Initial Thoughts
- Paul was a Jewish lawyer (rabbi is a later term created in Babylon) and a Pharisee all his life. A student of Gamaliel.
- Paul can't create new laws. He cannot speak contrary to Yeshua or Moses.
- Written before he went to Rome. The congregation there was established by someone else. 55-56 AD?
- What is Systematic Theology? Not Romans!
- Writing to explain the theology of adoption into Israel.
- Paul as the thirteenth Apostle fits the pattern of Israel as 11, 12, and 13 tribes.
The Literary Chiastic Structure of Romans
Romans 1
V1 - Doulos (δουλος) literally means "slave". Greeks might have differentiated between a slave and a bondservant, but a Jew wouldn't see a difference in the context of a Hebrew enslaved to another Hebrew. Except, that is, for the case of the slave in Exodus 21:5-6 who devotes his life to his master for the sake of his family, and that is how Paul seems to be identifying himself. This is underscored by his willingness, expressed later in the letter, to give up his own salvation for the sake of his fellow Jews.It's notable that he never refers to himself as Saul in his letters, perhaps emphasizing his new identity in Christ, as opposed to his old identity as an enforcer for the Jewish religious authorities. Paul's apostleship was not self-assumed; it was a divine calling, rooted in his obedience to the One who sent him. He says that he was "called an apostle", because his commission was not of his own choice. He was on a mission for another master when Yeshua intercepted him.
Paul was saying that he was a personal possession and emissary of Yeshua due to one of three reasons: 1) He was in debt to Yeshua beyond hope of paying it back, 2) He sold himself to Yeshua to pay a debt to someone else, or 3) He was a slave for one of the two prior reasons, but voluntarily submitted to his master for life out of love.
As an apostolos (αποστολος), Paul is not merely a disciple but an agent sent with the authority of the one who sent him. His being "set apart" (aforismenos, αφωρισμενος) likely alludes both to his religious identity as a Pharisee, a group whose name means "separated," and his current role, distinct from the world, to preach the Gospel of the risen Messiah. This setting apart reflects the broader call of God’s people to be separate from the world for God's purposes, as seen in Psalm 4 and Isaiah 40:9-11.
V2 - What is the Gospel that was promised and where?
- Isaiah 40:9-11 - Jerusalem is summoned to proclaim the Good News of the arrival of the Almighty with great power, rescuing his people from their oppressors and gently gathering them together.
- Isaiah 52:7-10 - The Good News is a proclamation of peace, salvation, and God's reign. The messenger of good news declares that God's redemption of his people has cone in a manner that no one from the nations can deny.
- Isaiah 61:1-3 - The Prophet proclaims the Good News of redemption, healing, and full restoration of the people of Israel.
- Nahum 1:15 - The Good News is the celebration of God's appointed times without interference form the nations, the people of Israel keeping God's covenants, and the wicked being completely removed from their midst.
Yeshua must be an heir of David in order to be Israel’s king according to the Davidic covenant described in 2 Samuel 23:1-7, 2 Chronicles 21:7, and Psalm 89:2-4, and he must have a king’s authority over Israel in order to be her Messiah. God counted tribal membership in Israel patrilineally (from father to son), so Yeshua could not have been a son of David by the most strict, traditional reckoning. However, two factors alleviate this problem.
- First, Yeshua was Joseph’s adopted son, and throughout the Scriptures, God recognizes adoption for the purposes of tribal membership and inheritance. See the Millennial prophecy of land division in Ezekiel 47:21-23 and consider the mixed multitude that came out of Egypt with the native Israelites and were given an inheritance alongside the native born at that time also. It seems that the only exception to that rule concerns the Levitical priesthood.
- Second, Yeshua’s mother Mary was also of the house of David. Many scholars believe that the genealogy in Luke 3:23-38 is Mary’s and not Joseph’s. When it says “being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, of Heli”, it means that he was adopted by Joseph who was the son-in-law of Heli. (Note that the Greek text doesn’t say “son of Heli”, but only “of Heli”. “Son” is inserted by most translators, but should not be, in my opinion.) Although this is a matrilineal connection, it reinforces Yeshua’s adoption into the house of David by Joseph.
V4 - Paul's authority wasn't just given by a foreign king, but by God himself. By whom was Yeshua declared to be the Son of God? By God himself in Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, and Luke 9:35. "Declared to be the Son of God" is an explicit statement of Yeshua's authority even over Caesar, an especially relevant point for a Roman in Rome.
Not only was Yeshua's claim to the throne backed by the Gospel accounts and by the Apostles, most of whom were still alive at the time Paul wrote Romans, but it was backed by his pedigree in the house of David, which would have been common knowledge to the residents of Nazareth and Bethlehem, although certainly maligned by his enemies. His claim to divinity was backed by displays of power in a spirit of holiness, not violence or showmanship, and by his resurrection from the dead. These things didn't make him the Son of God, but declared him so in the sight of all the nations as hinted at in the Gospel prophecies of Isaiah. Paul was called from one thing to another (v1), while Yeshua was revealed to be who he had always been.
V5 - "For the sake of his name" because the inclusion of the nations in the New Covenant was promised to Abraham and through the Prophets, so God sent Paul in order to fulfill that promise. See Zechariah 8:23.
Paul is not writing this letter in cooperation with anyone besides his scribe Tertius (see 16:22), so it's possible that the "we" in "We have received grace and apostleship" includes the believers in Rome, however the "including you" in the beginning of the next verse probably indicates that he means his fellow Apostles. Although all people who are called to be Yeshua's are also called to be his apostles, even if they are not especially separated out for a grand purpose, but those specifically called by Yeshua himself are unique in their Apostolic calling. See Acts 2:42-43, for example, where the believers in Jerusalem "devoted themselves to the teachings of the Apostles", which would make little sense if all believers were regularly called "apostles".
"Grace and apostleship" are always given to enable the Apostle to bring about repentance and faithfulness among those to whom he is sent. Such repentance doesn't refer to merely changing one's mind, but to changing one's heart, leading to a total transformation of the person, including his outward behavior.
"Obedience of faith" (not "obedience to the faith") is that obedience brought about by faith. See the same phrase in 16:26, where the obedience is "of faith", but to God. This obedience was prophesied in Psalm 67 in which the nations of the earth learn God's ways (read: commandments), yielding a great harvest from all over the world. The Psalmist explains, as Paul hints in Romans 1:16 and 3:2, that the blessings of God's election, Law, and covenants came first to Israel so that, through them, all the world might be blessed by learning God's ways in accordance with his promise to Abraham in Genesis 12. This obedience was also prophesied more explicitly in Isaiah 2:2-4.
"Obedience of faith" also refers to the obedience that is promised by faith. When we first commit our souls to Yeshua, we don't immediately become perfectly obedient to all of his commandments. Our sins are forgiven, and we become his, but the perfection of our walk is a long process that we see in the present only through eyes of faith that trust in his ongoing grace and the synergy of the written word, the Holy Spirit, and our determination to remain faithful. In this sense, our obedience is like the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal life: already and not yet. It is already ours, but not yet fully in our possession.
V6 - Paul is not addressing a select group of Romans who have been called as if there are some in Rome who are not called. Rather, he assures the believers in Rome that they have also been called, just as all those in Jerusalem and Antioch have been called. We are all called to belong to Yeshua, but only those among the nations who respond to the call with the obedience of faith will be counted among the people of Israel.
V7 - Although this letter was written to address specific problems within the Roman assembly (hence “to all those in Rome”), Paul also intended for it to be general enough to address all Jews and Gentiles who might find themselves in similar circumstances or with similar questions.
Because God loves you, whether Jew or Gentile, Roman or American, you are called to be set apart (saints), which never refers to an inward state that has no outward effect. Holiness is an inward state that has profound effect on your speech, behavior, and viewpoint. We are called to be holy in every respect.
“Grace to you” in the second half of the verse is probably not meant to be separate from “peace” as if the grace was from Paul and the peace from God. That sentence could probably have been written as “Grace and peace to you from God...” instead of “Grace to you and peace from God...” without changing the meaning. The grace that enables forgiveness can only come from God, because he is the only one capable or authorized to forgive. He is the ultimate aggrieved party in our sins, and only he can remove our guilt and restore peace in our relationship with him.
Paul refers to "God our Father" to emphasize that God is the father of all disciples of Yeshua, as we all are through the spiritual rebirth enabled by his death and resurrection. The separation of “God our Father” and “The Lord Jesus Christ” might lead some to believe that Paul did not believe in Yeshua’s divinity, but that is only because we are so prone to taking snippets of Paul’s writings out of context, as if he were writing a collection of one-line proverbs for modern Americans. Paul’s separation of these terms no more implies that Yeshua is not God, than Galatians 6:11 implies that Paul’s hand is not Paul. Elsewhere, Paul clearly speaks of Yeshua as God. See Colossians 2:9 and Titus 2:13, for example. When he seems to speak of them as separate entities, "God" always refers to "God the Father" as in this verse, as distinct from "God the Son", who is our firstborn, elder brother in relation to the Father.
V8 - "Through Jesus Christ" - Yeshua is the mediator of the New Covenant and the only way to the Father. Our prayers are directed to the Father, but through the mediation, righteousness, and authority of Yeshua. Paul thanks God because ultimately our faith grows through the power and influence of God, not merely through our own effort. He does not thank the Son, but God through the Son. That doesn't mean that the Son isn't God, but that he is the conduit through which we connect to the Father.
Proton (πρωτον) at the beginning of the verse should be understood to mean "firstly" as in "before I say anything else" and not “first” as in the first of a series. Paul is reassuring his readers that they are important and recognized, that his sole purpose in writing isn't to rebuke them. Like Christ, he corrects because he loves. Good teachers and leaders often precede correction with encouragement.
"All the world" at the end of the verse is hyperbole. Obviously, the faith of the Roman disciples had not been proclaimed in the Americas or Australia and probably not even so far as Crimea or Britain. Luke 2:1 uses a similar phrase in describing the extent of the Augustan registration. Although the Romans traded with peoples as far away as China, nobody would have thought Luke meant Augustus decreed that the Chinese people should be registered. Paul means “all the world” in the same general sense as we might say, "Everyone knows that Jerry is amazing," although we are perfectly aware that the vast majority of people in the world have never even heard of Jerry, let alone of his character. All of Paul’s letters must be read as they were written: in a conversational tone full of idioms, hyperbole, and ambiguity.
V9 - “For God is my witness” indicates the making of an oath. Paul isn’t contradicting what Yeshua said in Matthew 5:37. Yeshua, like Solomon, was teaching principles, not technical details of how to keep the Law. In other words, he was saying, "Don't complicate things. Don't look for loopholes. If you say something is true, be sure that it's true," and not necessarily that one should never take an oath. Sometimes a solemn or forceful oath is appropriate if it helps your listeners to accept the truth of what you are saying.
Only God knows what Paul prayed in private, so who else could bear witness to what he prayed? Paul frequently appeals to the witness of God to confirm a statement. See Romans 8:16, 2 Corinthians 1:23, Philippians 1:8, and 1 Thessalonians 2:5 for examples.
"I serve with my spirit" means to serve with his deepest being. It has the same meaning as "worship in spirit and truth". Paul serves the purpose of his commission, the spreading of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Yeshua, with his whole being.
V10 - Why did Paul pray so much for the Roman believers? Probably because he knew they had been leaderless for years, especially since Aquila and Priscilla had left. Paul’s primary mission was to bring the Gospel to places that had not yet heard it, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 52:15 as he discusses in the corresponding element on the other end of the Romans Chiasm in 15:20-22. Since Rome already had an established congregation, visiting them was necessarily a lower priority, but they were still on his mind, so he prayed for them continually instead.
V11 - Paul says that his reason for wanting to visit is to impart some spiritual gift to strengthen (stirikhthenai, στηριχθηναι, could also mean to confirm or establish) them. Elsewhere in his writings, Paul speaks of character traits, skills, and miracles as spiritual gifts, but these are gifts of the Holy Spirit to individuals, not to entire congregations. In this case, he probably isn’t referring to an ability to work miracles, prophesy, etc., but to a gift of instruction that will correct their path, bring unity to their congregation, and cohesiveness to their doctrine. This corporate strengthening is the purpose of the gifts and commissions given to individual believers as described in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 and Ephesians 4:11-13.
