Turn in your scriptures, if you will, to Romans chapter 2. I'm going to begin a little bit before our scripture text, our sermon passage itself. We're going to focus tonight on Romans 3, 1 through 8, but it's particularly connected, even more closely than some passages are, to what proceeds. So we're going to start at chapter 2, verse 17. So Romans chapter 2, beginning a reading at verse 17. God's holy word. But if you call yourself a Jew, and rely on the law, and boast in God, and know his will, and approve what is excellent because you are instructed from the law, And if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For as it is written, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is of a matter of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God. Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God, But if some were unfaithful, does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means. Let God be true, though everyone were a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? I speak in a human way by no means. For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come? As some people slanderously charge us with saying, their condemnation is just. Well, this evening we will look at a very important topic in the Christian life, and that is what you think the real difference is between you and any unbeliever. What's the real difference? The people that you come in contact with in the world, at your work, in your neighborhood, in your family, those who don't confess Christ. What is it that really distinguishes you? Where would you plant the flag, the Christian flag as it were, and say, this is how I'm different from the world. In our passage this evening, Paul asks and answers several questions in a way that many have found relatively confusing. But all those questions and their answers flow from the first one, about the advantage or benefit of being a Jew. And the way that Paul answers all of them is meant to draw out some of the implications of what he said previously in his argument, particularly in Romans 2, but also stretching back into Romans 1. And so it's important, again, that we remember a bit about what Paul has said previously to have the background here as we jump back into the middle of his argument. And I'll remind you then a bit of the context. It's been some weeks, two months, I think, since we were last in this text. You may remember then, back in Romans 1, that Paul described a particular set of people in whom he says God's wrath is already revealed. due to their rejecting the knowledge that they have about God, God had handed them over already to unrighteousness, three times that passage says it, with the result that they just follow headlong after sin in every way. They run after it. They increase in sin, both in quantity and in the heinousness or severity of their sin, and even despite its self-destructiveness and others' destructiveness. These are people in Romans 1 who are not only unbelievers, but are brazen, hardened unbelievers. We might say they're fairly consistent unbelievers, rather than being inconsistent. They not only run after sin, but they trumpet it as if it's a great virtue, calling good evil and evil good. You may know some people like that in your lives, but you certainly see people like that in popular culture today. These are people we could say that it's not very hard to look better than, morally or religiously. That's part of why Paul brings them up. Because he's going to then go on in Romans 2 to describe and to undermine two sets of reasons why some people falsely feel better than those in Romans 1. That they're better off. The first person, at the beginning of chapter 2, sees that God has been merciful to him in his life, not handing him over to unrighteousness when he sins, despite what he has done to others, and he interprets that as a sign of God's ultimate favoritism towards him, God's preferential treatment. Clearly, God must not find my sin quite as bad as he finds other people's sin, since he hasn't handed me over to my sin the way he has to them. So I must be all right. God clearly just has a lighter standard for me. No, Paul says, for all those outside Christ, the final judgment will be strictly according to works, not according to a relative degree of righteousness, that I'm better than the other person, but an absolute standard of righteousness, which we, of course, none of us meet. So God's patience for such people, unrepentant people, will be replaced by wrath. His patience now will be replaced by wrath later for all who don't repent. Then the second person in Romans 2, in the 17 and following, the part that we read, is a Jewish teacher. And this teacher claims, his claims form the more immediate background to our passage. The teacher stands up in the crowd, as it were, and takes what we might think at first is a stronger position than the person earlier in Romans 2, since he focuses on things that in and of themselves are good. He focuses on his possessing the written word of God, the law as he calls it, being taught from that law and being circumcised. And