If This Be So What Advantage Is There In Being A Jew? (3:1-8).
In a series of questions Paul now takes up the points just made, the claimed advantage of being a Jew (Romans 2:17-20) and the claimed advantage of circumcision (Romans 2:25-29). His reply is that both are true simply because it was to the Jews that God had entrusted the oracles of God. It was through those oracles that man could know righteousness. They had thus had the advantage of the given word of God, first through Moses and then through the prophets, for over a thousand years. It should have made them aware of God's righteousness (Romans 3:4) and of their own unrighteousness (Romans 3:5; Romans 3:10-18) and of the need therefore to genuinely seek God's way of atonement, initially through the system of offerings and sacrifices, and now through the One Whose death has made provision for ‘the sins done aforetime' (Romans 3:25). In Romans 3:10-18 he will use those same oracles in order to prove that all are under sin, whether they be Jew or Greek.
However, underlying what he says here is an important principle. He is not just wanting to bring the Jews into the common condemnation but is also underlining the fact of God's pure righteousness which must deal with sin as it is. Nothing must be allowed to evade the fact that God must call it into account and punish it accordingly, and that was true for all, both Jew and Gentile (Romans 3:9).
An important question to be solved in these verses is as to when Paul is speaking and when it is his opponent. But even when that is decided we must recognise that in the last analysis it is Paul who has framed the questions being asked. Thus we can see Paul as teaching even in the very questions.
The question and answer method is interesting. It occurs throughout the first half of the letter (Romans 3:1 ff; Romans 4:1 ff; Romans 6:1 ff; Romans 6:15 ff; Romans 7:7 ff) and suggests that Paul has vividly in mind his arguments with Jews and Christian Judaisers who had brought these charges against him (something specifically stated in Romans 3:8). He wants them to be nailed down once and for all.