Welcome back to Basic Training. We have 7 weeks remaining in our study of the book of Romans after today.
Last week we looked at Romans 1:18-32 as we discussed the wickedness of man. The bad news was we determined that God’s wrath would be poured out upon the wicked. We also determined some good news, those people who are considered wicked can be saved. There is hope for the world and that hope is found in Jesus Christ.
Today we will turn our attention to Romans 2:1-16. Paul continues his discourse on man’s condition as he begins to point us to God’s righteousness.
To get us to God’s righteousness, Paul explains that the wicked person is not the only one with a problem. He explains that the moral person has problems as well.
What comes to your mind when you think of a moral person?
Someone who is nice? Someone who does good deeds? A person who doesn’t swear, drink, or chew or date girls who do? A person who goes to church? A person who tells the truth? A person who obeys the law of the land? Even moral people have problems.
Let’s pray,
Father,
Open my eyes so I can see Your truth.
Open my ears so I can hear Your voice.
Open my mind so I can understand Your Word.
And open my heart so I may receive all that You want me to receive. AMEN
1 You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism. 12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. Romans 2:1-16 NIV
Paul wastes no time getting to his point. He gives us some more bad news. Everyone struggles. The moral and the immoral but the moral man who judges someone who is not moral is in as much danger of God’s wrath as is the one who lives immorally.
Once again, as he has done in the past, Paul speaks about a principle that Jesus taught.
Jesus said, 1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:1-5 NIV
We judge ourselves when we judge others and we condemn ourselves when we condemn others.
The man we talked about last week was involved in all sorts of evil. His actions were seen by all, you could see that he was not moral.
The man that Paul is talking about now was not living like the heathen, he was not outwardly sinning. His sin was from within. He may not be committing adultery, but he had lust in his heart. He may not have stolen anything, but he coveted in his heart. He may not have killed anyone, but he hated others.
With these things in his heart, he outwardly judged others.
In the Gospels we see that Jesus puts all of these things in the same category. Sin is sin regardless of whether it is a sin of the flesh or a sin of the mind. Read Matthew 5 for more on this if you want to.
We are condemned by our judgment because none of us are perfect. I’m not perfect and you’re not perfect. No one is perfect, but we are forgiven.
God knew our need for forgiveness and sent His Son to earth to provide us that very thing. He was the sacrificial lamb who gave His life for our sins. This is what we celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter for! We celebrate the fact that Jesus came to this earth, died for our sins, and rose again so we could have the promise of eternal life.
Without God’s forgiveness we are destined for hell. We need forgiveness if we are living in sin and we need forgiveness if we are living in Christ.
This is a good argument against pre-destination which means once you are saved you are always saved. The fact is simple, Paul said, “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.”
If we don’t repent we get to experience God’s wrath. If we do repent we get to experience His righteousness.
We need to be repentant for our sins because our sins hurt God. As Christians we are going to fail from time to time. Just because everyone fails from time to time doesn’t make it right, it just proves that we need a Savior and we need forgiveness.
Paul said in verse 4, “God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance…”
Because God sent Jesus to the earth to die for our sins, His kindness should lead us to always be sorry and repent of our sins.
Repentance is a change of the mind. When we first give our hearts to God we ask Him to forgive us of all the sins we have committed up to that point. Many of those sins we don’t even know we are committing until we are told that they are sins.
But once we ask, those sins are forgiven.
It is a frustrating fact however that many people, once they give their heart to God through Jesus Christ still struggle with sin issues.
Why? Because we are created with a free will to do what we want and since we are prone to sin we often fall into sin.
Remember that even Paul was not immune from this.
But here is something that you really need to understand, even though we are sinners, God never gets tired of our repentance!
The truth is that there is no limit to God’s ability to forgive, cleanse and restore. I cannot think of a single verse in the whole Bible that sets a limit on how many times God will forgive the sinner. It is simply not a question because His forgiveness and mercy are without boundaries.
Just think of Israel and how many hundreds of times they sinned the worst kind of sins. Yet the Lord kept forgiving them and restoring them. In two thousand years from Abraham to Jesus, there were only a few isolated times when the Nation really served the Lord, yet He continued to stretch out His hands to them and plead with them to return to Him.
Sadly, times did come when God handed them over to their enemies. His wrath was poured out on them, but not because He had run out of forgiveness and grace, it was because they refused to turn to Him.
That’s where the problem lies. We grow tired of asking for forgiveness long before He grows tired of giving forgiveness. And when we cease to turn to Him and confess our sins, He cannot continue to forgive.
But as long as we ask, He will surely forgive.
I know that we feel guilty because we are not getting victory over the same sin that entangles us over and over.
Yes, we should be winning the battle over sin but that has nothing to do with God’s ability and His willingness to forgive.
God wants us to get the victory over sin and if you are not winning the battle, then maybe you need to ask for advice from someone who is able to give you good council.
