kind of righteousness that God would accept, and it's the righteousness that he gives to sinners that they receive by faith.

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It's entirely of faith. So that's his thesis statement. And then he goes about proving that that is in fact the case, that the only righteousness available to men is the righteousness that God would give them, that they receive by faith.

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And so he starts out on that project in Romans 1 .18. Yeah, please. And I was going to say, and it's always been this way, according to Galatians 3 .8,

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when it says the gospel is preached to Abraham, right? Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. This isn't just New Testament.

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This is how it's always been. This is the entire plan of God from before the foundations of the world.

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And in terms of once sin enters the world, the promise in Genesis 3 .15

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of a redeemer who would come to save God's people, it has always been. I mean, that promise is made in Genesis 3 .15.

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And what we effectively have in the rest of scripture is the unfolding of the accomplishment of that promise. And this promise has always been a promise of what

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God would do. And it has always been a promise that is to be believed and received by God's people.

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So Paul's writing nothing new in Romans 1 .17. This is not some new category as though God is flipping the script and is now saving people differently.

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Which is partly why he cites the prophet Habakkuk to demonstrate that this has always been the case. So Paul is setting out in Romans 1 .18

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to prove that what he said in Romans 1 .17 is the case. The only way that a sinner would ever be counted righteous, declared just in God's sight, is if God gives that sinner righteousness and that sinner receives it by faith.

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So in Romans 1 .18, he begins to set out to prove what? One thing. That all men,

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Jew and Gentile alike, are under sin and thereby have no possible shot at righteousness of their own.

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And he does not conclude this portion of his argument until Romans 3 .20. That's where he drives it all down on a wedge.

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He says in Romans 3 .20, For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

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So there is no gospel. I'm just going to say this from the outset. This is how I understand Paul's argumentation.

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And I'll maybe be punchy about this in a minute, but because of all the guys that beat the desk over context and then seem to divorce that in jettison context altogether when they interpret

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Romans 2 .6 and following. There is no gospel from Romans 1 .17

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until Romans 3 .21. From Romans 1 .18 to 3 .20, it is all law because Paul has one objective, and that is to crush everyone.

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That's right. And to demonstrate that all men, Jew and Gentile alike, are under sin and thereby are worthy of condemnation and have no hope of righteousness on their own steam.

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By no way and no sense will any flesh whatsoever be justified by works of the law, because the law shuts everyone's mouth because nobody's done it.

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That's his entire argument. I mean, just even going back to... And I'll get more specific in a minute. Go ahead. Yeah.

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But going back to God will render to everyone His works. And... Which is a true statement.

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It is true. And we believe that. It should stop you in your tracks and want you to go to dig a hole and go hide.

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You should tremble when those words are read. You don't want it. Because let's just think about this for a moment,

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Justin. Humans naturally relativize things because we are a comparative -natured people.

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We love to compare ourselves. So when we think about, oh yeah, yeah, you know, God's going to render and He'll look at my life and He'll see that, you know, for the majority of my life,

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I really tried to obey Him. No, no. There is no try. That's not what Paul's saying. No, there is no try.

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And I want you to even think about your good works. You know, I like how Paul even describes his good works. They're putrefied, right?

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They come with them, a requirement of faith, because if you have not faith in the perfect righteousness of Christ on your behalf, your works will never be acceptable before God because they're not perfect.

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And we relativize our good works. Because when he says, listen, if you want to bring your works, you need to understand God's going to render to you what you deserve, and there is none righteous.

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Justin Perdue That's exactly right. All right. So let's get into this in a little more detail. We're not going to spend our time on Romans 1, 18 to 32, but just a super quick description of those verses.

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Paul begins. The contrast between Romans 1, 18 and 1, 17 is pretty striking because the righteousness of God that He gives sinners is revealed in the gospel.

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But then verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

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And then what's the evidence that all men are under wrath? Well, it's that God has given man over to every kind of sin and debauchery, sexual immorality, and on down the line.

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Then at the end of Romans 1, primarily speaking to Gentiles, to the nations, right, in Romans 1, 18 to 32, men are without excuse because the creation bears witness about God.

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The law that God has written into creation testifies about Him as well. So we're all culpable and we're without excuse before Him.