V12 - The KJV translates simparahklithenai (συμπαρακληθηναι) as “to be comforted together”, and that might have been a good translation in the 17th century, and it isn’t entirely wrong for today, but it isn’t quite right either. Paul isn’t talking about alleviating someone’s mourning or suffering, but about exhortation or imparting confidence.
The encouragement that Paul speaks of for himself is the assurance that the Roman assembly has been returned to a healthier, more edifying path. He isn't just intending to bring them "some spiritual gift" (v11), but to correct their quickly drifting doctrine and widening divisions. In this way, they will both be strengthened in their faith.
V13 - The Roman believers probably felt somewhat abandoned when most or all of their leaders had to leave Rome and some of them never returned. Paul was reassuring them that they were not forgotten, that he had every intention to visit them personally when circumstances allowed.
Paul gives three reasons for wanting to visit the Roman assembly: First, to strengthen the Romans in their faith and maturity. Second, to assure himself that they are on a good spiritual path. Third, to show a return on his own balance sheet for his investment in their spiritual growth. That third reason might seem prideful, but consider the parable of the talents. God rewards those who use his resources for the expansion of his Kingdom, and we should all work toward such rewards.
V14 - Paul’s obligation was created by his commission to be Yeshua’s apostle to the nations. His first obligation is to Yeshua, of course, but God promised to bring the Gospel to the nations (Isaiah 52:15 and other passages), and he delegated that responsibility, in part, to Paul, who once tried to stop the Gospel from spreading.
The Jews divided the world’s population into two categories: Jew (wise because they had God’s Law) and Gentile (foolish because they worshiped lesser pagan gods). The Greeks did much the same with the category of Greeks and barbarians. They were wise because they had their gods, philosophies, and sciences. The barbarians were foolish because they did not “understand” that their tribal deities were only provincial manifestations of the universal gods worshiped--with greater understanding--by the Greeks.
V15 - Paul is addressing Romans who thought of themselves as yet a third category from those discussed in v14. When he says “you also who are in Rome”, he obliquely acknowledges that they are neither Greek nor barbarian. The Romans admired Greek, but considered themselves to have taken up the culture and learning of the Greeks and improved on it in ways that the Greeks could not. They seemed to have had a more nuanced view of the nations than did the Greeks and Jews, but not dramatically so. Instead of two categories, they had four: Roman, Greek, Barbarian, and the Jews, who stubbornly refused to fit into anyone else’s system.
V16 - "I am not ashamed" is probably a deliberate understatement intended to mean "I am greatly honored". This is connected to Romans 15:17 on the opposite side of the Romans Chiasm.
The Gospel is the power of God to save all who believe, and not just the Jews to whom the messianic promises were first given. It is his power because there is power in his word. If he says something is true, then it is true. If he says that you will be saved, then you will be. Since God promised in Isaiah 2 and 11 (and other passages, especially in Isaiah) that the nations have an opportunity to join the Messiah’s people as a result of the sins of the native born Israelites, we can be absolutely certain that we have that opportunity.
"Everyone who believes" underscores that the offer of salvation has been extended to all peoples, but it also means that you must believe that God has come to set up his Kingdom and wants you to be restored to relationship with him in that Kingdom in order to take advantage of that offer. Paul says “to the Jew first and also to the Greek, because, as indicated in the Isaiah passages mentioned above, this offer is made as a result of the native Israelites having first rejected it, which logically requires that it must be offered to the Jew before it can be offered to the Greek.
Although Paul mentions five classifications of people in this passage (Jew, Gentile, Greek, Barbarian, and Roman), but with “the Greek” at the end of this verse he combines all but the Jew into a synecdoche for “Gentiles”. Ancient Jewish literature clearly shows a great admiration for the Greek people despite considering them to be in spiritual darkness. As a Jew, it’s possible that Paul believed his Roman audience might take “gentile” (Greek ethnos) as vaguely insulting. They certainly would have thought so if he had called them “barbarians” (Greek barbaros), whereas “Greek” (Hellen) would be a more acceptable term that they could interpret as referring to themselves as well as to the Greeks and barbarian peoples. He uses this same phrase, “to the Jew first and also the Greek”, twice more in Romans 2:9-10, and each time, it’s clear by the context that he means all non-Jews.
V17 - "Righteousness" might better be read as "justice". Both English words can be used to translate dikaisoune (δικαιοσυνη), but modern readers tend to associate “righteousness” with a personal characteristic of goodness and lawfulness, whereas “justice” is more about the standard of goodness and lawfulness, which is what Paul really means here.
The justice of God is revealed in the Gospel because the establishment of his Law (Jeremiah 31:33 and Micah 4:2) and the judgment of the wicked (Isaiah 13:11 and Micah 4:11-13) are inherent parts of the Gospel, which is the inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven and all that comes with it (Matthew 4:17).
The meaning of the phrase “from faith for faith” or, as some versions translate it, “from faith to faith”, could be interpreted in any number of ways, but two interpretations seem most plausible to me: First, we can be assured that God’s justice and wrath are certain because God is always faithful to his word. By his faithfulness demonstrated over time, our faith is strengthened and manifested in our own faithfulness toward him. Second, faith is like any muscle or skill, in that it is increased by being put to use. The more we trust in God, the more faithful we are to him, the more we learn to trust, and the more we are able to remain faithful to him. The discussion of the wrath of God in the following verses would seem to support the first interpretation over the second.
"The righteous shall live by faith" is a quote from Habakkuk 2:4 in which "righteous" is again more literally translated as "just" and could be thought of as "justified". By our trust in him and our surrender to his merciful judgment, we are justified or decreed to be righteous, regardless of past sins. Once forgiven, we walk out our belief in the promises and commandments of God by faithfully living accordingly. Even if we don't understand how God's laws or actions are righteous, our faith requires that we accept that it is.
God's justice is different than man's, though, and doesn’t rely on rote obedience to rules. Although we will be judged by what we do, God sees beyond the deed into the heart and mind. We are judged by what we do only because our outward faithfulness is inevitably informed by our inward faith and faithfulness. If you trust God with all your being, he counts you as one of his and will save you, even if your obedience is flawed. This is the righteousness of God.
V18 - The wrath of God is revealed from heaven in three ways:
- The destruction brought by God or by his natural laws in response to wickedness.
- Prophetic warnings and pronouncements given through prophets and the Scriptures.
- The conscience of each individual, reflected from the primordial image of God within them.
God is both love and wrath. He loved the world while we were still sinners, but because our sin brings death and suffering, his love requires wrath. No loving parent allows his child to go on behaving in ways that will only bring him pain? If he loves us, he must be violently opposed to sin. “So you will know in your heart that YHWH your God was disciplining you as a man disciplines his son. Therefore, you will keep the commandments of YHWH your God, to walk in his ways and to fear him.” (Deuteronomy 8:5-6)
In order to go on being unrighteous, a person must suppress the truth of God’s Law, both externally and internally, the objective written Law and the subjective inner law of the conscience. God often responds to such willful disobedience by giving us more of what we want. Remember how Pharaoh determined to refuse God’s command to let his people go, so God hardened his heart until the full measure of his wrath had been poured out on Egypt. Paul addresses this dynamic in more detail in the following passage through 2:16.
- Individual Complexity - The internal complexity of living things and the intricate balance of systems within systems requires a designer of extraordinary intelligence and foresight. Every lifeform is a self-repairing, self-replicating machine that becomes more complex, the closer you examine it, from the outer defenses of skin and bark all the way down to molecular factories beyond anything man has been able to copy with all of our technology. Individual organisms are so complex, even at the molecular level, that removing any one of thousands of different components or sub-systems will destroy the entire organism, yet those systems themselves are self-policing, removing, replacing, or repairing damaged components before they can cause significant harm. See Psalm 139:14.
- Biome Complexity - The interplay between organisms, even across species, also testifies to the existence of an intelligent, deliberate creator. Trees warn each other of danger. Viruses, bacteria, fungi, grasses, herbivores, and the most complex predators all cooperate, without any apparent conscious intention, to feed each other and keep ecosystems healthy. As local conditions change, local lifeforms adjust populations, habitats, and even genetic expression to compensate. See Job 38:39-41.
- Universal Fine Tuning - Physics demonstrates that our entire universe seems designed at every level to support life. A slight change in any number of values--some of which I could name, but won’t pretend to understand--would change the universe in such a way that life would become impossible. Stars and planets would cease to exist, let alone the minerals, seas, and atmosphere required by living organisms. See Psalm 19:1.
In the face of the overwhelming evidence for a Creator, his existence can only be denied by deliberate, continuous rejection and indoctrination. A child, left to himself, would assume that everything was created, and he must be trained to think otherwise.
One implication of this truth is that a person can attain a very basic knowledge of God’s identity without ever hearing the words YHWH, Jesus, Yeshua, Gospel, etc. All of those things are knowable, at least in conception, through the honest observation of Creation. If there is a Creator, then he has a purpose in creating. If he has a purpose for Creation, then he has a purpose for individual creatures. If he has a purpose for individual creatures, then he desires them to behave according to his plan. If his creatures will not behave according to his plan, then they should expect to be corrected, destroyed, or isolated so that they can’t interfere with the correct operation of the rest of Creation. Creatures who choose to act according to the Creator’s purposes can reasonably expect to be rewarded, although the Creator is under no obligation to do so. All of Creation, including every individual creature, belongs to the Creator and is dependent on him for its continued existence, and he is fully within his rights to use it however he wills, including destroying it.
Acceptance of the inevitability of God is in some ways more important than an academic knowledge about God, because a great deal can be learned of God’s character from the nature of what he has already done, apart from any special revelation or divinely inspired writings. As Job 12:7-9 says, “ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you; or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of YHWH has done this?”
V21 - Everyone, at some point, has a true epiphany of God. Everyone is presented with a window to the divine, but most people choose to turn away and suppress the truth in favor of a familiar, self-soothing lie. If you are determined to reject the truth, eventually you condition yourself to believe falsehoods and cripple your ability to evaluate and interpret the universe. The most intelligent people in the world have convinced themselves to believe the most absurd, anti-God fantasies because they decided to interpret the world through faulty premises. As Yeshua said in John 3:19, “they loved the darkness more than the light” because the darkness allows them to pretend that they are their own gods, defining their own standard of righteousness.
V22 - The philosophers and wise men of the ancient civilizations poured their energy into learning about God and then explaining away what they learned by attributing it to something else. They had wisdom in the grasp and threw it away like rebellious children. The Jewish people weren’t much better than the Greeks, as Jeremiah 10:14 attests. See also Isaiah 5:21.
V23 - All people have an innate drive to worship something, to align and ally with something greater than ourselves, but a being that created the universe must be effectively infinite in power and in his right to demand compliance with his standards. A smaller god comes with smaller standards. The sun may be intimidating in its power and ability to give life or take it away, but its existence doesn’t necessarily imply any demands on our behavior. Elevating an animal to the status of a god enables one to indulge his most animalistic urges and call it a virtue. It’s easy to worship heavenly bodies, earth-bound creatures, and inanimate objects because they make no real demands other than what we choose for ourselves.
Paul wrote this letter from one capital city of idolatry, Corinth, to residents of another, Rome. To many Christians in the West today, this kind of idol worship with festivals, incense, and sacrifice, is a hypothetical problem with little connection to their daily lives. That wasn’t the case for Paul and his Roman audience. Idolatry was everywhere. Human sacrifice was still common in most of the world, and hundreds of animals were sacrificed to the gods of Greece, Rome, and a dozen other pagan cultures in both cities every day.
Like the ancients, today’s Darwinists have become so enamored by God's creation and so desperate to deny God’s authority to make laws and punish disobedience that, in some ways, they worship the creation rather than the Creator, even making nature out to be its own creator. This isn’t so far from confused ancient pagan genealogies in which the convoluted relationships of air, light, land, sky, and sea (represented by deities such as Gaia, Uranus, and Oceanus) give rise to spirits which represent streams, trees, animals, and eventually mankind.
