"What
then? are we better than they? No, in no wise; for we have before
proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;"
In
fact we put it this way. "Have you ever wondered why God, in the
whole scheme of things, put the nation of Israel in the place of
privilege? Well we have an the answer. To show that after 2000 years,
beginning with Abraham, the Hebrews were indeed in a place of privilege.
They were under the Covenants promise, and God dealt with them in
miraculous ways. All in the earthiness of our flesh and in materialism
of property because they are one day to rule the earth. For this
reason alone The Messiah came and walked in the midst of them. But
after everything was said and done, were they any better than the
pagan Gentiles around them? No! And that was the proof of the
pudding. Even those that had all these special things going for them,
in the final analysis, their old Adam nature was just as corrupt as
ours is. That is why we showed God's displeasure with them. Now that
should tell us something shouldn’t it? We are all the sons of Adam.
Come across the page in chapter 3, what did we say this area from
2:17 through 3:20 reveals? God's perspective of Religious man. And then from 3:21 through
4:8 reveals our Redemption and Justification, do you see the
separation? So keeping this in mind, let’s look at verses 21 and
22.
Romans
3:21
"But
now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested,
(put in the spot light.) being witnessed by the law and the
prophets:"
We
used the verse a while back, how much Scripture is profitable?
All! All Scripture is profitable. That takes us back to
Genesis 1:1 and to the very last verse in Revelation chapter 22. It is
all profitable. So everything that we share from Paul is not to be
just lifted out and throw the rest of Scripture away, neither are we to throughout Paul's revelation, because it all
rests on that which went before. So this is what Paul is here saying.
Romans
3:21b-22
"...being
witnessed by the law and the prophets: Even the righteousness of God
which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that
believe: for there is no difference:"
Do not
you love the way the verse ends? Boy we do! There is no difference
now. The Hebrew with all his historical background does not stand on
any higher ground with God today than we do, because there is no
difference. In today’s sports language we would say, "God
has leveled the playing field." Is not that right? He
leveled the playing field and we all end up as sinners because we
were born of Adam. "We are not a sinner because we sin, but
rather we sin because we are sinners" Now that levels the
playing field. We can not look down our nose at the poor alcoholic,
and say, "Well if you would live like I live you wouldn’t have
that trouble." No! That person is not a sinner because he is an
alcoholic, he has become an alcoholic because he has the old sin
nature from Adam. And Israel is and was no different, that is why it took the full nations approval to ratify the New Covenant which Jesus brought into being through His three and a half years of ministry. But as Daniel and the prophets foretold they would not. And thusly they had the war which destroyed Jerusalem and the leveled the Temple during 66-70 AD. and scattered them again.
Everyone
of us are on the same level area when God finds us in our sins,
because we are all children of Adam, and a lot of people do not
understand that. They think that some people are just naturally good
enough that they are going to make it, because they were never
sinners. Hey, we have news for them, the Bible makes it so plain
that we are all sinners until we are saved. We normally like to
put the whole human race into two categories. "Jews and
Gentiles," but actually there is three, and what are they? The
Jew, the Gentile, and members of the Body of Christ. Those are
the three classes of people on the earth today. Always remember as
soon as we become a member of the One Body of Christ we lose our ID
so far as being either Hebrew or Gentile, because we are all one in the Body,
but outside the Body we still have our distinctiveness. That being in lawlessness and sin.
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