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But how bad are we? Not only do we do all of these things that Paul lists from Romans 1, 24 to 31, but we actually condone and celebrate wickedness, which is what we do.

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Then in Romans 2, 1 and following, his gaze shifts more towards Jews. It's clear. So then this is striking stuff,

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John. Let's just look at some of this. He says, therefore you have no excuse on man. This is Romans 2, 1. Every one of you who judges, for in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

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So you predominantly Jewish people who have the law, you judge folks that practice the stuff

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I've just outlined. Here's the problem though. You do the exact same thing, right?

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So then he says, we know that the judgment of God rightly falls on people who practice such things and you practice them as well.

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Then verse three, what he says effectively is this, you don't allow other people to escape your judgment.

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Do you think that you will then escape God's judgment? The answer there is of course not, right?

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You don't meet your own standards. And when you judge other people by your own standards, how much more so would you be liable to God's judgment?

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Then verse four, he says, or maybe it is that you're just presuming upon God's patience and kindness and forbearance, not knowing that all of that is meant to lead you to repentance.

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Verse five, but you actually are hard of heart and you're unrepentant. What does he mean there? He means you are a person who is blind to your own guilt.

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You have deluded yourself into thinking that you have rendered unto God that which would satisfy

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Him. You think that other people will face the wrath of God because of their conduct, but that you will not face the wrath of God because of yours.

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That's what he means by being unrepentant right there. And he says, because you're hard of heart and unrepentant, you're actually storing up wrath for yourself when on the day of judgment, right?

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The day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed, when God judges the world on principles of righteousness, which is what we said earlier, the question at God's bar is, have you kept the law?

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Are you righteous or not? Every man will be rendered righteous, a law keeper, or unrighteous, a law breaker.

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And that's true of every person. That's true for Jews who have the written law, like Romans 2, 12 to 14.

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It's true for Gentiles who have the law written on their hearts. And so here's the thing,

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John, that verse six of Romans two, right after you're storing up wrath for yourself because you're hard hearted, you're unrepentant, and God, when he judges the world on principles of righteousness, it's going to be wrath for you.

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Verse six, he will render to each one according to his works. Boom. That is not meant to be a statement of, like, if you hear that and you say, yeah, it sounds good, it's probably going to go well for me.

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You have not understood it. This is a death sentence. Like literally, game's over, guys.

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We need to just pack up, fold up, shop, and go home. If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called

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Faith vs. Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at theocast .org

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slash primer. You already mentioned chapter three, but you know, 320, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight.

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So either God's confused or Paul's confused or we're confused. That last option is the problem.

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The way that some modern commentators, I mean, respected guys, write about these verses, especially

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Romans 2, 6 through 13, they sound schizophrenic and they make

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God and Paul sound the same, sadly. It's almost like it's this weird, confusing thing. Well, we know on the one hand we're saved by grace through faith in Christ.

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But then on the other hand, it's mysterious, right? Because our works are going to factor into our final salvation.

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Like we need to keep the law ourselves. And by the spirit, we're enabled to do that. That's how they argue.

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Well, and then what world they'll go is over to James, right? Before Abraham was justified by works. And this is where, you know, man, we've already done a podcast on that.

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I'll just reference this now. Context, these guys who yell context. You take a passage like that.

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You jump over there where James is trying to make an argument that people are claiming faith in Christ.

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And he's saying, your actions are not justifying your claim. There's a difference where Paul here is specifically talking about one standing before God.

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He's talking about standing before God. He's talking about justification. That's right. That's what he's talking about. That's right.

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So I think it's important that just because it has the same word doesn't mean it's being used in the same context, right?

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That's what's so hard about a word like justification. It's a theological word. Like if I were to say, I hate this, Justin, you kind of need to know, well, what is this referencing?

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And then I will determine whether you should hate that or not. But with justification, we kind of say, well, no, he said justified and justification only can have one meaning.

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No, that's not what it means. It needs to be made right between two different people where our situations or context, or it could be financial, as you said, or legal.

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And so we have to understand in that context, James is talking about a relationship between two people saying,

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I believe in Jesus, but yet you're not showing me that. And in Paul's context, he's trying to crush people with the law.