V24-25 - If you reject that which every child can discern, why should God invite you into deeper truths? Some people are intent on believing a lie. God didn’t create any specific individuals with the intent of forcing them to commit depravity and therefore to be objects of his wrath, but he does allow them to be who they want to be. He allows time for their depravity to consume them so that their guilt and God’s justice in punishing them becomes clear to everyone.
If they “exchanged the truth about God for a lie”, then they necessarily possessed that truth at one time. This reinforces what I said concerning vs 19-21. Everyone has access to the truth about God, and everyone had that truth within them at some point before exchanging it for something easier today, even though it will cost them everything at the final Judgment.
See Isaiah 40:18-24, 44:9-20.
V26 - “Dishonorable passions” in this verse is pathe atimios (παθη ατιμιας), shameful passions of the mind. Pathos refers to sickness, not just deviant desires. What we think of as passions would be orexis as in v27, not pathos. When Paul speaks of dishonorable passions, he's addressing a profound spiritual and moral sickness where individuals forsake God's clear design for human relationships. I’m not saying that we must deny all personal desires but that recognizing that some desires, when they lead away from God's design, are afflictions of the spirit, paths leading away from the healthy spiritual integrity he intends for us. In this light, homosexuality, as addressed in this verse, isn’t just a personal choice but a symptom of a deeper rejection of the Creator's right to assign purpose and function to his creation.
“Natural” is the Greek phusikos (φυσικην), which refers to that which is in accordance with the essence of something. Homosexuality is almost universally considered deviant behavior, contrary to the essence of mankind. Even in societies where homosexual practices are accepted or even celebrated, there remains an underlying acknowledgment, often unspoken, of its departure from the norm. This isn't about legal or social acceptance but about an inherent recognition of what all humans perceive as contrary to the natural order.
To argue in favor of homosexual behavior, as many do, by citing animal behavior in abnormal circumstances misses the point entirely. People are not animals. We are created in God's image and commissioned to rule over the animal kingdom (Genesis 1:26-28). To lower ourselves to mimic animal behavior is to reject that divine calling, to forsake the stewardship and dominion we were given. Human behavior should not be judged by animalistic standards but by divine revelation and by the natural law that was once written on our hearts and can be again.
In Genesis 1:28, God commanded mankind to multiply and fill the earth. This is both prescriptive and descriptive. Throughout Scripture and even in the natural inclinations God built into us, marriage is intended as a union between man and woman for the purposes of procreation and companionship. This is a divine mandate, transcending mutable cultural norms.
Verse 26 addresses female homosexuality, while v27 addresses male. Paul might have chosen to mention them separately because they have different roots and they violate God’s Law in different ways. There is no specific commandment against female-female intimacy, but there is a command and an established norm that women should marry and have children. Lesbianism rejects God's design and command in favor of a woman’s own, sometimes as a reaction against abuse by men and sometimes as simple rebellion against God.
V27 - "Passion for one another" is orexis (ορεξει, orexei), not pathos. This is more about indulging physical desires, than about spiritual sickness, although the indulgence produces the sickness in time. The "due penalty" mentioned at the end of the verse is threefold: spiritual condemnation, the pathe atimios of the previous verse (an increasing propensity for wickedness), and physical illness in the form of sexually transmitted disease as well as hormonal dysregulation and epigenetic effects that might aggravate the feminine propensities that are often consciously adopted by people engaged in such behavior. One perversity breeds another and another, like leaven. This is one reason why the worst male pedophiles usually prefer male victims. “Victimless” wickedness often leads to the creation of victims who go on to repeat the behaviors of the original perpetrators.
V28-31 - Rejecting God and embracing immorality destroys the mind's ability to think rationally. When you know the truth and deliberately practice a lie, you drive a wedge between yourself and God that may prove impossible to remove. Once you have made yourself unreachable, there is no limit to the depravity that your heart and mind is capable of.
A person who indulges in such behaviors, knowing full well that they are wholly contrary to God's laws, has deliberately chosen to spit in God's face. Having driven that wedge between him and the truly divine, he will begin to believe his own lies, and his thoughts will cease to be rational, if they ever were. His reasoning will be warped because his mind has shut off an entire part of his being and a huge aspect of reality for which he can no longer account, and so he will fall further into sickness. Although Deuteronomy 28:28 is talking about the national consequences of national rebellion against God, the nation can’t suffer madness and “confusion of mind” unless individual members of the nation succumb first.
Paul described the behavior of those who are beyond hope (i.e. of "a reprobate mind") as a parade of horrors worthy of death, but he singled out homosexuality for special treatment. He called it dishonorable, against nature, shameful, and erroneous. It isn't the practice of such things that cause a person to be beyond hope, but the love of them is evidence of their hopelessness. In other words, not all who do these things are reprobate, but the reprobate love to do these things.
This is not to say there is no hope for the homosexual and other dedicated sinners, but that hope is fleeting. If they do not repent when the Spirit gives them the chance, they may render themselves incapable of repentance. Such is the blasphemy of the Spirit, the unforgivable sin. It is not that God cannot forgive nor that he is unwilling to forgive, but that the 'reprobate mind' can no longer repent.
Hatred for God drives people to twist everything good into evil, even when it destroys themselves, because doing so allows them to show their spite for God. Keep your distance from people who embrace anti-Biblical morality or they will gradually corrupt your mind too. They can never be your friends.
This passage follows the same pattern as Paul's other statements concerning categories of people. Not all of these behaviors are explicitly sinful (e.g. foolishness here and drunkenness, anger, and rivalry in Galatians 5:19-21), but if these things become your identity, then you are surely also engaging in all kinds of God-hating sin.
V32 - Since we were created by God for God's purposes, those who reject what they know to be true and reject God's plan for them have no reason to complain about their condemnation. They are useless tools, so why should the toolmaker allow them to take up space in his workshop?
Everyone instinctively knows that heterosexuality and marriage are natural. People who want to reject God’s design in order to indulge their perverse passions convince themselves through choice and practice or by redefining words like “love” to justify their actions. Sometimes they are convinced by incessant brainwashing imposed by others, such as the public shaming and “training” imposed by entertainment, education, and journalism industries, or by pain and abuse inflicted on them.
Romans 2
V1 - In 1:20, Paul wrote that "they are inexcusable". Here he says "You are inexcusable". Did the previous chapter make you feel superior to the world? Then this verse is addressed to you. If those people, who don't have God's written Law, instinctively know right from wrong and work to suppress the truth over time, how much less do we, who have the Scriptures, have any excuse for sin?
Paul is saying essentially the same thing Yeshua said in Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” Neither Paul nor Yeshua prohibited making and expressing moral judgments about other people’s behavior. The point in both statements is that, before you point out someone else’s sin, acknowledge and address your own. You are accountable to the same standards by which you measure your neighbor. Don’t denigrate him because he’s a sinner for doing the very same thing--or a similar thing--that you do.
We are required to make a distinction between right and wrong and to teach others to do what's right. Just be sure that you are doing so in humility and gentleness, with the full understanding that you are guilty of sin too. To judge other people by any metric, you must be able to pass that metric first. So judging people according to a standard that you can't meet only exposes your own guilt. In judging someone else, you judge yourself.
V2 - The Greek word translated “judgment” is krima (κριμα), which refers to a legal decision. Since God wrote the Laws of the universe, whether moral or physical, God is the ultimate judge of guilt and innocence. His verdicts are, by virtue of being the Law-Giver, right and just. His judgment can be a good or bad thing, as shown in0 Revelation 20:11-15, but it only “falls” on you in a negative sense of a guilty verdict and the subsequent sentencing.
"Such things" refers specifically to those sins listed in Romans 1 and related sins, but also to the hypocrisy of double standards. God himself is perfect, and his Law is a reflection of his own character. Since he cannot operate in an uncharacteristic manner, it is impossible for God to be a hypocrite.
We are all guilty of one sin or another and so have forfeited our right to be in the presence of God’s absolute holiness nor to claim any reward from him. (See my comments on 1:19-20.) Once guilty, no amount of obedience can ever hope to restore a person to the righteous standards of a perfect God. Only an acknowledgment of God’s authority to judge, followed by humble repentance and faith in his mercy to forgive, can save us.
V3 - Paul continues with the same theme as Yeshua’s words teaching in Matthew 7:1-5. “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” The repetition of “such things” in this verse shows that Paul’s warning isn’t limited to hypocrisy in the exact same sins for which you are judging others, but to any serious sin. Are you judging others for sexual immorality while bearing false witness yourself? If you treat God spitefully by preaching obedience and practicing disobedience, you will be judged by him alongside the Pharisees who did the same.
Some people loudly condemn their own sins in others--or project them on the innocent--because they believe it will make them seem innocent. However, God doesn't care nearly so much about our words as he does about our actions, and even more so about the state of our hearts. He sees all, knows all. As Jesus said in Luke 8:17 and 12:2, nothing can be hidden from God. Everything will be revealed eventually. If not in this life, then at the final judgment. See also Jeremiah 23:24.
V4 - The Greek word for riches is ploutos (πλουτου), which doesn’t refer only to a number on a balance sheet, but to an abundance of any kind of resource, since wealth in the ancient world measured cattle, land, and people as much as it did gold and silver. God has an abundance of kindness, forbearance, and patience. He knows that we aren’t perfect, that our flesh and our habits are corrupted. He knows that, although a commitment to repentance may happen in an instant, the reality of repentance takes a lifetime and more.
However, God’s forgiveness is for a purpose. If we disregard that commitment that we made to him and go on sinning willfully, we are abusing those riches. He will never run out, but he will choose to disregard us and our fake repentance if we insist on disregarding him and his demands on our behavior. God forgives us so that we can complete the repentance that prompted the forgiveness, not so that we can continue to sin.
In Psalm 78, Asaph tells of how Israel, despite all of the miracles they had witnessed and the divine favor they had received, did not keep God’s covenant or Law. He withdrew his protection, but forgave and restored them when they repented, only to repeat the cycle again and again, until he eventually exiled them from the land. God wasn’t surprised by any of this. Even as he gave them his covenant in the wilderness, he predicted that they would fall away and be exiled, yet he also promised to restore them one day when the unfaithful branches of their tree had been sufficiently pruned away and the people turned back to him, his covenant, and his Law.
It’s not only the native Israelite whom God disciplines. 1 Peter 3:20 says that God kept his patience with the whole world, not just one nation, until Noah had completed the ark. This implies that there may be events external to the sinner that put an end to God's patience. Don't put off repentance, because you don't know at what point God will stop calling you back, nor what will happen to you and the world around you.
V5 - God's wrath doesn't dissipate while he is waiting for us to repent. It accumulates. If we do repent, then that wrath is removed entirely, but if we don't, it could all be unleashed at once, like the Flood that destroyed the people of Noah's day.
2 Peter 3:7-12 seems to say that some of that wrath is stored up in the universe itself as an aspect of natural law, which in part explains why God often uses exaggerated natural events as a tool of his judgment against mankind. Consider how God used the Nile River, animals, plagues, and storms to bring Pharaoh to repentance prior to the Exodus.
V6-8 - We cannot earn forgiveness and eternal salvation through obedience to God’s Law nor by performing any other work, small or great, yet we will be judged according to our works none-the-less. Think of any modern junior level sports team. Declaring your allegiance to the Yeshua and committing to repentance from sin is like signing up for the team. You don’t need any skill. You haven’t played in any games yet. You haven’t even been to a single practice, but you’re still on the team. When it comes time for your first game, maybe your coach will put you in and maybe he won’t, but if the team wins, you still win. At the end of the season, you will be judged by your effort, willingness to do the work, and team spirit, but you are still part of the team, whether you scored one hundred goals or none at all.
If you decide in the middle of the season that you no longer want to play on this team or in this sport, and you refuse to follow the coach’s directions or show up for practice, the coach has the option of removing you from the team. Maybe he’ll speak to you privately and give you chance after chance to correct your behavior, or maybe he’ll use you as an object lesson for the rest of the team. You didn’t do anything to earn your place on the team, but you most certainly can do something to lose it.
