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RECONCILIATION AND FAILURE OF THE LAW121
`To declare His righteousness for the passing by of the sins of the past through the forbearance of God' (Rom.
3:25 Author's translation).
This forbearance was likely to be abused, as we know, for the apostle says:
`Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness
of God leadeth thee to repentance?' (Rom. 2:4).
When Peter, enlightened by the vision as to the reconciliation, stood before Cornelius, he said:
`Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons (cf. Rom. 2:11): but in every nation he that feareth Him,
and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him' (Acts 10:34,35).
Jonah was taught something of this by God's dealings with Nineveh; and Daniel's words to Nebuchadnezzar
were:
`... break off thy sins by righteousness, and thine iniquities by shewing mercy to the poor' (Dan. 4:27).
So of Cornelius it was said:
`Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God' (Acts 10:4).
The relation between demon worship and Gentile idolatry has already come before us when considering the
teaching of 1 Corinthians. So we return to Romans 2. In the day of wrath God will render to every man according
to his deeds. Then follows a record either of fact or of fiction. Those expositors who, seeing nothing in Romans
except that which they choose to term evangelical doctrine, do not hesitate to tell us that the apostle was wrong in
what he told the Athenians, and that the verses in Romans 2 now under consideration (i.e., 7-10) are to be taken as
purely hypothetical, being stated only to be refuted: that while those verses reveal the righteous principles of God's
throne, as a matter of fact they will never come into operation, because there will be none to whom the award can be
made, `for there is none righteous, no not one'. Now while this simplifies issues tremendously, and removes all the
strain of holding, unmixed, several lines of truth together, it discounts several passages of Scripture (Acts 10, Dan.
4, and Acts 17, among others) and seems to indicate that the apostle was inspired to write a lengthy statement, and
then, when he had finished it, to put his pen through it.
Under the view we have been led to take, the reconciliation is seen to be far-reaching. It deals with sins of the
past, and we are taught in this same connection that God was not imputing their trespasses unto them. It looks
forward to the future, and Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, claims that his message not only has a provision for the
limited number of those who both heard and believed, but that it indicates something of the way in which the
redemption of Christ will apply to those, who like Nineveh and Tyre, `would have repented' had they had equal
opportunity. If under the gospel of Romans the Lord is pleased to accept the obedience of faith, He is also revealed
as willing to accept the obedience of conscience from those to whom neither law nor gospel had been given. We
must remember that the present gospel, while preached to all, brings salvation only to the elect. It is confusing
things that differ to apply church truth to the outside world. That God recognizes the limitation of responsibility is
clearly set forth in Romans 10:14,15 :
`How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom
they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be
sent?'
We need not torture ourselves nor attribute to God the most awful negation of discriminative righteousness,
when we think of the untold millions who have lived and died without one ray of light from Moses' law or Christ's
gospel. They are provided for. Faith in Christ they cannot exercise, for they never heard of him, but conscience and
creation have ever been with them:
`... if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for
circumcision?' (Rom. 2:26).
The same grace that counted Abraham's faith `for righteousness' will `count' the uncircumcision of the heathen
who observe the righteous requirement of the law `for circumcision'. If we are not prepared to admit the latter, we