Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-march-9-2023
Romans 2:12-24
12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
17 Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; 18 if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; 19 if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24 As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
The apostle Paul devoted a large part of his Letter to the Romans to the question of how followers of Jesus who are from a Jewish background and those who are from the gentile culture should live out their faith together. In our reading for today, Paul writes that when Jews obey God’s law, they will be declared righteous. But he also says that gentiles might also be judged as righteous if they live in a way that shows that God’s law has somehow been “written on their hearts.”
It’s probably important to remind ourselves that Paul wrote a lot about the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but almost nothing about Jesus’ ministry and teachings. He seems to have assumed that believers were already being told what Jesus had done and taught. So we should make a point of reading Paul’s letters in a way that keeps the teachings of Jesus in mind.
For instance, you might remember that when he was asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus said the law of God can be summed up in two commandments: Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything else that we think of as ‘the law of God’ should be thought of as elaboration on those two “greatest commandments.” So if we keep that in mind in reading Paul’s comment here, it would seem to say that there are some gentiles who show by their love for God and their love for others that these commandments have been written on their hearts.
In the famous Parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25, Jesus talks about those who will get into the heavenly kingdom and those who won’t. The question is whether or not they’ve fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, visited the sick and imprisoned, etc. Holding up that parable alongside what Paul writes here, those who have done these things would seem to include the gentiles Paul describes as having God’s law written on their hearts.
Of course, some followers of Jesus flatly reject the idea that anyone who isn’t a follower of Jesus can be “saved.” I understand that. It’s a cornerstone of Protestant theology that we are saved by our faith, not by “works” – presumably even the kind of works Jesus talks about in Matthew 25. I guess the best I could do to resolve the tension between these two ideas is to say that both Jesus and Paul seemed to understand that genuine faith transforms the believer so that they would be doing the kind of things Jesus describes in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. If you think of yourself as follower of Jesus but you’re not doing acts of service to the needy, you might want to give the matter some prayerful thought.
I’m sure some readers see in this passage a word of hope for those who are not followers of Jesus, but who genuinely live as though God’s law were written on their hearts. You might have read about the Muslim man in Los Angeles who has spent the last 25 years providing loving foster care for disabled children, many of them suffering with terminal conditions. I hope and pray God will find a place in his kingdom for that man and others like him. He might be a Muslim, but I’m pretty sure he’s a “better Christian” than I am.
For those of us who follow Jesus, his commandments to us are clear. I’ll leave it up to God to decide “who goes to heaven.” I’m pretty sure that’s above my pay grade.
We should take a minute to notice that Paul has harsh words for those who think they’re entitled by their Jewish background to tell other people how they should live, but who fail to keep God’s commandments themselves.
You could substitute the word “Christian” for “Jew” in this passage, and what Paul says would apply perfectly well to lots of us – maybe most of us. Just about anyone who identifies himself or herself as a Christian and spends a lot of time spouting off about how sinful others are is likely to strike others as a judgmental and self-righteous hypocrite.
And Paul says a hypocrite ‘dishonors God’ – we make God look bad because of our hypocrisy. That’s a pretty scary thought, but maybe not all that surprising. It seems pretty clear that God’s “friends” cause him a lot more trouble than his enemies.
There’s a much better approach to living by the law of God than pointing out the sins of others, it seems to me. And that approach is the one both Jesus and Paul seem to call for. That approach is to be honest and unflinching about confessing and repenting of our own sins, and to let the world see that we’re praying that God will transform us more and more into people who display the image of Jesus. If we keep that the focus of our faith, the world will see that the requirements of the law are written on our hearts, and God will be glorified through us.
Let’s pray. Lord, we pray that you will help us to become more and more focused on doing your will, not to ‘earn our way’ into your heavenly kingdom, but rather to live as grateful children who understand we are saved by your grace, and who want to bring glory to you as a way of saying thanks. Amen.
Blessing,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 102 and 126; Jeremiah 4:9-28; and John 5:19-29. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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