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That's what he's trying to do. It's completely too different. And so it does matter. Well, in guys, they'll grab the early verses of Romans eight, particularly

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Romans eight, three, and four, where Paul writes there that God has done what the law weakened by the flesh couldn't do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

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And guys will go there to Romans eight, three, and four and see spirit wrought keeping of the law by Christians.

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We are enabled by the spirit to keep the law is how they interpret Romans eight, four. Well, again, Calvin and other guys are like, no,

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Romans eight, four is about the imputation of Christ's righteousness. For people who say that Paul is talking about our keeping of the law by the spirit, that is completely foreign to the apostle's argument.

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And I agree with that take. So, but that's what guys argue for in Romans two, is that Paul is writing about our spirit empowered keeping of the law, that we will be able to do well enough that God would render unto us according to our works, eternal life.

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They'll grab Romans two, 29 as well, where Paul talks about being a Jew is an inward reality and that circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not the letter of the law.

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Well, again, what is Paul arguing there in the latter portion of Romans two? I realized we haven't even argued for Romans two, six and following, which

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I plan to do in a second, but Romans two, 17 to 29, Paul picks the law up pointedly says to Jews, you rely on the law and you boast in God.

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You rely on the law, but you haven't kept it. You appeal to the law, but you've not attained righteousness under it.

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And you actually dishonor God by breaking the law. Then he picks up circumcision. You think that circumcision is valuable, but it's only valuable if you keep the law.

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And in fact, if you aren't circumcised, but keep the law, you're good. So then he says that no one's a

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Jew outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, the circumcision that matters in the eyes of God is a heart level reality because why, what's he saying?

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He's saying that God's judgment penetrates to the inner recesses of the human heart. And so God will only render people righteous who are righteous at that level.

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This is not external conformity to a written code. This is not some external right or ceremony.

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This is about being found righteous at a spiritual level. That's his entire argument.

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And so again, even there in Romans 2 29, he's not talking about spirit empowered, imperfect obedience.

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He's talking about perfect righteousness at a spiritual level that's required in the eyes of God and the judgment.

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And the strong language is he's a righteous judge. Therefore, it requires him to be impartial.

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So no matter what your birth is, if you're from Abraham or not, the law does not look at gender or race.

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It's just not what it looks like. The law is the standard. That's right. All right. So Romans 2 6 and 5, let's just look at a few of these verses in particular, and then we can comment in general ways and wrap up the regular portion of the show.

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So Romans 2 6, he will render to each one according to his works. That's a true statement because God's a righteous judge.

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Verse seven, to those who by patience in well -doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.

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But for those who are self -seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.

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Pause button. Romans 2 7, to those who by patience in well -doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he'll give eternal life.

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So for the seekers, man, for those who seek God diligently and genuinely, for those who seek eternal life and good,

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God will reward them. This is what people say. So is that true of you or not?

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Are you seeking God? Are you seeking eternal life? Are you seeking glory and honor and immortality?

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Well, here's the thing. Look at Romans 3 10 and 11.

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As it is written, this is Paul, the conclusion of his argument. None is righteous. No, not one.

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No one understands. No one seeks for God. So is

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Paul saying that men by seeking for God somehow are going to earn eternal life?

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He's no, because just a few verses later, he's going to say, here's the problem. Guys, no one seeks

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God. No one seeks immortality. That's the issue. All right. Continue on Romans 2 9.

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There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the

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Jew first and also the Greek. All right. So here we go. True statement. There'll be glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good.

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Romans 3 12, same section, same part of his argument.

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Paul goes on to say, all have turned aside together. They have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.

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So it is true glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good to the Jew and also to the Greek. Here's the problem though, guys, says

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Paul, no one does good. Not even one person. That's right. So it's true.

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God's a righteous judge. He'll reward those who do good. But nobody does good. He'll punish those who do evil.

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He will reward those who seek eternal life. Here's the problem though. Nobody seeks for it, right?

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So it's, it's an indictment of the entire human race. That's right. That's what he's accomplishing in the context.

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You've got to see it that way. And you've got to read Romans 2 in its entirety, but Romans 2 6 to 13 in its context, don't isolate it, don't read into it, take

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Paul at his word and see what he's doing and he's setting us up for what John, Romans 3 21.

