Lesson 7 - Romans 2 Cont.

[Music] [Music] so I am gonna ask you put those thinking caps on today it's gonna be challenging the things that often get glossed over in the book of Romans we're gonna attack with gusto today in Romans chapter 2 the role of the law or as the complete Jewish Bible prefers to say the Torah for both Gentile and Jewish believers takes a prominent place in the narrative if you're going to understand Paul at all you better understand what he means when he says law because he uses that word hundreds of times in his epistles now we're gonna take this slow and easy because the issue of the law has immense implications for judeo-christianity we're also going to spend some time explaining and examining common terms that we find within Christianity but those terms are often not defined we to say them and walk right by them this is where your study and knowledge of the Torah and hopefully your study of the book of Acts with us is going to pay off handsomely the issue has made all the more complex because of the terminology that Paul employs and unfortunately we have the added problem of Paul necessarily using Greek to transmit his Hebrew thoughts and for 21st century English speakers yet another challenge is that we go through yet another layer of translation from Greek to English Hebrew thought converted to Greek then Greek thought converted to English so step number one for by students is to recognize that there are challenges due to translation issues and they matter when we attempt to understand Holy Scripture it is when we deny these issues that poor doctrine is created step number two is realizing that it doesn't take a PhD to understand the issues that we explore and to find an understandable solution the Bible wasn't created by or for academics and theologians it was created for average people to hear to read to understand it's just that the distance of language and culture and a couple of thousand years of history puts us today at a disadvantage so we have to work a little harder to get to where God's and God intends for us to go so while Jews of the first century could better understand the context that Paul is getting at even if they don't necessarily agree with his conclusions or even as theology Gentiles who don't understand Judaism are hopelessly lost in space unless they have been carefully familiarized with Jewish culture of the biblical era and the role of Holika Jewish law verses the Bible and if we don't get this right when we get there some weeks from now it'll make Romans chapter seven the discussion on that this matter of the law seems somewhere between maddening contradiction and some sort of first century religious psychobabble most denominations solve this problem by picking a few phrases of Paul's out of context then relying on them while just ignoring his other phrases that seem to say exactly the opposite we're gonna begin to tackle some of this today I hope it is is interesting and eye-opening to you as it is to me but you're gonna need to focus now one of the things to look for today is how Paul defines what doing the law and work of the law actually is and since Yahshua says in Matthew 5:17 that he didn't abolish the law then he says in Matthew 19 that to that that to the measure that one obeys the law one status within the kingdom of God is going to be determined then what doing the law amounts to especially in modern times well that ought to be is supreme importance to every believer matthew 5:19 so whoever disobeys the least of these Commandments and teaches others to do so will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever obeys them and so teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven so once you become a member of the kingdom of heaven you will be fitted somewhere within a hierarchy as determined by God not by me not by a rabbi and not by some pastor you will be fitted from the least to the greatest fully dependent upon how zealously or not you obey the law of Moses however becoming a member of the kingdom of heaven is not ironically dependent on a bangle law it is entirely a matter of trusting God and having faith in Yeshua as our Messiah and our Lord and no doubt Paul's definition of doing the law is something of a sis of a surprise especially to his Jewish years of his day so open your Bibles now to the book of Romans as we continue with this important letter that has become the fulcrum upon which modern Christianity balances whether it ought to or not is a matter of opinion so we're gonna read Romans chapter 2 from verse 12 to the end if you have a complete Jewish Bible we're gonna start on page 14 oh three Romans chapter 2 starting at verse 12 all who had sinned outside the framework of Torah will die outside the framework of Torah all who have sinned within the framework of Torah will be judged by Torah it is not merely the ears of Torah whom God considers righteous it is the doers of what Torah says who will be made righteous in God's sight for whenever Gentiles who have no Torah do naturally with the Torah requires than these even though they don't have Torah for themselves our Torah for their lives show that the conduct the Torah dick takes is written in their hearts their conscience is also bear witness to this for their conflicting thoughts sometimes accuse them sometimes defend them on a day when God passes judgment on people's inmost secrets according to the good news as I proclaim it he does this through the Messiah Yeshua but if you call yourself a Jew and you rest on Torah and you boast about God and you know his will and you give your approval to what is right because you have been instructed from the Torah and you have persuaded yourself that you are a guide to the blind a light in the darkness an instructor for the spiritually unaware a teacher of children since then the Torah you have the embodiment of knowledge and truth then you who teach others don't you teach yourself preaching thou shalt not steal do you steal saying thou shalt not commit adultery do you commit adultery the testing idols do you commit idolatrous acts you who take such pride in Torah do you by disobeying the Torah dishonor God as it says in in the Tanakh for it's because of you that God's name is blaspheme by the by the Gentiles for circumcision is indeed a value if you do what Torah says but if you're a transgressor of Torah your circumcision has