Read: Romans 3:1-20 - STEP Bible, Bible Gateway
St Paul spent much of chapter 2 of his letter taking a swing at Jewish Christians who had gotten the impression that their Jewishness made them ‘better’ than Gentile Christians. Now he swings the other way, and takes aim at those Gentile Christians who had insisted that Israel’s failure to live up to the special relationship it was supposed to have with God meant that God was no longer interested in the Jews at all.
Paul’s rebuttal of this point is complicated, but very important. First, he notes that the Jews were entrusted with the revelation of God throughout history. He admits (as he had said in chapter 2) that the Jews had failed to prove trustworthy with that revelation. But then he quickly observes that the special relationship between God and the Jews was never really in the Jewish people’s control anyway: it was God who had given them the special relationship, and not the other way round. Which means that the continuation of the special relationship was never really dependent upon the Jews’ choosing to honour it; it was dependent on God’s choosing to do so. Even if the Jews had kept the Law perfectly so as to maintain their special relationship with God, it would still only be because God had been immensely gracious to them in the first place that they had any sort of special relationship to maintain with him at all.
And that is precisely Paul’s point: the Jews have a special relationship with God not because they were really good at keeping their side of a bargain (and they manifestly weren’t), but rather because God insisted on keeping his side of the bargain even when the Jews didn’t. Indeed, the very fact that God didn’t abandon the Jews even when they abandoned him testifies to just how gracious and faithful God is. Far from being unfair in still maintaining his special relationship with the Jews even after they have forsaken him, God is actually being more fair than he ought to be in staying the course.
But, to repeat: that doesn’t mean the Jewish Christian can feel smug or superior. Because all of us have sinned equally; and because the only reason the Jews were ever preferred by God was not because of any merit on their part – it was only because God showed extraordinary and special kindness to them.
The grace of God – his favour, undeserved and freely given – is an incredibly important concept to Paul. Most of Romans as a letter is devoted to unfolding the concept, and to explaining that it really is as radical as it sounds: for no reason, and without us deserving it at all, God has just decided to be permanently kind to us – to all of us. What a difference it makes to the way we relate to God ourselves if we can understand Paul’s message.
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.