Pride and Prejudice in the Human Heart (Romans 2:17–24)
What does the Bible say about spiritual pride? See how Romans 2:17–24 exposes religious boasting: our privileges are meant to humble us, not harden us.
Introduction
Illustration: In Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy walks tall with pride in his social status, wealth, and family name. This is why he looks down on the Bennet family. Elizabeth Bennet, on the other hand, is full of prejudice—quick to judge Darcy based on his aloofness and false reports about who he is. Only when both recognize and conquer their respective faults can they understand one another and fall in love.
Paul knew something about pride and prejudice. These aren’t just literary devices, but spiritual realities in every human heart. Romans 1:18–3:20 builds the case that every one of us—worldly pagans, moral critics, religious insiders—stands unrighteous before God and must be clothed in the righteousness of another: Jesus the Messiah of Israel, the Savior of the world.
In our passage, 2:17–24, Paul turns the spotlight on his own people—but if you call yourself a “Jew” (v. 17). He exposes their pride and prejudice towards Gentiles. They saw themselves as spiritually superior. But Paul says: you’re under the same righteous condemnation as the “godless Gentiles” you look down on!
Transition: Having stripped the mask off the moralist in vv. 1–16, Paul now pulls off the religious insider’s mask as well.
Thesis
Religious pride and prejudice becomes spiritual peril when we boast in the law but break the law.
Israel’s Pride (vv. 17–20)
Children: what’s pride? Pride is thinking so highly of yourself that you start bragging to make yourself look great. “I was so good looking back in the day; I was the man in my sport; I was at the top of my class in math.” Sometimes your head gets so big—like a balloon—you can’t fit it through the door. And what happens when a balloon gets too big? It pops!
Israel’s balloon of spiritual pride was enormous. They boasted about their righteousness. Paul lists six boasts:[1]
1. Their Name (v. 17)
They boasted in being “call[ed]…a Jew—a name no other nation on earth enjoyed. ’Ioudaioscould also be understood as Judean—still a boast. His point is going to be evident: they are Jews in name only, not deeds.[2]
2. Their Law (v. 17)
They relied on (ἐπαναπαύω) or found rest in the law. God gave it to them unlike any other nation; it was theirs, and they presumed that possessing it made them righteous. Deuteronomy 4:8 became a mere boast while they didn’t obey: “what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law?”
3. Their God (v. 17)
They boasted in God—the only true God—not the idols of Egypt, Canaan, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, or Rome. The Shema, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4) wasn’t a creed to preserve and profess but a prejudicial dividing line.
4. Their Knowledge (v. 18)
They knew God’s will because they had God’s Word. Psalm 147:19–20 had become a source of pride rather than praise:
“He declares his word to Jacob,
his statutes and rules to Israel.
He has not dealt thus with any other nation;
they do not know his rules.”
As John Calvin said, they had the “approval of judgment” but not the “approval of choice.” They could analyze the good but not actually do it. Rules for thee, not for me.
5. Their Discernment (v. 18)
They approve[d] what is excellent by being instructed from the law. Not necessarily doing what is excellent—Paul is careful here—but knowing what excellence is. Remember verses 6–16: most Jews merely heard the law while some Gentiles did it.
6. Their Ministry (vv. 19–20)
They were confident they were:
a guide to the blind
a light to those who are in darkness
an instructor of the foolish
a teacher of children.
Blind, in darkness, foolish, children is precisely how they labeled the Gentiles. Their role to be guide, light, instructor, teacher wasn’t wrong in itself since God intended Israel to be a light to open the blinded eyes of the nations (Isa. 42:6, 49:6). But they wore their role without the reality.
Notice how external all of this is. They possessed the privileges but didn’t grasp their purpose. These blessings were meant to humble them—not make them haughty—and lead them to the Savior, not to themselves. But they were relying and or resting in mere possession of the law.
Application: Let me speak personally—and for all of us. I have the same pride. I boast in the name “Calvinist” or “Reformed” as if wearing the badge gets me backstage access to God! I rely on our tradition, our confessions, our church order, our liturgy—and forget that these are supposed to lead me to back to their source in Scripture! I boast that I know who God is because I’ve read a mountain of theology—forgetting that the mountain doesn’t save me! I boast that I know his will because my theology is “the most consistent theology on the market!” I boast in my discernment because I’ve been instructed in the Heidelberg Catechism! I boast that I’m a guide to the theologically blind, a light to those in ecclesiastical darkness, an instructor of the biblically foolish, a teacher of the spiritually young! And in all my pride, I am wrong, wrong, wrong!
