“For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified. So, when Gentiles, who do not by nature have the law, do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

It doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then you hear about a judge getting arrested for violating the law in some way. Those always feel like rather scandalous stories because judges are supposed to be the ones who know the law best as well as what the consequences for violating the law are. They are the ones who set the consequences for violating the law. They should know better than anyone else not only what not to do, but why not to do it from at least the consequences side of things. And yet knowing the law and doing the law are two different things. One does not necessarily or naturally lead to the other. As Paul continues to challenge the Jewish background believers in his audience, this is what he seeks to help them understand next. Let’s unpack this with him.

The Jewish background believers in the church in Rome were evidently feeling a bit smug toward their Gentile background brothers and sisters as Paul began talking about sin. At least, Paul was operating on the assumption that they were. He had seen it and experienced it on the part of Jewish background believers often enough in his ministry thus far to feel safe in addressing the issue without having actually been to the church.

In several other contexts, when Paul started talking about sin and our need for a Savior, the Jewish background believers smiled confidently because they had the Law. Sin wasn’t an issue for them the way it was for other folks because the Law kept them from it. The Law served as their guardrail, giving them a better grasp of the righteousness of God than their poor Gentile compatriots. They really had a lot to overcome in order to get to the point where they were following Jesus. For the Jews, their leg up gave them a huge advantage, so they didn’t have to worry so much about the whole sanctification thing. They were starting in the opposing team’s red zone (to use an illustration that would have been meaningless to them but which seems relevant with the Super Bowl coming Sunday).

To this group, Paul here says, “Listen, having the Law by itself is meaningless. Being right before God is not something that people who simply hear the Law achieve. It is only those who actually put it into practice who benefit from it.” Or, as Paul himself puts it, “For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.”

This principle should be pretty easy for us to grasp. The same basic idea applies in every area of life. If you go to school to learn things, but don’t ever do anything with what you learned, all of that learning isn’t going to benefit you. It’s an open question in that case whether you actually learned anything in the first place. In the same way, hearing the law of God by itself doesn’t do anyone any good. It is the one who does it who receives the benefit.

This is an idea Jesus’ brother James explores in even more detail in his letter when he talks about faith and works. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works? Can such faith save him?” And again, “In the same way faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.” And still again, “But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

James’ context and focus are somewhat different than Paul’s, but the underlying point is the same. To know what God has said about how we should live in relationship with Him and to not put into regular and active practice what God has said about how we should live in relationship with Him does not benefit anybody. It’s only the doers who benefit.

Well, this idea has implications. One of the most important implications as far as Paul’s audience and the point he was addressing here was concerned is that having the Law by itself doesn’t mean anything. That was the deceit of the Jewish background believers. By virtue of having the Law, they thought they were at least starting off on the right foot, if not starting off ahead of everyone else. But if they didn’t actually put the Law into practice, this simply wasn’t the case. On the contrary, if someone had never heard the first thing about the Law, but lived in such a way that was consistent with the Law anyway, that person was going to be more right with God than the person who had spent a lifetime studying it as if it were a laboratory specimen but without ever letting it actually impact his life.

I can put this in even more concrete terms than this. I have received one speeding ticket in my life. I was driving back home from doing a wedding ceremony in another county. The road I had to take went through a section where the speed limit changed from 45 to 55 and back several times as you wound through the country and a couple of small towns. At one point, an officer passed me going the other direction. I didn’t think anything about it until he turned on his lights almost as soon as he went by me. Sure enough, he was coming for me. He clocked me as going 54 mph. That’s about what I thought my speed was, and I thought that was just where I wanted it to be since the speed limit was 55 there. But it wasn’t. I had missed a sign that announced one of the several changes to 45. So, I got a ticket. Whether I knew the speed limit or not, I was still held accountable for it.

The same is true with the Law of God. God’s Law is nothing more than a reflection of His character. His character defines how He expects us to live. And the thing is, because the world He created bears many of the marks of His character on it, and because we were created in His image, we are able to know the basics of His character without having it told to us directly by Him. This is why there are some principles of human morality that have been consistent across all cultures in all times.

Because of this, as Paul wrote in chapter 1, we are without excuse in claiming that we didn’t see God or didn’t have enough evidence for His existence and character. God has made it so patently obvious that all such excuses are rendered moot. Anyone who says otherwise has simply chosen a path of willful ignorance to the reality of the world they live in; the world God made.

If someone has the Law and doesn’t keep it, the Law does them no good. If you know the rules, and refuse to play by them, the rules aren’t benefiting you at all. On the other hand, even if someone doesn’t have the rules, but plays by them, they’ll reap the rewards of getting things right. “So, when Gentiles, who do not by nature have the law, do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.”

Paul’s point here isn’t that salvation is possible apart from Christ. It’s not. His point is that while God gave the Jews the Law of Moses, His righteousness was (and is) still what it was whether the Law existed or not. This means it was technically possible for someone to have kept all the standards of His righteousness without having actually heard any of the Law. No one has, of course, because of our sin-broken nature, but it is a thing all the same. The Law wasn’t ever what saved us. Our living up to the standards of God’s righteousness because of our willingness to accept that those standards are real and right in spite of not being able to directly see the God who set them. That is, our faith (demonstrated by our obedience) is what has always saved us.

It is because of our perpetual inability to do this that Jesus came to do it for us and extend to us the benefits of His having done it on our behalf when we put our faith in Him. But then, I’m jumping ahead of myself. We’ll come to that.

Paul says one more thing here at the end that I want to highlight before we leave today. Starting in the last part of v. 15, Paul says this: “Their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.”

Now, there are several things we could unpack in a fair bit of detail there, but I want to draw your attention to just one of them. When God comes for judgment, He is going to judge “what people have kept secret.” There is nothing hidden from God. David makes that clear in Psalm 139. He knows us. Completely. He knows everything about us. If there is a thought in your mind, God knows that thought. You can’t keep secrets from Him. That thing nobody else even has a clue about, He knows about it. In fact, He knew it before you did. If you’ve got some habit of sin you think you are keeping a secret from everyone else, rest assured that it is not a secret from Him. Your best bet is to give that up and let the righteousness of God in Christ penetrate to that place in your heart. Submit every part of your life to Him, and don’t hold anything back. You’ll only be fooling yourself if you think you can do otherwise. You can’t.

And with that uncomfortable thought, enjoy your Thursday. We’ll be back to Romans next week.