The first three chapters of Romans declares one inescapable fact – that Jew and Gentile are sinners. In the scheme of things Gentiles, through waywardness and ignorance, were enemies of God (Rom. 1). Jews were privileged in that they received the oracles of God and yet they became enemies of God and so rejected the Christ and crucified Him:- those who were supposed to be the best and who thought they were the best rose up and killed the Son of the God they professed to serve!!! What does that tell us about man?! Man is incurably bent! If the flood is a testimony to the universality of sin, the rejection of Christ is the true measure of sin. These same people had been taught to offer sacrifice for sin all their life but they did not offer Christ as a sacrifice for the their sin:- it was just plain murder and it was Christ who did the offering. In the voluntary offering of the Godhead we have the damning of sin and the proof of forgiveness.
Why do I say proof of forgiveness? Because if there ever was a time when God had the perfect right to destroy the world it was then! If the wickedness that brought on the flood was bad, what can be said of the wickedness that would drive nails through the ministering hands of Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Paul is right when he says in Rom. 5:8 but God commended His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Paul traces the scheme of things in Rom. 11, describing how the Jews rejected the Messiah and so caused the gospel to be preached to the Gentiles who, in part, accepted it thus causing jealousy in the Jewish camp because they were supposed to be the favourite ones, not the Gentiles. And this jealousy would encourage them to turn to the Christ to receive what the Gentiles were getting. So in the choosing of the Jews there was no elimination of the Gentiles – they had a part to play in the overall scheme, as did the Jews. The part that each group played involved their sin and disobedience! So he concludes in v.32: God has concluded (sugklelo – to shut up, hem in, enclose – ie. lumped in the same boat) all in unbelief (disobedience – apeitheia – unbelief in action, disobedience). Ever had a clean-up where you were trying to sort the good from the bad – maybe old paint tins – give them a shake – nothing – but it’s got some weight – maybe there’s a skin over the paint and there’s some good paint underneath. Start scraping the paint out of the groove so you can lever the lid off. The lid is stuck on but you persevere and finally get one bent lid off only to find its all gone hard. Continue on? No, dump them all in the bin and buy some new paint (knowing in a few years you’ll be doing the same thing again).. They say it’s not good to generalize, and in many instances that proves true. God did something similiar – starts ‘prizing some lids off human lives and finds the lives have gone off and hardened. What’s he do? Consigns them all in the same pile? Yes? Throws them out and gets a new batch? No (remember He felt like that with the nation of Israel in Moses time). Paul says he lumps them all in the same boat. Why? So he can condemn them? No! So He can have mercy upon all! Or of you like, offer grace to all. Grace and mercy are two sides of the one coin. Grace is receiving what you don’t deserve and mercy is not receiving what you deserve. God had a plan that would be accomplished In and through and despite man’s disobedience.
A child was once staring out a window and watching gale force winds batter the surrounding countryside and she said, God must have lost grip of His winds tonight. Paul is saying that God was in control – everything was serving His purposes though it might not have seemed so. He wants all to be aware of their sin so they can come to repentance and throw themselves upon the mercy of God. We hate sorrow of any sort, but our dislike of it is not to be thought of as indicative that sorrow is bad. Sorrow for self is not good but a lot of sorrow is good. Loss of pain can be indicative of leprosy, not good health. Our disappointment over our sin is not proof we cannot be saved but rather proof that God is producing in us what we need. Sorrow for sin, disappointment with self, is all part of the process of becoming what we are to become.
He does this through a system of faith so that all can be saved (Rom. 4:13-16; Gal. 3:22). If salvation was, say, through the law of Moses then three things would follow: First, salvation would only come to the Jews for the Gentiles did not receive the law of Moses. Second, salvation would not be by grace through faith but by performance, and third, the promise of salvation through a Saviour for all the families of the earth would be rendered null and void. This helps answer the question, Is God for us or against us? When Victor Hugo died in 1885, half a million mourners followed his cortege to its final resting place. He was more than a playwright, poet and author – he was a statesman, lover of the poor, and a Frenchman who loved France with all his heart. When the Prussians moved against Paris, Hugo left his home in Guernsey to travel to Paris. On his way through Belgium a young Frenchman met him and asked him, Is it prudent to go to Paris at this time? Hugo replied, It is very imprudent – you ought to go. Hugo arrived just as the Prussians were closing off the ways in and out of Paris, and a whole host of worried French people met him, enthralled that this man would come to imprison himself in Paris with them and face whatever there was to come in the seige. Isn’t that what God did for us in Jesus Christ? He came to bear with us and for us in the righteous judgement of God upon the rebellious human family. If the judgement of the holy God is seen as proof that God is against us, then how do we interpret Christ going to the cross? Is God just ‘picky’ about our sin? Is it the size of our sins that upset Him or is it the revulsion of His holiness? Some believe that the fact souls are lost proves that God is not for us.