Let me put it positively: With all the privileges in the Reformed tradition, confessions, church order, and liturgy, you and I need a heart as big as our head. We here at OURC need to be known for having as big a heart as a head. If we believe in a big God and say, “Salvation is of the Lord,” and ultimately that he will make all things new, then show it with a big heart for the lost!
Don’t rest on your laurels. Paul lists Israel’s privileges because they were gifts—not grounds for Israel’s pride. They’re meant to humble us, not harden us! In themselves, they’re insufficient to make you righteous before God.
Transition: Israel boasted in privilege. Now Paul shows how far they fell.
Israel’s Fall (vv. 21–24)
Paul recites back to Israel their six boasts that led to their fall; then he drops the hammer of the law upon them:
You…who teach others, do you not teach yourself? (v. 21) The instructors were uninstructed themselves!
You preach against stealing, do you steal? You…say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? (vv. 21–22) Paul’s point isn’t that every Jew committed all of these sins outwardly. His point is that the law judges what’s in the heart as much as what’s done by the hands. He’s applying the internal, spiritual power of the law Jesus taught in Matthew 5:
You may not steal with your hands but you covet with your heart.
You may not commit adultery physically but you lust in your heart.
You may not bow to idols, but you’ve either robbed God by withholding what belongs to him (cf. Mal. 3:8), literally robbed pagan temples and thus become unclean, or you’ve benefitted from the plunder of war in the marketplace.
Paul followed Jesus in teaching sin isn’t just what you do—it’s what you desire.
Then comes Paul’s devastating summary: You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law (v. 23).[3] In doing this, they continue to those whom the prophet Ezekiel rebuked: As it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (v. 24 cf. Ezek. 36:20).
One parallel passage is in Isaiah 52:5, where the Gentiles saw Israel in exile and thought, “Their God must not be much.” Their hypocrisy didn’t simply condemn them—it defamed God. They protected their God’s name on their lips, but profaned it by their deeds. They were supposed to praise God; but they caused many to mouths to curse him.[4]
Application: In our terms, don’t sit around on your phone all day debating theology on social media or discussion boards, lecturing others on the glories of the Reformed view of whatever—only to break the ninth commandment over and over again your tone, your accusations, and your uncharitable assumptions! The world may not understand covenant theology, but it understands hypocrisy. When God’s people don’t resemble God, his reputation suffers.
Transition: If religious people fail…if we who know better don’t do better… what hope is there?
Bridging to the Gospel
What are you resting in today? Your works or Christ’s?
Martin Luther said Paul’s purpose here was
“to humble the proud and to bring them to a full knowledge of their evil condition; to teach them that they need grace; to destroy their own righteousness, so that in deep humility they seek after Christ, confess their sins and so accept grace and be saved.”[5]
Are you humbled today by seeing the pride and prejudice in your heart? Do you see why you need to earnestly and passionately seek Christ’s righteousness to be your own?
John Calvin commented on our passage:
“No one who is seriously touched or moved by the fear of God will ever dare to raise up his eyes to heaven, since the more he strives to attain true righteousness, the clearer he will discern how far he is from it.”[6]
The law doesn’t just expose our sin—it exposes our self-deception.
The law exposes us. The gospel embraces us.
Your righteousness will never save you. Christ’s righteousness always will.
And the only safe place for proud, prejudiced hearts is kneeling at the cross.
Conclusion: Look to Christ and Live
Paul’s purpose here is not to crush you and leave you in the dust, but to awaken you from spiritual death.
He’s not seeking to shame you, but to shepherd you.
He doesn’t want to leave you hopeless, but drive you to the only hope.
Look to Christ today. Rest in him.
The one place where the prideful and prejudiced can find pardon is at the cross.
[1] Haldane, 189. Kruse lists five. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 145.
[2] Origen, 139.
[3] Paul he had a younger contemporary, Rabbi Joachim ben Zakkai, who wrote approximately ten years after Paul’s letter to the Romans about the increase of murder, adultery, sexual immorality, commercial and judicial corruption, sectarian strife, and more. To be a Jew was a byword. Philip, 42.
[4] Theodoret of Cyrus, 58.
[5] Luther, 63.
[6] Calvin, 55.