There are rewards in God’s kingdom for those who continue in faithfulness to God and his covenants, even if your execution of his instructions is imperfect, and there are penalties for those who continue in rebellion. Ongoing disobedience is the mark of the unrepentant. Even surface obedience that is motivated by self-righteousness is actually disobedience because obedience starts in the heart. Hence the gentile whose obedience is counted as circumcision.
Paul isn’t saying that anyone must be perfect in order to earn eternal life, only that they must commit to turning away from sin (lawlessness) and toward good works. Repentance is not about perfect obedience in all things, but committing to submission. Works matter, good and bad, but the determining factor of your eternal fate is the righteousness in your heart.
See Romans 3:23 and Jeremiah 12:1-3.
V9 - The Law of God represents his eternal standard of human behavior. Everyone who has not accepted Yeshua's sacrifice in faith that it will remove his sins in God’s eyes will be judged according to the Law, and they will all come up short. All men will be held accountable for their obedience or disobedience whether or not they have ever heard of Moses and the legal code that bears his name.
Ezra 7:6 and Nehemiah 8:1 both say that God used Moses to deliver the “book of the Law of Moses” to the people of Israel. The statutes recorded by Moses were not invented by him. They are a reflection of the character of God--even if they are expressed within a specific historical context--and the basic attributes of his character are knowable by all men through Creation as described in chapter 1. Since God’s character is eternally immutable, so is his Law. It is eternal, unalterable, and perfect.
As Ezekiel 9:6 and 1 Peter 4:17 indicate, judgment must always begin with God’s house, those with the most intimate and thorough knowledge of his character and Law. However, although the Jews (and all of self-aware Israel) are judged first, they are not judged alone. There is no excuse for anyone not to know that there is a Creator God and so there is also no excuse not to know that there is a Law which they are unable to fulfill--even if they might not know all of the specific details--and they will be judged accordingly. The law came first to the Jews, so it only makes sense that judgment should come to them first, but the essence of the Law is knowable by all mankind and is even reflected in the moral codes and corrupted religious practices of all peoples.
V10 - There is glory, honor, and peace for those who do good works. The good works of God’s commandments are important because the honor and glory of God matter and these are bound up in his kingship. When Yeshua said to “Seek first the kingdom of God” in Matthew 6:33, he meant that if we desire to take part in that glory, then we must subordinate our own desires and priorities to those of his Kingdom. Those words were spoken to Jews, but they were spoken for the benefit of all mankind.
God’s Law was given, in part, to reveal our shortcomings and to teach us how to love God and man more purely. However, the Law brings a swifter and more severe judgment than would exist without it. The purpose of such judgment isn’t to make people suffer. God isn’t vindictive. While we live, his judgment is instructive. It is intended to urge us to repentance, and with that repentance comes peace in being reconciled with God, honor in being restored to our rightful place in the universe, and glory in his shadow and likeness.
V11 - This verse could be more literally translated as "there is no acceptance of faces with God".
Paul is speaking of God’s impartiality in the context of the final judgment of all mankind. The criteria for entering eternal life or eternal damnation are precisely the same for all people, whether Jew or Gentile, man or woman. See also Peter’s similar statement in Acts 10:34-35.
However, God does show some degree of partiality in other matters, as Paul shows in his discussion in chapter 9 of God’s right to appoint different people to different roles in his plan. Clearly God showed partiality in choosing Peter as an apostle and not Cornelius, but both men are equally saved for eternity. He chose Jacob for one role and Esau for another, Joseph to be a living prophecy of the Messiah in one generation (Genesis 37-47) and Korah to be a living prophecy of the anti-Messiah in another generation (Numbers 16).
V12 - This is the first mention of law in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The Greek terms nomos (law, νομος) and anomos (without law, ανομος) are used more than 70 times in Romans, more than any other New Testament book by a large margin. Although the definite article “the” is absent from the Greek text, the context seems to require that he is speaking of the written Law of God (aka the Law of Moses or Torah) or else how could being without it or failing to do it have any bearing on our righteousness before God?
Paul says that those who have sinned without having the Law will also perish without having the Law. The death he speaks of is most likely the second death described in Revelation 20:14. The implication seems to be that we will be judged by how our works align with God’s Law whether we know the Law or not. As will become evident later in Romans, Paul does not mean that we can escape this death by strict adherence to the Law. Rather he means that our obedience will be a factor in our judgment, whether as evidence of our faith or as a potential modifier of our punishments or rewards.
Since we all have the spark of God's Law built into our nature as his image-bearers, we have no excuse not to know its basic requirements. If we choose to pursue reconciliation with God, then we will grow in obedience and understanding of his Law over time. If we choose to reject God and his Law (you can’t keep one and reject the other) in favor of our own, then we will slide deeper into disobedience and depravity until we have destroyed our consciences and even our ability to reason.
There is no hope that we could ever win salvation through obedience to the Law on our own merits, but through Yeshua's sacrifice salvation has been made available to all men in all time, so that if we have faith in God's forgiveness and mercy we will be saved from damnation. Abraham, Moses, David, Peter, and Paul have all been saved by the same faith by which you and I are saved. Obedience to the Law has never saved anyone, because no one except Yeshua has ever been capable of perfect obedience. No sacrificial lamb, no sin offering, no penance has ever saved anyone.
V13 - "Hearers of the law" are his Jewish readers in this context. This is a deliberate dig at those who believed they were justified before God by virtue of their Jewish heritage. It's not enough to have received the Law from God, only those with sufficient faith to obey will be justified. Paul’s point isn't that obedience itself earns justification, but that those who obey are also those who are justified by their faith.
People who have not heard the Law are still capable of following it in spirit and from the heart, even if they never know the letter, so long as they are genuinely pursuing a relationship with the Creator with humility and a repented heart. Ironically, most people who have heard the Law have rejected it in spirit, even as they keep the letter, because they are not pursuing that relationship so much as they are pursuing an elevated status in the eyes of God and man. A person who obeys God’s commandments because he believes it will advance his social position or make him more worthy of eternal salvation, would be better off in some ways if he simply forgot about the commandments altogether.
Consider God’s warning to the religious elite of Jerusalem in Isaiah 29:13-14. He told them that all of their self-made religion had blinded them to the true meaning of the Scriptures, and so God would cause their “wisdom” to pass away and their discernment to be obscured.
V14 - As shown in chapter one, all people have some internal knowledge of God’s expectations, which were codified at Sinai into what we call the Law of Moses, the Law of God, or Torah. Although the definite article “the” is missing from the Greek in the phrase “do not have the law”, Paul is clearly talking about The Law. All people have laws, so if he isn’t talking about Torah, then the statement would be nonsense.
Paul is saying that Gentiles obeying God’s Law out of self-interest or conscience without having any specific knowledge of the written Torah is a good thing. By choosing to live as God’s image within them leads, they have a better life personally and collectively. They get some of the rewards of obedience even if they don't understand what they are being obedient too.
This doesn’t mean that Gentiles should not be taught the Law. As Paul instructed Timothy on the leadership of a Gentile assembly in 2 Timothy 3:16: All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. It’s good to have a conscience that is generally aligned with God’s immutable Law. It’s even better to allow God’s Law to refine that conscience through study, prayer, communion with the Holy Spirit, and discipline. See Romans 8:26-30.
V15 - "Work of the Law" here is in singular and used in a positive sense, where elsewhere Paul says "works of the law" in a negative sense. "Works of the Law" (plural) is used in Romans 3:20,28 and several times in Galatians to refer to a religious system that erroneously relies on works as a means of attaining eternal salvation. The plural version is also used in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Miqsat Ma'ase haTorah, Selections of the Works of the Law), which is about detailed, extra-Biblical (mostly) regulations intended to preserve the sanctity of the Temple.1
In my opinion, Paul’s use of the singular work instead of works points to the effect of the Law rather than a person’s works performed in the name of the Law. In this case, he means those aspects of the Law that are known by all people instinctively or that can be known by anyone by observing and contemplating the character of the Creator evidenced in his Creation.
The most ignorant member of the most isolated tribe has a basic understanding of right and wrong from the time they begin to comprehend the independent existence of other people. Everyone's conscience urges them against sin until they silence it by suppression, misuse, or addiction.
V16 - Everyone will be judged by the same Yeshua, and God's judgment is inherent in his Gospel.
The Gospel (evaggelion, ευαγγελιον) is about the Kingdom of Yeshua. Paul says, "my gospel", referring to the good news that he conveyed in his ministry, but it was not a special gospel that was unique to Paul. This is like talking about “my words” in which I explain the meaning I believe Paul to be conveying in his letter to the Romans. I am using my words to expound on Paul’s words.
Paul’s good news--his evaggelion--is all about the Good News of the Messiah, which is the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. Kingdom means there is a King, which means there is a Law (law-making is the most essential characteristic of a king), citizens, and a judge who holds the citizens to the Law. All of these are inherent in the message of the Gospel as given by the Prophets, the Gospel writers, and the Apostles.
In this Kingdom, the King and Judge are one and the same. His judgment will be against our actions, but more importantly against our hearts, “the secrets of men”, which are those wicked thoughts and desires that germinate in the soul and sprout into the world into sinful actions. This is what Yeshua meant when he taught that a person is guilty of murder or adultery if he has murder and adultery in his heart, although he hasn’t committed either crime in a way that any human judge could punish. See Matthew 5:21-30.
Satan, which means “accuser”, brings charges against us of breaking God’s commandments, and the Law itself, whether written on stone or flesh, witnesses against us. Since we are all guilty of breaking God’s Law in some way (Romans 3:23), we would be without hope if we didn’t have someone who could intercede on our behalf. Yeshua, as God and King, is our Law-Giver and Judge, but he is also our Advocate and Intercessor as written in 1 John 2:1, Romans 8:34, and Hebrews 7:25. He doesn’t bring any accusations against us (Romans 8:33-34), but protects all who submit to him from divine judgment by removing all evidence of our guilt from our souls (Revelation 7:14) and from God’s record-books (Colossians 2:14).
Jewish Sinners in Need of a Savior
V17 - Nobody is justified in God's sight by virtue of his ancestry. Covenants are inherited, but righteousness is not. A physical descendant of Jacob can rely on that birthright to claim a place in the covenants of the patriarchs, but not a place in God’s favor. If he flouts God’s Law or mercy and depends on his own efforts to justify himself in God’s eyes, then even what he has could be taken away.
The Law is not intended to be our advocate, so we can't depend on it to defend us in God's court. The Law is the standard by which we will be judged, and so it shows us how to behave and love, but the only testimony it can offer in God's court is how you broke it. We must rely on Yeshua as our advocate, his blood to atone for our sins and justify us in God’s sight, and God’s mercy to forgive.
V18 - The Law does in fact instruct on God's will and that which is excellent, but it's not enough to hear and understand the Law. One must have sufficient faith to obey.
V19 - Too many people want to be teachers when they haven't mastered the lessons themselves. See Matthew 15:14. Knowledge without the wisdom of application often becomes a stumbling block in itself. It's often better to remain ignorant than to get so caught up in the trees of the Law that you lose sight of the forest of its intent.
Isaiah 49:6 and Matthew 5:14-16 say that God’s people are supposed to be a light to the nations, bringing sight to the blind, but that mission can't be accomplished through academic learning apart from humble obedience nor by replacing the commandments of God with traditions of men.
V20 - Psalm 19:7-8 describes the Law as perfect, restorative, correct, pure, and a source of wisdom and joy. Psalm 119:66 uses belief in the commandments as a basis for asking God to teach discernment and knowledge. God uses the Law to teach these things, but the Law cannot teach any of these things by itself. The spirit (the principle from which the application is derived) and the letter (a real-world application of the principle) work together to bring real wisdom in a way that simply stating the principle could not.
Paul says in this verse that the Law embodies knowledge and truth, and it does! The problem with a rigid adherence to the letter isn’t the contents or requirements of the Law itself, but its use by an unlawful heart, too hard to sense the spirit that God is trying to communicate through the letter. See 2 Corinthians 3:5-18.
