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Keeping the law inwardly, parts 3 and 4

Lynne Baab • Tuesday March 17 2026

Keeping the law inwardly, parts 3 and 4

Overall theme for the next few months: God’s law is love

Lesson 5: Keeping the law inwardly, parts 3 and 4 (Romans 2:12-29, parts 1 and 2 are here)

Key verse: Real circumcision is a matter of the heart — it is spiritual and not literal. Romans 2:29

3. Faith and Actions

Christians have long debated the relationship between faith and actions. The apostle Paul has already noted in Romans 1:17, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” Our actions still matter, as Paul will explain in Romans 6:1-14. In Romans 2, Paul is laying a foundation for the significance of our actions by indicating that what we do reflects what is in our hearts.

The word “heart” is used more than 800 times in the Bible. It refers to the place in our bodies where we experience emotions — similar to our use today — but also to the place where we think and make decisions. The word “brain” is never used in the Bible, and “mind” is used most often in phrases like “changed his mind.” When we imagine God giving us a heart of flesh that desires right actions, we can picture God’s work in our emotions, thoughts, and decision-making process.

“A new heart I will give you,” God says to the people of Israel, speaking through the prophet Ezekiel. Hearts of stone are replaced by hearts of flesh, filled with God’s Spirit. These hearts of flesh will enable us to obey God (Ezekiel 36:26-27). Paul argues in Romans 2 that God sometimes gives these valuable, tender hearts of flesh to Gentiles. When someone who doesn’t know God instinctively acts consistently with God’s values, they “show that what the law requires is written on their hearts” (verse 15).

The people of Israel thought they were obeying God simply by being circumcised, but Paul argues that “real circumcision is a matter of the heart” (Romans 2:29). Living as if we belong to God, and seeking connection to God, is not a matter of a ceremonial action that happens only once in a man’s life, usually when he is a baby. Both men and women allow the Holy Spirit to write God’s law on our hearts, so that we can know what is good in an ongoing, daily life of obedience to God.

Because our actions flow from what we feel, think, and decide, our actions are significant in God’s sight. According to Paul’s teaching in Romans 3, our actions cannot earn us righteousness before God because we simply cannot totally avoid sin. However, our actions reveal our hearts, in the biblical understanding of heart, and God cares profoundly about what we feel, how we think, how we make decisions, and the actions that flow from those inner realities. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

What do you see as the connection between our hearts, in the broadest sense of the word, and our actions?

4. Stepping into the world

We grow up in families, communities, and classrooms where we learn about right and wrong. We become adults and try to figure out what we personally believe is right and wrong. At some point, we begin to evaluate our sense of right and wrong in the light of God’s truth in the Bible.   

Human beings love dichotomies and binaries. We seem to be wired to instinctively view the world in black and white terms. If this is good, then its opposite must be bad. Some Christians, as they begin to try to figure out what Jesus teaches about right and wrong, fall into the pit of perfectionism and legalism. They try to earn God’s approval by doing the right thing all the time. Perhaps they learned perfectionism in their family of origin, or perhaps they feel comforted when they know they have obeyed the details of what is expected of them.

Other Christians perceive the overarching message of the Bible to be that God is our savior, full of grace towards vulnerable humans and the whole creation. If living by grace is good, then trying to earn God’s approval through what we do is bad. This statement of a dichotomy happens to be true, but sometimes Christians then overemphasize the second half of the dichotomy. If I don’t have to earn God’s approval through my actions, then my actions don’t really matter. As long as I trust in God’s grace, I can do whatever I want.

In Romans, Paul builds a detailed argument that Christians are called to live by God’s grace in a life of faith. This grace-filled life involves drawing near to God daily, learning from God about what really matters in life. Faith involves examining our values, what we believe to be right and wrong, and growing in aligning our values with Jesus’s teaching. Living by faith includes acting on what we know to be right. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). Our words and actions flow out of our feelings, thoughts, and decisions. 

Faith involves allowing the Holy Spirit to give us hearts of flesh that can receive God’s grace and walk in love. People just like us aren’t the only ones to receive hearts of flesh. As Paul points out in Romans 2, sometimes unexpected people show signs that God’s heart-changing Spirit has been working in them. We can be on the lookout for God’s transforming work inside us, as well as in the lives of people very different from us.

In what ways have you experienced God changing your heart? Think of some examples of the ways your actions changed as a result of that transformation within you.

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Next week: Finding life and freedom. Illustration by Dave Baab: Daejeon Park, Seattle.

Previous posts about the heart:

This lesson appeared in the Fall 2023 edition of The Present Word adult Bible study curriculum published by the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Used with permission.

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