³ What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it? ⁴ 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.”

Inconsistent lives of believers do not trump what is true about God. Which is a more reliable source of truth: God or the evident behavior of human beings, who have been given His Word? The failure of God’s people does in fact show fundamental truth about God—that we are all sinners, even those who have received the true message of God, and so He is justified in judging us!

The problem with us “moderns” (the same as the Jews of Paul’s day) is that we want to think of God as a benevolent deity who goes easy on our human errors and shortcomings. We don’t want to see ourselves as complete failures (despite what Jeremiah 17:9 says). Human religions always compete for validation based on how well they can prompt humans to conform to whatever human ideals are in vogue for the day. The religion that produces “better” people must be the better religion, and therefore have better gods. In the ancient world this meant the nations or people groups that had military victory must have had the greater gods, because that people group produced better warriors.

Today, religions and even Christianity are judged by the prevailing human ideals, the greatest of which is “Tolerance.” If a Christian is not tolerant but judgmental of others who don’t live by his moral code, then it is assumed the Christian (or Jewish) God he believes in must be invalid because He is “unfaithful” to the accepted human values. But such a philosophy of religion (as we may call it) fails to consider that human nature is fundamentally flawed, especially in our view of the Creator God, who designed us in His image. We have sinned and fall short of His standard, yet think we can sit in judgment over Him. Our failure, rather than proving God is unfaithful, proves that we are the ones who are unfaithful!

Is it not interesting that Paul here alludes to the words of King David, the Jewish hero of faith, who in his confession after his adulterous affair with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah prayed: “Against You [God], You only, I have sinned…so that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge” (Ps 51:4)? If David understood this, then all Jews should be truthful about their own blind self-righteousness. “Behold, You [God] desire truth in the innermost being…” (Ps 51:6).

Lord, I confess my own self-righteousness in thinking I am morally better than my unbelieving neighbor.