become uncircumcision therefore if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the Torah won't his uncircumcision be counted his circumcision indeed the man who is physically uncircumcised but he obeys the Torah will stand as a judgment on you who've had a brief nawab circumcision ceremony and you have the torah written out but you violate it for the real Jew is not merely Jewish outwardly true circumcision is not only external and physical on the contrary the real Jew is one inwardly true circumcision is of the heart it's spiritual not literal so that his praise comes not from other people but from God keep your Bibles open we just heard verse 12 take a look at verse 12 particularly if you have a complete Jewish Bible but look at verse 12 but now I want to read it to you in the King James Version Romans 2 12 for as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law that's the King James Version a little more familiar to years didn't have the word Torah in there notice how the complete Jewish Bible chooses to insert the word Torah where the complete Jewish but rather the King James Version virtually all other English versions use the term law whether your Bible reads without law or outside the framework of Torah both of these phrases are actually attempted translations of the Greek word a Nomos a Nomos now Nomos means law or it means a custom that's regularly obeyed eight Nomos means without law not law an ignorance of the law something along those lines know most and a Nomos are common words in greek and they apply to any law in most any context in general therefore for roman gentiles it was up to the context of the conversation to flesh out how that term was meant not to jews however the term law had a much smaller range of meanings but in every case it pointed towards their religious laws that are seen as having come in one way or another from the God of Israel even more how we moderns take the term law in English has a number of variables in the Bible however we should take nearly every instance of the word law as being a religious term in non-religious usage in the Gentile world the term law is used differently for instance quite often the police or the sheriff is called the law or we say that someone is breaking the law and we mean that there is some societal statute statutes similar criminal that a perpetrator is violating and so we think of it in a legal sense or we can speak of the law as an entire system of rules and force through various governmental institutions thus it's important that we remember that in the book of Romans the Hebrew Paul is thinking in Hebrew cultural and Hebrew religious terms not in Roman Gentile cultural terms so especially when he speaks of someone sinning without the law clearly this helps us understand that Paul means law in the Hebrew religious sense of it therefore without law should better be better translated as without the law because Paul is speaking of the system of rules that govern all Jewish behavior within Jewish culture and in his letters Paul usually calls this the law however told you you need those thinking caps on today however as Paul uses the term the law and often within Hebrew culture as well the law is not a precise or a technical term it's a very general term in much earlier times Old Testament times the law strictly meant the law of Moses the Torah has received about Sinai that's all it meant but in Paul's day long way removed from that when the synagogue not the temple was the most influential and prevalent religious institution of the Jews the term the law had taken on a more broad meaning and in general it more meant Jewish law Holika which was a blend of man-made traditions plus interpretations of the law of Moses plus what is often called oral law oral law is a little different from tradition in that it is said among academic Jews that what was written down in the law of Moses is not all that Moses received up on Mount Sinai there were other laws that they call oral laws that God gave to Moses but for various reasons Moses chose not to write them down rather they were handed down word of mouth orally or oral law yet they remained valuable and valid and for Jews equal an inspiration and authority as the written Torah so for a Jew the term the law pointed towards this large body of rulings that they lived by that rhetorically a rather durian theoretically really have become its common foundation based upon what God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai and this is because Holika purports to be the proper interpretation of what God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai no matter how fanciful that interpretation might be now while this might have your head spinning in effect it is almost exactly how Christianity works today and has for centuries for instance Christians often speak of the Trinity and when asked about this say well it's in the Bible I have news for you it's not the word Trinity never appears in the Bible Old Testament or New Testament rather the word Trinity is actually the name given to a man-made Roman Church doctrine that seems to have come about around the 3rd century AD this church doctrine of the Trinity arose mainly as an interpretation by some early church authorities concerning this particular passage in Matthew 28:19 Matthew 28:19 therefore go and make people from all nations into talmidim into disciples immersing them into the reality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit that's where the doctrine of the Trinity came from the word Trinity never appears in the Bible now as you might imagine maybe you don't know this there is no such thing as a single Universal E accepted doctrine of the Trinity within Christianity since indeed it's a man-made doctrine it's not a direct passage from Holy Scripture nearly every denomination of any size has its own version of it and some denominations don't believe in the three gods and one theology at all but the point is that those who to say that it's valid say oh it's in the Bible in reality however the doctrine of the Trinity is only in a particular interpretation of a Bible passage made by certain church authorities but in common Christian speech and thinking Holy Scripture and the doctrine of the Trinity are essentially the same things carrying the same weight and same Authority that's how it worked in Judaism when the term the law