2:10
“… glory, honor and peace…”
Remember who they are? We just read about them in verse 7 above. They are the ones who
“work what is good…”
And you will recall that we concluded, based on context, that these are not just some ordinary earthlings that tried a little harder than their neighbors; these are the redeemed. These are the born-again.
Many will look to this whole passage when you ask them if they think they are going to heaven, and say, Well, I’m not totally sure, but compared to most people, I’m not really that bad. Church-goers are the ones who may have this problem the most, because they hang around people who do indeed have the Spirit of God in them, and some of it seems to rub off.
But rubbed-off salvation won’t work on that day.
Be very sure, the song said, “be very sure your anchor holds and grips the Solid Rock.” That rock is Jesus. Are you trusting Him alone to save you?
Has He entered your life and begun the change? I didn’t say “finished” but at least begun? Are you different than you were, simply because of your new birth? That’s the sign of your salvation, that’s the evidence of the filling of the Spirit. Then you are in this new number.
“… to the Jew first and also to the Greek/Gentile…”
Yes, this Good News went to Jews first, on Pentecost and thereafter. Three thousand Jews came into the church on its birthday. And when Paul
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began his rounds, where did he always go first? To the Jewish synagogue. The early church was very Jewish.
But we’re talking about rewards and judgment. I showed you where the Jews will be judged first. The Tribulation, followed by the second coming where Gentiles will be judged. But Israel, whatever that means, will also be rewarded first, or so it seems. The elect 144,000 Israelites, which are largely hidden during the Tribulation, are sealed in Revelation 7, followed immediately by the slow entrance by martyrdom of the Gentile saints. The Dragon tries to hurt Israel and cannot, then it comes after the church. It seems that Israel will precede the largely Gentile flock into the blessings of God.
2:11
“For there is no partiality with God.”
That must sound strange here. We just said Jews are first all the time, whether in receiving the Gospel or receiving judgment or receiving rewards. Jews first. But obviously, first does not mean done deal. Often in Scripture, the second-born or even later-born child gets the blessing: Abel. Isaac. Jacob. Judah. Joseph. David. Solomon…
Israel was blest first, but Israel fell from God, and God went to those other sheep. First isn’t everything. God has no partiality. The basis is not birth order, education, gender. The basis – and we are talking about judgment here – is unforgiven sin. No matter who you are or think you are, if you are an unforgiven sinner, you’re lost forever. When it comes to sin and grace there is no Jew or Gentile.
Our God is just. He treats everyone equally and with justice. Impartiality is just another of His many traits we can count on.
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Partiality. Another fascinating word given us by the Greeks: prosopolemptes. From prosopon which is “face” or “front”. And a form of the verb lambano, “to take or receive.”
So, “to receive face.” What? To look at someone’s face, their outward appearance, and say, “I receive that.” Not to look at their character, their reasoning, their inner life, just the face. That’s partiality, and God doesn’t have that.
Macarthur mentions here “Lady Justice,” the old Roman goddess of justice, Justitia. You’ve seen pictures of her? What is strange about “Lady Justice”? Right, she is blindfolded! She can’t see. She can’t see your face, your outward appearance. Your smile or tears. In some statues her hands are tied also, so she cannot receive a bribe.
A truly just human needs a blindfold and a rope. We are so partial based on the wrong things.
As the judge: Why you poor dear, you’re crying. Oh, you have a gift for me? You must be a loving person, you could never have done such a bad thing. Case dismissed.
Our God needs no blindfold or rope. He cares not how many good things you have piled up through the years to bribe Him into accepting you. If you reject the sacrifice of His Son for your sins, or worse yet, come into His presence all smiles like you never did sin, your judgment will be swift and awful.
God has no partiality. Peter, a Jew, had to learn that firsthand. He preached to Jews on the Day of Pentecost, opened the door to the Kingdom to Israel! 3000 saved! Then God seemed to say to Peter, I gave you more than one key to the Kingdom. You’ve opened the door to the Jews, why not bring a key to the Gentiles, and let them in?
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Gentiles? Lord I’ve been a good Jew. Even in his sleep when a vision occurred to Peter asking him to disobey the old Jewish rules about what to eat and not to eat, Peter said, no way, I’m a good Jew. You love the Jews. You love our ways. Never will I do Gentile disobedience.
Go downstairs, Peter. I want you to make a little trip. You’re going to a Gentile home and you’re going to preach the same Gospel there that you did on Pentecost. Can you hear Peter grumbling all the trip, “I’m a good Jew, we are the chosen people. You came to us when no Gentiles were interested in the true God!” Keep walking Peter, do I have a surprise for you.
