ROMANS ii. 17-29
"_The Jew, first, and also the Greek_"; this has been the burthen of the Apostle's thought thus far upon the whole. He has had the Jew for some while in his chief thought, but he has recurred again and again in passing to the Gentile. Now he faces the Pharisee explicitly and on open ground, before he passes from this long exposure of human sin to the revelation of the glorious Remedy.
[Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =But if[20] you,= you emphatically, the reader or hearer now in view, you who perhaps have excused yourself from considering your own case by this last mention of the responsibility of the non-Jewish world; =if you bear the name of Jew,= whether or no you possess the corresponding spiritual reality; =and repose yourself upon the Law,= as if the possession of that awful revelation of duty was your protection, not your sentence; =and glory in God,= as if He were your private property, the decoration of your national position, whereas the knowledge of Him is given you in trust for the world; [Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =and know the Will,= His Will, _the_ Will supreme; =and put the touchstone to things which differ,= like a casuist skilled in moral problems; =schooled out of the Law,= under continuous training (so the Greek present participle bids us explain) by principles and precepts which the Law supplies;--[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =(if) you are sure that you, yourself,= whoever else, =are a leader of blind men, a light of those who are in the dark,= [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =an educator of the thoughtless, a teacher of beginners, possessing, in the Law, the outline,[21]= the system, =of real knowledge and truth,[22]= (the outline indeed, but not the power and life related to it):--if this is your estimate of your position and capacities, I turn it upon yourself. Think, and answer--[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =You therefore, your neighbour's teacher, do you not teach yourself? You, who proclaim, Thou shalt not steal, do you steal?= [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =You, who say, Thou shalt not commit adultery, do you commit it? You, who abominate the idols,= affecting to loathe their very neighbourhood, =do you plunder temples,= entering the polluted precincts readily enough for purposes at least equally polluting? [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =You who glory in the Law,= as the palladium of your race, =do you, by your violation of the Law, disgrace your[23] God?= [Sidenote: Ver. 24.] ="For the name of our God is, because of you, railed at among the heathen," as it stands written,= in Ezekiel's message (xxxvi. 20) to the ungodly Israel of the ancient Dispersion--a message true of the Dispersion of the later day.
We need not overstrain the emphasis of the Apostle's stern invective. Not every non-Christian Jew of the first century, certainly, was an adulterer, a thief, a plunderer. When a few years later (Acts xxviii. 17) St Paul gathered round him the Jews of Rome, and spent a long day in discussing the prophecies with them, he appealed to them with a noble frankness which in some sense evidently expected a response in kind. But it is certain that the Jews of the Roman Dispersion bore a poor general character for truth and honour. And anywise St Paul knew well that there is a deeply natural connexion between unhallowed religious bigotry and that innermost failure of self-control which leaves man only too open to the worst temptations. Whatever feeds gross personal pride promotes a swift and deadly decay of moral fibre. Did this man pride himself on Abraham's blood, and his own Rabbinic lore and skill, and scorn both the Gentile "sinner" and the _'am-hââretz_, "the people of the land," the rank and file of his own race? Then he was the very man to be led helpless by the Tempter. As a fact, there are maxims of the later Rabbinism, which represent beyond reasonable doubt the spirit if not the letter of the worst watchwords of "the circumcision" of St Paul's time: "Circumcision is equivalent to all the commandments of the Law"; "To live in Palestine is equal to the Commandments"; "He that hath his abode in Palestine is sure of life eternal."[24] The man who could even for an hour entertain such a creed was ready (however deep below his consciousness the readiness lay) for anything--under fitting circumstances of temptation.