V21 - It can be tempting to explain away certain of God’s commandments when we believe that we know and understand them thoroughly. We might think, God gave this commandment to protect people from such-and-such; now that I know that, I can take precautions against such-and-such and don’t need to keep the commandment.
For example, many people believe that God said not to eat pork because it can be dangerous if not properly handled and cooked, and so they dismiss those rules as irrelevant in the age of refrigeration, sanitation, and meat thermometers. However, they overlook the fact that poultry is just as dangerous if not cooked properly, but God didn’t forbid eating chickens and doves, disproving the entire thesis.
Never allow yourself to think that you are above the Law because you understand the Law better than someone else. If you think you don’t need to keep the commandments, then you probably need to keep them even more. The best way to learn something is to teach it, but the best way to truly understand something is to do it first, then teach it, and then do it again.
However, before you begin to teach, ensure that you are doing your sincere best to practice what you intend to preach. As Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 3:2, “an overseer must be above reproach.” That doesn’t mean you will ever be perfect, only that no one should be able to examine your life and honestly claim that you aren’t sincere and as faithful as anyone could expect.
V22 - Considering how Yeshua pointed out that adultery in the heart is just as bad for your spiritual state as adultery in the flesh, so if you decry adultery and yet harbor adultery in your heart, you are just as much a hypocrite as if you committed adultery with your neighbor’s wife.
The meaning of adultery in this verse is clear, but the second part seems more obscure. What does Paul mean by “do you rob temples”? This phrase translates the single Greek word hierosules (ιεροσυλεις, ), which Thayer’s Greek Definitions translates as “to commit sacrilege, to rob a temple”, but does this make sense in context?
This verse is arranged as a parallelism:
Do not commit adultery.
Do you commit adultery?
Abhor idols.
Do you rob temples?
In keeping with the pattern of the parallelism, “Do you rob temples?” should relate to “Abhor idols” in the same way that “Do you commit adultery?” relates to “Do not commit adultery”. In other words, the Greek word heirosules must describe the opposite of abhorring idols, just as moicheueis (μοιχευεις, commit adultery) describes the opposite of not committing adultery.
In ancient Greek literature, the word for “temple-robbing” was a crime against a Temple in which the perpetrator stole or otherwise misused tithes or some other sacred.2 I don’t believe that Paul is saying that committing sacrilege against pagan temples is the opposite of abhorring idols. It seems to me that the KJV’s translation of this term (dost thou commit sacrilege) is more accurate to his intent. To paraphrase, “You who abhor idols, do you also abhor the one true God by abusing that which belongs to him by withholding your tithes and mistreating his people?”
V23-24 - Don’t be proud of being obedient to one commandment when you are still breaking another. Hypocrisy in the name of God brings dishonor on God himself because we are his emissaries to the world. Taking God's name in vain. Consider this quote that has been attributed to Brennan Manning, author of The Raggamuffin Gospel.
The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.
V25 - Although Paul frequently uses the term “circumcision” as shorthand for a ritual conversion to Judaism, I believe he is using the term literally in this verse. Circumcision is a commandment, and there is value in being circumcised if you are doing so in obedience to the commandment and not neglecting the rest of the Law, just as there is value in tithing, keeping the Sabbath, and singing praises to God, if you are faithful to him in other ways. However, if you are committing adultery, stealing, and making false accusations against your neighbor, circumcision has no benefit whatsoever.
In Galatians 5:6 Paul says "in Christ Jesus, circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything", but this passage in Romans shows that "In Christ Jesus" limits the context of that statement. Circumcision has value, whether it refers to being a Jewish man who was circumcised on the eighth day or to being physically circumcised as an adult in honor of God’s covenant with Abraham or to eat a Passover, but circumcision itself won't gain you any favor with God. That is dependent on faithful obedience to God, not faithless obedience to man’s traditions or for selfish gain.
Please note that I am not saying that anyone must be circumcised in order to be saved. Indeed, I don’t believe there is a general command anywhere in Scripture to circumcise a grown man for any reason except to allow him to eat a Passover.3 Circumcision can’t save you or make you a member of God’s covenants with Abraham or Israel, since it was given as a sign of a covenant that was already established, not as a means for entering the covenant. There is benefit, however, in all of God’s commandments or he wouldn’t have made them, even if that benefit has no bearing on your eternal salvation.
V26 - Paul mentions several different laws and kinds of laws throughout Romans, but context indicates that the only law he could reasonably be referencing here is the Torah, sometimes known as the Law of Moses. Yeshua was the only man who ever kept the commandments of Torah perfectly, so Paul is probably speaking of keeping the precepts in a more general sense of overall faithfulness, rather than in every minute detail. However, this does tend to support my assertion regarding v25 that there is no general commandment to circumcise a grown man.
Curiously, the ESV translates dikaiomata (δικαιωματα) as “precepts” here and as “righteous deeds” in Revelation 19:8. Either translation is technically valid, but according to Thayer’s Greek Definitions the word emphasizes the rightness of judicial decisions and not merely the fact that they are codified. This Greek word corresponds to the Hebrew word mishpatim (מִשְׁפָּטִים), which the ESV translates as justice in Genesis 18:19, Exodus 23:6, and other places.
Translating the Greek word as precepts in this verse almost makes it sound as if there is no inherent value in the rules of the Law, yet David wrote in Psalm 19:9 that “the mishpatim of YHWH are true and entirely righteous.” I think the ESV would be more faithful to Paul’s intent to translate dikaiomata as judgments or righteous rulings.
If a gentile comes to faith in Yeshua and keeps God’s righteous rulings, even though he wasn't born as a Jew and remains uncircumcised, playing on the meaning of the Hebrew name Judah which means praised (see Genesis 29:35), he is as a Jew in the eyes of God, and God declares him to be a party to the covenants of the patriarchs whether he is circumcised in the flesh or not. His faithfulness shows that he is circumcised in the heart, which is a more important factor.
V27 - There are only two ways for anyone to escape judgment according to God’s Law: to be perfect from birth to death or to repent from rebellion against the Law and accept the justification that Yeshua purchased for everyone through his death.
The first is impossible for all but God himself. The second is free and instant, but carries an obligation of faithful perseverance. Our justification through King Yeshua sets us free from the condemnation of the Law, but we are not set free from our obligation to obey him . Paul, Yeshua, James, and John all defined the standard of righteousness as obedience to the Law, and not just the Ten Commandments. See Romans 7:7, Matthew 5:19, James 2:11, and 1 John 2:3-4.
God wants perfect obedience to every aspect of the Law, but he knows that we are imperfect, fallen creatures and incapable of perfect obedience. This is why he sent Yeshua to be born as a man, live a perfectly obedient life for us, and then die for us, so that we could be saved despite our shortcomings.
A gentile who has been forgiven and keeps the Law in his heart despite often failing in the flesh is more faithful to the intent of the Law than a Jew who is properly circumcised in the flesh and keeps all the traditions of the Pharisees, but believes that his obedience and good deeds today atone for yesterday’s sins. Imperfect obedience in faith is better than obedience to the letter of the law without real faith.
V28-29 - The word Jew (Ioudaios, ιουδαιος) comes from the Hebrew name Yehudah, which means "praised". Paul isn’t saying that a faithful Gentile with a circumcised heart has become an ethnic or religious Jew. He is making one or all of these points about a faithful Gentile who is submitted to the King of Israel:
He has been made an Israelite by royal decree. See Ephesians 2:8-22.
His life is a praise to the name of God and Yeshua.
His faithfulness makes him praiseworthy in God’s eyes.
All of these things are true, so my only question is which one was Paul’s intended meaning.
This should not be understood to mean that an ethnic Jew ceases to be an ethnic Jew and an heir of the covenants of Israel because he has not yet come to believe in Yeshua any more than adding a baby to a family means that some other member of the family has to be expelled. Certainly many Jews--but not all!--have been cut off from Israel because of their flagrant disregard of God’s commandments, but that is a separate topic.
1 Abegg, Martin, Jr. "Paul, Works of the Law, and MMT." Biblical Archaeology Review, vol. 20, no. 6, 1994. Biblical Archaeology Society Library, library.biblicalarchaeology.org/article/paul-works-of-the-law-and-mmt/.
2 Demosthenes. Against Timocrates. Section 120. Demosthenes, Speeches 20-22. Translated by A.T. Murray, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1939. Perseus Digital Library, www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0073%3Aspeech%3D24%3Asection%3D120. Accessed January 10, 2025.
3 In my opinion, Genesis 17:14 was only intended to apply to men who lived in Abram’s house at that time. The commandment for future generations was to circumcise boys on the eighth day. This is supported not only by Galatians 5:6 and Joshua 5:4-6, where the men who obeyed God were uncircumcised, while those who refused to listen to him were circumcised.
Romans 3
V1 - By “circumcision”, Paul is still talking about the literal, physical act and not about ritual conversion to Judaism according to what was called the "custom of Moses", since he says elsewhere that ritual conversion is worse than useless.If what really matters for eternal salvation is circumcision of the heart and not circumcision of the flesh, what is the benefit in being one of God’s “chosen people”? And why did God give circumcision at all if it doesn’t benefit anyone? These are fair questions that much of Christendom has been struggling with since the very first Gentile came to believe in Yeshua.
The beginning of the answers to these questions is in the same Scriptures that raises them. Solomon wrote in Proverbs 9:10 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and in Ecclesiastes 12:13 that the whole duty of mankind is to fear God and keep his commandments. Paul essentially restates this in 1 Corinthians 7:19, “Neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.” Keep the commandments of God, whether regarding marriage, civic duty, or circumcision, not because it will save you from eternal condemnation, but because you fear and love God.
V2 - Paul wrote in Galatians 5:2 that “if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.” However, he says here that there is much value in physical circumcision. We also know from Acts 16:3 that he circumcised Timothy who was not a Jew (despite later, unbiblical rabbinic doctrine that Jewish identity comes through the mother instead of the father). On the surface, this seems like Paul has contradicted himself. How can circumcision be of any value at all if it makes Christ of no value?
The key to resolving this apparent discrepancy is to understand the context of each statement and action. In Galatians, Paul was addressing the problem of false teachers who were claiming that a person must be circumcised and adopt all the man-made customs of the Jews in order to be saved. See Acts 15:1 and Galatians 4:8-9. Here in Romans, Paul is talking about the benefit of being born and raised as a Jew in obedience to God’s commandments, which includes the command of circumcision.
In the context of obtaining forgiveness of sins and eternal life, circumcision is worse than useless. If you become circumcised to earn salvation, then you don’t understand salvation. It’s like putting on a Los Angeles Lakers jersey and thinking that makes you a member of the team with no practice, no skill, and no contract. You’ll show up at the arena thinking that you’re part of the starting lineup, but they won’t even let you past the ticketing booth. If you want to be a legitimate member of the Lakers team, there is an accepted path to making that happen. Your pre-membership wardrobe is irrelevant. The only jersey that matters is the one you receive as a sign of the membership that is established by your contract.
Physical circumcision is like that jersey. If you--as a man, obviously--“accept circumcision”, thinking that this will get you into eternity, you won’t even be allowed past the front gates. You will have ignored the path of repentance and faithfulness that God clearly laid out in favor of a ritual imposed by men. Circumcision is only a sign of a covenant that has already been established, not a key to entering into the covenant.
Once you are an official member of the team, you have to wear the jersey in order to enter the game, just like you have to be circumcised in order to eat a Passover according to Exodus 12:48. This is what Paul meant when he wrote “For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God” in 1 Corinthians 7:19. It’s a great blessing to eat a Passover in Jerusalem according to the commandments of God, and those instructions include circumcision.
Paul sometimes uses “circumcision” as a synecdoche for being ethnically Jewish, and while there is value in being circumcised according to the commandments of God--as opposed to the traditions of men--this is eclipsed by the advantages of the Scriptures as a cultural inheritance. This is what Paul means by “the oracles of God”: the Law, Prophets, and Writings, what Christians call the Old Testament. The Jew of the first century was much like the Christian of today in that he was steeped in the Scriptures, however imperfectly they were interpreted and applied.