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He crushes us all with the law by the law that works of the law. No one will ever be justified. The law only shuts our mouths.

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But then he says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

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The scriptures testify about it. Well, what righteousness is that? It's the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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We're misusing a tool, Paul. Paul's using a hammer to smash us down, to destroy us so we can give us the life of bread of the gospel.

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And we're taking that hammer going, no, we can build up righteousness. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. The hammer is designed to destroy righteous, not build it.

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And I would say, Justin, a lot of times the reason why people go to these, because it has this language of good works.

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And I know a lot of preachers are concerned about good works in the church. So are we, and good works matter.

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They're paramount. They're so important. They're, they're important for the work of the kingdom, but good works are never used to build righteousness for one's standing in the kingdom.

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That's granted. That's always granted. Standing, status, justification, works have nothing to do with it. That's right.

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Because sometimes what people are going to hear us say is like, you guys, you guys are going to be careful. You're antinomians. You're going to tell people they don't have to do good works.

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That's the exact opposite. Let's just make sure we go to the right place where good works are necessary as it relates to the work of the kingdom, sharing the gospel and loving one another, but it's never in relationship to our standing before God.

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That hammer in Paul's hand is coming at your head to crush you and say, don't try and do this in your own power.

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Yep. The law is not a pillow. It's a sledgehammer. When it comes, when it comes to justification, when it comes to justification, there is one use of the law.

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That's right. It's to crush us, to show us the depth of our corruption and to drive us to Christ.

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I mean, Paul says that at the end of Romans 3 .20, he says, by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

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What is that? That's the first use of the law. It shows us our sin. It's like Romans 7 .13, right?

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That it was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin.

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That's the purpose of the law, right? And through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

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That's right. This is why the law is given. Redemptively speaking, the law is given for this purpose so that we would look at ourselves and look at the law and we would tremble, just like Sinai shook when

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God gave it in the first place. We should tremble at the law when it comes to our standing and our justification and know that we are bankrupt and devoid of righteousness.

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And then we look to Christ, who is our only hope. I mean, is Paul schizophrenic when he says there's nothing that can separate us from the love of God?

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Because according to Romans 2, you would feel like there is something that could separate you, which is your good works. You wouldn't do enough good works.

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Yeah, that's why you have to understand Lawhammer. And then when he gets to Romans 8, just to help you understand your position, your union with Christ, your status is based upon God's capacity and ability, which is the objectivity of our faith is outside of us.

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So Romans 2 is meant to crush you and Romans 8, or you could say 6 through 8, is meant to build you up into the cross of Christ.

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I mean, Romans 6, he's going to get into union with Christ. He's going to talk about being freed from the tyranny of sin and becoming obedient from the heart.

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God be praised. And then he gets into Romans 7. We're not under the law anymore.

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We live by the Spirit. But then he speaks to the reality of the remaining corruption that's always with us and how we're at the same time, effectively, saints and sinners.

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This is not a podcast about that, but he's going to get into this stuff later on. But right here in Romans 2, he is not talking about that.

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He is building an argument. He's using the law to crush and to indict everyone that he might herald the gospel.

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So Romans 10, if I may briefly just do my final parting shot, just to kind of help us, really

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Romans 9, 30 through 10, 4. This is, I think, illustrative and illuminating just to continue to help us in our understanding.

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So Paul asks, I'm just going to read these verses and comment, because you read in Romans 3, 21 and 22, just like you read in Romans 1, 17, this phrase, the righteousness of God, you know, and it comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

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Well, what are we talking about? All right, here we go. Romans 9, 30. What shall we say then? He answers his own question, that Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it.

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That is a righteousness that is by faith, but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness, again, right, did not succeed in reaching that law.

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Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.

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They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it's written, behold, I am laying in Zion, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

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Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. He's talking about Jews, Paul is. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.

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Then these, Romans 10, 3 and 4. Four, being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

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Brief insertion. When Paul uses the language in Romans 1, 17, 3, 21, 3, 22, or here in Romans 10, the righteousness of God is not a divine attribute.

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This is not describing the fact that God is righteous. What he's talking about is a righteousness that God gives to sinners.

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The question is what, what righteousness? Whose righteousness? Romans 10, 4.

