Superiority Bias
(Romans 2:1-29)
1. This week was a tough week, losing Ginny. I know many of you are hurting, as are Marylu and me. Ginny was quite a woman of God as well as everyone’s friend.
2. She was also very much enjoying and looking forward to this series in Romans. She was a woman of the Word, a hearer and a doer. Today’s text, however, is about mankinds’ propensity to neither hear nor do. And we humans are ready to defend our stance.
3. It is always easier to preach a sermon than to debate someone with opposing views, but we cannot avoid it. Some of you have to deal with bosses or fellow workers, students, teachers, or family members who not only reject the Gospel, but mock you or take digs.
4. Paul, obviously, was in a position to receive barbs and objections – even to the point of violence and risking his life. But he could become shrewd, and, like Jesus, often used his opponents’ arguments to make his case.
5. In today’s section, he is addressing Jewish objectors to the Gospel, and so he begins with widely accepted Jewish beliefs. But his intent is to lead all – both Jew and gentile – to the conclusion of Romans 3:9-10, “ What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one…’”
6. His goal is for the reader to take sin more seriously than they probably do, leading to a hopelessness about attaining forgiveness, salvation, and justification by our own efforts.
Main Idea: The human race suffers from three sin-related problems that alienate mankind from the true God.
I. The Problem of SUPERIORITY Bias (1-4)
A. We may think we know what matters, but we do NOT know that we do not know.
1. You think your opinion counts as much as those who are experts. I have. Earwax.
2. We don’t know how little we know; cannot evaluate objectively; we think we can.
B. We may go hard on others and EASY on ourselves (1-3).
“Since psychological studies first began, people have given themselves top marks for most positive traits. While most people do well at assessing others, they are wildly positive about their own abilities, Dunning said.
That's because we realize the external traits and circumstances that guide other people's actions, ‘but when it comes to us, we think it's all about our intention, our effort, our desire, our agency — we think we sort of float above all these kinds of constraints,’ he said.”
[source: https://www.livescience.com].
• In the Watergate era, people accused President Nixon of viewing himself above the law. Christians who are repeatedly divorced will bemoan America’s divorce rate. People whose children have turned out terribly will try to tell others how to rear their children.
C. God’s kindness is not an ENTITLEMENT because we are owed it, but rather is meant to lead us to REPENTANCE (4).
1. Some people presume God will forgive them because they are kind. But God’s kindness does not result in our forgiveness. His kindness is to stir us to repentance, and repentance leads to forgiveness.
2. Adam and Eve had centuries, Nineveh 40 days, David, a year after his adultery with Bathsheba, the nation of Israel had 40 years, and God has given planet earth nearly 2,000 years so far.
3. An ancient written Jewish Midrash puts it this way, “It is man’s way in the world to heap up iniquities, but once he vows repentance, then, though God see his iniquity, He considers it not, if one dare say such a thing” (PRK 24.13).
II. The Problem of HARD Hearts (5-11)
A. We are handicapped by a STUBBORN (self-asserting) heart (5a).
B. We are storing up God’s WRATH (5b).
Deuteronomy 32:34-35, “’Is not this laid up in store with me, sealed up in my reasuries? Vengeance is mine, and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly.’”
C. Our spiritual DESTINY is revealed by our works (6-11).
1. Paul agrees with the theory that those who do good works will end up and heaven and those who do not will not.
2. But he will qualify this later by telling us that only those who are in the Spirit, regenerate, can actually please God.
3. Romans 8:8-9, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
4. From here to 3:20, Paul shows that the Jews are just as lost as the gentiles.
D. This echoes some of the teachings of Rabbi GAMALIEL (Acts 22:3).
1. Gamaliel was Paul’s mentor (Acts 22:3).
2. The school of Hillel vs. Shammai on the subject of gentile conversion
III. The Problem of Being Religious but Spiritually Dead – No REGENERATION (12-29)
A. Sinners are LOST, whether they have the Torah or not (12-13).
In the Tosefta (Sanhedrin 13:2) there is a debate between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua on whether the World to Come is reserved for Jews or whether this blissful state is the reward of Gentiles as well. Rabbi Joshua holds that “the righteous of all peoples have a share in the World to Come” and this became the official view of Judaism [https://www.myjewishlearning.com]
B. REGENERATE Gentiles are SAVED apart from Torah (14-15).
1. Paul adds a condition to Hillel based upon the change under the New Covenant – believing that Jesus is the Messiah.
2. Can people be saved apart from hearing about and believing in Jesus? I think not, not now. He will argue in Romans 10 that to be saved, one must believe in Jesus Christ; to believe in Jesus Christ, someone must tell them about Jesus; the only way some people can be reached is for others to send someone to tell them about Jesus.
3. Even the gentiles have a conscience which either affirms or condemns them.
4. Conscience, although imperfect is evidence of an instinctive standard, a law. And if there is a law, there must be a lawgiver.
C. Jesus Christ will be the JUDGE (16).
D. Having the Law does not CIRCUMCISE the heart (17-28).
Jeremiah 31:33-34, “33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Deut 30:6, “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.”
E. A Jew (ultimately) is one who is both externally and INTERNALLY Jewish (28-29).
1. The Rabbis, in discussing how the term “Jew” came to be applied to all the Israelites, not just the tribe of Judah from which the term originated, pointed to Mordecai, who was from the Tribe of Benjamin (Esther 2:5) yet is referred to as a “Jew.” According to the Talmud, “anyone who repudiates idolatry is called a Jew” [Meg. 12b-13a].
2. I am not sure Paul has this idea in mind; I think he is referring to believing Jews. These believing Jews are referred to by Paul as “the Israel of God” in Galatians 6:16, in contrast to the false teachers whom we call the “Judaizers.”
3. The word “Judah,” mean praise, a play on words here. “Father seeks those who worship Him in Spirit and truth.”
