How to Give God a Bad Name

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.” (Romans 2:23-24 ESV)

With what seems to me an amazing degree of chutzpah the Apostle Paul wrote to a church he had never visited and cut directly to the chase by laying out a case for God’s righteous condemnation of all humanity. It goes something like this: “Dear Church at Rome, You don’t know me. My name is Paul and I’m writing to introduce myself and seek support for evangelizing the western part of the Roman Empire. To begin with, let me just point out that you are all sinners and deserve eternal damnation.” In our day we would hardly consider this an effective way to “win friends and influence people,” even if our accusations were true.

In the first three chapters of the letter to the Romans Paul lays out the basic tenets of Christianity. In chapter one he describes the spiritual condition of the Gentiles. They act as if God does not exist. Though they do not have the law or the covenant (more on this in a minute), God has revealed himself and his character to them through nature, and therefore they are without excuse in refusing to acknowledge God’s sovereignty. They deserve God’s wrath. In chapter two Paul takes aim at the Jews. They have the law and the covenant but do not keep it and therefore they, too, are without excuse.

The beginning of chapter three summarizes the arguments of the first two and famously concludes “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23) There is good news here as Paul goes on to show that our salvation is a free gift and not merited by any action on our part. But at this point in the argument, if we divide the world into two groups as Paul does: Gentile and Jew, then we can see that by rights everyone is pretty much toast.

Curiously Paul’s seems to imply that the sins of the Jews are worse than those of the Gentiles. In the passage Romans 2:17-24 Paul chastens the Jews for “boasting” about their special relationship with God while at the same time not living up to the requirements of the law and the covenant. One of the most fundamental aspects of Jewish self-identification at that time was knowledge that as Jews they were specially chosen by God. God had delivered them out of bondage in Egypt and turned them exclusively into “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:6) I think the audacity of publically affirming this belief alone was enough to sow the seeds of the anti-Semitism that was rampant in the Roman world.

But what made it worse was what Paul alludes to here. The covenant entered into by Yahweh with the Jewish people is summarized in the previous verse in Exodus: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.” (Ex. 19:5) Paul tells us in Romans 2:17-24 that the Jews loved the last part of the covenant (“treasured possession and holy people”) but weren’t too keen about the first part (“obey my voice and keep my covenant”). In all of their long history the Jews had never obeyed the law or kept the covenant. They had always denied God’s sovereignty and chased after idols. And though in Paul’s day the Jews generally adhered more strictly to the Mosaic Law than they ever had before, both Jesus and Paul condemn their religious practice. Why?

The answer is obvious: they were hypocrites. One can picture a Jewish Christian reading Paul’s condemnation of the Gentiles in chapter one with a smug sense of satisfaction. Secure in the knowledge of their covenant relationship they cast scorn upon the unrighteous pagans and their filthy habits. They could not imagine that they were equally guilty. They trusted in the law and thought it made them safe from condemnation, but because they could not fulfill the requirements of the law their trust was misplaced. And, going even further, the misplaced self-satisfied confidence that allowed them to condemn their pagan neighbors produced an affront to God because they too were guilty. So God was blasphemed by their hypocrisy.

One of the reasons I think this concept would have been difficult to grasp by Jews of Paul’s time is that many of them really were very pious. Paul himself was a member of the Pharisees, the most devout and respected Jewish religious group of the time. They kept the letter of the law meticulously, and because of this they were absolutely certain of God’s favor. But in chapter 23 of Matthew Jesus demolishes their illusions and calls them “blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Mt 23:24) The allusion here is of punctiliousness in the letter of the law but blindness to the spirit of the law.

Thank God we are not like them! Oh, but we are! How many of us rely on “election” as our ticket to righteousness? How many of us believe that by going to church and writing checks, and watching the right TV shows and movies and listening to the right music and supporting and condemning the right politicians and causes we are somehow set apart from our neighbors who are not “chosen” like us? But at the same time we pursue with zeal the idols of our age: material prosperity, emotional security, and sensual pleasure, all with full knowledge that our brothers and sisters throughout the world and right in our midst are crying out; suffering and dying from hunger, poverty, oppression, violence, and persecution.

It’s not that the way Christians act is fundamentally different or worse than the way non-Christians do. But because we profess to be followers of Jesus we bring ourselves greater condemnation. For as the Apostle Peter tells us we have inherited the covenant and therefore the stipulation of the covenant to be a light to the nations: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)

We have allowed ourselves to be defined by things we are against but we are not able to articulate let alone demonstrate what we are for. In fact, many of us lead lives indistinguishable from our non-Christian neighbors, except perhaps in our religious fastidiousness. This is exactly the sin of the Jews that both Paul and Jesus condemn. Jesus pointed out to his listeners that they had “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.” (Mt. 23:23) And so have we. And that, Paul tells us, gives God a bad name.

Next week we will consider what gives God a good name.