The Jews thought that Jewish rejection meant that God’s plans for them had come to naught! Not at all! All of these considerations are big on privilege and small on responsibility. They all minimize human sin and minimize God’s holiness. They all ignore God’s ability to bring sweet out of the bitter, victory out of defeat, strength out of weakness, and bring a plan to fruition. It’s an embarrassment to man’s pride and self-sufficiency to be implicated in the cross. When man was at his worse. God was at His best. That God would do that for me strikes at my independence – I didn’t ask Him to do that! That’s true, but that’s not what drives the protest – what’s closer to the truth would be the thought Is my sin really that bad God would have to die for me? Besides, all our independence would disappear if on Judgement Day it became apparent that a perfect sacrifice was necessary for our sin – I didn’t ask Him to die for me would all of a sudden become Why didn’t you die for me?…aren’t I worth it!? God in outlining the sinfulness of man, provides sinful and twisted man reasons (excuses rather) for not being faithful, but God doesn’t prove the sinfulness of man to drive him away, rather to make man see his true condition and realize his only hope is the mercy of God in Christ.
What about the person who says, I just can’t forgive myself. I can understand the extreme disappointment we can be to our selves at times, but don’t let the Devil use that to stop us becoming Christians or remaining faithful. Is it really our business to be in? Are we the ones we have sinned against? Is it important to forgive ourselves? A lot of literature says so, but the Bible doesn’t say so. Whether we go to Heaven or not is not a function of whether we forgive ourselves. It’s true we sin against ourselves as well as God and others, but it is a righteous God who is justly offended and it is His forgiveness that is needed. Does our inability to forgive ourselves imply God is unable to forgive? God is better at everything, including granting forgiveness. Are we pretending we are more offended by sin than He? If He was to talk to us about sin he would say, It’s worse than you think. Yet that doesn’t put Him off loving us.
But the Lord wouldn’t want me! is a common thought. We make ourselves out to be such tragic figures and we whine in gutless resignation because we get tired of the struggle against sin and we’d rather just lie in a pumped up inner-tube and drift with the current with all the other sinners. Why should we put a higher standard upon our acceptance than the Lord? Why should we exaggerate our sins as if they were unforgiveable when the Lord says otherwise? God chose a sinful nation (Deut. 9:6) and the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15,16) and he was okay with that – why not with you and me? We have already seen that there is none righteous, no not one. He’s lumped us all in the disobedient basket. God is not demanding perfection. He’s just asking us to offer Him a loving heart and the best that we can muster today. Perfection is for another place and time. It would be more honest to say I just don’t want to follow the Lord: I just want to do my own thing for my lifetime and then take my chances. I’m embarrassed by a Lord who loves me and pursues me so I feel uncomfortable in His presence and I don’t want to be reminded that He loves me so much He died for my sins. It’s easier to walk away from someone who doesn’t care and so we make up lies about God (and the same sort of lies about people sometimes).
Sin can be disappointing. Peter knew that. Early in the piece he said, Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. Later he went out and wept bitterly. He was a bit like a bull in a china closet from time to time as far as his discipleship was concerned, but he knew despite his failings he loved Jesus. And Jesus was pleased with that. As H.G. Wells said, A man may be a bad musician, and yet be passionately in love with music.
The whole world lies in wickedness, says John. He has concluded them all in disobedience, says Paul, that he might have mercy upon all. That’s what God wants to do. 2 Cor. 4:1 reminds those of us who have received mercy that we have a ministry to extend the mercy of God to the world.