Hi! Thank you for being here. In today’s installment (Romans 2:17-3:8), Paul is still hammering the fact that we’re all sinners, and on top of that, hypocrites! We must strive for the outward and the inward both to be godly. Circumcision for example, must also be a “circumcision of the heart.” But again, perfect obedience is impossible, as we know from our hour-to-hour experience. One of my favorite moments is that split second after receiving Communion, when no thought or action has yet interrupted my “clean slate” before God.
But sometimes we’re not seeing ourselves in this repentant light. The NIV Life Application Bible lists some common excuses we give when we’re refusing to admit we are sinners: 1) “There is no God,” or, “I follow my conscience,” 2) “I’m not as bad as other people” 3) “I’m a church member,” or “I’m a religious person.” It goes on to say: “Every person must accept that he or she is sinful and condemned before God. Only then can we understand and receive God’s wonderful gift of salvation.” When we really wrap our mind around this, the degree to which God’s grace and mercy are boundless and unearned, we can begin to fathom his love for us.
I’m weirdly put in mind of Denis Johnson, whom you may know from the movie adaptation of his short story collection Jesus’ Son. He’s that rare fiction writer who also wrote stunning poems. He dedicated his 1982 book The Incognito Lounge—I believe in a spirit of repentance—to “the people I have lied to.”
His work always reminds me that “she who has been forgiven much, loves much.” (Luke 7:47). But in order to be forgiven, we have to ask, by turning our hearts toward God.
One of Johnson’s poems, “From a Berkeley Notebook,” has this ringing phrase right in the middle: “These are the absolute// pastures I am led to:”. After the speaker of the poem confesses his sinful state, he is given sustaining consolations. The poem becomes almost childlike in its renewed and renewing wonder. And so we get the loveliest sleeping bag ever in a poem, the sheltering pines, light from distant stars, the fine refreshing rain.
From A Berkeley Notebook One changes so much from moment to moment that when one hugs oneself against the chill air at the inception of spring, at night, knees drawn to chin, he finds himself in the arms of a total stranger, the arms of one he might move away from on the dark playground. Also, it breaks the heart that the sign revolving like a flame above the gas station remembers the price of gas, but forgets entirely this face it has been looking at all day. And so the heart is exhausted that even in the face of the dismal facts we wait for the loves of the past to come walking from the fire, the tree, the stone, tangible and unchanged and repentant but what can you do. Half the time I think about my wife and child, the other half I think how to become a citizen with an apartment, and sex too is quite on my mind, though it seems the women have no time for you here, for which in my larger, more mature moment I can’t blame them. These are the absolute pastures I am led to: I am in Berkeley, California, trapped inside my body, I am the secret my body is going to keep forever, as if its secret were merely silence. It lies between two mistakes of the earth, the San Andreas and Hayward faults, and at night from the hill about the stadium where I sleep, I can see the yellow aurora of Telegraph Avenue uplifted by the holocaust. My sleeping bag has little cowboys lassoing bulls embroidered all over its pastel inner lining, the pines are tall and straight, converging in a sort of roof above me, it’s nice, oh loves, oh loves, why aren’t you here? Morgan, the pyjamas are so lonesome without the orangutans—I write and write, and transcend nothing, escape nothing, nothing is truly born from me, yet magically it’s better than nothing—I know you must be quite changed by now, but you are just the same, too, like those stars that keep shining for a long time after they go out—but it’s just a light they touch us with this evening amid the fine rain like mist, among the pines.
Here’s the Scripture, from which I’ve deviated quite a bit today!
Romans 2:17-3:8 (NIV)
7 Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; 18 if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; 19 if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24 As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” 25 Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. 26 So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? 27 The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker. 28 A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. 29 No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.
3What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? 2 Much in every way! First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God. 3 What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? 4 Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” 5 But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) 6 Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? 7 Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” 8 Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!
What do you think? How do you see God’s faithfulness in the midst of our fallenness?