So he enters a Gentile house. Preaches. And the Holy Spirit falls in that Gentile house on Gentile people. What is Peter’s response? I know now that God is not one who shows partiality!
Same for you here. Call on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. No excuses. Well, I’m not religious. Well, I wasn’t raised with that. Well, I’ve really messed up! God is no respecter of “face”. He’ll save anyone who calls on His Name.
2:12
“For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law…”
Looks like a new idea here, but it is really repetition. We are still talking about two main groups of people, who, when added together, equal the whole human race. The theme is consistent. All are sinful, and all deserve judgment.
First a group of people in the world who sin without law. The “law” here of course is the law of Moses. Most people in the world know nothing, and have known nothing, of Moses’ law. The law was given to and prized by Israel. Later, Christians filled with God’s Spirit have that very law written on their hearts. But most do not know of that law, and therefore
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disobey it unwittingly, and will be lost. We saw in chapter 1 that ignorance of the law is no excuse, as ignorance of a tiny bit of poison in a quart of water will not keep you from instant death when you drink it. He will further explain why Gentiles deserve eternal loss as well as Jews in verse 14 and 15. Right now we know, so far, that Gentiles who do not know and keep the law will perish.
Perish? Doesn’t that simply mean go out of existence? No, the word means to be fully destroyed. But doesn’t that mean that eventually you no longer exist? Think of the perishable foods in your refrigerator. If they stay there long enough, you grab them and pitch them into the garbage, for their further decay.
They are worthless, castaways, but the picture is not perfect, because Jesus talked about a place where the worm dies not, showing us that destruction from the Lord is an eternal thing. Forever ruined. Forever useless. Forever in decay, but the worm that would normally feed on that corpse and then itself die, does not die, but keeps feeding on cells that keep being replenished. Even the damned will have resurrected bodies, bodies fit for showing the wrath of God forever. Horrible thoughts, but drawn right from the revelation of God, and needing our attention. No one gets to just lay down and rest forever if they have rejected the God of Heaven.
Gentiles, get saved!
“… and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law…”
So who is meant by that? Certainly, the Jews. There is no question that the Jewish people have had access to the law of Moses for about 3,500 years. When they appear before the judgment bar they will be judged by that law, unless they have accepted the judgment that was placed on Christ on their behalf. The words of Moses are clear. The prophets told them that the soul that sins shall die. Unforgiven sin means no entrance into the Holy Place of God. And sins cannot be forgiven except through
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the Blood of the spotless Lamb of God. Jews that are not eventually Jews for Jesus are damned.
So there it is again. All Gentiles plus all Jews equals all people and all people have sinned and all people are therefore under the curse of God. Paul is making a solid case here.
A question arises in some hearts. Macarthur goes there a while, and I will follow for a while. Will Jews and Gentiles be punished alike in hell? When Jesus talked in Luke 12:47-48 about slaves who knew their master’s will vs slaves who did not know that will and were therefore punished less, was he talking about Jew vs Gentile? The Gentiles after all did not know the Master’s will. I think it is a dangerous road to travel, because Paul is just about to explain here that Gentiles really did know some things. We covered a little of this in chapter 1.
Yet Jesus’ words do need to be applied somewhere. In that same passage in Luke we read of servants who are cut in two and thrown out with unbelievers. Then the tone is lessened a little when talking about some bad servants who get punished but not thrown out. I would not be surprised to find that this flogging of servants who turned out to be lazy and indifferent, applies to us. Saved people who left their first love for a while, who got caught up in worldly pursuits, but who were saved, as Paul says, as through fire.
Something to ponder as you study on your own. Luke 12: 42-48.
Now at the following verse in the KJV and the NKJV, and at verse 14 in the NIV, you’ll see a parenthesis. And you’ll see its brother down at the end of verse 15. No, that doesn’t mean that these words were not in the original. It means that in the mind of the translators Paul is inserting a thought inside of a thought. I believe KJV people got it right there. If you read verse 12 and then skip immediately to verse 16 and keep reading, you’ll see a flow of thought that makes sense.
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Please understand that punctuation marks of any kind are not inspired by the Spirit. They are placed there by translators who believe they have caught the flow of the communication. Sometimes they miss it. In this case I think they got it right.
In fact, if you want to get really technical, and I’m sure you do not, there is a thought within a thought in verses 13-15 too. Let’s examine the thoughts.
The original thought: (v. 12, 16) Everyone will be judged by their deeds on judgment day.The 2nd thought within this original: (v. 13.) Hearing is not enough. You must do.The 3rd thought inside of that one: (v. 14-15). For example, look at the Gentiles.)
