As we read through the Roman letter we find Paul constantly referring to the Jews. He decries their lack of faith, their rejection of Jesus Christ, their failure to keep the law, their rebellion, etc. I am afraid that we take comfort in the fact that we are "Christians", who believe in Christ, and therefore do not need to pay attention to the admonitions of the Apostle.
However, if you will forget the term "Jew", and substitute "people who believe in God, and consider themselves religious", you might find Paul's words both current and applicable to much of the religious world today. When Paul says the Jews have the law but do not keep it, can we say we do not have the law? Of course not! The moral law of God has not changed. But many religious people today are trying to restructure God's will to fit the hedonistic society in which we live. When Paul agonizes over the fact that many Jews rejected Christ, can we say this is not true of our "Christian" society, when the extent to which most pay homage to Jesus Christ is by wearing a gold cross and going through the church rituals on Sunday. Faith in Christ is more than belief in His Sonship. It is accepting Him as Lord of your life. Even as I write these things the words of God ring in my ears, "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."
If we take the book of Romans as a record God has preserved across twenty centuries for His people today, it reads a little differently, doesn't it? Paul opens the tenth chapter with these words, "My heart's desire and prayer for Israel is that
they might be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. They, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the
righteousness of God." Jesus said, in the book of Luke, "That which is well pleasing in the sight of men, is an abomination in the sight of God."
Have we not structured our worship services so that they please us, and assume that they are pleasing to God? Does the code of Christian conduct to which we subscribe really reflect honor and humble obedience to God, or have we defined righteousness in a set of rituals which justify us, but demand no sacrifice and very little discipline in our lives? All of my life I have listened to debates between preachers of different religious groups. They all revolve around which creed is correct, and which legal system is nearer the truth. Very early in my ministry, I began to wonder: If we got all the legal rules correct, would it really make us true followers of Jesus Christ? Are we not defending "our" righteousness, rather than agonizing over the righteousness of God?
The Jews were very meticulous in their observance of the rules of their religious practice. Paul claimed to have lived according to the straightest sect of their religion...a Pharisee. And yet he writes in this letter that dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" will not forgive a single sin. Our society today is slipping rapidly into Godlessness, morally and religiously. The practices of even religious people are defended, even when they are obviously contrary to the written Word. Can we really look with scorn on the Jews of Paul's time, who substituted their own righteousness for the righteousness of God?
A trial is going on in Sweden in which a preacher is being tried by the State for preaching that the Bible condemns certain moral sins. The prosecutor ridiculed the preacher and said, "Get a modern Bible. Yours is way out of date." If we roll with the punch, and let society dictate what the church will preach, and what the moral standard is to be, we are a people without hope. Our hope must be vested in Jesus Christ the Savior, and the righteousness He preached, or we are guilty of crucifying Him anew. This is not just something that we should do in the corporate body of the church. It is a reformation of our lives that calls for a new sense of dedication, a renewal of our prayerful communication with God, and a humble discipline of our lives in spite of the peer pressures of our modern society.
