Series on Romans
IV The Gospel and the Law
B Elimination of Boasting
Text: 3:27-31
Introduction
Paul has made clear that the law cannot save us and our only hope is in the grace of God and in His Son, Jesus Christ. John Bunyan gives us a graphic illustration of this in Pilgrim’s Progress. The pilgrim, Christian, is at the house of the interpreter being instructed. He sees a man in a very dusty room with a broom. As the man sweeps the dust rises and swirls in thick suffocating clouds. Then a lady is called who sprinkles the room with water and the room is easily swept. The broom is the law, and the lady is the gospel. The law like the broom cannot clean hearts of sin and only makes the situation worse the more we sweep. But the grace like the lady and the water changes the situation and it changes us. Realizing that we are dependent upon the mercy of God alone is part of our Reformation heritage, sola gratia. The effect of this on us should be that we are completely humbled, abased, discomfited and mortified and that we become suppliants and beggars for the mercies of God. In these concluding verses of this section Paul is reminding us of the position we are placed in and the humility that is appropriate and he tells us there are three things we must not do. We must not preen or boast, we must not entertain any prejudice, and we must not try to phase out the law from our lives.
I No Preening
In verses 27 and 28 Paul says, Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. Do the indigent and paupers boast about their situation? Have you ever heard anyone say that he is proud to be a beggar? As long as a man thinks he can save himself he is going to boast about it. In the New Testament the Pharisees were an example of this. In Luke 18:9-14 in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus makes this abundantly clear, To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisee was like a man who went swimming and saw the rules posted. He deliberately disobeyed them and was drowning. A lifeguard jumped in and at the risk of his own life saved the man. Afterward the man stood before the rules and thanked them for saving him. Ridiculous? Of course it is. How do you think the lifeguard felt? That’s how the Triune God feels when sinners foolishly break the rules and think they are OK, and ignore the lifeguard, Jesus
II No Prejudice
In verses 29 and 30 Paul deals with another common problem of his own people the Jews, Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. The Jewish people were consumed with prejudice against the Gentiles. They bragged about building up a hedge around the nation through their interpretations of the law. Jesus broke through every one of their prejudices about food, about the sabbath, about disease, about ceremonial washings. He did it because the hedge was not supposed to be there in the first place. You do not have to be a Jew to be loved by God. Paul had to fight this battle over and over in the early Christian churches. The Jewish converts constantly pressured the Gentiles to undergo Jewish initiation. Earlier in his ministry Paul was in Galatia. Jews were scattered throughout the empire, but Galatia in Asia Minor was made up of ethnic groups that were Gentile. Visiting Jews stirred up the other Jews to a resumption of the practices of the law, especially circumcision, and then tried to force these practices on the Gentile believers. Paul wrote in Galatians 6:14-16, May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God. That Jesus or Paul should have had to make this point about the Gentiles was certainly contrary to what Israel had actually been taught. Throughout the Psalms, the songbook of the nation, they are repeatedly reminded that God is the God of all, not just the Jews. For example in Psalm 47:8 and 9, we read, God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne. The nobles of the nations assemble as the people of the God of Abraham, for the kings of the earth belong to God; he is greatly exalted. We cannot exclude anyone from God’s free offer of salvation and forgiveness.
III No Phasing Out
The last mistake that may issue from Paul’s teaching, that we are saved through faith and not through keeping the law, is now addressed. It is a very different reaction. Some people would conclude that if they were saved by grace alone through faith, then the law could be disregarded and was useless. However Paul hastens to say in verse 31, Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law. What does Paul mean by the law here for he uses the word with different meanings? In this instance it really doesn’t matter because all the usages fit, as Charles Hodge makes clear, “If the law means the Old Testament generally, then it is true, for the Gospel’s method of justification contradicts none of its statements, is consistent with all its doctrines, and invalidates none of its promises, but is in harmony with them all and confirms them all. If it means the Mosaic institutions in particular, these were shadows of which Christ is the substance. That law is abolished not by being pronounced spurious or invalid but by being fulfilled. What it taught and promised, the Gospel also teaches and promises, only in clearer and fuller measure. If it means the moral law, which no doubt was prominent, it is still not invalidated but established. No moral obligation is weakened, no penal sanction disregarded. The precepts are enforced by new and stronger motives, and the penalty is answered in him who “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (see 1 Peter 2:24).” In essence what he has said is that Christ in His life and death fulfills the hope of the Old Testament, the types and symbols of the Old Testament and the moral obligations of the Old Testament on behalf of His people. Thus all objections to salvation by Grace through faith alone are eliminated. Sola Gratia, Sola Fidei.
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