Read: Romans 2:17-29 - STEP Bible, Bible Gateway
The assertion Paul has now spent the better part of a chapter making – that Jewish Christians have no moral advantage over Gentile Christians (and vice versa) – reads very strangely to Jewish Christians. The whole point of God’s dealing with the Jewish people rather than other people throughout the Old Testament was precisely that he had, freely and under no compulsion, chosen them to be his special people; and, as a marker of that special choice, that he had given them the Law as a guide for how to live in accordance with his purposes in order that their special relationship with him could continue to flourish. And here is Paul – one of the most Jewish Jews there ever had been – apparently arguing that the Jews’ special relationship with God wasn’t worth the paper it was written on!
But look at how St Paul makes his argument. He says: yes, Jews have had a special relationship with God through their shared ethical code – the Law – but the special relationship Jews have with God through the Law is only as good as the Jews are at actually keeping the Law. If you’re a Jew and you don’t keep the Law, then it has the effect of nullifying the special relationship you supposedly have with God altogether. What matters is not that you have the Law and the special relationship that accompanies it; what matters is that you keep the Law and actually work at the special relationship with God which the Law was designed to help you cultivate.
What went for the Jews in first-century Rome goes for us churchy people today. We have all kinds of means at our disposal by which we may exercise our special relationship with God – we have a fully-fledged system of sacraments and church services and religious practices in which we participate regularly. All of which are incredibly valuable. But they are only a means to an end – a means to make us more like Christ. If, when it comes down to it, we go through all the rigmarole of our religious practices and we don’t become more like Christ because for all our piety we don’t act like him, then all our pious devotions do is expose us as hypocrites.
So, we need to ask ourselves: do I really act like Christ? Am I seeking daily to be more like Jesus in the way I act and speak? Or am I just coming to church on a Sunday and ignoring why I come to church in the first place?
These devotions were originally written for the parish of All Saints, Ascot and we are grateful for permission to republish them on Fulcrum.
Patrick is curate of All Saints’, Ascot in Berkshire. A musicologist by training, he is married to Lydia, a university lecturer, and dad to Madeleine. He writes (sporadically) at benedixisti.wordpress.com and tweets (even more sporadically) as @patrickgilday.