“Outwardly Religious, Inwardly Lost”
(Romans 2:17-29)
Series: Not Guilty!
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
First Baptist Church Henderson, KY
(5-17-09) (AM)
- Take God’s Word and open to Romans, chapter 2.
We’re preaching our way, verse-by-verse, through the Book of Romans. We believe that expository preaching through books of the Bible is the best way to learn the Word of God. And so we left off at verse 16 of chapter 2 and we pick back up at verse 17.
Remember the context. The Apostle Paul is writing a letter in the year AD 57, writing to various house-churches scattered throughout the Roman Empire. These churches consist of both Jews and Gentiles, Jews and non-Jews who had come to believe the Gospel and had become followers of Jesus Christ. And here in Chapter 2 Paul continues his argument that all people everywhere are sinners. In Chapter 1, he addressed all people in general, with special emphasis on the Gentile, and then here in Chapter 2 he turns his attention to the Jew. And his whole point in these verses this morning—verses 17 to the end of the chapter in verse 29—his whole point is that while the Jews were a privileged people, they were not necessarily a saved people. That is, their merely having the Law, for example, did not guarantee they were in good standing with God.
Now we’ll see how this applies to us, but before we ask how this all applies to us here in Kentucky in 2009, let’s first cross the bridge to Rome in 57 and get this down.
- Stand in honor of the reading of the Word of God.
17 Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God,
18 and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law,
19 and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness,
20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.
21 You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal?
22 You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?
23 You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law?
24 For “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,” as it is written.
- Pray.
Introduction:
Perhaps the greatest need of the American church today is the need for professing Christians to really examine themselves to see whether they are truly in the faith. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.”
There is the dangerous possibility of self-delusion, thinking that we are okay when we are not okay at all. In fact, we may think, “Examine myself? Me?!” Like the guy who tells the police officer, “I don’t know why you pulled me over. There are a lot of other people doing far worse than I!”
Paul is reminding the Jew that he is not okay. In chapter 1 he has shown that all people everywhere are not okay and now he turns to the Jew and says, in essence, “If you think that just because you are a Jew and just because you are privileged to have the Law and, as we’ll see toward the end of the chapter, just because you bear the symbol of the covenant—circumcision—I mean if you think you’re okay just because you have these privileges, I want to remind you that you’re not okay.”
And this is just the danger we face. We may sit in this congregation and feel ourselves okay before God. We tell ourselves that we’re in good standing with God. After all, most of us are regular “church goers,” we’ve been baptized, we’re good people and we dress nicely and we combed our hair this morning and we smiled at our neighbors and we brought our Bibles to church and here we are now to listen to the preaching. We’re good, moral people.” That is the danger. We can be outwardly religious, but inwardly lost.
Now if we will humbly bow ourselves before the text this morning, God will open up our hearts and minds to two major areas of self-examination. I invite you to join me in this self-examination as the Word of God penetrates our souls. First,
I. We must Examine our Hypocrisy (17-24)
Hypocrisy is telling others to do something that we fail to do ourselves. We preach or teach something is bad, but we do that very thing ourselves, like telling a child not to smoke cigarettes as we puff on a cigarette. That’s hypocrisy. Paul, himself a Jew, calls attention to the hypocrisy of his fellow Jewish brethren. What he says in these verses is, “Here you have the Law and you teach the Law, but then you break the Law yourselves.” That’s what he’s getting at when he says down there in verse 21, “You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself?” He’s calling attention to their hypocrisy. But before he addresses their hypocrisy, note the positive things he has to say about the Jewish people. Verse 17 and following:
17 Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God,
18 and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law,
19 and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness,
20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.
The Jew had plenty to boast about. He was a steward of the Law. He carried the scrolls of the Old Testament and was considered a “guide to the blind, a light to those in darkness.” He was a teacher who had “the form of knowledge and truth in the law.” That is, in the Law, the Jew had the embodiment of knowledge and truth. These are good things, but their love for the hearing of the Law and the teaching of the Law was marred and tarnished by how they lived. They themselves failed to live according to the Law they expected in others. Verse 21:
21 You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal?
22 You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?
Paul tells the Jew to examine himself. Is he not guilty of the very things of which he is accusing others? Perhaps Paul means that these Jews were guilty of literally stealing and committing adultery and robbing temples, or he may simply mean for them to consider the truth that everyone is guilty of sin when we understood the way in which Jesus amplified it for us. Remember, for example, when Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I say whoever looks at a woman lustfully has committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:27-28).” Jesus helps us see that we are all sinners.
