What is the Clearest Gospel of All? Romans 2

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#3 – The Sin of Self-Righteousness
(Romans 2:1-3:8)

I want you to imagine that you are sitting in the church of Rome when the epistle to the Romans is first read. An elder or a scribe or leader has been reading chapter one, verse 18 up to verse 32. While this passage is being read — where Paul describes the wrath of God revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of man and the terrible things that men are doing because they have turned their backs to God — you notice that a group of Christians sitting on one side, these are Jewish Christians, are nodding their heads and whispering to one another, “This Paul surely has hit the nail on the head. We have always known that these Gentiles are rebellious and sinful.”

Suddenly the reader turns to chapter 2 and these Jewish Christians prick up their ears, because this is what they hear in chapter 2:1-4:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?

And the Jews began to say to themselves, “Surely he is not talking about us. We are Jews. How can he talk about us like that? Surely he must mean somebody else.”

And the scribe is reading on and he comes to verse 17:

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God....

Paul says, “Yes indeed, I am talking to you Jews. Indeed you are called a Jew and you trust in the Lord and you make your boast of God...,” and he goes on and on.

You see, Paul has been describing the Gentile world in chapter 1, and he has given us a terrible picture of death. They are ungodly, they have deliberately suppressed the truth about God, they have made their own gods, they are worshipping themselves and their ideas, and they are living in sin. And now, suddenly, he changes from the Gentiles to the Jews.

Why does he make this distinction? It is because the Jews were in a very special position. You see, the Gentiles did have a knowledge of God, but it was an implicit knowledge of God: it was a knowledge of God that was revealed to them through nature and through their inner conviction.

The Jews, over and above this, had the direct revelation of God. As Paul mentioned in chapter 3, verse 2:

...First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God.

God had revealed Himself to them through His law, through Moses, and through the other prophets — revealed Himself in a very special and explicit way.

The tragedy was that the Jews were relying on this. They felt, because God had given them this special position, that they were very special people. They felt, because they had the law in this explicit form, that they were better off than the Gentiles. They felt that these things, in and of themselves, made them acceptable to God. But they were ignorant. They were ignorant of the fact that these things did not make them special before God.

Before we discuss the Jews, I would like to

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