was used some of what was said to comprise the law was indeed taken word-for-word directly from Holy Scripture the law of Moses the Torah but most of the time by Paul's day what was ordained and followed by Jewish society was what man-made tradition Holika said that the law of Moses meant or it led them to believe was the case in any case the point is that often in the New Testament era like here in Romans 2:12 the term the law had a rather broad general sense to it that didn't intend to make any scholarly or technical differentiation between the law of Moses and all the various man-made Jewish traditions that had developed especially since the Babylonian exile it was all considered as equally valid and of the same substance and most importantly of the same level of divine authority again it works very similarly in the Christian Church as regards doctrines in Scripture well is used here in Romans chapter 2 what we must try to grasp is that the law was or than a set of religious rulings for Jews to follow it described and it instilled an entire way of life the law is what defined Jewish identity following the law was what separated Jews from Gentiles so to a Jew a person who lived without the law indicated a non Jew a Gentile there was no such thing as a Jew who lived without the law or that person wouldn't be considered a Jew interestingly Paul says that a person who was raised without the law a Gentile was as liable to offend God and perish as the Jewish person who was raised in a society that revolved around the law now the law in its broad sense more than only the law of Moses but nonetheless this Jew could offend God by not obeying that law so what Paul is plainly saying is that simply being a Jew does not immunize you from God's wrath in Christianese simply being a Jew doesn't save you and especially so if you break the law that is the main thing that you cling to as to what separates you even elevate you from Gentiles then in verse 13 Paul says something that would really have bothered Jews of his day he says that being one who hears the law doesn't make the hearer a Jewish hearer righteous before God oh that would have upset them rather it is those Jews who do the law who are righteous now here are a couple of things to notice notice how it is not those who read the law but rather those who hear where did one hear the law in Paul's day you might be surprised at the answer it wasn't at the temple it was in the synagogue in the synagogue and traditions were taught orally because they hadn't been written down yet and Holy Scripture since it had long ago been translated into Greek was more accessible to the average diasporic Jew than it had ever been but still most Jews didn't possess a Bible that was expensive so indeed nearly universally Jews were hearers of the law of traditions and Scripture but they heard it in the synagogue from the mouths of Pharisees not at the temple from the priests the only thing is that in Paul's day the Jewish societal belief was that being Jewish automatically made you righteous before God any kind of salvation experience for a Jew in his day had to do with being physically saved from a bad circumstance for instance from being occupied and oppressed by Rome the kind of salvation that Christianity envisions and that Paul preaches is meant in the spiritual sense that is we are saved in the sense of our souls being given eternal life by the Lord this is the reason that Paul is explaining to these Jew of the city of Rome that merely being Jewish does not keep them safe from God's wrath and this thought would have severely agitated most of the Jewish community including some of the Jewish believers so says Paul it is the doers of the law who are judged righteous by God and surprisingly this group rather this applies to the group that does not have the law as well Gentiles Romans 2:14 for when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law these then not having the law are a lawn to themselves needless to say verses 13 and 14 seem very difficult to understand and would have upset the Jewish community to no end but now here's something that causes great consternation within the Christian community it is best seen in the King James Version in verse 13 we read this in the King James for not the hearers of the law are just before God but the doers of the law shall be justified oh my did you hear that the doers of the law shall be justified let's pause to define a term in Christian parlance the word justified means to be made righteous before God through faith in Christ modern Christianity dating back to Luther emphasized that since justification is through faith alone then it is impossible that works in other words physically doing something can be involved so how does that operate here we're clearly Paul says it's the doers of the law who shall be justified now folks this is one big sticky wicket because if we stop right here and go no further understand that Paul just literally said that if one does the law that will be their justification before God so does Paul mean that one can either be justified by doing the law or justified by faith in Christ that there indeed is an option a and an option B for salvation or has some as some have decided Jews are justified by doing the law Gentiles are justified by faith in Christ so indeed Christ is not for the Jews he's only for Gentiles so which is a sticky wicket see part of the problem with this verse comes with the translation from the Greek to the English and a determination by Christian commentators to insert the word justification where I don't think it necessarily belongs essentially they try to make two English words righteous and justification that both come from the same Greek word to mean two different things in order to wind up with a theological result that they have predetermined now let me help you through this very real dilemma the reality is that the Greek words used in verse 13 for when this verse says that merely hearers of the law will not be just before God but only the doers of the law shall be justified they're the exact same root word in slightly different forms and both times they are used in our passage they actually mean righteous not justified now recall from an earlier lesson in Romans that the standard root word for righteousness in Greek is deke deke oh and when it is used here in verse 13 deke you is applied