"What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just. What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God."
In today's quote, Paul continues to establish that, in reality, there was never a difference between the Jew and the Gentile other than that the Jews were specifically chosen as the vessel by which the grace of God would be delivered to all mankind. God knew from the beginning that the Jews would fail under the Law.
Paul said, in essence however, that even if many the Jews failed God, that that in itself, did not mean that God's plan for the redemption of mankind had also failed. All mankind, as Paul herein states, have completely failed God. "There is none righteous, no, not one."
However, the failure of the Jews to obey the Law perfectly demonstrated the need for and paved the way for the coming of the promised Messiah. Jesus, being the only begotten Son of God (God in human form), was the only one capable of living in strict obedience to the Law and thereby being the required perfect sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. Jesus, by His perfection, fulfilled the entirety of the Law.
God's prophets and all those faithful ancient Jews who did all they could to obey the laws of God and who kept the faith that God would eventually provide a redeemer, receive eternal life just as we do today, by faith only. They had faith in God's promise to send a Redeemer just as we, today, have faith that Jesus Christ crucified, was that promised Redeemer.~
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