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THE KING’S BUSINESS
and glory and honor and peace if we work good, there is no missing tribulation and anguish if we work evil. Sunday, June 10 . Rom. 2 : 12 - 16 . This passage is one of the most fre quently and most grossly abused passages of Scripture. Many take it as declaring another way of salvation than through faith in Jesus Christ, namely, salvation “by living up to the light of nature.” They would have us believe that Paul here meant to teach that if the heathen did “by nature the things of the law,” he would be saved by his thus doing, but such an interpreta tion overlooks entirely the context, and the point that Paul is aiming at. The entire purpose of the passage from chapter one, verse eighteen, to chapter three, verse twenty, is to show that "every mouth is stopped” and all the world” brought under the condemnation of God,” and that “out of the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight.” (ch. 3:20). In the passage before us Paul is not for a moment showing how heathen are saved by ' “keeping the law written in their heart,” but how all the heathen are justly con demned for not “keeping the law written in their heart,” just as all the Jews are justly condemned for not keeping the law from Moses, and the conclusion of the whple matter is not that some are saved without Christ by living up to the light of nature, but that “there is none righteous, no, not even one” and that “there is no difference, for all have sinned” and that if any one is saved it can only be “as a free gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” and that the one condition of receiving this redemption is faith in Jesus Christ (cf. ch. 3:10, 22, 23, 24, 26). We should also note the fact that when God does judge, it will not be merely out ward acts of men that He judges, but their secret thoughts and desires as well. When the day comes when God judges not merely man’s outward acts but his secret thoughts and imaginations and desires, who will stand? Certainly not one will stand
wrath and misery is the- refusal to believe the Son (John 3:36). Eternal life is for some, viz. those who “by steadfastness in well doing seek for glory and honor and in c o rru p tio n b u t for others there is “wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish.” These are for “every soul of man that worketh evil.” It is very evi dent from Paul’s words here that the oppo site of “eternal life” is not annihilation and that it is not unconscious existence, but it is “tribulation and anguish,1” that is, conscious suffering. These words express the crush ing, bewildering agony of conscious tor ment of soul. A very expressive and sug gestive description of those who are to endure these is found in verse eight: ( 1 ) “Them that are factious,”, i.e., devoted to a party or opinion (in this case their own opinion as opposed to the revealed mind of God). (2) “Them that obey not the truth.” Truth is not something that we are at liberty to treat as we will, we must believe and obey or ,else perish. (3) “Them that obey unrighteousness,” i.e., yield the will to unrighteousness. Every man yields his will to either the truth or to unrighteousness (cf. ch. 6:13, 16, 17, 19). To yield to the former means “eter nal life” ; to yield to the latter means “wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish.” As the Jew had the first oppor tunity, he will also be the first in the judg ment, but the Gentile will not escape. Saturday, June p. Rom. 2 : 9 - 11 : There shall be “glory and honor and peace to every man that worketh good,” but let not any man who rejects Jesus Christ fancy that he “worketh good,” for he is violating God’s first and all-important demand upon him. The Jew will be first in the blessing as in the judgment. But the Gentiles will not be in the least over looked. There is no respect of persons with God. It matters not with God whether one be Jew or Gentile, American or African, learned or illiterate, rich or poor, He deals upon the same principles with all; there is no missing eternal life
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