You may also not be overcoming because you are being disobedient in another matter. For instance, maybe the Lord is speaking to you about your prayer life, Bible reading, tithing, forgiving others, or church attendance and maybe your disobedience in those areas has a direct bearing on why you are vulnerable to temptation and sin.
Maybe you just aren’t fleeing from temptation when it presents itself. The Bible tells us in James 1:14, "Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." We just need to run away from temptation!
There are many reasons why people sin. That’s why Paul said, “What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.” Rom. 3:9
But that still does not take away from the fact that the Lord can, and wants to, forgive you much more than you want to ask for that forgiveness.
You will never get the victory over sin until you learn to ask for, receive, and believe God’s forgiveness.
The shame and guilt is what entraps us and prevents us from breaking free. And we far too easily believe the Devil’s lies that we are no good and a loser, than we believe God’s truth that we are cleansed, forgiven, and new creatures.
The basis on which we approach God for forgiveness has nothing to do with your track record, failures or successes.
The only thing that matters when you come to the throne of grace is that Jesus’ blood is still able to cleanse the vilest sin.
When the Father sees the blood of His Son, He is satisfied and your track record is totally irrelevant, each time you ask God forgives.
We all need God’s love and forgiveness and He freely gives it to all who ask. It does not matter if we have never asked Jesus into our hearts or if we have been a Christian for many years we still need forgiveness and God still forgives.
Paul maintains that for the moral man the deeds reveal the true attitude of the heart. Every person will be judged according to his or her works, and those works will prove inadequate for salvation.
Some take this verse out of context and think it means that God will reward all men for their works. This is a judgment passage, not a blessing passage.
Many people think God has a scale in which he weighs a person’s good and bad deeds, and that if the good outweigh the bad, the person will go to heaven. This simply is not the biblical picture. Good works cannot get a person to heaven:
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. Ephesians 2:8-9
Men will ultimately be judged by even their good works. Works that are "good" in human terms are still not good enough to be meritorious for salvation. All those works will be insufficient to save:
The unsaved man will be judged for his sins and his works. He will plead his works, but there will be no forgiveness for his sins.
The believer has immortality, glory and eternal life because He has excepted Christ as Savior. But if he fails to exercise his faith in his daily life he is endanger of losing the things he already possesses.
Those who do not obey the truth, that is, the light God has given them, stand under the wrath of God. God will judge according to the result of obedience or the lack of obedience to truth in a person’s life.
That is why we need forgiveness. God looks at our heart to see if the obedience is there. If the obedience is there we will strive to do that which He desires. If the obedience is there we will fight to overcome sin. If the obedience is there we will seek His forgiveness quickly when we do sin.
When God looks at my heart He sees the deep desire I have to serve Him. He also sees my struggles. He sees me when I am tempted to sin and He sees me when I fall. God knows what I go through.
And still He loves me and is patient with me. So I have this promise of eternal life in Him because of His forgiveness of sins. But the key for me and for all of us is to keep our faith focused on Him. We should learn from the Israelites I talked about earlier who continued to turn their back on God.
That is a big reason why Paul is writing this letter to the Romans. He doesn’t want them to make the same mistakes that the Jews from Abraham to Jesus made.
He wants their faith to be pure and righteous. He wants them to stay focused on Christ.
So he moves on to God’s righteousness in Romans 3:21-26.
21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:21-26 NIV
We are all alike, the Jew and the Gentile, the sinner and the saint. We all fall short of the glory of God. The condition of mankind is a dark and gloomy picture indeed.
But Paul doesn’t leave us there. He transitions into the Good News.
Mankind has gotten in so deep that there is only one thing that can get him out. It is the grace of God. God had to enter man’s world otherwise man would never be able to enter God’s world.
There are two important words in this passage. They are righteousness and justify. They are different in English but they are very close in the original Greek.
To be righteous in Greek is dikaios.
To be justified in Greek is dikaioo.
Justification is a legal declaration issued by God when He pronounces that a person is free from any guilt or fault and that person is now acceptable in His sight.
To justify therefore is to pronounce and treat those as righteous.
It is much more than just being pardoned, it is a thousand times more than being forgiven. It is being treated as if the sin never happened.
That is what God offers those who ask for His forgiveness and He offers it to all, freely through Jesus Christ.
None of us are perfect but all of us can make certain of what our future holds. We can all, the sinner and the saint, make sure that justice will be done in our lives and that we will be ready for the Judgment Seat of Christ.
There are two judgments that God will hold for people and it is up to us as to which one we will be in.
The Great White Throne Judgment in which God will punish the sinners and the Judgment Seat of Christ in which God will reward the believer according to their deeds.
We can all make certain which judgment we will be in.
Through Christ, the atoning sacrifice for our sins has been made and we can be pardoned for our sins.
All we have to do is have faith in God and accept His forgiveness through Christ and keep our eyes focused on Him.
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