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For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. So this righteousness of God, seeking

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God's righteousness, submitting to God's righteousness, the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, all that, that is describing this reality.

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It's Christ who is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes in him. Right? So we're trusting in Christ and we get his righteousness.

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Just brief observation here. Roman Catholics have objected to this for centuries and many people are imprecise in their language in a way that's unhelpful.

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When we talk about the righteousness of Christ being imputed to us and being credited to us, we're not talking about God's own righteousness being given to us as though a divine righteousness could be given to a human.

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That's not what we're saying. We're not acting like in the courtroom, the judge is giving the defendant, the judge's righteousness.

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What it is, is that God, the son became a man and as a man, he could represent men.

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Paul argues this in Romans 5, right? That just like Adam represented us all, Christ represents everyone who's in him.

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So Jesus kept the law. He fulfilled the requirements of the law and his righteousness as a human being is what's counted to us so that when we're represented by Christ and united to him by faith, when it comes to God's bar at the end of it all, are you a law keeper, are you a law breaker?

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In Christ Jesus, we have kept the law. It is as though we have been as perfectly obedient as he was obedient for us.

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That's the argument. And it's incredibly edifying when we understand what Paul is up to and how the best thing that could ever happen for us is that we would in fact despair of our own righteousness.

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So that we would know that Christ is our only hope for righteousness. And I mean, brother, if the

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Lord would drill this through my thick skull, I would be greatly helped because I am so prone, like all of us,

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Spurgeon says this really well, that we all just cling to Sinai, right?

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We prefer Sinai to Calvary and we, like men, like moth to a flame, we just cannot stay away from the law.

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Even though the law can never give life, it can never justify, we can't help ourselves. And we are robbed of peace and joy and effectiveness when we constantly think in these ways.

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The tactics, you know, there's episodes that we did a couple of weeks ago. This is the tactics of the accuser, right? So depending on one's standing, if they have a weak conscience, he attacks them with the failure of the law.

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And if they are prideful, he attacks them with, you can do this, right?

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Self -righteousness. So he's either going to attack you on either side of this. And it's important that we proclaim the purity of the gospel and the purity of the law and make sure that they're staying separated.

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A couple of things, people ask you this quite often. So we've done two things. We've put together two separate pages. We have a category page that has a lot of recommendations on other episodes that we have done.

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And so we'll put that in our syllabus where you can see all the other categories of law gospel we've done. And we have a law gospel reading resource list that's available on our recommended reading list that's available there.

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I want to thank all of our donors and supporters. That's the kind of resources we're going to continue to be putting out in the coming months and weeks.

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So I just want to thank you guys for that. And there's a lot of other resources on our website.

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You guys can check those out. Things like, I don't even know if it's out yet. We're working on it. It could be out, but stay tuned for an email.

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Things like a church directory, where if you're looking for a like -minded church, I may have to take that out, but I don't know.

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We're working on it. We'll see what happens. It might be a church search kind of thing. A church search kind of thing for like -minded churches like Theocast.

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Justin and I do a second podcast. And in this next podcast, we're going to continue this conversation about good works.

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Are they necessary? What are they necessary for? And how we can use the gospel when Paul says that the kindness of God is meant to lead to repentance.

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How does that help us in understanding the role of good works? And so we're going to use that in our second podcast, which we call

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Semper Reformanda. And this is where Justin and I spend time with those who are a part of our

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Semper Reformanda community. These are monthly donors who give to us to help support us. And we do an additional podcast for them.

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We also have an app for them, and you can join that app where Justin and I, we interact with you in there.

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We have additional resources, things called like TheocastU, where you can get in there and listen to classes that Justin and I have been teaching.

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So just a lot of great resources in there. We've been adding a whole lot more for 2023. If you want to be a part of Semper Reformanda, you can go to our website, theocast .org,

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to learn about that. Justin, super edifying. My heart is so full. I love hearing you talk about the gospel, my friend.

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I love talking to you about the gospel. And hey, if you guys have not heard his sermons, in the links below, two powerful sermons on Romans.

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Go listen to them. I promise it'll be great. Yeah, I mean, obviously the whole series is on our website. I'm currently in Romans 3.

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Yep. You can go to his website, covbap .org, if you want to listen to those. Love you guys. Thank you. Excited for 2023.