to both the here of the law not being deemed by God is just and to those who are justified by doing the law that is English translators customarily choose to use the words just and justified instead of using the more standard correct word righteous see this is the result of lots of literary gymnastics by Bible commentators to try and figure out how to wiggle out of this problem that on the one hand Christians proclaim we can only be justified by faith in Jesus but on the other hand we have Paul saying bluntly you just read it that the doers of the law shall be justified folks this is Romans this is not the Old Testament and we find this in all English versions so it's certainly not an error now EP Sanders dealt with this conundrum in a wonderfully creative way he says that we first need to replace the word justified which is a uniquely Christian term when used within the church and that it means to be made righteous on account of Christ we need to replace that word justified with the word right just you hear that with the word righteous now I know that sounds strange sanders is adding an IDI to the end of the noun righteous to make it into the verb righteous a word that doesn't actually exist in the english vocabulary but since the greek words used in verse 13 are just variations of dick EW which clearly means righteous any Greek lexicon will tell you that then it's much more helpful and appropriate to our understanding to use our newly minted English word righteous then sticking the word justified in here just because we want to give it a distinctively Christian connotation see the beauty of inventing and using the word righteous is that it doesn't carry a particularly Christian or a particularly Jewish context with it by using the word right just then we understand the true meaning of what Paul's trying to communicate which is to say that a person is made truly righteous only by God himself taking a divine action upon that person to bring it about God reaches down from heaven and he righteous that person when you were saved God reached down from heaven and he presto righteous to you that's what he did he righteous to you God through his own unique power through his own sovereign decision changed a person who was not righteous into a person who's now righteous in his sight he righteous Tim he righteous to her but now we have the other dilemma to deal with is it true then that one can either do the law in order to be made righteous or one can have faith in the Jewish Messiah to be made righteous the means to untangle this is to understand what the phrase doing the law means according to Paul Paul says in verses 9 and 10 of chapter 2 yes he will payback misery and anguish to every human being who does evil to the Jew first then to the Gentile but glory and honour and Shalom peace to everyone who keeps doing what is good to the Jew first and to the Gentile for God does not show favoritism so the reward for those who do evil is what misery the reward for doing good is what glory honour and Shalom that's what says thus we find that the results for those who do what is good is the same as for those who do the law and this is why Paul is able to say that Gentiles who do what is good but don't have the law are the same as Jews who have the law and they do the law both Gentiles and Jews are essentially doing the law because to Paul doing the law is a faith oriented obedience to God let me say that again doing the law according to Paul is a faith oriented obedience to God so what does that mean for us I want you to focus all your attention on this place because if you can have for him this is gonna answer many questions for you it means that Paul is saying that it is the law the law of Moses the Torah that in its entirety it embodies the standard that must be met if a person hopes to be justified righteous by God but by this I do not mean that the law itself makes us righteous rather I mean that Paul's purpose is not that Paul's purpose is not to show how a person how a person can can be justified by God how a person can be righteous but rather simply what the standard for justification is and the standard is it set forth in the law by showing us what is good and right and God's eyes and what is not let me give you an example what I mean it's the Olympic Trials you're a star pole vaulter but the rules say it isn't simply a matter of whoever vaults the highest at the trials that gets a trip to the Allah to the Olympics rather it is that a particular height has been set by the Olympic Committee as a standard and it must be met or exceeded if any pole vaulter is going to qualify for the Olympics if the height standard is 17 feet and the best pole vaulter president the trials can only vault 1611 then nobody gets to go because nobody met the standard but even more see the Olympic Committee doesn't tell you how to get yourself to that standard all they've done is set the standard height that has to be met they've set the standard that's it but they've also said certain rules as boundaries for however you intend to get there and Paul says that the law lays out that standard 17-feet God that the law lays out the standard for being right with God how you're able to meet that standard how are you going to get there that's a different issue but whether Jew or Gentile whether you have the law of Moses as your moral guide or you have the natural law that all you human beings have as your only moral guide the standard for being righteous is the same but if the law is the standard then how can people who don't have the law Gentiles even know what the standard is Paul answers that question in verse 15 Romans 2:15 for their lives show that the conduct the Torah dictates is written in their hearts their conscience is also bear witness to this because for their conflicting thoughts sometimes accuse them sometimes defend them now while the complete Jewish Bible captures the overall meaning of this verse very well I also want you to hear this same verse and a different English version called the ESV the English standard version and I want to do it because it's a little more literal to the Greek there it says they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuser even excuse them a couple things to see here first of all Paul says that the lives of those Gentiles who naturally do not have the law of Moses is their guide nonetheless demonstrate