of course, again, in and of themselves, these things are quite good as far as they go. In fact, we might be tempted to think in similar ways. We too cherish the fact that we have God's word. We place quite a lot of emphasis on teaching from it. And everyone who's a member of this church must also be baptized. The New Testament equivalent of circumcision in the Old Testament, right? In themselves, all these things are quite good and they are important, but as reasons for ultimate confidence before God, or for thinking ourselves truly better than others. They're hollow. Paul points out to the Jewish teacher that merely having God's law is insufficient. If you wanna place your confidence in that, then you also have to keep the law, something which the teacher, of course, does not do, and we don't either. Paul says circumcision itself is nothing to boast in. After all, some diligent Gentiles outperform many circumcised Jews when it comes to morality. Merely possessing circumcision, or if we want to translate it, merely being baptized, makes no ultimate difference all by itself. Clearly, then, the boasts of the Jewish teacher are unfounded. You can have God's law and circumcision all you want, you can have baptism and the Lord's Supper too for that matter, but if you think that that is the real difference between you and other people, you want to boast in outward things like those, then you're missing the real point and you'll be terribly disappointed when you stand condemned in the final judgment. Throughout Romans 2 then, much of Paul's argument has been negative, undercutting two false forms of confidence. There are many reasons why people may think they're better than those described in Romans chapter 1. But most of those reasons are hollow and self-deceiving. including those of the Jewish teacher, distorts God's word and the Old Testament sacrament of circumcision into a supposed reason for boasting. Now, of course, all of that may quite naturally leave us wondering, well, what did rightly distinguish the Jewish people from others? They were, after all, God's chosen people in the Old Testament. Surely there must be some advantage in that, and by extension, what is the advantage for us of being here tonight, hearing God's word, being baptized people in the new covenant period? Well, Paul anticipates that question at the start of our passage, and so we begin tonight in chapter 3, verse 1. If the boasts of the Jewish teacher are wrong, Paul asks, what then is the advantage of a Jew, and what is the benefit of being circumcised? Right away, we should notice how closely this question, closely related it is to the topic in Romans chapter 2. It's something important to keep in mind throughout this passage. Many commentators, when they get to this passage, take some or all of what we read, chapter 3, 1 through 8, as a digression in Paul's argument, a sort of aside or parenthesis, as if Paul's jumped over to talk about a few other things mostly unrelated to what had come previous before he returns to his main line of argument in chapter 3 verse 9. But really in the end that assumption proves unhelpful and quite a few things about the passage tend to show that that's not the case. We'll see here as we go instead that what Paul's doing here is really continuing the line of his prior argument and pushing towards some important initial conclusions. So the wording of the questions in verse one is just one of the things that helps show us that. This is the continuation or the extension of what had just been said. Here though Paul sets out now, rather than disagreeing with the Jewish teacher, what does being a Jew in and of itself not mean? Now he comes at the matter positively. What does it mean? The answer is found in verse 2. What is the advantage of the Jew and what is the benefit of circumcision? Much in every way, Paul says. To begin with, they were entrusted with the oracles of God. Now we can notice firstly in verse two that Paul sees a great deal of advantage in being a Jew. There's much advantage in every way, he says. And it's important to notice that in and of itself. We could say there's tremendous advantage in being in the covenant community of God's people. This is by no means something to underestimate or downplay, but it is also something that must be correctly understood. And of course, that's the whole point. That's why he disagreed with the man earlier. about Jewishness and circumcision. What's the true advantage? What's the essential difference? So verse two continues, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. Now notice here that on the face of things, Paul's answer in verse two sounds quite similar, at first blush at least, to the answer of the Jewish teacher back in chapter two. Because they both appeal to the fact that the Jews possessed God's word. The oracles of God, Paul calls them here. There seems at first blush to hardly be any difference from what the Jewish teacher had said. Now, in fact, there actually is a difference. There's quite an important difference between referring, as the Jewish teacher highlights, the