Around Paul’s time, the Jews who were masters of God’s Word and frequenters of the religious institutions quietly considered themselves superior to all the irreligious folks on the outside—if you can imagine anything like that. Now, they never would have said it out loud. But they were confident that their strong involvement with the Law of Moses gave them a little extra favor with God. A shortcut to salvation, if you will. Never mind the fact that they were actively disobeying the very law they had memorized.
Part of the reason for this delusion is forgetting the basic elements of human nature that every single one of us have in common. Are human beings essentially good or essentially bad? I think if you take God’s Word seriously, you have to say it’s the latter. We are sinners by default, every one of us, and every aspect of our soul is tainted by corruption. And yet the image of God in us is not destroyed. Every human being, though thoroughly depraved, still has an inkling of eternal good. Though we are unable to reach it fully, each of us has an intrinsic yearning in our heart for the goodness, the glory, the righteousness, and the beauty of Heaven.
That’s why even unbelievers who don’t know God still so often live respectably righteous lives. As one author put it, “the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Many ignore or suppress that inkling of good altogether, but many others strive to do and fight for what they know is right. And they can’t help but know what’s right; every human heart is manufactured with the moral law of God engraved upon its very core. So it should go without saying that in the eyes of a righteous God, the atheist who inadvertently strives for divine goodness is better off than the religious zealot who couldn’t be bothered to obey his Lord’s commands.
Paul’s conclusion from this is one that his Jewish readers probably didn’t want to hear: knowing God’s commands gives no advantage, but actually doing them does. We are called not just to know a lot about righteousness or be a part of a righteous organization, but to obey our Lord and pursue a life of doing what is good—because we know what is good. And this applies to every follower of God in every age of the world. May we pursue righteousness and be found righteous in God’s sight!
