Romans 2:1-5
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Well, we’ve made it to chapter two! Let’s dive in, and we can get our bearings and see where we are.
1 Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. 2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
So, before we jump into each verse, let’s understand the broader context of this passage. Someone wiser than me has said, when you see a “therefore” in scripture, you need to see what it’s there for. This conjunction is giving us a logical connection between what has come before and what Paul is about to say.
So, let’s remind ourselves of what Paul said in the last part of chapter 1. Paul talks about the gospel and its power. He talks about the righteousness of God being revealed by faith. We talked about the jump between verses 16-17 into the passage starting at 18, what Thomas Schreiner called the “implicit proposition:”
“God’s saving righteousness is being revealed in the gospel by faith (17)
and we really need God’s saving righteousness (implicit proposition)
because God’s wrath is being revealed against all people who have sinned against His glory (18)”
We then see Paul talk through how God has revealed Himself to all the world, and no one is without excuse. God’s righteousness has been revealed in the Gospel by faith; His wrath has been revealed against the willful suppression of the truth.
Paul goes into some detail discussing what that looks like, and how those in unrighteousness deserve death from God, the true Judge. This idea is going to be central to how we think about our passage this evening.
Last week we saw how God is the truly righteous Judge. He created the universe. He set the standard. No one but Him can adjudicate it.
THEREFORE…you have no excuse if you judge.
One thing we want to clarify, right off the top, is that Paul seems to be using a diatribe style for his argument here. I don’t think we should see in these verses a particular person in the church at Rome that Paul is talking to when he says “O man” or “you/your;” rather he is using a literary device where he makes his point using strong questions and bold statements, as if to an imaginary pupil. This device has a tendency to help the reader internalize it as if it was spoken/written directly toward us, even though the principles are for the church as a whole.
Also, a couple things are in play here. First of all, we have to see that when we stand in judgement over others, we are in practical terms usurping God’s role. God is the true judge, we are servants of Him. I think that is important when we look at the text of the first verse here:
1 Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.
By attempting to take God’s place, we condemn ourselves. This is read in view of the unrighteous man discussed in chapter 1.
Something else we have to consider here is the context of judgment here. Specifically, how people want to twist passages like this and Matthew 7 around into saying we should never judge someone else. We have to understand that as believers, we are actually called to discern, or judge, others. The Layman’s Bible Commentary says this:
Acts thru Corinthians Judgment and the Law (2:1–16)
It isn’t so much the judging itself that is wrong, because believers are instructed to identify and deal with behaviors that are potentially harmful to themselves or others (Matthew 18:15–17; James 5:19–20; etc.). But, like Jesus, Paul warns of the dangers of hypocrisy in evaluations of other people.
Where Paul is going here is not against those who rightly perceive wrong action, but rather those who would pass judgment on someone while doing the very same things they are condemning.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is hypocrisy. It is lying. It is sin.
Likely, Paul has in mind here the Judaizers or even Jewish believers who feel that Gentiles are second-class Christians, all while ignoring their own sin and need for Christ.
And look, Paul’s concern here is important. Look at verse 2:
2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.
God’s judgement, which is just and true - but also maybe not what we want on us - rightly falls on those who judge others hypocritically. We all want God’s mercy, His forgiveness, His grace. But just for us. Because we like to keep score about how much more holy we are than others.
Stupidly, this reminds me of a line from Weird Al Yankovic’s “Amish Paradise:”
“Think you're really righteous?
Think you're pure in heart?
Well, I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art”
God is the true judge. And we see Paul, who is phenomenal with rhetoric, posing a few questions:
3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
He first asks if the imaginary man that represents the letter’s recipients if they think they will escape God’s judgement. Again, this is a rhetorical question, as you can tell both in the incredulous tone of the asking, and in the front-loading of the disqualifying actions of the question.
We do this with our children, right? Or at least, I know I do. Or maybe with our friends, right? I’ll say something like, “You want to be an Air Force Fire Fighter? You, the child who cannot stand loud noises, cannot bear people shouting at you, and the child who absolutely melts under the least amount of stress, you want to be a firefighter for the Air Force? Ok, boomer”
We were down at the Flying Pig this last Saturday because Chloe’s school has a walking club that she is in, and they did the “26th Mile.” Zachary and I were spectators because when we had to register, we thought he has a track meet that day. He didn’t have to go to that one, so we were relegated to just watching. As we were walking back to the van after the race, Zachary tells us we should run the 5k next year. And I said yeah, that would be fun.
Now, if I don’t do some training between now and then, I’ll get some questions like these leading up to that race, right? “You’re gonna run a 5k? I mean, you know how long a 5k is right?”
We should understand this style of argument. I ask a question, knowing the answer and front-loading it sufficiently that the person being asked knows not to answer.
Because anyone in their right mind would not suppose to escape God’s judgment.
Then, Paul goes a step further.
4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
He asks perhaps the most pointed question in all of his letters. Maybe the seminal question and the very heart of evangelistic thrust:
“Do you presume upon the riches of God’s kindness and patience?”
That is really it. Do you presume upon God’s kindness and patience. The answer to that questions drives the Gospel conversation. Because we see that God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance. God’s kindness is meant to show us that God, who is the ultimate judge, is also the ultimate loving Father who cares for us, and that kindness and patience He shows to us should lead us toward repenting of our sins, of turning away from sin and unrighteousness, and turn toward living in agreement with God’s word and His will.
Notice that Paul uses the word patience twice. Forbearance has a sense of a good-natured tolerance that delays enforcing rights or claims or privileges. Patience here has the connotation of patient endurance of pain or unhappiness. We could perhaps paraphrase verse 4 in this way:
“Do you presume upon God’s gentle benevolence and goodness, his tolerance of your lawbreaking, and his patience in spite of the pain your disobedience causes Him? Do you presume upon that? Because it should lead you to fall on your face and ask for His forgiveness and for Him to change you into what He wants you to be.”
But we see that Paul has no grand aspirations that his imaginary student here will do the proper thing, because verse 5 tells us that very thing.
5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
We know the term hard-hearted. That is a church term we use, and it is descriptive enough that most outsiders can get it. Hard hearted means that you are unfeeling. There is no tenderness. Unsympathetic. Impenitent is a bit harder to grasp for some of us because we don’t use that word often.
Impenitent means refusing to turn to God. Unrepentant. So, verse 4 tells us that God’s kindness toward us should lead us to repent, but verse 5 shows that we are choosing not to repent, and we are storing up wrath for ourselves.
This goes back to the idea of judgment from a worldly - unrighteous - perspective. We who refuse to repent, to shape our hearts and lives for God’s glory, will store up not rewards but wrath. God will see our deeds, and they will be despicable. It won’t matter if we were the “vilest” of criminals, or the leaders in our churches. Our religious affiliations won’t matter (we’ll see that in the coming weeks).
Jesus warns of these people.
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
God isn’t looking at our pedigree. He is looking at our heart.