Journal: Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
Volume: JBMW 07:2 (Fall 2002)
Article: Why God Inspired Hard Texts (Romans 3:1-8)
Author: John Piper

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JBMW 7:2 (Fall 2002) p. 79

Why God Inspired Hard Texts
(Romans 3:1-8)

John Piper

Senior Pastor, Bethlehem Baptist Church
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Editor’s Note: The following sermon was preached by John Piper at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on March 14, 1999.

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the benefit of circumcision? Great in every respect. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God. What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? May it never be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written, “that You may be justified in Your words, and prevail when You are judged.” But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is He? (I am speaking in human terms.) May it never be! For otherwise, how will God judge the world? But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I also still being judged as a sinner? And why not say (as we are slanderously reported and as some claim that we say), “Let us do evil that good may come”? Their condemnation is just. (Rom. 3:1–8, NASB updated)

Last week I tried to lead us through an exposition of this text and how the argument of Paul flows. We tried to get inside his head and think his thoughts after him. We heard behind his own words the words of his objectors and how he answered them. And we tried to see how this paragraph fits in with his overall purpose in the letter. So I am not going to repeat all of that here this morning.

Instead, I want to do something I haven’t done before in the eleven months we have been working through this letter. I want to step back from the text and ask: what are some of the implications - for life and culture and history and worship - of the sheer fact that God has given Christianity a Book and a text like this and built the Church on it?

Christianity Is Declared through a Book - through Words

What was unleashed in the world by the fact that Christianity not only declares salvation from sin through faith in Jesus, but that Christianity also builds its message and its ministry and its mission on a Book, the Bible, and on books in the Bible like the Letter to the Romans, and on paragraphs in the letter like Romans 3:1–8? What personal and cultural and historical impulses were unleashed on the world when God inspired Paul to write a paragraph like Romans 3:1–8 the way he did?

Now you may ask, Why are you asking that question h...

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