Even more important than the collective Jewish familiarity with the Scriptures is the inheritance of the covenants that God made with the patriarchs. Paul will address this advantage in the following verses and in chapter 11.
V3 - The hypocrisy of some Jews does not devalue the Law and the Prophets or his promises to the patriarchs of Israel, nor does it call into question God's choice of a people. As Moses said in Deuteronomy 7:7-8, the descendants of Jacob weren’t chosen because they were more deserving or moral than any other people, but because God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He will certainly prune them of pathological branches (Romans 11:17), but he will always preserve a remnant for the sake of the patriarchs.
God knew exactly who the children of Israel were when he called them out of Egypt. He told Moses in Deuteronomy 31:14-18 that they would forsake him and his covenants and be temporarily repudiated because of their rebellion, but he also promised in Deuteronomy 30:1-14 that they would repent and that he would restore them to all of the blessings of his covenants. Since Israel was not chosen because of their faithfulness, they cannot be unchosen because of their unfaithfulness.
V4 - If YHWH can revoke the promises he made to the genetic descendants of Israel, why should we trust him not to revoke any promises he makes to anyone else? He would be no more worthy of our faith than Zeus, whose mythology is full of deception and broken promises. Men are promise- and covenant-breakers, but God is not.
It’s important to understand that a covenant is not a mere contract. It is the definition a relationship between two or more parties, sealed by the blood of a sacrificial victim, not merely a performative agreement. A covenant describes responsibilities that come with the relationship and penalties for failing to fulfill those responsibilities, but the covenant cannot be nullified any more than brothers can stop being related by blood.1
The quote here is from Psalm 51:4, in which David declares God’s authority to judge sins and the purity of his judgment because of his own sinlessness. If God were to nullify any of the covenants he has made, he would no longer be sinless (Numbers 30:2), and his right to judge mankind would be compromised by his own guilt.
V5 - Paul seems to be assuming that his reader will understand the context of the quote in v3 in which David extolls God’s right to judge his sins, in part because of God’s own innocence. The unfaithfulness of Israel highlights God’s righteousness because he kept those covenants even when they did not.
Paul frequently engages in a rhetorical method known as diatribe, in which the speaker poses questions or objections from a hypothetical opponent and then answers them. In this case, he poses the possibility that God should thank us for being unfaithful since it puts a spotlight on his faithfulness. Our shame, in this view, actually brings glory to God, and so he should encourage our unfaithfulness rather than punishing it.
V6 - If God failed to discipline Israel, to whom he had given his oracles, on what basis could he punish the rest of the world? The Jews received explicit instruction on the Law from Moses, the Prophets, and then from the Son of God himself, and so they must feel God's wrath before those who have some excuse because of their ignorance. See Romans 1:16 and 2:9-10. Yet, God has promised to judge the world, so he must also judge Israel.
V7 - Paul repeats the hypothetical question of v5 but narrows it from the sins of Israel to the sins of a single man: “If my unfaithfulness makes God’s faithfulness seem even greater by comparison, why is he mad at me?”
If lies and unfaithfulness were morally neutral, this might be a good argument. How can we know how bright a light really is until we have some darkness to compare it with? It's very similar to the idea that God allows us to experience pain so that we will understand joy, but that's not the only reason pain exists, and suffering itself isn't immoral. The one who causes the suffering of others is used by God, but will also be judged by God.
V8 - By “do evil that good may come”, Paul probably means breaking God’s commandments in order to win converts. Niccolò Machiavelli is often paraphrased as saying, “The ends justify the means,” and this is truly how some people interpret Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23, where he said that he became all things to all men. They claim he taught that God’s Law is irrelevant to the “New Covenant believer”- and so we are free to live as we choose, and he chose to live as a pagan when among pagans in order to create an affinity with them and win them to Christ. But what could it possibly mean to win them to Christ without teaching them to obey Christ?
These people are telling the same lies about Paul that people had been telling about him in Acts 21:20-21. Many thousands of Jews had come to believe in Yeshua, and they remained faithful to the commandments of God and even to their extra-biblical traditions. Someone was spreading a rumor that Paul was teaching Jews in the diaspora to abandon the commandments (“forsake Moses” in Acts 21:21), which is exactly what he would have been teaching if he really believed that he was justified in eating pork and working on the Sabbath in order to win converts. “Their condemnation is just,” he says.
The plain truth that Paul expresses so clearly throughout Romans is that the Law of Moses remains God’s standard of behavior for all his people, whether Jew or Gentile. In v31 of this chapter, he reassures his readers that they should not understand anything he says to be contrary to keeping the Law.
V9 - See v2, which says the Jews have an advantage in having been entrusted with the oracles of God. It is an advantage in any kingdom to know the laws, but knowing them doesn't help you if you break them. God’s standards of right and wrong are the same for Jew and Gentile, but as Paul told the Athenians in Acts 17:30, God is more lenient with those who don't yet know the truth.
V10-12 - This is a quote from Psalm 14:1-3, in which David makes a poetic and hyperbolic complaint to God against the ubiquity of sin and evil in the world. David's words are an emotional outburst and not meant to be taken in a strictly literal sense.
When David says, "None is righteous," he didn't mean that no one is capable of doing anything right or worthy of being called righteous in any way. The Scriptures themselves show us otherwise. In Genesis 7:1, God describes Noah as "righteous," indicating that there are indeed those whom God considers righteous within the context of their faith and obedience. Similarly, in Exodus 23:7, God commands Israel not to perpetrate injustice against the righteous, which logically requires that such individuals exist. Numerous Psalms exhort the righteous to praise God and to put their trust in him.
If righteous people do exist, what does Paul mean by quoting David in this context?
Paul is using David's poetic lament to illustrate how even those that God and the Scriptures consider righteous fall infinitely short of the perfection of God. No human, except Yeshua, has ever lived a life completely free from sin. Neither Paul nor David are saying that there are no righteous people in the world. Rather, they are saying that no one can ever be sufficiently righteous, sufficiently understanding to achieve the level of perfection necessary to atone for their own past sins and to earn eternal life through their own efforts.
As Paul says in v23, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". While some might be more righteous in their actions than others, any flaw, no matter how small, is like an infinite gap when measured against God's perfect standard. The debt incurred by the slightest infraction cannot be erased (justified) by our own obedience to a Law that we have already broken. Forgiveness can only be received through faith in Yeshua, whose sinless life and sacrificial death bridge that infinite gap for us.
V13-18 - Paul quotes four more passages from the Psalms and one from Isaiah to further illustrate the fallen state of mankind.
V13a - Psalm 5:9.
V13b - Psalm 140:3.
V14 - Psalm 10:7
V15-17 - Isaiah 59:7-8.
V18 - Psalm 36:1
V19 - The TLV has a better translation of this verse than either the ESV or the KJV: “Now we know that whatever the Torah says, it says to those within the Torah, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may become accountable to God.” My only disagreement with the TLV is in rendering nomos as “Torah”. I believe Paul is referring to the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), but that is an interpretation, and not necessarily what Paul wrote. In my opinion, translators should avoid introducing their own interpretations into the text as much as possible.
I say that the TLV is better because it says “within the [law]” instead of “under the law". The Greek phrase Paul uses here is different than what he uses in Galatians 3:23, 4:5, 4:21, and 5:18. Galatians reads hupo nomon (υπο νομον), while this verse reads en to nomo (εν τω νομω). The distinction is important because “under the law” refers to a state of being guilty and therefore under the law’s power to convict and punish, while “within the law” refers to the state of being within the law’s jurisdiction. The two phrases are almost universally conflated in theological discussions and Bible translations, and I believe this does severe injustice to Paul’s doctrine.
No matter which interpretation you prefer of en to nomo, this verse soundly refutes the idea that only Jews are within the jurisdiction of the Law. How could the whole world be held accountable to God by the words of the Law if it was not speaking to the whole world?
This verse is structured as a parallelism that highlights the connection:
- A - Whatever the law says
- B - It speaks to those within the law
- A - That every mouth may be stopped
- B - Whole world held accountable to God
The words of the Law puts an end to all possible defenses in God’s courtroom, the likely meaning of every mouth being stopped. Nobody can stand before him and claim to be innocent, because nobody except Yeshua has managed to live a sinless life. God sees every deed and every state of the heart. Those within the Law’s jurisdiction in the first half are the same as those being held accountable for their crimes in the second half: the whole world.
V20 - It doesn’t say “works of the Law”, but “works of law”. The definite article is assumed by the translators. "Works of law" probably means ama'asim and refers to rabbinic halachah, which is based on Torah, but isn’t the same. It does not refer to living according to the actual Law of Moses, but according to man-made rules by which men believe they can be made righteous. Either way, it amounts to the same thing: trying to earn your salvation by your own power.
- There are several Hebrew words for law, and they can all be translated into Greek as nomos.
- “Justified in his sight” - Bildad (Job 25:5) and Eliphaz (Job 15:14-16) say that even the heavens and heavenly bodies are impure in God’s sight. These men are not reliable witnesses in every respect, but their point here is a good one. God is so magnificent that not even the sun and moon could possibly impress him. How much less could our feeble attempts at righteousness impress him. His righteousness is infinitely perfect. The tiniest infraction makes any righteousness we might muster to be less than infinite. Mathematically speaking, anything less than infinite is infinitely less. There is no possible way for us to make up the difference on our own. We absolutely need a savior, someone who can bridge the gap.
- You can’t be justified in God’s sight by trying to live according to the Law (or law), because the Law will continually expose your shortcomings. When you master one sin, you will discover another. This is the essence of Galatians 2:19. In trying to earn salvation through obedience to the Law, Paul only succeeded in revealing his hopelessness, and so his hope in the Law died, so that it might be refocused on the Law-giver.
V21-22 - Not without regard to the law or in lawlessness, but through the person of Yeshua and his faith. The Law and Prophets prophesied about Yeshua and spelled out his necessity, and his faith was demonstrated by his obedience to the Law, but it was his faith and not the Law itself that demonstrated God’s righteousness.
- Faith = pistis, a reliance or trust in another. A conviction of the truth or trustworthiness of a matter. Faithfulness. Here, it is pisteos.
V23 - The quotes of David above were hyperbolic and didn’t really include all people, but Paul uses them to illustrate the point that all people really have fallen short of God’s perfect righteousness.
- We are made in God’s image, like shadows, and it is impossible for the shadow to outshine the reality. See Colossians 2:16 and Hebrews 8:13.
- Anything less than infinite is infinitely less than infinite.
V24 - Justification is gifted by the forbearance of God.
- Redemption - Gr. Apolutrosis. He. Ga’al. - See Hebrews 11:35, Ephesians 1:14, Exodus 15:13. Refers to a ransom paid to release a prisoner or something held.
V25 - Propitiation means a cleansing or wiping away. Septuagint uses it to refer to the kiporet of the Ark of the Covenant. But his blood doesn’t just cover over sins. It removes them. See Rev 7:14.
- This forgiveness shows God’s righteousness, because only one who is perfectly sinless could be qualified to completely remove all sin, unlike animal sacrifices which only temporarily covered them over.
V26 - By declining to punish sin in the here and now when he is within his rights, he demonstrates his righteousness and the ultimate justice of his judgment. When he finally judges mankind, no one will have an excuse, because he gave us ample time to repent or to prove our sinfulness.
- “His righteousness” is dikaiosune, which is the same root as justify. Everywhere the English says “justify”, think “made/declared righteous”.
- He is just because he establishes the Law and the guilt of lawbreakers, but he justifies those who have faith in Yeshua by setting aside their guilt.
V27-28 - There’s nothing to brag about
- Law of works and law of faith are not Torah. These are principles by which some seek salvation. They are generic principles of law, not specific laws.
- God alone has the power to set aside our guilt and designed a mechanism by which it could be done through his own power. The infinitely perfect God had to become an infinitely perfect man and die for the sins of the rest of us in order to deflect God’s righteous judgment onto himself.
V29 - God created the entire universe, including all mankind, therefore he is the God of everything.
- See Isaiah 19:19-25. Egypt and Assyria are metonymes for the whole world.
