Professing Christians and "Church Members"
commenting on Romans 2:17-29, and 3:1-8 William Newell wrote:
...So much for the Jew who was the "religious" man, when Paul wrote Romans. But the "religious" man today is the "professing Christian," and "church-membership" as they call it, has taken the place, in the thought of Christendom, of the Jew's consciousness of belonging to the favored Israelitish race.
If we should thus apply this passage (17-29), must it not read something like this?
"If thou bearest the name of a Christian, and restest on having the gospel, and gloriest in God, and knowest His will, and approvest the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the gospel; and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, having in the gospel the form of knowledge and of the truth" – Then would follow the searching questions of verses 21 and 22; for do we not know teachers that teach others, but refuse to follow their own teaching? And preachers that denounce stealing, but are accused by the world of being themselves money-grabbers? So it would read, "Thou who gloriest in the gospel, through thy disobedience to the gospel, dishonorest thou God? The name of God is blasphemed among non 'church-members' because of you! Church-membership* indeed profiteth if thou be an obeyer of the gospel; but if you be a refuser of a gospel-walk, thy church-membership' is become non 'church-membership.' If therefore a non 'church-member' obey the gospel, shall not his non 'church-membership' be reckoned for 'church-membership'? And shall not non 'church-members,' if they obey the gospel, judge thee, who with the letter and 'church-membership' art a refuser of a gospel-walk? For he is not a Christian who is one outwardly, nor is that 'church-membership' which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Christian who is one inwardly; and 'church-membership' is that of the heart, in the spirit not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God."
...God's great announcement of these principles of His throne is given to awaken men out of their false hopes about themselves, unto the truth about themselves; and is to be regarded as a description of God's judgment, as it must be, – in order that men may be aroused, and not refuse His truth. But do not confuse Romans Two with Revelation Twenty! At the Judgment Day there will be no such preaching and reasoning with me as Paul here is doing, but damnation only – "according to their works–the things written in the books."
- - - - - - - - - -* We repeatedly call attention to the fact which every student of Scripture discovers, that believers are not known in Scripture as members of a local assembly, but members of the Body of Christ (Eph. 5:30): "members of Christ" (1 Cor. 6:15); and "members one of another" (Rom. 12:5). This is the only membership found in Scripture.
But if we professing Christians consign this whole passage [3:1-8] to the Jew, we fall directly into the same terrible trap. Whole multitudes today in Christendom, sheltered in their imagination by the fact that they have "joined" some church, resent the very doctrines that Paul here insists on. Thousands of so-called "church-members" not only have never been brought under real conviction of sin and guilt and personal danger, but rise in anger like the Jews of Paul's day when one preaches their danger directly to them!
Now if God paid no attention whatever to the claim of the Jew to be exempt from judgment because he was a Jew, neither will He pay any attention to the claim of the "Baptist" or "Presbyterian," "Episcopalian" or "Methodist," as such. For all men are alike guilty, common sinners! What avails before a holy God the special religious names sinners may call themselves? This book of Romans will do you and me no good if we apply it to Jews or Mormons only!
Romans Verse By Verse, pages 69-71, 78
