The greatest deception ever

This is not really anything. It is not an interpretation of all of Romans but is an attempt to pick up some of the themes that Romans deals with, with 7:11 as the pole around which everything else revolved. Although that is not to say that it is an exposition of that verse.

It is the result of some reflection on truth and lies in Romans. I posted a word search on truth, lies and deceit here, but should have searched for 'knowledge'/'knowing'/'knew'/'know' and more would have been clearer sooner. But as 7:11 connects deceit with the law, it is also my attempt to understand how these themes fit with the law.

This is also not my promised post on knowledge of God through creation, but will hopefully feed into it... so with that out of the way....

God in creation made himself known by revealing the truth about his power and nature (1:18). However all humanity rejected this truth preferring instead to believe a lie (singular, 1:25). What was this lie? If we read Genesis 3 the lie that the serpent deceived Eve with was the lie that God would not follow through on his threat of death. In short he persuaded Eve that 'the wrath of God is [not] against all ungodliness and unrighteousness' (1:18). That wrath has been revealed so we should now know it to be true, and yet humanity still believes the same lie.

God provided Israel with the law which was the 'embodiment of knowledge and truth' (2:19-21). This law meant Israel knew 'that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice' sin (2:2). However, Israel while believing this truth in relation to others did not believe it applied to them, and so they did not 'obey the truth' (2:8). Instead of letting the law judge them they relied on it and boasted that they knew God's will (2:17-18). They taught others but not themselves.

The people of Israel were believing the serpent's old lie that judgment would not really fall on them. So if God entered into judgment with Israel, like God did with David (in Ps 51 quoted in Rom 3:4), God would be justified in punishing Israel - proving the lie to be a lie. Israel should listen to their own law which, as Paul shows in the quotations of Romans 3, declares them to be under sin and under the curse. Instead they were using their tongues to deceive themselves and others about their true situation which was that they were under the curse of creation and of the law.

But what of the covenants and the promises of God to Israel? Can God really be faithful to these promises and also be justified in his judgment against sin? Or from the other direction, how can God pass over former sins and yet stay the righteous judge who does not let the wicked go unpunished?

Paul explains that God has fulfilled both the law and the promise that appeared 430 years earlier. He did this by putting forward Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins. He took the curse of the law (showing God to be righteous) but he also fulfilled the promise of the covenant with Abraham that God would be faithful to his promise even at the cost of his own life.

But does this only affect the Jews, of is it for the Gentiles also? After all the promise was to Abraham and his offspring, and the law was only for the Jews as well. Aren't the Gentiles just spectators to this drama of the Jewish people. No, because God is the God of all of creation. The law was just the embodiment of what was already in creation (chap 1). The promise to Abraham was that 'all the nations be blessed' (Gal 3:8). The Jews were priests to the world, and represented the world to God. God was never just interested in them.

But all this assumes that the promise cannot come through obeying the law. Isn't that what the bible teaches? Wasn't Abraham declared righteousness because he obeyed the law, and receive the promise because of his obedience? No! Abraham was declared righteous because he believed in 'him who justifies the ungodly' (4:5). He then received the promise, not because of what he did but as a gift.

So why then the law? What did the law achieve?

• It brought knowledge of sin (3:20)
• It brought transgression (4:15)
• It counted sin (5:13)
• It increased the trespass/sin (5:20)
• It held us captive (7:6) Imprisoning us under sin (Gal 3:22)
• It showed sin to be sin (7:13)
• It made sin sinful beyond measure (7:13)

These can be brought under two headings:

1. It described what sin looked like and told us that it would lead to God's wrath
2. It actually increased the sin

We can understand how the law did 1. while remaining good, but how did it do 2. while still being a good thing?

Well it did it because it was not the law itself but Sin using the law to its own advantage. It used the law to bring the deception it had been perpetuating since Eve, to its climax. It used the law to perform the deception of history, which showed more than had ever been shown before how sinful humanity was.

By the commandment the Devil deceived humanity into believing not merely that God's judgment wasn't as strong as they thought (as he did with Eve), but instead he deceived humanity into using God's judgment against God himself. Israel did this whenever they boasted about the law. They did it every time that thought that doing a good work earned them a wage. But they did it supremely in the greatest sin of history, the crucifixion of God's own Son.

This was legalism brought to its climax. They rejected the cornerstone and it became a stumbling block (9:33; 1 Peter 2:7-8). They had a zeal for God, a zeal for keeping the law, but this was not according to knowledge of the truth and so they did not submit to God's righteousness in the person of Christ but instead they killed him (10:1-3)! They condemned the perfect obedient son using the very law that should have led them to accept him. They were deceived like Eve was into thinking that they could take the place of judge over God, instead of letting God judge them. But they increased the trespass because where as Eve had just rejected God's law and asserted her authority, the Jewish leaders had used God's law itself to assert theirs.

However that judgment was shown to be a lie by God's raising of Christ from the dead for his justification (1 Timothy 3:16). He 'was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead' (Romans 1:3). But that justification of Jesus was also our justification if we see ourselves judged in his death by being baptised into it (4:5). We too can share in his declaration to be a child of God. We too can share in his new resurrection life.

• Further thoughts on reading Romans: Reading Romans backwards

What do you think? Does that make sense of the text? My particular concern might be that it reads the truth/lie as belief/rejection of the judgment of God against sin, when the connected promise should also be in there as well. Some of the passages seem to fit the latter better than the former.