That’s not me, that’s Paul. Logical to the max. Leave nothing out. Take no prisoners. Nail that truth down in every way possible.
We’ll skip the parenthetical statement now and go to verse 16.
(First, let’s re-read verse 12. “For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law, )
2:16
“… in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.”
Now that verse is packed with important information. I believe it is a restating of verse 5 that talks about “the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” Here, Paul goes deeper. There, he goes on to talk about deeds. Here, God speaks of the motivations that caused those deeds.
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Remember? Moses said, “No killing!” Jesus said, stop the hatred and the anger within, and the killing will stop by itself. Why do we sin? Because deep inside we are sinners. Why do we manifest these awful symptoms? Because deep inside we have a disease. Why is mankind in turmoil with worse headlines on the news every day? Because deep inside, mankind, in its secret thoughts and ideas, is corrupt, depraved. God will one day judge all those secrets.
By Jesus Christ? I showed you in another place how Christ will come to judge the nations. That’s in Revelation. But Peter makes it clear in talking to Cornelius, Acts 10, that it is Jesus “who was ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead.” God will judge the world. But He’s going to do it by Jesus at His coming. Paul in speaking to the men of Mars Hill, Acts 17, even more clear: “God has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom he has ordained…”
But what of this other phrase, “according to my Gospel.” How is the “Good News” connected to this awful coming judgment from Heaven?
Whose Gospel is this, to begin with? Did Paul have his own account of the life of Jesus, the “Gospel of Paul”? No, Paul’s Gospel was the same as the others. Paul was saying that Jesus had committed Him to publish the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus resurrection. 2 Timothy 4:8 mentions this same phrase, “Remember that Jesus Christ… was raised from the dead according to my Gospel.” He was not the author of a new Gospel, just a publisher of the original Gospel. Nothing he ever says contradicts anything said in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. His Gospel was the Gospel of Christ.
So is this Gospel to be the basis for judgment? No. Paul has just told us, though we skipped those verses for a moment, that the Gentiles have not the Law, and we know most of them do not have the Gospel either, yet they will be judged regardless on another basis, which we will discuss.
Commentators stew over this phrase. Macarthur does not comment on it at all. It’s not as easy as it seems. The best we can come up with, I think, is
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the fact that the judgment of the world is connected with the resurrection of the dead. I did not give you the full quote in Acts 17:31. Yes, God has appointed a day of judgment, and a person to judge, namely Jesus. He goes on to say, “[God] has given assurance of this [fact of the coming judgment by Jesus] to all, by raising Him from the dead.”
There is Paul’s Gospel, and it must be ours too. God calls us all to repent, to believe in Jesus. God raised this Jesus from the dead, and he is going to come to the earth one day and rid the world of evil. Sin will be dealt with. Injustice will become justice. The secrets of men will be exposed and condemned. A new world with new rules and new ways, God’s ways. His Kingdom will have come, as we prayed all these centuries, and His will will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
That’s good news. No, the good news is not the basis of the judgment, but the judgment, strangely enough, is a part of the good news. The finished work of Christ anticipates a finished end to sin. Even so come, Lord Jesus.
Now, some unfinished business. Back to verses 13-15.
2:13
(for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified…
James 1:22-23 lines up with that thought, right? He says for us not to be hearers only, but doers. People who love to hear but don’t love to do, are deceiving themselves. Here is a test of whether we are in the true Christian faith or not. We love to hear messages. Sermons on CD, in a Bible study. Christian music. Intake constantly. But do we love to do what we are told in all those messages? We heap up teachers because our ears itch to have someone say we’re ok, we’re on the right track, all is well.
And if the messages get negative, we can change channels or CD’s or you- tube video.
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As I came to this part of my writing and study, brother Ezekiel shouted in my ear, Let me talk to them, brother! So I stepped aside, and here is what Ezekiel said (Ezekiel 33:30-32). And he said it because I believe that in much of the Western comfortable church, this is where we are. Can you bear a heavy word from a prophet of God?
“As for you, son of man, the children of your people are talking about you beside the walls and in the doors of the houses; and they speak to one another, everyone saying to his brother, ‘Please, come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord.’ So they come to you as people do, they sit before you as My people, and they hear your words, but they do not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain (we are justified by works ultimately). Indeed, you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear your words, but they do not do them.”
