⁷ But if through my lie the truth of God abounded to His glory, why am I also still being judged as a sinner? ⁸ 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.

To the Jewish way of thinking at that time, the Gentiles will of course be judged, because they are outside of the covenant community of God, without the Law of Moses. But Paul has demonstrated that if Jews are not judged, then no one will be judged (“For otherwise, how will God judge the world?” vs. 6). This causes a huge dilemma for the Jewish objector to Paul’s gospel, for if the Gentiles are not judged, then what’s the point of the Jewish covenant (in their thinking) if the Jews will be judged as being unrighteous just like the Gentiles? Where is the specialness in that? The Jews have always seen themselves as exceptional in the world of humanity, and they are. But that does not make them exempt from God’s righteous judgment!

Against this, Paul anticipates further objection from his imagined “Jewish objectors.” We say “imagined” because at this juncture in the letter Paul is speaking to those with a Jewish mindset, a way of thinking he knows very well from his pre-conversion position among the best of the religious elite: “I lived as a Pharisee according to the strictest sect of our religion” (Acts 26:5). Paul raises a new, most natural Jewish objection, which essentially is this: “If as you say, Paul, that God is true and that we Jews are liars just like the Gentiles, and if our sin provides a backdrop against which God is seen more clearly, then why does God find fault in me for my unrighteousness? Is not my sin like the black velvet cloth on which a diamond is laid to show off its brilliance?”

Paul answers this question with another question, by bringing out into the open a personal criticism against his teaching. Some had twisted Paul’s words, cleverly it seemed, to suggest that his teaching encouraged people to sin. That, they thought, was the logical conclusion. Paul, however, casts his assessment of such treatment back on those diabolical interlocutors. Obviously, such a criticism was meant to be a discussion stopper, an end of conversation. “Paul was obviously wrong, for look where his thinking logically leads!” Paul gives them no quarter, those who deliberately tried to undermine the truth with absurd, illogical extensions of his argument. Those objectors might hold sway with those who reject the knowledge of God with their clever debate techniques, but they deserve the harshest of censure. Their argument is not worthy of an otherwise civil discussion or response. “Their condemnation is just.”

Lord, I don’t want to use any excuse for my sin, for You are a righteous God.