Commentary on "All Have Sinned"

GABRIEL PROKSCH

 

Day 5: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - Jews and Gentiles Together

 

Overview

After analyzing the sinful condition of gentiles the author turns toward the second chapter of Romans, where Paul deals with his own people, the Jews. The study rightly points out that despite their certain advantages in having the will of God explicitly revealed, the Jews were also sinners, just like the Gentiles, when measured against God’s standard. Apart from God’s grace nobody can hope to escape God’s condemnation.

 

Observations

Despite the good approach, there is a shallow account of the state of things. The author doesn’t go far enough in dealing with the perspective presented in Romans 2. The lesson starts with a partial evaluation of the gentile plight and attitude toward general revelation: they have “lost sight of God a long time ago and, thus, fell into the most degrading practices.” In reality, the apostle Paul speaks plainly about the fact that in spite of God’s current day-to-day revelation to the gentiles through nature and their own consciousness, they still, in spite of knowing that these things are wrong, nevertheless go forward and manifest their rebellion against God (Romans 1:32, see also verse 20). Their wickedness is not something that happened “long ago”; it’s a present determination to ignore God’s plain revelation of Himself rooted deeply in man’s nature.

It is important to keep this aspect of man’s deep and continuing rebellion in mind, because the apostle Paul doesn’t simply want to establish the reality of all men being sinners in the sense that all failed to measure to God’s perfect standard. He wants to go deeper than that and show that man’s problem is more than an external problem demonstrated by bad behavior, or even with some partial corruption of his nature after the fall. Man is not simply sick with sin; he is dead in sin and needs spiritual resurrection (Ephesians2:1). I will not deal at this point with the Adventist unbelief in the existence of the soul; I ask the reader to look in the commentaries of others in regard to this point.

My point at this moment is to emphasize the shallow Adventist evaluation of man’s sinful state. In Romans 2 Paul argues that Jews, presumably religious people, are no better than the gentiles not only at the level of performance, failing to meet God’s standards, but also at the most profound level, in their profound rebellion against God that matches the rebellion in which Gentiles are involved. Despite the advantage of having God’s will revealed, they manifest the same attitude toward it as Gentiles did, boasting of being favored by God and presuming on his kindness (Romans 2:3,4). The reality of having an impenitent heart is what puts both gentiles and Jews at the same level (Romans 2:5). In the final end, Paul concludes that “nobody seeks after God”; there is no one who does righteousness (Romans 3:10,11), all are in a state of rebellion and stand under God’s judgment.

I concede that some notion of man’s depravity is present in today’s lesson; still the author doesn’t go far enough in acknowledging the awful reality of man’s sinful state of rebellion. I direct the readers of this review to the next day where the full import of his erroneous views are becoming visible.  

 

Summary

1. Jews and gentiles alike are equally depraved and utterly unable to please God, even when they have the will of God revealed.
2. Man is not “sick” with sin; he is utterly dead in sin, by nature a child of wrath (Eph. 2:3).
3. There is no possibility that a person can change his own hypocrisy and moral failure by praying and committing to be observant to the law or to Scripture.
4. No one seeks or does righteousness apart from God’s intervention.

 

GO TO DAY 6

 

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