Oh American church! Entertainment in the pulpit. Dynamic preaching and teaching on YouTube. Wonderful “Gospel” music. Sounds so good. But I wonder. If David Phelps, one of my favorites, could not hit the high notes, would I listen to his message? Does Gospel music reach my soul, but bypass my spirit? Does it make me feel good or does it cause me to do good? That preacher, does he make me cry? Or does he make me die to myself and change my life? Is the church changing by all the many messages, or only continuing on?
When people or churches do not change, they die. Trees change all year long. They are still the same tree next year, but radically different too. If we or our churches are the very same next year as this, we have wasted an entire year. Let the change come. Not the Gospel! Not the Book! It doesn’t need to change. But let me change. Slowly fashioned into His image. Next year I should still be Bob but a radically different Bob. Not because I heard, but because I did.
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Of course, all that comes from an initial encounter with the Spirit of God. And when we draw near to Him, and listen, changes happen. If we refuse to listen and just keep listening to what we’ve always listened to, our traditions and selfish habits, this tree will have to be plucked up by the roots and cast into the fire.
Hearing is the first thing that happens. What is missing in Romans 2 is the second thing that happens: the infusion and grace of the Holy Spirit to motivate and empower. Then comes the works, the final step. And it is therefore by our works, works created by God in us, that we will be judged. It is because of God’s grace in us that we have no excuse for not doing the works He has assigned.
So, Paul says, in the long run, it won’t be hearers, even of the law of Moses or the Gospel, but doers, that will be saved. But how can that be if they don’t have a chance to hear God’s law?
Paul answers that question next.
2:14-15a
“for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law unto themselves, who show the works of the law written in their hearts.”
So they do have the law! It’s been written on their hearts from the beginning of their lives. Men do know what is right and wrong. They don’t have to read Exodus 20 to know that they shouldn’t be killing and stealing and cheating on their wives. It’s universal. Not only does nature teach us who God is, as in chapter 1, but our instincts show us what God wants.
You were born with a knowledge of right and wrong.
All of us know some very good people. That’s what we would call them. Jesus said, there is none good but one, namely God. But God has written His law in our heart and there are some people who seem to measure up favorably. They would do anything for us, and have done some things
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when we were in need. They are the volunteers when a community needs a baseball coach or a hospital helper or a food drive chairman. They genuinely like people and enjoy doing things for them.
And they are the hardest people, often, to bring to Christ. Why? Christ talks to them about sin and their need for forgiveness and a new heart.
But why should they want that, they ask. They are already good-hearted people, they say. Just look at what I do.
But there is sin, we say.
And they say, who are you to judge me? Look at some of the people in your church, still smoking and drinking and cussing like a sailor, using God’s name in vain, hanging out at the parties and worldly events. My life is better than theirs already. Thanks anyway.
Won’t it be awful when they get to the day of judgment – and they will – and God says to them, “On what basis should I allow you into My Heaven?”
They will say, “I was a good person, I did many wonderful works.” Jesus will say, “Your good works are a witness against you. Go to everlasting fire.”
They will answer, “What? How can my good works witness against me?”
Response: “You knew I demanded good works, but you knew also you were not perfect before me, as no one is. That means that there were bad works mixed in, and you let them slide. You did not consult me about the bad works, only tried to impress me and others with the good ones. I only accept perfect people in this realm. You could have been perfect by My forgiveness and my Spirit’s working in you, but you chose the way of pride. You said you did not need me. So I never had a relationship with
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you. Your only relationship was with yourself and your pride. You must now be lost forever.”
So the Gentiles, though not avid readers of Moses, have a law inside them. Each Gentile makes up His own book of Exodus and tries to live by it. He may be pretty successful in keeping His own book, but his book is faulty to begin with. His book probably doesn’t deal with motivation, secret sins, “little sins”, so when he tries to present his book and his record to a holy God, God will not accept it.
“Well, I do the best I can with what I know.” Not enough.
“Well, I’m not perfect, but I do more good than I do bad.” Not enough.
“Well, I’m surely better than those hypocrites over at church.” May be true. But not enough.
Here’s God’s standard. Matthew 5:48. “You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
James 2:10. For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.”
And to all the outwardly talkative “Lord, Lord,” people, the self-styled prophets, believers majoring in demons, so called miracle-workers, Jesus will say, “I never knew you. Leave Me.” Why? “You practice lawlessness. You knew My ways and majored in your own ideas and practices. You disobeyed Me at every turn, and chose rather to be somebody. Well, now you are somebody. Your very description is in the Holy Bible, but you and I never had a relationship at all. Go!”
Many will hear that awful sound. The rejection of a man who may or may not have heard the law or the Gospel, but who decided to create a law of his own making and try to obey it.
