Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Romans 3:3–8
And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just (Rom. 3:8).
Today’s passage is filled with questions. Like the one with which Paul opened Romans 3, most of these are hypothetical questions (others are Paul’s responses), for he is continuing to toss up and shoot down potential objections to his previous assertion that Jews and Gentiles alike are subject to God’s judgment for sin. But while we find seven questions in this passage, they have to do with just two issues.
The first is God’s faithfulness. Someone might say to Paul: “God made an eternal covenant with the Jews. But you say that many of them are lost for failure to believe in Jesus Christ. You’re implying that God is being unfaithful to His covenant!” But Paul will have none of it. He deals with this issue in much greater depth in chapters 9–11; here he simply affirms that nothing, including the unbelief of the Jews, can nullify God’s faithfulness. “God is faithful,” Dr. James M. Boice writes in his commentary. “He will save those He has promised to save. But not apart from faith. And not mechanically!” Like the previous objection, this one proceeds from a faulty understanding of God’s dealings with the Jews; it also assumes that the mere circumcision of the flesh will save apart from circumcision of the heart, even though God’s Word declares that the latter is absolutely necessary.
The second issue in this passage is, according to Boice, a “quibble.” In other words, it isn’t a serious argument against Paul’s position. Someone might say to Paul: “You’re saying that God displays His mercy and grace to sinners. So sinners help God look good, and big sinners help God look really good. So God ought to be good to these helpful sinners and spare them from wrath. In fact, it would be pretty unjust of Him to pour out wrath on sinners after all they’ve done for Him.” Paul wastes no rhetorical ammunition on this one, for it is patently ludicrous. Instead, he resorts to scorn: “Why not say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come’?” Then he turns deadly serious. Anyone who would say such a thing (and some apparently actually have accused him of saying it) are deserving of condemnation, he says, for they are declaring the one true God to be unjust.
Think what you want, Paul says—God is faithful and just. His wrath can be difficult to understand at times, but it must not be used as an excuse to blaspheme.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
It would be surprising to hear a Christian say that sin makes God look good. However, we sin all too blithely, assuring ourselves that we are saved by grace, not by works. This represents a major misunderstanding of Biblical teaching on the importance of good deeds. Read the verses below and reflect today on your commitment to obey God.
For Further Study
- Deuteronomy 5:32
- Psalm 119:4–6
- Matthew 5:17–19
- Romans 3:31