that the work of the law is written on their hearts now since to a Christian a work is a physical action how can a physical action be written on our hearts note that Paul is not speaking of the natural law in this case he's speaking about the law of Moses and the point he's making is there are Gentile believers who have no knowledge of the law of Moses and yet ironically they naturally do what's contained in it they naturally do the law they have deep within them some natural moral sensitivity that reflects God's will and his standard that one would sooner expect to find in Jews because they have the law of Moses as their guide but second and to put a finer point on it this verse does not say that the law is written on their hearts it says the work of the law is written on their hearts here is another verse that gives Christian Bible commentators fits because of this allergic reaction to anything that a believer might do that even closely assembles a work and this is especially so when Paulson plainly the work of the law is written on their hearts here's the thing once again it is the English translation from the Greek and not also not understanding Hebrew thought this is what gets on our way and can give us a mistaken understanding see in this verse the English word work work of the law is what is usually used to translate the Greek word organ and while work isn't necessarily incorrect without fail we take the word work to mean something like our deeds or our labors it has to do with our exertion our efforts but our gone has a little different sense to it in this particularly in this context it more leans towards meaning the business of something what a certain thing is supposed to accomplish we might say that for example the work of the United States Constitution is to bring equal justice for all or for instance there's an old management saying that the business of business is business the business of business is business in other words a business shouldn't get all bogged down and other things and get all distracted by other matters that in the end don't contribute to what the purpose of the business is by the way it happens a lot so in the 21st century way that English is spoken rather than use the word work which makes us think of Deeds and so on a better translation for us would be they show that the business of the law is written on their hearts in other words Paul says that when what the law was created to accomplish the business of the law with the law is truly all about is written on these Gentiles hearts even though they don't have the physical written law of Moses to guide them the purpose and the standard of the law is what is revealed to the hearts of these Gentiles even though the details of the law are not now I've used the term heart many times now today but I want to remind you I'm only using it the way the Bible literally uses it but while in modern times we speak of the heart metaphorically as the seat of our emotions that's not what the Bible means the dictionary of Bible imagery says this about the use of the word heart in the Bible we associate thought memory with the brain today but in the idiom of the Bible thinking was a function of the heart thinking was the function of the heart so heart in the Bible refers to our thoughts so not about how we feel the better word for our modern vocabulary instead of heart is mind every time we see the word heart in the Bible we need to insert the word mind according to what the words heart and mind mean in English today versus what the word heart meant in ancient times biblically the heart is not about acting emotionally it's not about feelings biblically heart is about thinking remembering calculating it's about making decisions it's about moral judgments so what is not being talked about is some kind of ethereal activity or unexplained emotional impulse that a Gentile can't trace just a why we make certain moral choices rather it is that Paul says that the standard of the law has been written to the thinking and rational part of a human being our mind and that's why he is making the good moral choices that he is and it's God who put it there I want to pause to make this point Paul is saying all of this in order to lead up to something it's just a preparation for saying something Paul is simply laying out this foundation of his case in a good orderly way and what he's doing is putting Jews and Gentiles first on equal footing and explaining that Jews are not so privileged that their Jewish heritage somehow exempt them from God's wrath on judgment day because neither are Gentiles automatically evil simply because they aren't Jews and because they don't know anything about the law of Moses does not mean that they're automatically condemned the gods were at the Judgment Day and finally after making all these points he declares that what he is saying is according with the God according to the gospel of Christ now for the final time in this lesson I'm gonna remind you this entire letter he is writing the book of Romans is addressed to believers not all Romans not all humans in general to believers he's talking to believers about believing Jews and believing Gentiles but he addresses each group within their own social context the natural law and doing good for Gentiles the law of Moses obeying the law for Jews that terms they understand but then he ends up by saying that both of them amount of the same thing and that it is that doing the law in reality is obedience to God based on faith and trust and that doing the law in that sense is a necessity for both Gentiles and Jews to avoid God's wrath at the judgement beginning in verse 17 he continues his diatribe and then he takes aim at the thing the Jews value so greatly in fact the word itself that Paul takes aim at circumcision is a term that Jews in this era actually called themselves they called themselves the circumsized the Jews would call themselves the circumcised and so Gentiles were called the uncircumcised so was confounding as the next few verses might sound to Gentiles into English speakers Paul was doing no more than using the common Jewish vernacular of his day and so we will finish off Romans chapter 2 and get a start on Romans chapter 3 next time [Music]

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Length: 53min 10sec (3190 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 03 2019