Romans 2:6-11: First Question

Being that the responses to my last post on this passage were so overwhelming . . . eh hem . . . I thought I’d go ahead and post some attempts at answering my own questions.

1) Being self-seeking leads to God’s wrath, but isn’t doing good to gain glory, honor, and immortality self-seeking? Maybe we can best answer this question with another question. Is it selfish of me to seek for a happy marriage? The philosopher Kant would say yes, and that such motives are not truly altruistic. Only when you have absolutely no self interest are you acting morally. Thankfully, the Bible emphatically does not take us in this direction. It says things like “He who loves his wife loves himself”(Ephesians 5:28). This is an obvious appeal to the “self” as motivation for loving another, my wife. Even when Scripture declares “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others”(Philippians 2:4) notice that self-interest is assumed but not condemned. Don’t get me wrong. This is certainly no modern self-esteem message: “Before you love others, you must first love yourself.” Self-interest is not promoted; it is assumed. But it is assumed as natural and proper. The first command given to man doesn’t say, “Do not eat of the tree in the middle of the garden just because I said so," but “Do not eat . . . or you will surely die.”

Clearly, then, biblical self-denial is not to have no thought of the self. This is good news, for Kant’s ethics are abysmally depressing. Telling my wife that I will love her because it’s the right thing to do may sound moral, but I can tell you she sure isn’t going to like it. Nor should she. Biblical self-denial is not the rejection of personal pleasure; it is the choosing of greater pleasures over lesser ones. That is ultimately what is at the heart of love. To love someone is to delight in them, or at least the two are so intimately linked that they can’t possibly be separated.

So back to Romans. I hope I’ve shown that to work for the greater pleasures of glory, honor, peace, and immortality is not necessarily selfish. It could be, of course. Kind of like working for a really big paycheck. My boss may like my good work ethic, but it is hardly altruistic. So I suppose we have to define what exactly “glory, honor, peace, and immortality” truly are. They aren’t quite like my paycheck. We don’t have to read very far to get some hints as to what Paul is talking about. In Romans 5:1, Paul says through Christ we get “peace with God,” and then in 5:2 he speaks of the “hope of the glory of God.” We could go more in depth, but I don’t think we need to at this point. All you have to see is that “glory, honor, etc.” are derivative. That is, they come from God. Or more precisely, they are found in God. Therefore, to seek for glory in Paul’s mind is to seek for God as God. Those thirsting for God are those who seek for glory, honor, peace, and immortality, which I think Paul sums up as “eternal life.”

For clarity sake, I will repeat the point. Acting for personal benefit is not necessarily selfish. The door, then, is open to a selfless search for personal benefits. Sounds radical, I know, but I don’t think it is quite as radical as you might think. We are, to use some imagery I got from C.S. Lewis, created to be leeches on a host, namely God. All glory, honor, joy, life, peace, etc. is found in him. Therefore, we are most human and most righteousness living like leeches upon his grace. “Doing good” then should not be seen as a payment for some eternal prize, but as joyfully sucking down the fluids of grace provided by our host. Maybe I can say that a bit more tastefully. We pursue good works not to barter a better deal, but to participate in the real life found in God.

That’s all for now. I’ll deal with the second question later.