17 Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God,
Romans 2:17-20, ESV
18 and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law,
19 and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness,
20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.
The Jews Paul is addressing had every reason to feel confident before God. He chose them to carry His law to the world. Through this law, they knew the will of God and were able to distinguish the things that matter. No one could argue that they did not have an advantage over ALL other nations. But what they failed to acknowledge (as we’ll see in the coming weeks) is that the law, this advantage, their privilege was a GIFT from God!
“That revelation was never meant to be the private treasure of one nation, which it could withhold from all others. Israel was to bring the light of God into the world’s darkness; it was to share its revelation with the multitudes that did not have it. But this could be done only in a spirit of humility, always bearing in mind that the Jew who had received the revelation would have been just as much in the dark as any Gentile, were it not for what God had done. There should accordingly be exultation in what God had done, not in the Jew’s privileged position. The trouble with assuming that one is a guide to others is that it so easily leads to the assumption that one is naturally superior to them. But the Jew had no natural superiority, and Paul complains accordingly.” Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 133.
With every gift, we have a choice. Will we proceed with humility or with pride?