fact that he possesses God's law. God's law tells us what we ought to do, his moral holy will. The oracles point to something slightly different. other parts of scripture that help interpret the significance of God's law. And we'll see, he's gonna quote one of the oracles in a minute here. But initially still, the Jewish teacher's answer and Paul's answer are formally fairly similar. And of course, that's why the next question comes immediately in verse three, concerning the problem of Jewish sin. Because that's the exact question that Paul had confronted the Jewish teacher with. The Jewish teacher claimed the law and circumcision as his advantages. Paul undermined those claims by pointing out the teacher's own sin and the sin of many other Jews. Well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? Paul now makes his own claim, the oracles of God are the Jewish advantage, and so the question naturally comes, well, how's that really any different? How does that claim hold up under the burden of Jewish sin any better than the teacher's claim did? Doesn't Jewish faithlessness undermine and nullify this benefit too? No, Paul says, not so fast. There's actually a crucial difference here. You see, in as much as the law of God communicates God's righteous will for our lives, it simply condemns us. In as much as God's word is for us a law, our sin is a huge problem. An insurmountable one. Since we don't live up to that righteous will. And yet other portions of Scripture communicate something else as well, not just God's righteous requirement, but what we are to do in the face of that righteous requirement despite the fact that we don't keep it. It's not the bare law that we cling to. Mere teaching of what is right and wrong. If that's all that was there in Scripture, or if that's principally what we concern ourselves with Scripture, there's no hope in that. There's no good news in that. There's lots of bad news in that. But Scripture, thank the Lord, has much more than that too, some of which Paul goes on to describe here. So in verse four he says, by no means. Jewish unfaithfulness does not negate God's faithfulness. Instead, let God be true, though everyone were a liar, as it is written, and then here's a quote, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged. And here, of course, Paul is quoting from one of the oracles in the Psalms, Psalm 51 in particular, which provides some of David's own interpretation of the law's significance for him and for us. And we know, I assume, that Psalm 51, we read it earlier in the service, is one of David's great psalms of repentance, particularly after his sin against Bathsheba and Uriah. And we should notice several things about that psalm that come into play here, right as Paul is disagreeing with the Jewish teacher back from chapter two. First of all, the reason for the psalm is that David himself was guilty of both adultery, which is of course obvious with Bathsheba, but also stealing. Because he didn't just commit adultery, he took her as his wife, and he took Uriah's own life as well in murder. In other words, in the context of this Psalm, Psalm 51, David was clearly guilty of some of the very same sins that Paul has just accused the Jewish teacher of in the previous chapter. Remember in chapter two, verse 21 and 22, Paul asked the teacher, you who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say not to commit adultery, do you commit adultery? The questions imply that, yes, the teacher had, and that that was, in fact, quite obvious. Now here in chapter two, Paul makes appeal to Psalm 51, where David had done some of those same things. So again, we ask, what's the difference from the Jewish teacher? Why does Paul appeal to David at all if he has many of the same moral failings as the teacher did? The first difference is that in Psalm 51, David does not try to distract from his sin by pointing to reasons why he's still better than other people. He doesn't boast in his having God's written law. He doesn't seek to say that circumcision somehow shields him from God's wrath or is some kind of reason for confidence. He doesn't compare himself to other people at all. showing that, well, he's still better off than a lot of those ungodly Philistines were. See, Lord, at least I still go to the tabernacle and worship you regularly and keep the food laws and offer sacrifices, especially a lot more than all the Gentiles do. They're particularly gross, so I'm better off than that. No, in Psalm 51, David makes no effort to distract from the clear fact of his sin, but points to it himself, and its severity. He frankly acknowledges, he openly acknowledges not only the reality of his own sin, but the fact that he's truly guilty for it, and that it's a true offense against God, an insurmountable offense. