Romans 3:1 Commentary and Bible Study

This is a chapter about conversion, but the first part is about the mistakes that are so often made by religious people. As these mistakes were made in olden times by the Jews, the same mistakes are also made by many non-Jews. Now immediately the apostle – under the inspiration of God and being a fine teacher – begins to deal with the protests that people will make. He imagines that many Jews are reading his words, and have understood his reasoning, but are uncomfortable with it. So he adopts this technique for the benefit of Gentiles as well as Jews. He anticipates the protests and the questions they will ask. The two question which he asks here refer back to the two subjects he has handled in the second half of chapter 2 – being a Jew (Romans 2:17-24), and circumcision (Romans 2:25-29). He combines them in his answer, because the answer to both is really one and the same.In the light of the fact that so many Jews have missed salvation, the question is asked, ‘What advantage then hath the Jew?’ If countless of them can be lost spiritually, what advantage do they have over a Gentile who is a total outsider? This follows right on from the previous verse where it is emphatically stated that the only person who is truly a Jew is one who has been converted, one who is a Jew in heart.A Jewish doubting hearer may ask, ‘If at the end of the day a Jew is the same as a Gentile with regard to salvation, and must repent of sin, and be converted, and know the Lord in his heart, what advantage can there possibly be for the Jew?’ Behind the protest is this idea: if the whole nation of the Jews is not to be regarded as God’s true people, but only some of them, they seem to be no better off than the Gentiles. The protest then goes on: ‘Or what profit [what benefit] is there [in the Jewish rite] of circumcision?’ Circumcision should make some difference, but according to you, Paul, it can end up doing nothing at all. But God said that his people were ‘blessed above all people’ (Deuteronomy 7:14). Where then is the blessing if many do not actually arrive in heaven? Paul had no doubt had this objection pressed upon him many times.The problem was that the Jews of old totally misunderstood circumcision, because its meaning and purpose was not what they thought. They attached far too much importance to it, treating it as if it had power in itself. They thought that when the rite was performed on their infants, it sealed them as God’s children. All the male line were circumcised because, as they thought, it was God’s way of assuring them that they were his children, that they had this ‘badge’ in their flesh, the warrant that they were his children. But circumcision never meant that at all. It did not guarantee acceptance with God, favour from God. What it really gave the Jew was light, spiritual instruction, spiritual opportunity, but that had to be taken advantage of.