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“Sad, sad that bitter wail, almost… but lost.” “… their conscience also bearing witness…”
The conscience is separated in Paul’s thinking, from the heart. God has written His law in the hearts of mankind. Man takes that law and adds to or takes away, then trains his conscience to obey it. A child may grow up thinking, rightly, that to kill a baby, whether in or outside of Mommy, is a very bad thing. Evil. But if he is raised in a home where he is taught that that thing inside Mommy is not really a baby at all, but just some tissue that’s part of Mommy, he must change his God-given thinking, and retrain his conscience.
This all goes back to chapter 1, where we studied the suppression of truth inside man. He’s born with a great measure of truth, but through the years that truth is re-shaped and re-formed , perverted. Oh how important is the job of a mother and father today, to shape a child’s conscience, the sense of right and wrong that activates guilt.
Let us say unequivocally, someone is going to shape that conscience. Friends at school will shape it. The media will shape it. Give your children up to the people of this world and their thinking processes, and your child will slowly but surely have a conscience like the Bible describes elsewhere, seared with a hot iron. Is that your hand on the handle of that iron?
“No, I didn’t do it. It’s that liberal teacher at school. It’s that awful news network.” May I suggest that the parents of Bible days who threw their children into the fire as an offering to Moloch, could also scream, “I didn’t kill my child, it was the fire.” Good luck with that excuse. You are responsible for what goes into the eyes and ears of your child. Some parents need to make some quality decisions. Conscience-forming begins just after birth.
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What will your conscience tell you to do? Answer: What you have fed into it, as though it were a computer. Tell yourself, prove to yourself, that homosexuality is good and normal, and your conscience will slowly stop screaming about it. Don’t get proud here. The same thing is true about how you drive and how you eat. These aren’t cute little sins, they are proof of a conscience that is not sharp any longer.
Macarthur points out something you may already know. Leprosy, the disease, does not eat flesh away. Leprosy desensitizes the nerves, so that pain is not felt. Cuts, burns, infections can take their toll on a leper, and he doesn’t feel a thing.
That’s the disease of the perverted conscience. Warning signs are ignored at first, then invisible, inaudible. “I didn’t think that was wrong.” But it was anyway, and unconfessed it will send you to hell.
When I was speaking on behalf of the persecuted church for VOM, I told the people that actually my job is the job of the nerve cell in the human body. You see, there are not two bodies of Christ, the persecuted church and the Western un-persecuted church. There’s only one church. Jesus thinks of His church as His body. One body. And that body is persecuted. My job was to take the knowledge of that pain in the body and communicate it to where it would do some good. Pain is a good thing.
When the western church heard my stories, they prayed, they gave, some perhaps decided to go deeper.
If you no longer feel pain when you read certain Scriptures that are clearly against your behavior, the Word hasn’t changed. The Spirit hasn’t changed. Your conscience has changed. Ask God for pain. Conviction. The first days. Your first love of God which implies your first hatred of sin.
Paul includes all under sin. The Jews have their law. The Gentiles have their God-written conscience. Both are testimonies against us, crying out for a rush to Jesus Christ.
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“… and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)”
A bit difficult here. The NKJV has added “between themselves” for a reason. Let me take you to the Greek text itself, word for word:
“…and between one another the reasonings accusing or also defending.)”
This rendering in the NKJV has led some to say that we are talking about Gentiles talking with Gentiles about moral values. The KJV and most other translations believe that the sense is that the whole dialogue is going on inside of you. One thought rises up and says “Do this, it’s OK.” Another thought rises up and questions the first thought. And so on.
But the point over all is that our consciences, despite the sage advice of Jiminy Cricket, cannot be our guides. Yes, with the help of Walt Disney, children in my generation were taught that the conscience should be the guide. Remember this moment of guidance:
When you get in trouble
And you don't know right from wrong Give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
When you meet temptation And the urge is very strong Give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
Not just a little squeak Pucker up and blow
And if your whistle's weak Yell Jiminy Cricket
Take the straight and narrow path And if you start to slide
Give a little whistle!
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Give a little whistle!
And always let your conscience be your guide.
Just innocent Disney. Really? He sets up a Bible-based problem and attempts to solve it with fantasy and bad theology.
No, when you don’t know what to do, call out to Jesus, read His Word, talk with His people, and let your conscience be formed and then guided by God’s revelation. Man’s conscience without God’s direct input will guide him, for sure: to sin, death, and hell.
So much for the Gentiles. The rest of Romans 2 is dedicated to the Jews, but let’s listen in as Paul addresses them.