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, David says, which leads directly to the part of the psalm that Paul quotes, so that you are proved right when you speak and are justified or you prevail when you are judged. This is an unvarnished confession of sin. You are right, God. when you condemn my sin, period. I and everyone else is wrong if they try to accuse you of wrongdoing or put you in the wrong, Lord. No, you are right when you judge and you prevail. You are unimpeachable when people attempt to judge you. Yet why is it, we might ask, that David can confess these scandalous sins and not simply be undone and without hope? Why is it that David isn't just another example of someone condemned? Why is it that the psalm contains such resolute confidence within it as well? Because at the same time as David confesses his sin, he also cries out to the Lord for the undeserved mercy that he knows the Lord loves to show those who seek him. Have mercy upon me, O God, have mercy. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgression, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin. I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me. Here then, Paul says, is the true advantage of the Jew. Not merely that they possess the law of God, but especially that they possess oracles like this one in Psalm 51 that describe true confession of sin and assurance of God's wonderful mercy to pardon. God loves to pardon the repentant sinner. In itself, the law only exposes, but thanks be to God, that scripture gives us not only the law, but the solution to the law. Solution of God's grace. Scripture teaches us, the law teaches us what we should do. The law teaches us, of course, what we as Christians should still seek to do as Christians. It doesn't go away entirely. It goes away in its condemning us. It continues to be a rule for how we should live. Scripture still teaches an entirely separate, an entirely different basis than the law for our confidence before God. The unfailing mercy of the God who delights to forgive the repentant sinner. David is, again, unsparing in describing his sin. It's very important. Children in particular, perhaps, but all of us, we like to make excuses for our sin. Explain it away. Well, it was really because of my brother or my sister or my circumstances or Something else, I didn't mean to do it. Yeah, I really did, but I'll say I didn't. David doesn't do that, does he? Did it. He's guilty for it. Properly speaking, I'm very clearly condemned. Starting point. And yet it's not an ending point, is it? In confessing that God is right to condemn him, David is also confessing that the only solution to his sin is an entirely undeserved mercy. So that's what he asks for. That's what he seeks. Complete grace. That's the only possibility here. He's entirely forfeited his right to anything else. just as we have. David doesn't try to seek help from God by claiming that his sin wasn't really that bad. Or pointing out that, well, I also did some other pretty good things. Or even worse, maybe pointing out other people who have done far more than I think I have. He just seeks God's mercy with recognition that he has no right to it. 100% I don't deserve this. And yet in that, he approaches God in the only way that sinful human beings can, so has confidence. That is the circumcised repentant heart that God delights in. But this is what David demonstrates for us. That God's righteousness always exists in complete contrast, in diametric opposition to our unrighteousness. And that there's no other way to seek his favor other than to confess that. To ask for what we don't deserve, to ask for the opposite of what we do deserve. It's not just that we don't deserve this good thing. We do deserve everything opposite by way of condemnation and punishment. We've forfeited all that's good. All we can ask for is a gift. This is the true advantage of the believing Jew, Old Testament. Oracles like Psalm 51 that teach what true repentance is and urge all of us to practice it, to follow after God in it. Notice also in Psalm 51 that this blessing of repentance and forgiveness is clearly not for David alone. David makes this very clear in verses 12 and 13. He says, Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Then what? Then I will teach transgressors your way and sinners will turn back to you. Now think about this. This is really a brilliant stroke on Paul's part. Paul points to the Psalm, Psalm 51, in which David openly confesses his sins, appeals to God for mercy, and then says that when he is restored, he will be the one to teach others. Why? Because he's been catechized? Because he's been circumcised? No, because he's repentant. David, not the man in Romans 2, is the true Jewish teacher. David, not the man in Romans 2, is the one to whom sinners should look for instruction and help. Not the man who points towards all of his outward-seeming holiness. or his supposed superiority to others, not the one who exalts himself in pride, but instead the one who teaches that all mere outward comparisons between myself and somebody else simply do not matter before a holy and just God. The only way to have confidence is by seeking undeserved, utterly forfeited mercy. but God promises to give it to those who ask repentantly. And part of what this shows, of course, part of what David shows is that God doesn't ultimately treat people's sin