False Security: Introduction

Romans 2:17-29

¹⁷ Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God, ¹⁸ and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, ¹⁹ and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, ²⁰ an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law. ²¹ You, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who preach that a man should not steal, do you steal? ²² You who say, “Do not commit adultery,” do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? ²³ You who make your boast in the law, do you dishonor God through breaking the law? ²⁴ For “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,” as it is written. ²⁵ For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law; but if you are a breaker of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. ²⁶ Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? ²⁷ And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the law, judge you who, even with your written code and circumcision, are a transgressor of the law? ²⁸ For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; ²⁹ but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.

(Verse 17) - People long for economic security, job security, marital security, national security, health security, home security, security of social position, and many other kinds of security. It is the natural impulse of self-preservation to want security. Yet, despite the claims of independence and self-sufficiency that many people make, they know instinctively that, in themselves, they are not completely secure.  their innate knowledge of General Revelation tells them they are accountable to a higher authority and that they fall far short of His standards.  All men have this witness in them, and all men, universally, ignore it.  We have seen that God Himself bears witness to each person so that they are aware of His person and their accountability to Him.  We have seen that they understand at least their estrangement from Him on the level of instinct because He Himself explains it to them.  Because men reject His authority over them, and yet still have this God-created sense of the spiritual they seek to “scratch that itch” in any one of a variety of ways.  They seek the security that can only truly come from submission to the Gospel in many human fashions.

A measure of economic security can be had from such things as having a long-term work contract, working for or owning a business that has proven to do well even in hard times, or by having a diversified portfolio of investments. A measure of home security can be achieved by burglar alarms, high fences, or watch dogs. A measure of national security can be had from a well-trained, well-equipped military force. But history and personal experience have proved over and over again that such things cannot guarantee absolute security

When they bother to think about it, most people hope for some form of eternal security. If they do not believe in heaven and hell, they hope death will be the end of existence, that it will usher them into an impersonal, unconscious nothingness, or recycle them through another lifetime in an endless linking chain of lives better than the ones before.

But Paul has already declared unequivocally that, whether they consciously realize or admit it or not, all men, even the most pagan reprobates, know something of God’s “invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature” (Rom. 1:18-21). Every person, Jew and Gentile alike, has the witness of heart and conscience, by which he is able to discern basic right from wrong (2:14-15). And all people know to some degree that those who do not live up to God’s standards of righteousness are “worthy of death” (1:32). Most have this gnawing fear that God is going to judge their sin, that one day they will be held accountable for the way they have lived. And Scripture says they will live and die only once, “and after this comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27).  As we have noted, this is all a function of General Revelation.

Therefore instinctively people hope that, in some way or another, they can escape that judgment. Whether consciously or unconsciously, religiously or irreligiously, they understand deep within themselves that they need to deal with their spiritual insecurity. They want the assurance that they will not be punished for their evil. In the attempt to do that, men have devised countless false ideas and philosophies to try to escape the punishment they innately know they deserve.

Most people build up a false sense of spiritual security by trying to convince themselves they are basically good and that a just God could not condemn good people to hell. They believe that their good works and intentions outweigh their bad ones and that, in the balance, they are pleasing and acceptable to God. Others believe that God is too loving to send anyone to hell and will ultimately save even the most wicked of sinners. Still others insist that there is no God and that the idea of a final divine judgment is therefore ludicrous. These beliefs are so common that those who put their security in them can find reassurance in the large numbers of other people doing the same. They have even designed religions to affirm these views.  these views all center on the idea of a human righteousness that is sufficient to win though in the end and satisfy whatever Divine authority is out there.

Far from being cruel and insensitive, the Christian who exposes such false ideas of spiritual security does a great service to those he warns. If a person is to be commended for warning a family that their house is on fire or that a bridge they are about to cross might collapse under them, how much more is a believer to be commended when he warns the unsaved of their lostness and condemnation apart from Jesus Christ. No greater kindness can possibly be offered a person than that of showing him the way of salvation. But before he can have motivation for being saved, he obviously must be convinced that he is lost.  The proclamation of the true Gospel and the inadequacy and hellish nature of any trust in human righteousness is the greatest love that anyone can show for another person.

As the forerunner of Jesus Christ, John the Baptist preached a sobering message of repentance from sin (Matt. 3:2). Jesus began His own ministry preaching the same message (Matt. 4:17). Perhaps more than anything else, the Sermon on the Mount is an extended series of warnings about such false spiritual security. In that message the Lord declares unequivocally that men’s righteousness, attitudes, good works, relationships, professions, prayers, fasting, ceremonies, and generosity can never measure up to the standard of perfect holiness to which God holds them accountable (Matt. 5:48).

Jesus stripped naked the hypocritical and legalistic false securities of the Judaism of that day. They stand as the prototypical example of human righteousness in action.  He declared that those who trust in outward substitutes for true righteousness will one day say to Him, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?” But to such false disciples Jesus will say, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matt. 7:22-23). The person who builds his religious house on any self-made foundation is certain to have it washed away by the storm of God’s judgment (vv. 26-27).

Having shown how both the moral Jew and the moral Gentile alike will be brought before God’s great tribunal in the end times and have no basis for any sense of well-being and security (Rom. 2:1-16), Paul now focuses exclusively on the Jews, the covenant people of God. They had far greater light and blessings than the Gentiles. But as the apostle now points out, that greater privilege made them more accountable to God, not less, as most of them supposed. Before he explains the way of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, he shatters the idea of false spiritual security that most Jews had in their heritage (2:17a), in their knowledge (vv. 17b-24), and in their ceremony (v. 25-29).

I need to be sure that I am loving those around me, family, neighbor, and enemy alike, but seeing to it that I bear witness of the truth of the Gospel and calling them to submission to that righteousness revealed from heaven.