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.”

Classic confusion between truth and application. So common today, non-believers dismiss the truth of Christianity because of the inconsistent behavior of Christians. The failure of a person to live up to the truth that he preaches, while not providing a good endorsement for the truth, nonetheless does not invalidate the truth. As an example, a moralizer who knows and preaches that murder is wrong, but then goes out and kills someone, does not invalidate the moral truth that it is wrong to murder. All that does is speak to the failure of the person to live up to that code. If I paint the backyard deck of my home without first sanding the boards and applying the correct primer and then discover the paint peeling off the deck, I cannot fault the manufacturer for producing faulty paint. The problem lies not with the creator of the product but with the user of the product.

The Jews, as we saw in the previous two verses, had an advantage of being entrusted with the Word of God. How have they responded to that privilege? Not so well, for they have failed to live up to that standard. Now, does their failure to live consistently according to God’s standard invalidate “the oracles of God”? Does their failure in some way speak to the inadequacy of God or that He is not faithful to them when He judges them to be sinners like everyone else? Interestingly, the apostle uses a form of the question that expects a negative response (this is what Greek scholars call a second-class conditional statement). The question is the natural one to arise at this juncture, and Paul punctuates the response with his iconic mē gnoito or in English, “May it never be!” Translators render this phrase variously: “Not at all,” “By no means,” “Absolutely not,” “Of course not,” “Certainly not” and “God forbid.”

Since Paul obviously cannot wait for the reader to give an in-person answer, he answers the question posed. With great literary genius (and of course, inspired by the Divine author), his thrust was that the reader, if he were following closely, would end up thinking, “How could I have possibly thought otherwise? I can now see how absurd it was of me to even think of that question, which Paul knew I would have.” The failure of Jews to live by God’s law does not impugn or tarnish God’s faithfulness in any way!

Lord, thank You for anticipating and answering the illogical concerns I sometimes have as I seek to know and live out Your Word.