V30 - God has a complex internal anatomy with functional divisions, but his authority is not divided. There is not a part of God that presides over the seas and another over the heavens. All of God is the Creator and all of God is the master of all mankind.
- See Psalm 24:5. Righteousness comes from God to those who seek him. "Circumcision" refers to rabbinic circumcision.
- Is it significant that Paul said “by faith” and “through faith”?
V31 - Through faith in God we establish the Torah and become righteous.
- When we are under the Law, we are under its condemnation, but being no longer under the Law doesn’t mean that it can no longer inform our behavior and conscience. We uphold God’s Law because it is an extension and reflection of his character and we are his people.
1 Carper, Jay. Covenants of Israel. YouTube, uploaded by American Torah, 29 January, 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwePQSis7X4&list=PLJVup1isOKCnHRh_kgE0y3WPf5TSWBwnB
Romans 4
V1-3 - Abraham was declared righteous because of his faith many years before he was circumcised. See Genesis 15:6. “Counted unto him” in v3 is the same as “imputed to him”. He didn’t have actual, significant righteousness of his own, but God ascribed it to him anyway.
- Consider a man who adopts two sons. Both have an imputed sonship that they didn’t earn. The first is an obedient, faithful son his whole life. He is a son in name and in deed. The second son is like the Prodigal who rebels and leaves the father’s house. Maybe he repents and maybe he doesn’t. The point is that the father has the option of continuing to call him a son or to repudiate him. The father is just in either case.
- This passage defines the concept of “justified by faith”. Justification is God counting us as righteous for the sake of our faith in him, not because of anything we did before.
- See Matthew 11:19 - “Wisdom is justified by her deeds.” This means that wisdom is made/shown to be/declared righteous because of her deeds. Keep this in mind when you compare Romans 3-4 with James 2.
- If James was written by the brother of Yeshua, then James 2:17-26 is parallel to this passage, not a refutation or counterpoint. In that case, it seems likely that there was a popular teaching that somehow connected the unity of God with a two-tiered law system, much as is taught in some branches of Christianity and Messianic Judaism today. We know logically and scripturally that there is only one creator God, but our rebellious nature wants to insert an anti-creator into the story to justify following a different law. See Marcionism and Gnostic dualities.
V4 - Consider Eliezer who worked for Abraham his whole life, who put his own life on the line, and ruled Abraham's house (including Isaac!) with the full authority of Abraham himself, yet could never be counted as the promised heir. He had every cause to be jealous of Isaac, but was grateful to be a part of Abe's house. Genesis 15:1-4.
- Consider also Ishmael, who was Abraham’s legitimate son according to law and tradition, but could not be the son of promise because he was the product of Abraham’s own efforts and not God’s miraculous intervention. Genesis 17:15-21.
- Both Eliezer and Ishmael could have been legitimate heirs to Abraham by the laws of men, but
V5 - Not that anyone is justified because they are ungodly, but that they are justified while they are still ungodly. Repentance doesn’t magically transform a person into a perfectly obedient son. It only sets him on a course that would be pointless without that prior justification.
- His faith is counted as righteousness, because he has no righteousness to speak of. When a person first comes to faith, nothing good that he has done counts for anything because it wasn’t done in faith. So he is saved while he is still a sinner, but once God has justified him, his faith enables his righteous acts to count as actual righteousness.
- The word for righteousness at the end of the verse has the same root as justify/justifies.
- See the parable of the vineyard laborers in Matthew 20:1-16. God has every right to give whatever he wants to whomever he wants, so long as he does so within the bounds of what he has already promised to do.
V6 - Refers to Psalm 32 in which David talks about how one who expects forgiveness can't hide his sin or pretend it doesn't exist. It must be repented of and then one must accept God's teaching in the ways of righteousness.
V7-8 - Greek words used are interesting: “Blessed are they whose anomiai (lawlessnesses) are afetisan (left behind/abandoned) and whose amartiai (errors) are epekaluptisan (covered over; NASB translates the last word as “covered”). Blessed is the man against whom the Lord oo me (will never ever) logisitai (account) amartian (error).”
- David sang of the grace of God to forgive sins a 1000 years before Paul wrote Romans.
- Psalm 32:3-5 speaks of the need to confess sins to God in order to obtain forgiveness. This is not a “work” in the sense of earning anything. It’s merely an acknowledgment of debt.
- Psalm 32:6 implies there is a time limit to repentance. Confess and repent while you still can, because eventually the flood waters come and the doors will be closed.
- Psalm 32:7 adds meaning to the idea of sins being covered. God is our hiding place and it is beneath the blood of Yeshua that our sins are permanently covered over.
- God cooks the spiritual books in favor of those who believe in him.
V9 - We know that God forgives and “enrighteouses” people whether they are circumcised or not because he imputed righteousness to Abram before he was circumcised.
V10 - Circumcision came after Abraham's calling and covenant, not before. He was pronounced righteous in Genesis 15:6 and circumcised in Genesis 17:4.
V11 - The commandment to become circumcised is only given to those who are already God’s people. There is no point in someone outside the covenant being circumcised because it is a sign of having already been inducted.
- “The purpose” in the ESV is misleading. It’s not the purpose of either the circumcision or the command to circumcise, but the purpose of Abraham being explicitly declared righteous before his circumcision. If God had waited until after Genesis 17:4 to call Abraham righteous, we might say that it was the circumcision that made him so. Putting that statement in 15:6 leaves no room to question.
V12 - Abraham is the father of the faithful remnant of physical Israel as well as of the faithful converts from the nations.
- See Luke 3:8. Nobody can appeal to genetic descent from Abraham for justification in God’s eyes. The circumcision itself isn’t enough, but one must believe God.
V13 - God might use natural laws to accomplish his promises, but he doesn’t have to. In this case, it served his purposes to bypass all natural and manmade laws in order to create a people from what was not a people, life from death.
- Eliezer and Ishmael were both legitimate heirs to Abraham, one according to the law of men and the other according to the law of nature, but God had another plan for which there was no law. He intended to make a direct intervention in the normal process of events to give Abraham an heir apart from economic and familial laws.
- Per Galatians 3:21-29 explains this same concept. Eliezer and Ishmael were both enslaved according to law and the heir of Abraham by that law until the child of faith came. When Isaac came, the full promise was revealed in God creating an heir for Abraham without reference to the laws of economics or biology. We were once Eliezer and Ishmael, but now we are Isaac.
V14 - We are given the Law only after we are made heirs, not before. The covenant is established by faith and sealed by actions, not the other way around.
- “Those of law” doesn’t refer to Jews, but to anyone who thinks he can earn salvation by his own efforts. It isn’t even about obedience to Torah, because it says “of law” not “of The Law”
- Deuteronomy 30 and Jeremiah 31 show that the physical descendants of Jacob, as a people, can never lose their status as God’s chosen, but this doesn’t guarantee that every individual descendant will be saved. Every person must have believe as Abraham did in order to inherit eternal life and forgiveness of sins.
V15 - The law brings wrath because we can never fully live up to its demands. We will inevitably fail in some small respect and so lose all possible merit to eternal life. Wrath is the default wage for all mankind since Adam sinned. In trying to earn salvation through obedience to law, we earn only wrath. The only righteousness that can truly save us is that which is imputed to us on Yeshua’s account because of our faith in God.
- “Where there is no law” is often misunderstood to mean that God’s Law doesn’t apply to some people or in some eras. That’s not the point. It’s about things that happen outside the purview of law, not to people who don’t have or know the Law. This verse could be reworded as “For the Law brings about God’s wrath because of our violations, but in a context in which no law applies, there can be no violation.”
V16 - The first phrases of this verse are evidently ambiguous and difficult to translate. ESV takes a little more liberties than the bare text seems to warrant, but it doesn’t change the fundamental meaning.
- Amplified: Therefore it is by faith, so that in accordance with God’s grace, the promise might be guaranteed to all who would be Abraham’s heirs, not only to those who keep the Law, but also to those who only have the faith of Abraham, who is made to be the father of us all.
- There is no hope of salvation apart from God’s grace and we receive that grace by believing in his promise to give it. His grace is only extended to those who will believe that he gives it.
- One who lives according to rules (whether God’s or man’s) is not cut off from salvation nor is the one who does not live according to rules. It’s not necessarily bad to be among “those of law”. It just depends on what laws and why you keep them.
- Being a child of Abraham necessarily also means being a child of Jacob. Ishmael, Esau, and Keturah’s children are all descendants of Abraham, but only according to law and not according to promise. The promise flows from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob and all of the children of Abraham’s faith must also be of that line. The natural descendants of Jacob, especially those who have kept the Law, are “those of the law”.
- “Father of us all” refers to both the natural children of Abraham through Jacob and those of faith.
V17 - We were dead in our sins, with no more capacity for righteousness than stones. Yet through the divine action of God, Sarai’s dead womb was resurrected, and stones came to life.
- Father of many nations. See Genesis 17:4-5. This is literal in that Abraham became the genetic father of many nations. It is figurative in that he became the father, through faith, of multitudes from among the nations. When we are added to the covenant, our parents don’t change, our DNA doesn’t change, and we don’t magically become Jews. We are Americans, Mexicans, Canadians made to be children of Abraham by faith, not by lineage.
- God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 17:4-5 is in both the present and past tense.
- “Gives life to the dead” is a reference to the bodies of Abraham and Sarah as well as to the natural born Israelites, many of whom do not know they are Israelites. See Ezekiel 37.
- “That which does not exist” is a reference to an heir where there couldn’t be one, to gentiles made into Israelites, stones made into children of Abraham. See Luke 3:8.
V18 - This is the heart of Abraham’s faith, the promise in which he believed, despite good reasons not to believe, that caused God to declare him righteous.
- Abraham didn’t doubt God’s promise, but he doubted his own understanding of the promise. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be through Sarah? God only clarified that after Ishmael was born.
V19-20 - Abraham could see the evidence against God’s declaration with his whole being, yet he believed. He didn’t deny that his and Sarah’s bodies were too old to conceive children, nor did he deny that God was capable of making it happen anyway.
- Abraham’s faith in spite of evidence to the contrary strengthened his faith even more. Faith is like any other skill. You get better at it, the more you exercise it.
V21 - I am fully convinced that God can heal me, that God can give me the resources to accomplish whatever task he sets before me, even while I am sick and have no resources. God spoke the universe into existence, so what could possibly be too difficult for him?
V22 - God wants to see the kind of faith that believes despite any evidence that the world might present or fabricate. That doesn’t mean he wants us to believe in lies. God didn’t tell Abraham that he would be the father of nations just to see if he would believe an absurdity. He told him so because he meant to make it so. Don’t mistake your misunderstandings of God’s word for his actual word, and don’t hold too tightly to promises that he never made.
V23 - Abraham probably never saw those words in print, and maybe nobody spoke it to him at all. Like all Scripture, it was recorded for our benefit.
V24 - Our challenge to believe in Yeshua’s resurrection is similar to Abraham’s challenge to believe in his own. We have an historical record of the resurrection and those who witnessed him alive, but all that we know of the natural world says that dead people don’t come back to life.
V25 - Our sin can’t just be erased because God decided. The laws by which he exists and by which he created the universe require sin to be atoned by blood. Since any atonement made by the sinner himself is inherently imperfect, it can never erase his own sins. Only the blood of an infinitely perfect man can atone for the infinite shortcomings of man. Yeshua gave up his life to erase our sins and rose from the grave to ensure our resurrection.
Romans 5
V1 - Peace is a state of relationship between us and God. This isn’t talking about a clear conscience, but about escaping God’s wrath. Those who are not justified in God’s eyes will receive his wrath at the final judgment if not before.
- Peace with God = justification.
- See Isaiah 27. Repentance brings peace with God, which brings restoration and fruitfulness.
V2 - Forgiveness of sins and eternal life are gifts from God that we couldn’t possibly earn no matter what we do, and even God’s grace to grant them to us in response to our faith in him would have no effect if Yeshua had not died to enable the removal of our sins.
- See John 14:6, Isaiah 53, and 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:2.
V3-4 - God allows suffering for a purpose, but suffering itself isn’t a good thing. We shouldn’t seek out suffering for ourselves or anyone else except for brief moments of discipline for those under our authority, but neither should we expend all of our energy trying to avoid it.
