Romans – The Play Part 1

Paul lifted his face and stared at those seated in the vast arena, then called out to his left. “You Gentiles walked into this courtroom pleading ignorance, but you knew God. You saw the Lord of creation. You saw Him in His creation, but you turned away from what you saw. You turned so far away from Him that your mind became a study in the ridiculous. You began to worship statues of animals and of men, instead of considering the God whom you knew was there.

Well, here. Here is the consequence of your folly. God gave up on you. God simply turned you loose to let you taste all the desires that were in your sinful hearts. And what was in your hearts? Sexual impurity. That’s what was in your hearts, and you degraded your bodies with one another. You exchanged the truth of God for a lie. You even began serving creatures—creatures which God created—instead of worshiping the Creator of those creatures. This, you wise ones, is pure insanity.

I repeat: God gave you up, Gentiles. You did all sorts of things that were simply sinful lust, and then you justified what you did with great feats of intellectual gymnastics. Your men stopped having sex with women. You began having sex with one another. You became perverted, and your bodies drew the penalty and the consequences of your actions. Diogenes, you had knowledge of God. Gentiles, hear me. You knew. You knew. Yet you decided that you knew something that was really not worth knowing. So, God gave up on you. And He gave you over to a mind which was not intellectual at all, but a mind that was depraved. Hear me, heathen!”

Paul’s voice now rang out clear across the coliseum. “Every one of you is filled with every kind of weakness, every kind of evil, every kind of greed and malice. Your thoughts are soaked in envy, deceit, spite, and yes, even murder. You heathen are gossipers and slanderers. You are arrogant, and you are God-haters. Furthermore, you are inventors. You invent new ways to do evil. And beyond all that, if that is not enough, you even disobey your parents. Heathen!”

With that, Paul slammed his fist down on the table. “You have no respect for honor. There is no mercy in you. Many of you have lost your natural affections. Furthermore, you knew that God said that if you did these things, you must die. That did not matter to you one iota. You continued to live in degraded immorality, and then you even applauded those who did these things with you. You cheered when you saw that you had influenced others to be as depraved as you are. You cheered.” With these words, the Jewish side of the court broke out in wild applause. Raspusen jumped to his feet, clapping his hands over his head. The Jews, as one, roared their approval. Paul lowered his head slightly. No one heard him as he whispered, “Yes, just exactly as I expected you to do, Raspusen. You Hebrews have fallen right into my trap.”

Paul raised his hand to request silence. “Your Honor, if it pleases the court, I would like to bring the first indictment.” With these words, the Jews, anxious to hear the indictment against the Gentiles, leaned forward expectantly. “Your Honor, with this evidence, I would like to indict—” Paul paused. He filled his lungs with air, whirled around, pointed at the Jews, and veritably roared at them, “Your Honor, with this evidence, I now indict…the Jews!”

For a moment, there was stunned silence. No one moved. Then suddenly the Jews were on their feet. Raspusen, his fist swinging over his head, was screaming, “Jews! How dare you! What does he mean?” The judge rapped furiously for order. Paul gleefully walked over to the side of the Jews. “Oh yes, Raspusen, yes, by all means—yes. By your very mouth, Raspusen, you announced that you agreed with God’s own words. Judgment comes first to the Jews. Only after judgment has fallen on the Jews does judgment come unto the heathen.”

Paul turned to the judge again. “The Jews are the first to be indicted, Your Honor.”

Raspusen roared, “Your Honor, Paul is out of order! He accused the Gentiles but indicted the Jews. Why, Your Honor, why? We demand to know why! These charges, which Paul made, were toward Gentiles. The conduct he described was the conduct of those unclean, uncircumcised infidels over there!” The judge’s only reply was to motion for Paul to continue. Paul calmly walked to the center of the room. His response came in quiet and unhurried words.

“Ah, Your Honor. Gentiles, Jews—all of you—please listen. Everything that I have just described, all the evil, all the wickedness, all the perversion, all the sin that you Gentiles have done—every act which you have committed—” Paul stopped, then slowly turned to face the Jews. “Every evil act the Gentiles have committed, you Jews have also committed. You Jews—you have done everything the Gentiles have done.” With that, pandemonium broke out. The Gentiles roared their approval as they moved as one to their feet, thrusting out their fingers and crying as they did to the Jews—a living sea of millions of uncircumcised Gentiles crying in unison: “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Then the chant changed to: “It is true! It is true! It is true!”

The judge wildly banged his gavel. Slowly, the crowd silenced. Nonetheless, here and there, a clear voice could be heard crying out to the other side: “I have seen the Jews do this very thing. I’ve done these things with the Jews….”One Gentile woman jumped to her feet and cried, “It was a Jew who taught me to do these very evils.” Four counselors of the Gentiles jumped to their feet. “Yes, we do these things. We admit it. You Jews do them too. But you do them in hiding. Then you swear you’ve never done them, nor will you ever, ever admit one of your sins.” The whole of the Gentile throng again picked up the chant, “It is true! It is true! It is true!”

The Jews rose to their feet, screaming, “No! No! No, it is not true! We have never done these things.” Several minutes of chaos reigned before the judge was able to bring the room back to order. Furiously, he motioned for Paul to continue. Again, Paul walked directly over to where Raspusen was. “Raspusen, there is a holy name, the holiest name of all, the very name of God, specifically the name of the God of the Jews.” Paul looks back to the Gentiles. “You Gentiles blaspheme that name, do you not? All over the world, you blaspheme that holy, holy name. Why, Raspusen? Raspusen, why did the Gentiles go out of their way to blaspheme the holy name of the God of the Jews?”