according to a double standard. Remember how that came up back in the beginning of Romans 2. David was the king of Israel. David was the king of God's chosen people, and yet even David's sin doesn't get swept under the carpet. Psalm 51 describes how David received severe chastisement from the Lord. There's no special group of people here whose sins just get overlooked by God. Our unrighteousness, it says in verse five, demonstrates God's righteousness. In other words, it demonstrates that God plays no favorites. God chastised David for his sin. God sent Nathan the prophet to confront him and condemn that sin. In fact, David's sin becomes an occasion for him to confess that God is completely just to condemn his sin. And so Paul says in verse five, if our righteousness, meaning Jewish unrighteousness, demonstrates the righteousness of God, that's what David's sin did, what shall we say? That the God who inflicts wrath is unjust? speak as a man by no means, for then how could God judge the world? English translations are often a little bit unclear here, but the point in verses 5 and 6 goes back to the issue of favoritism, where Paul started in Romans 1 and 2. Do not think that there is a double standard in how God inflicts wrath or judges sin. The future judgment will show later how that's not true, but David's experience already shows it now. God will not simply look the other way. Not for the king of Israel, and not for you. Finally, in verses seven through eight, Paul answers another objection that he came across, it seems, probably somewhat frequently in his ministry, that the gospel of this free grace to sinners is just soft on or condones sin. If through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why are other people still condemning me as a sinner? And why not just do evil that good may come? as some people slanderously say that we say. Isn't that what justification by faith alone teaches, that we can just sin as much as we want and it doesn't matter because sinners go off scot-free, get off scot-free? Paul says of people who would allege that, that their condemnation is deserved. Psalm 51 shows as clearly as anywhere that the faith which receives mercy from God is a repentant faith. A faith that is sorry for its sin. And hates and forsakes it because it is displeasing to God. Turns to God for a free and undeserved gift. A true and repentant faith does not receive that free gift and then run gleefully and hypocritically back to its sin with absolutely no sense of conviction or remorse. Yes, of course, as Christians, we do go back to our sin. Sometimes even, perhaps, brazenly so for a time. But still, the true child of God cannot live there in that rebellion. He knows how good and how gracious God has been to forgive him. And by God's grace, the true child of God still hates his sin at the end of the day, continually returns to God for more forgiveness and more strength to resist it. Paul will talk more about that in Romans 6. Well, as we step back and reflect on This passage, I know that there's a lot here, it's a somewhat complicated pass in the epistle, but I want to focus this again on this question. Brothers and sisters, what makes you, as a child of God, different from the world? What is your advantage? and you go and you rub shoulders with non-Christians at work or in family gatherings perhaps over the holidays, what is it that you would point to that is really different or better about your life? I think too often we get sucked into an unhelpful way of thinking about that topic. And we answer that question with respect to the way that we live or the way that we think other people should live. Maybe we don't say that directly, but I think we often do think it. And if we think it, then it comes across implicitly in our conversation or by our actions. What's different? Well, the difference is that you're sleeping with people everywhere around the planet, anyone that you can, and I'm not. That's the difference. What's different? The difference is that your life rejects God's creation rules and norms, and says that there's no differences between men and women at all. You're a radical feminist. That's the difference. I'm not. You see that? That's the difference. You approve of or practice homosexuality, and I stand against it. So that's what's between us. Frankly, the culture that we live in encourages us to think that way. To think that that's the really important dividing line between people. Watch a lot of news, or if you read a lot online, or social media, or whatever, people will constantly tell you that this is the real issue in our society. This is the real cause that we should be standing up for. And so implicitly, we start to think of people, ourselves and others, as being either pro or anti-gay marriage. As being either feminist or complementarian. As being either gay or straight. As if this is the real dividing line. But it's not. It's not the real, crucial dividing line between you and unbelievers. As important as these things are in their own way, and they are important in their own way because God's word clearly teaches