Then what advantage has the Jew?
Then what is the advantage of being born through the line of Abraham?
Or what is the benefit of circumcision?
Or what good does it do to obey all the Laws?
Great in every respect.
There is great advantage no matter how you look at it.
First of all, they they were entrusted with the oracles of God.
God chose this particular People group to give His Law to, so they could know how to obey God and please Him, and get His blessings, before anyone else.
What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it?
So if God chose this whole group of people, what if some of them didn't put their faith and allegiance in the Lord God? Does this remove the power and authority of the Law? Of course not.
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 (Psalm 51: 4).Even though every person may be mistaken or deceived, God is Truth, and everything He says and does is True and can be trusted and relied on. And when God calls us on our disobedience, He is always just and fair.
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.)
If when we go against what God says, and we suffer the consequences of our errors, we prove that what He directed is right; and then God judges us for our disobedience, letting us receive the wrath we all deserve, if He hasn't already poured it out on Jesus on the Cross.
May it never be! For otherwise, how will God judge the World?
When we disobey and suffer the consequences, it shows that if we'd done it righteously in the first place, instead of sinning, it would have turned out better. This shows that His ways are right, they work, because that's how He designed this Earth to operate.
But when Mankind rebels against God and His ways, then we experience all the problems and troubles and sorrows of the World, because we're not following the Manufacturer's Instructions. So it's all our own fault.
And when we decide to make our own decisions, then we're considering ourselves to be our own god, and this usurps the authority God has over us. That's why we deserve His wrath. And that's why Jesus died as the Lamb of God on His altar the Cross for each of us, so we wouldn't have to die, and can live with Him forever.
But if through my lie the Truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I also still being judged as a sinner?
When we are deceived into repeating lies and things go wrong, it shows that God is right, and He gets the credit for being right, because if we followed His course we wouldn't have had the troubles and problems we are dealing with. So my disobedience shows how God is holy.
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.
Just because God gets the glory when we disobey, it doesn't mean we should disobey! God also gets the glory when we do right. He always gets the glory, because He designed it all. God wants us to follow His ways, so we won't have to get so tangled up in the briars and thorns of the World.
And people who slander Christians, saying that we think we can do anything we want because God will always forgive us, show that they don't understand God's grace or His Spirit in us. As rebels against God they will be judged righteously for their errors.
God's Word is His Book of directions on how to relate to Him and to one another, how we are to use this World for our common benefit, and how to make it right when we've messed up. He's given us every advantage so that we can enjoy all the benefits He put here for us.
God's Word gives us our whole history from before Mankind was, all the way through to after our Era of Mankind is over, with even a glimpse of the next World. And the Star of the story is Christ Jesus, our Lord God Almighty.
He told the Bible writers what to write, letting them put their own personalities into the writings. And He wrote the Ten Commandments with His finger on the tables of stone for Moses, and gave Moses all the Laws, and all the information to put into the first five Books.
He knew what He would need to do to be our Savior, so He told the people how to perform all the sacrifices, so we would recognize Him when He fulfilled them all.
God wants us to know Him, so He has revealed Himself to us, because He Loves us so much. And He wants the very best for us, to be His own children to help Him run His family business, the Kingdom. But He wants us to want to know and love Him back, so He gave us our "free" will to choose.
Knowing that we will sometimes not choose Him, but rebel instead, He made provision to redeem us, so at least some of us would be His sons and daughters. Some being a number that is uncountable! (Revelation 7: 9-10.)
O my Father, You are so good, so great, so gracious, so wise, so generous with us all! You are Almighty God the Father, who has designed and made everything that exists. And Your Son, our Lord God Almighty, and Your Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Almighty God, all as one God together created and made all the Universe and the Earth for an environment where we could live.
Then You gave us your instructions. You told Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, because if he disobeyed You he would have to be able to die, for a Savior to die in his place. But You also put the Tree of Life there for him, and if he'd eaten of that Tree, we all would live forever. So he really did have a free choice.
Now our choice is not as free as his was, because we inherited his sin-nature, which draws us away from Your good ways, into our own, flawed ones.
So You made sure we could know Your ways, in giving us all the Law, the rules and precepts and commandments and regulations, so we could order our lives in order, and not have to suffer through all the tangles we end up in when we disobey and rebel.
O Father, please prepare Your children for what You have told us is going to happen before Your Son returns. Keep us faithful through everything that will work against us, and let every weapon forged against us to fail, and be against the forger; let the one who digs the hole fall into it himself.
And when we see the thousands falling beside us, the ten thousand at our right hand, and it doesn't touch us at all (Psalm 91:7), then we will give You all the credit, the glory for all You have done!
And every eye shall see, every knee will bow, and every tongue will proclaim that Jesus Christ is our Lord God Almighty, the King of the Universe, to the eternal glory of Almighty God the Father, forever and ever. Amen.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
