Romans 3:4 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Romans 3:4

Comments

Paul might have given the answer that the promise was only ever made to those who exercised the faith of Abraham, but instead he actually answers it here slightly differently. In this verse and the following verses he is going to be saying this: ‘God is faithful not only to his promises of blessing, but to his threats of judgment. Pick up your Old Testament and look at any book of the Old Testament, and there are both promises of blessing to the seed of Abraham (and to all the world as a matter of fact) and there are warnings of judgment. God’, the apostle replies, ‘is faithful to both. He will reward faith; he will punish unbelief and sin.’ In verse 3 he had posed the question, ‘What if some Jews did not believe and therefore were judged? Does that mean that God is not faithful to his promises made to the nation?’ He answers with the strongest of denials – ‘Let it not be’, or ‘God forbid’, as the KJV renders it. ‘Let God be true, but every man a liar.’ He then makes an even stronger case, and supposes that not just some, but all did not believe. Paul is not saying that he wants every man to be a liar, or that he is asking God for this: it is not a prayer or a wish, but a supposition. What he means is, suppose it were the case that every man was a liar – it is hypothetical; not all men are in fact liars in the sense that he means. But still it would not make the faithfulness of God without effect. In the worst case, all men would be liars in denying the truth of God, and yet God would still be true. Nothing that unbelieving men can do, could ever change the Lord or alter his commitment to his truth. Nor would it alter his determination to judge unbelief and wickedness. God never promised that all physical descendants of Abraham would be in heaven, but only that those who believed as Abraham did. Even if none believed apart from Abraham, the promise would still be honoured.The Scripture confirms God’s readiness to judge when it says, ‘That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.’ He will exercise judgment even though the entire human race is against him, and opposing him, and refusing to believe his revealed truth, and it is certainly true that the majority are. Paul is quoting from Psalm 51:4, but the Holy Spirit leads him to adjust the words slightly for his own purposes, and in doing so he follows the Septuagint. The word ‘overcome’ is used instead of ‘be clean’ in Hebrew, and it means to be victorious, to prevail, or to conquer. God’s judgment is seen as if it were the outcome of a battle. Unbelief is engaged in a battle against God. Those who sin against him are trying to overturn his truth. They maintain their position in spite of what he says to the contrary, and they are not going to give up. God’s judgment is a proper answer to this stubbornness, for it will not only punish them but prove them to be utterly wrong, and they will be compelled to admit they are wrong. His judgment is his perfect answer to their aggression. He will prove his truth by judging them, and his word will prevail over their word.

Application

The way we should reason when we face some perplexing problem is to start with bedrock principles, and to reason from them. God is faithful is a bedrock principle, and nothing that contradicts it can be true.

We do not vote on truth, as if God’s vote is one, and the votes of unbelieving men and woman count as more than one and outvote God. God is the definition and foundation of truth, and none who say anything to the contrary are speaking the truth; they cannot stand. Therefore, even if the whole human race were allied against God, he would still prevail.

Supposing a father in Edwardian times was very rich and had a splendid home, and suppose many children were born into his family. As the children grew up, he makes this promise. He says, ‘My children, my sons, my daughters, will receive a good education. I will make sure they receive a good education, and that they go into good professions.’ That is the promise, but what happened was that most of the children grew up very proud and arrogant, and very lazy. They certainly went to the university, but most of them were thrown out, because they never did any work, and because they were thrown out, their father did not see them into good professions. Let us say that one appreciated the privilege and the opportunity, and worked, and finally got into a good profession. Then the father adopted other children too, and they were very conscious of their privilege, and they went to university, and they went into good professions. The father’s promise is kept. He never said that he would see all of them in to good professions regardless of how much they applied themselves. He simply said, ‘I will see my sons and daughters get good education and go into good professions.’ Well, he did. He kept his promise, but not to every one of them: in fact, perhaps only to one of the natural children. It is rather like that with the Jews. God’s promise is that his children will be blessed in life and in eternity; not every one of them irrespective of whether they obeyed him or not, loved him or not, sought him or not. God has saved many Jews without doubt in the Old Testament, but always they are called a remnant, a minority. He has saved many Jews at the beginning of the New Testament age, through the preaching on the Day of Pentecost and afterwards. Practically all the very first Christians were saved Jews. And then he adopted other children. He brought in the Gentiles, grafted them in, adopted them, into his true church, and they were saved also. God keeps his promise. Says Paul, ‘You must acknowledge that God is always faithful. It is you who have got the wrong idea in the way and the manner in which he will keep his promises.’ God is justified if he rejects a person, and if you challenge him and if you judge him, he will be perfectly vindicated.

Questions

Why is a passage that speaks of God’s judgment brought forward to support his faithfulness to his promise. Are not his promise and his wrath two very different things? Yes, in themselves they are, but both are founded upon the truthfulness of God’s word. It is his truthfulness that means that his promise, once given, can never be revoked, and it is his truthfulness that means that he must punish the guilty and carry out his threats (Hendriksen).

Outline

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Introduction

Romans 3:4 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Romans 3:4 explained