about these topics. We are in favor of right versus wrong, the way the Bible teaches. But as important as those things are in their own way, they're not the real difference about being a Christian. And they're certainly not what you should think of as the basis for your confidence. Let's remember here, brothers and sisters, that the unbelieving Jewish teacher in Romans 2 agreed that sexual immorality was wrong, and probably especially homosexuality. That's why Paul starts there in Romans 1. Many unbelieving Jewish and Roman Catholic teachers believe that today. Yet there's no ultimate difference between them and any other unbelievers. They're all just unbelievers at the end of the day. Unbelieving moralists will go to hell with unbelieving licentious practitioners of every single evil. Let's remember this too, that as much as we may disagree with certain sins and perhaps not practice certain more infamous sins, at least outwardly, We still do struggle and we still do fail in all the same categories of sin that we disagree with and condemn. Christians certainly struggle with sexual immorality of many different kinds, whether outwardly or, at the very least, inwardly. And Christians often give in to unbiblical forms of egalitarianism, not least in their marriages. Would you like to submit your life to the ultimate tests of Ephesians 5? Wives perfectly submitting to their husbands, husbands perfectly loving their wives in that self-sacrificial way that Christ loves the church. Christians certainly can do struggle with or even fall into homosexual sins or any other quote unquote really bad sin that we may see in the world around us. So what's the real difference then? Not our purity. Real difference, brothers and sisters. not of that kind. Yes, we should disagree wholeheartedly with sin in all its forms. Be clear about that. I'm not saying otherwise. And yes, we should resist sin with all of our might. And yes, indeed, by God's grace, we should also over time increase in maturity, increase in sanctity, by God's grace, but still after all of that, the difference between what we do and what unbelievers do will only be a partial difference ever in this life, ever. And so the real ultimate difference isn't there. It's found instead only in what, by God's grace, we confess about our sin and where, by God's grace, we go with our sin to God for forgiveness and pardon. We confess our sin, we seek to confess our sin truly and baldly and unreservedly. This is what I've done. And no matter what anyone else tries to tell me, I shouldn't have done it. I'm guilty. And my only hope, my only confidence, my only claim, the only difference in my life, that I acknowledge this, and I ask for forgiveness. God, therefore, is pleased to give it. Know that many of you want to be a good witness at work or with your family members. This is what you should especially want them to know. Not just that you disagree with the way they're living. Not primarily, that you disagree with the way that they're living, but that while you do disagree with their lifestyle and you try not to do various things, I'm sure that's probably obvious to them already, you also still do a lot of them, the very things you disagree with. In the end, you are absolutely no different than them in and of yourself. Only real difference in being a Christian is that you look to God for undeserved mercy, that you hope they will too. The topic of your coworker's homosexuality comes up at work, what do you especially want to show people? That you disagree? That you find that quite scandalous? Off-putting? Sometimes we're drawn into that, maybe even out of some good intentions. How about trying to show that you're really not very different? that you struggle with sin constantly too. That's why looking to Jesus in repentance and faith is the only advantage that anyone can have a world. I suggest that if you think this way about yourself, it will produce a better witness in your life to others. And it will also produce more peace in your heart, as you stop comparing yourself to other people, which is never truly satisfying, because it's only ever a partial difference. There's no real satisfaction in it. In this, you will also give all glory to God. God of undeserved mercy, who's the only one who actually deserves glory. Let's pray. Father and our God, we are undone by this, we know that. We know that we are prideful. We know that we want simply to be better than others or to think of ourselves that way, and yet, Father, we confess that it is not true. We do not measure up to your standards, and when we approach your throne in the final day, when it's Jesus and us, we will not look favorably in and of ourselves. We try to be comparative. So we pray that you would teach us the way of humility, teach us what the true advantage is, the true difference in life. Continue to massage this into our hearts as we're so constantly in need of this message. Make us humble, we pray. Show your light through us, not just the light of right and wrong. the light of the gospel, the glory of Jesus Christ. We pray this in his name.