So Paul’s point is, “Here you are teaching ‘Do this’ and ‘Don’t do that,’ but you guys are guilty of the very things. You are hypocrites. You break the very law you teach.”
Remember that Paul’s overarching purpose is to demonstrate that the Law is insufficient to save the Jews. Though the Jews had the Law, they broke the Law and this Law-breaking pointed to their need for the Gospel, namely their need for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. They needed a righteousness before God that they could not achieve on their own. They needed the righteousness of Christ.
That’s where Paul is going with all of this but in so doing, we learn about the terrible impact of hypocrisy upon a watching world. Verse 23:
23 You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law?
And the answer is “Yes.” Yes, you Jews boast in the Law, but then you break the very Law in which you boast and teach to others. Paul is saying that the Jews boasted in the Law, but regularly broke the Law and so brought dishonor upon God. It’s this “dishonoring of God” that really hits home. Verse 24:
24 For “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,” as it is written.
The phrase, “as it is written,” is a reference to Isaiah 52:5. Paul is quoting Isaiah 52:5 here in verse 24. He charges that because of the hypocrisy of the Jews, “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles.” Let me say that another way. Paul shows us the impact of religious hypocrisy upon those who are not believers. What is the impact? Those who are not followers of God, those who watch others who profess to know God, they watch the hypocritical behavior of the so-called religious people and they shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Their God must not be that big a deal. Look at the sorry way the people of this God live.”
Now we are ready to understand how this point of hypocrisy in AD 57 applies to us today in 2009. We say we are Christians, followers of Christ. We say we live in accordance with the Bible, but do we? Do we consistently live in keeping with the things we preach and teach? Or—and get this now—or, “is the name of God blasphemed among the Gentiles because of us?” That is, are unbelievers turned off because of us? Are unbelievers drawn closer to God because of our behavior or are they driven further away. The Gentiles—the unbelievers—are always watching.
Do you have a Christian symbol or bumper sticker on your car? When you drive faster than you should and you break the law, you are living inconsistently with the teachings of the God you profess—and the Gentiles are watching. The unbelievers see that and “the name of God is blasphemed because of you.”
When you miss a put on the golf course and you angrily let out a dirty word, the unbelievers are watching and the name of God is blasphemed because of you.
When you loaf around at work or school or participate in petty gossip and dirty jokes and worldly discussions, the unbelievers are watching and the name of God is blasphemed because of you.
People outside the church are forever drawing conclusions from what they observe in us: how we treat the Bible, how we speak about other people, how we use our time. God help us from causing the name of God to be blasphemed because of us.
Those of you reading Charles Spurgeon’s devotional Mornings and Evenings will have read of the danger of hypocrisy in today’s very timely reading. How providential. I read it this morning myself. Spurgeon writes about the professing Christian who harms the church’s witness by attacking Christianity with “the dagger of hypocrisy.” He adds, “Inconsistent professing Christians injure the Gospel more than the sneering critic or the heretic.” The greatest threat to Christianity is not from outside the church, it is from inside the church.
And what about your so-called “joy in the Lord?” We Christians go around telling everyone about how “the joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10).” Really? The unbelievers are watching to see if that is true. When you lose your job, the unbeliever is watching to see how you react. When you are sick, the unbeliever is watching to see how you deal with sickness. When tragedy strikes your family and you lose your home or a loved one—if you throw your hands up into the air and you shake your fist at God—what have you done? You have given good reason for the ever-watching unbelievers around you to blaspheme the name of God. They say, “Evidently their God is nothing to them.” So we have no power to reach the nations for Christ. Our missionary zeal is ineffctive and dead because the mask is removed and people see that our joy was not in the Lord after all, but in the world. We exchanged the glory of God for the lie and worshiped and served the created things rather than the Creator.