- See 1 Peter 4:12-19.
- Nothing great is easy. If you would become great or do great things, you will suffer along the way. If you haven’t suffered, then you are fooling yourself about the value of what you have accomplished.
- Jacob's life was "short and evil", but he was blessed beyond measure. Hardship is often a blessing from God because it is a precursor of greater challenges and responsibilities.
- Sometimes one person suffers for another's blessing. If we suffer for the sake of another, this too is a blessing for ourselves, one that we will reap 100 fold. Yeshua is the greatest example of this.
- We only know good because we have known evil. This is the end result of eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil. We weren't supposed to eat it, but God has turned out sin into an opportunity to bless those who are willing to receive it.
- Purposes of suffering
- Reveal your character
- Reveal God’s character
- Reveal the world’s character
- Reveal the character of false gods
- Understand God’s and Christ’s suffering
- Provoke repentance
- Deter crime
- Rescue the righteous
- Build faith
- Build character (strength, determination, etc.)
- KJV says “experience” instead of “character”. The Greek word is dokimee, which means proven, much as metal is tempered. A combination of experience and character is probably a better idea.
V5 - The hope Paul wrote and spoke of is the hope of the Gospel, which encompasses the forgiveness of sins, the restoration of Israel, resurrection, and eternal life without sin and shame. See Acts 23:6, 24:15, 26:6, Acts 28:20,
- See Isaiah 45:15-25. God often hides himself in the midst of our suffering, and so we ask “How can God allow this?” If he told us the purpose of every evil thing, it wouldn’t have its intended effect. If God himself appeared to every person undergoing trial, where would be the need for faith? He hides himself to empower our suffering, which leads to our reconciliation with him, our liberation, and eternal life after the resurrection without fear of shame or punishment.
V6 - “Still weak” refers to our inability to save ourselves. God requires us to confess our sinful state and repent from sin, but he doesn’t expect us to make any progress before he saves us. He forgives our sins while we are still wallowing in sin.
- Christ didn’t make a mistake in dying for a people who hated him. If everyone loved him and lived a perfectly righteous life, what would be the purpose of his death? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” If the people who crucified him had understood whom they were crucifying, they certainly wouldn’t have done it.
V6 - Almost nobody would die to save a criminal who deserves death, but that’s what Yeshua did for us. He didn’t die to save the sinless. He died for idolaters, homosexuals, and murderers because he knew that a few of them would be saved by his death.
V7 - Some people will choose to die for someone who isn’t immediate family or a very close friend. Even then, they would need assurances that their death would save the other person’s life, spare them great pain, or cause them to become a good person. Yeshua knew that nobody would become a good person by his standards.
V8 - Only the most loving person can clearly see the value in suffering for another.
- How does it show God’s love for Christ to have died for us? Because Yeshua is God’s only begotten son in a way that no mortal father can have a son. He is God in the flesh. God created a father-son relationship with a part of himself and then sacrificed that son in order to save people who had no hope of saving themselves, and couldn’t even repay him by becoming remotely good. Our righteousness is not earned, but bestowed by the grace of God through the blood of Yeshua.
V9 - How does one follow from the other? Justification refers to restoring a person to the infinite righteousness required to be resurrected to eternal life in God’s direct presence. If God can make an infinitely unrighteous person infinitely righteous, how hard could it be to simply shelter that person from a tiny bit of wrath focused on a tiny little world in a corner of the universe?
- This doesn’t mean that God shields redeemed people from the natural consequences of their sin. That’s not God’s wrath; it’s just nature.
- Does this mean that we will never experience God’s wrath poured out on the people around us? Not necessarily. It means that we will be sheltered from the brunt of it. The Hebrews suffered at least to some degree in the first 3 plagues of Egypt. God only made a clear distinction between his people and the Egyptians in the fourth plague. See Exodus 8:22-23.
V10 - Yeshua died for all mankind before we even knew that we needed him, while many of those who knew they needed him, rejected him.
- We were subjects of a sworn enemy of God, slaves to sin, and therefore enemies of God at the moment that Yeshua gave his life for our redemption.
- If by his death, Yeshua can change our allegiance from Satan to him, it is a trivial thing to spare us from his wrath poured out against those who refuse to be reconciled to him.
V11 - We rejoice in our reconciliation to God, in our salvation from wrath, and we also rejoice in sufferings because of the good that they bring. God is good by definition. There is no downside to God. Through our suffering, we gain in strength, character, and perspective, but in God we gain only good with no pain.
- Joy has always been a central feature of the religion of YHWH. Deuteronomy repeatedly commands us to rejoice in God’s presence as an integral part of the sacrificial system:
- ch12 - You shall eat your sacrifices before YHWH your God and rejoice before him.
- ch14 - You shall eat there before YHWH your God and rejoice.
- ch16 - You shall rejoice before YHWH your God.
- ch26 - You shall rejoice in all the good that YHWH your God has given to you and to your house.
- ch27 - You shall rejoice before YHWH your God.
Original Sin?
Four categories of Original Sin doctrine
- Guilt imputed (Federal headship)
- Guilt inherited (Seminal transmission)
- Guilt earned
- Sinful nature inherited
- (Yetzer tov / yetzer hara)
Doctrines of Imputed Original Sin (Roman Catholic, Calvinist)
- Augustinian Seminalism - The guilt of sin is transmitted along with semen. We actively participated in Adam’s sin by virtue of being his offspring and having been part of his body at the time he sinned.
- Immediate Imputation - Adam’s guilt is inherited by all of his descendants and this creates a sinful nature within them.
- Federal Headship - We are guilty of sin because Adam has authority over us and therefore represented us in the Garden. The generation of Adam is guilty of Adam’s sin, much as all of Israel is accountable for the covenant their elders made with the Gibeonites.
Doctrines of Inherited Sinful Nature (Eastern Orthodox, Arminianism, Mormonism)
- Mediate Imputation - A sinful nature is inherited by all of Adam’s descendants and this causes them to sin.
- Uncondemnable Vitiosity (aka New School Theory) - All men inherit an evil inclination which inevitably causes them to sin almost as soon as they are capable. I’m not sure how this is different than Mediate Imputation.
Doctrines that Deny Vitiosity
- Pelagianism - There is no sin or sinful nature inherited from Adam, and men are capable of living a sinless life.
- Good/Evil Inclinations - The Jewish belief that everyone has good and evil inclinations that we must nurture and control, respectively. Yetzer tov and yetzer hara.
V12 - Death is an inherited disease and Yeshua is the cure, as promised to Abraham. As leprosy was cured by baptism in the Jordan, so is death cured by baptism in the blood of Yeshua.
- Death, not sin, spread to all men.
- Psalm 51:5 - Poetic exaggeration
- Psalm 14:3 - No one does good. This is talking about what each individual person does, not what Adam did.
- Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:20 - Can’t punish father or son for the sins of the other.
- Sin came into the world through one man, not one woman, even though the woman sinned first. This seems to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Adam had authority over Eve before the Fall.
V13-14 - Paul presents a contradictory statement: Sin is not counted where there is no law and the law wasn’t given until Sinai, but sin was counted against all men before Sinai. He is showing that the Law existed before Sinai and applied to all men, not just Israelites. Only one law had been given before the Flood: Don’t eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was impossible that anyone after the Fall had eaten from that tree, so nobody violated that law (their transgression was not like Adam’s). Yet death, both spiritual and physical, still reigned from Adam to Moses over all people. This means that God’s Law did exist and did apply to all people.
- Genesis 18:20-21 says that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was very grave, and then 19:12 says that God would destroy the city because of the outcry against it. On what basis could God destroy the city?
- In Genesis 20:3, God threatened to kill Abimelech because he was planning to violate Sarah. How can that be since no explicit commands had been given concerning sexual behavior other than to reproduce?
- Leviticus 18:24-30 says that the Canaanites made themselves unclean and were cut off from among their people because they practiced sexual abominations that are contrary to God’s Law. Yet the Canaanites didn’t have God’s Law. In fact, even Israel didn’t have these commandments at the time that God condemned the Canaanites for violating them. This means that the Canaanites and Israelites actually did know these laws, even though they had not yet been written down by Moses.
Parallelism in Romans 5:15-16
- V15 - Free gift is not like the trespass
- Many died through one man’s trespass
- Greater grace and gift of Jesus abound for many
- Many died through one man’s trespass
- V16 - Free gift is not like the result of Adam’s sin
- Judgment following one trespass brought condemnation
- Free gift following many trespasses brought justification
- Judgment following one trespass brought condemnation
V15-16 - The death brought by Adam and the life brought by Yeshua are similar in that they are both one-to-many relationships, but they are different in three very important ways:
- One brings death, while the other brings life.
- One impacted all, while the other only impacts those who believe.
- Just as destruction is so much easier than construction, it only took one sin to separate all of mankind from infinite righteousness and unite them with death. However, Yeshua’s death restores all who believe to infinite righteousness.
Triple Parallelism in Romans 5:17-19
- V17 - Because of one man’s trespass
- Death reigned through that one man
- Much more will those who receive grace and righteousness
- Reign in life through Jesus
- Much more will those who receive grace and righteousness
- Death reigned through that one man
- V18 - As one trespass
- Led to condemnation for all men
- One act of righteousness
- Leads to justification and life for all men
- One act of righteousness
- Led to condemnation for all men
- V19 - One man’s disobedience
- Many made sinners
- One man’s obedience
- Many will be made righteous
- One man’s obedience
- Many made sinners
V17-19 - Multiple points can be learned from this triple parallelism:
- Trespass or sin is the same as disobedience. Where there is no disobedience, there is no sin.
- The consequences of our sins don’t end with us. They will be passed on to our children, to the people under our authority, to all the people around us, and even to the people in authority over us.
- Adam’s curse has three primary effects on mankind where it relates to our need for a savior: First, death reigns over all mankind, so everyone is condemned to die through sickness and decay. Second, the corruption in our flesh and in the world around us drives us to disobedience: the sinful nature. Third, because of our sinful nature, we inevitably sin and earn eternal condemnation.
- Righteousness is the same as obedience. We are condemned because we follow in Adam's disobedient footsteps. We are redeemed because our redeemer obeyed and gave up his life so that we could choose to follow him. If he had sinned even once, he would be in the same dire situation as us, unable to save even himself.
- Yeshua’s perfect obedience preserved his infinite righteousness. No matter how much righteousness is imputed to us, it can never run out. The grace and righteousness that is extended to us for his sake is as infinite as he is. Death, by its nature, is an end and has an end. The life imparted by his grace is eternal.
- Just as justification and life is not automatically given to all men, but depends on our reception of it in humble repentance, so condemnation is not automatically passed to every human being only by virtue of having been conceived in the line of Adam. Each and every one of us has received condemnation because of our unwillingness to obey God’s Law in every respect. See Matthew 7:13-14 and Romans 3:23.
V20 - We could never know the value of our salvation if we weren't first condemned to die. This doesn't mean we should deliberately increase sin and suffering so that our joy will seem more profound. See Romans 7:7-13.
- The Law wasn't given so that we would sin more, but so that our sin would be more apparent. Sin increases in light of the Law just as dirt increases when exposed to the light.
- Alternatively: Exposure to the Law increases the desire to sin in those who are in rebellion and determined to sin.
- Where sin is exposed, God’s grace is magnified. It’s not that God’s grace is actually greater because people sinned more, but because sin was exposed.
V21 - “Reigned” means that it has power over people. Because death reigned and brought sin with it, sin reigned in death in the same way that Joseph reigned in Pharaoh. When we decide to reject God’s desires in favor of our own, we are brought under the power of sin to condemn. We are put “under the Law”. God’s grace reverses this process. God’s grace made a way for Yeshua’s righteousness to be effective for us, “canceling the record of debt that stood against us” so that sin could not reign over us (Colossians 2:14-15). With the power of sin removed, we are no longer under the Law, and we can be given eternal life once we are also removed from under the power of death in the resurrection.
- See Romans 6:14 regarding equating the dominion of sin with being under the Law.
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