Or, Favorable Conditions with Disastrous Consequences Romans 2:17-24 January 23, 2022 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins

Introduction

One surprise that keeps surprising me in Scripture is how much God gives. When we talk about His attributes, we ought to connect them to His generosity, His magnanimity. Omniscience applied means He gives with perfect knowledge, who needs what and who will respond how. Omnipotence applied means He gives with complete power, the only limits are ones He sets Himself. Righteousness applied means He gives what is fitting, never evil or tempting to do evil.

Creation is a gift. God was free to make or not. Our status as those who bear His image is a gift, not shared with stars or suns or seas (Psalm 8:3-4). Gender differences, marriage relationships, generational and occupational fruitfulness are from Him and through Him and to Him. We have no blessings we have not received.

He gave Adam and Eve a garden full of food, and He gave them a glorious opportunity to learn obedience by not eating from just one tree. They lost paradise by not accepting the God-given limitation, and “natural” men have been foolishly refusing to thank God since (1 Corinthians 2:14; Romans 1:21).

It doesn’t stop God from giving. He keeps giving sun and sight, oxygen and lungs and trees, rain and harvests. He gives more than necessary things, He gives natural things such as male and female, and enjoyable things such as baseballs and beaches and barbecues. God keeps giving, and that increases the guilt of those give credit to someone else.

Among other things God has given, there are some obvious and transcendent, albeit untouchable, principles and moral laws that are not social constructs. Whatever words men use as labels, physical laws are gifts, like gravity. Moral laws are also gifts, a sense of right and wrong built into the universe and into individual consciences. Hammurabi and pirates have codes, and men have an integrated and active judging mechanism. This is not a product of materialistic evolution, it’s a gift.

There was a particular people that God chose specially to whom He gave even more gifts. He blessed them with detailed revelation, with His own Word, with explicit guidance and prohibitions and rules for appropriate consequences for worship and life. God blessed them with truth about how things work, about His own character, about how to see the world in light. They truly were a people gifted by God with favorable circumstances (notwithstanding Lewis that “favourable conditions never come”), and for too many, it led to disastrous consequences.

That people were, and are, the Jews, the nation of Israel. They are the explicit group addressed by Paul starting in Romans 2:17.

What we’ve seen in the epistle so far is that God’s wrath is being revealed on unbelievers who abuse and pervert God’s gifts so that they don’t have to thank Him (1:18-32). Then there were some more sophisticated persons who I called judgy-pants on purpose because it pokes at their pretension. They have an elevated judging function that seems to work great, except on themselves (2:1-16).

Now in verse 17 Paul pushes his own people’s buttons, hard. These people had more, and more special, gifts. They were first class gifts, and those who wielded them without faith became first class hypocrites. In verses 17-24 Paul goes after their boast in the law, and then in verses 25-29 he goes after their boast in circumcision.

Favorable Conditions (verses 17-20)

There is a pattern in verses 17-20 and 21-24: if…then. The syntax is called a conditional statement. Part of the reason I’m calling them first class hypocrites is because in Greek this “if…then” is a first class conditional construction. What that means is that the “if” can be assumed true. These are first class gifts, unique to Israel, and this [...]