Let’s examine our hypocrisy. Do we really find our “joy in the Lord?” Do we really love Him with our heart, soul, mind and strength? Have we really been changed by the power of the Gospel or are we merely outwardly religious and inwardly lost? This examination of our hypocrisy is tied closely to the second self-examination. Secondly:
II. We must Examine our Holiness (25-29)
That is, there must be a change inside in our souls. If we are followers of the One True God then we are a different people. There is a change within our hearts that leads to holy living. Watch Paul treat this as he brings up the matter of Jewish circumcision. Verse 25:
25 For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.
Circumcision, literally “cutting around,” was the removal of the foreskin from Jewish men as a symbol to indicate that the Jews were God’s special people. Circumcision was a sign of God’s special covenant of love with the Jews. It was a symbol, much as a wedding band today is a symbol. I wear a wedding band to indicate that I am in a binding covenant of love with my wife. The mark of circumcision was much like that. It indicated that the Jews were in a binding covenant of love with their God. Circumcision was a symbol that showed others that the Jews belonged to the one true God.
But the symbol was intended to reflect a heart of commitment on the part of the one bearing the symbol. Circumcision was to be an external sign of the inner heart that was in love with God. The Jews, regretfully, began to regard circumcision as less a symbol of an inward spiritual commitment and more of a kind of “guarantee” of their acceptance before God regardless of how they lived. It would be a bit like my saying that my wedding band guaranteed my marriage to my wife regardless of my faithfulness to her—as though I could pursue other relationships throughout the week, but then point to my wedding band and say, “Well, you see all this running around is all okay because I am, after all, married. See, here is my proof!”
And this was the problem of the Jews. He had received the special favor of God, a gift of grace that touched the heart so as to result in a life of faithfulness and holiness. The true measure of the Jew, then, was determined by what happened on the inside, not by the symbol on the outside. The Jew, however, boasted in what was merely on the outside. He boasted in the external. He boasted in the sign, the symbol, the outward physical things, rather than the inward spiritual things. He rested in and relied upon the outward symbol regardless of his behavior. Consequently, he had become outwardly religious, but inwardly lost. So Paul says in verse 25, “Circumcision is a good thing if indeed you live what you profess. But if you don’t live what you profess, you may as well not be circumcised at all.”
What we are on the outside matters little if we are not changed on the inside. God must touch the heart and when He does we are to live a life of committed obedience, following our Lord and His Word out of gratefulness. Without the inner work of grace, the externals mean nothing.
Paul really gets the Jews’ attention now by showing how the Gentiles—the uncircumcised—are actually better off than the Jews if they live what they profess. Verse 26 and following:
26 Therefore, if an uncircumcised man (the Gentile) keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?
27 And will not the physically uncircumcised (again, the Gentile), if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law?
28 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh;
29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.
Paul’s point here is that external symbols mean nothing if there is no inward change of the heart. It is a bit as Jesus says in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Holiness is an inside-job that works its way out in Christian living. God touches the heart and it results in behavior that glorifies God.
The Jew was trusting in the outward, external symbol of circumcision for his acceptance before God in the same way many people today rely upon the outward, external symbols of baptism or church membership for their acceptance before God.
Paul is saying, “No! The external symbols are not guarantees of salvation and acceptance. It doesn’t matter how long your name has been on a church roll or how many times you were baptized or how religious your family is, salvation is a work of the heart.” This is something I wanted to stress last week to our couples during the parent-child dedication service. What we did was no ritual that conferred some kind of grace upon a baby. As precious as babies are, they need a savior. We all need a savior and we must be changed by God from the inside-out. Holiness begins first in the heart. We must be born again.
This is why Jesus makes that troubling statement in Matthew 7:21: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven.’” Salvation is not simply professing to believe something. Salvation is God’s work upon the heart. It is an inner work of grace.
So as you examine your holiness, as you examine your heart, let me ask you, do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? Has your heart been changed? Do you yearn for the Holy Spirit to rule your life? Do you hate sin? Is there a hush that falls upon certain kinds of conversation when you enter the room because people know you’re different and they respect you? Do you love everyone in this room? Do you love the Word? Is that why you participate in worship on Sundays? Because you really love the Word of God? Is that evidenced by your growing love for all things spiritual?
Examine yourself to see whether you’re in the faith. Test yourself (2 Corinthians 13:5).
- Stand for prayer.
Christianity is not found in our being good, moral people. Christianity is found in our realizing we are not good people and that we are sinners. And when we realize this we then become fearful of judgment and we are in a position to flee to Christ and receive God’s forgiveness. Our righteousnss, loved ones, is found in Christ alone.
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