Even the Religious are Guilty

Introduction

Chapter one ended on a pretty dark note concluding that mankind lies under God’s wrath because of their ungodliness and their unrighteousness. Men didn’t like the idea of God in their lives so they suppressed the truth and God gave them over to their sin. The depravity of man’s heart is total as we saw it affects all areas of our lives.

Some on reading that list might be sitting there thinking, but I don’t do those things. They may look at those who do and think how could people do those things. Its easy the older we get to look at the things that younger people are doing and think, how did things get so bad. We look at them and think, “I’m glad I don’t do those things.” Paul anticipates this response.

Romans 1:18-32 primarily highlighted the depravity of the Gentile world. Jews weren’t going around worshipping idols by this time in their history, so we see how easily it would be for the Jews to say, “Yeah, look at those sinful wicked Gentiles.” The Jews lived generally morally upright lives; so it would be easy for them to think God might be lenient. After all they aren’t as bad as all that.

Many in America, live decent upright lives. We don’t necessarily do all those horrible things that we see other people do. We don’t cuss, don’t get drunk, don’t cheat on our wives. We don’t steal or kill people. We try to treat people the way we would want to be treated. And so it would be easy to think we are alright.

The very first word of chapter 2 is therefore. Whenever you have a therefore you should circle it and draw a line to what it refers to. What it is telling us is that what Paul is about to say is connected to what he has just said. I don’t believe the therefore points directly back to the verses right before it here. I believe it goes all the way back to vs 18. Paul is in essence saying , Gentiles are under God’s wrath because of all their depravity, but so are you.

You see just being a good guy does not exempt us from God’s judgment. The problem with this line of thinking is that no one is truly good. Luke 18:19 “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God.” The man who Jesus was speaking to believed that he had kept all the commandments of God. When Jesus asked him about this he said “All these have I kept from my youth up.” Basically he was saying I have been a good kid my entire life. But Jesus knew his heart. He knew that we all fall short. He followed up with a command to sell all that he had and give it to the poor. Jesus knew the true state of this man’s heart. He may have been a pretty good person, but he was consumed with greed. That rich young ruler went away sad because he couldn’t bring himself to do what Jesus told him to do. Even the best of us have a mortal flaw.

Paul is building a case here that heathen Gentiles are sinners, but so are the “righteous” Jews. In fact by chapter three, he concludes we are all sinners. Since the main theme of this chapter is the judgment of God, we are going to look at this text as a court case against the righteous. First of all, we will look at the defendant.

The Defendant

Paul writes this entire chapter as a Diatribe. A diatribe is an argument or dialogue with an imaginary opponent who represents a type of person. It’s kind of like Nathan when he confronted David. Nathan didn’t come out and say David you sinned and God is going to judge. No, he began with a question about how to deal with a certain man who had been wronged by his rich neighbor. The rich neighbor had friends coming over for dinner and wanted to throw a big party. Meanwhile the poor man next door had nothing except a little goat. But the rich man stole the goat and served it to his guests. The story provoked David’s sense of justice and convicted him through the back door.

Nathan responded with the words, thou art the man.

Paul addresses an imaginary person when he says “O man,” but that imaginary person represents a type of people. The use of the singular man makes it unlikely that he is addressing the saved church here. Rather Paul is addressing the individual person who justifies himself as he hears the words of Romans 1.

We are given more details as the text goes on. Look down at

Romans 2:17 “Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God,”

This isn’t written primarily to self-righteous Gentiles. Paul anticipates the Jews in their self-righteousness saying “Thank God I’m not like one of those people in chapter 1.”

Since their return from Babylon, the Jews had rejected idolatry. Outright idol worship was no longer an issue in Israel. With the Maccabean revolts, religious conservatism had risen to prominence. The pharisees were actually the movement most loved by the common person in Israel. And from what we know about the pharisees they were pretty exact in their obedience of the law. They even added to the law just in case they sinned. But their hearts were corrupt. In Matthew 23:27 “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” They looked good on the outside but were full of rotten decay on the inside.

In the same chapter as the rich young ruler, Jesus addressed the heart of men like this who thought they were fine because they did all these good things. Let’s turn to Luke 18:9–14 “And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

Men let me ask you this, have you ever had this situation. You misplaced something maybe it is your car keys; so you go to your wife and ask her where she put them. She denies that she touched them but you are sure someone other than you misplaced the car keys. Maybe it even blows up into an argument. Later you are putting you pants away from yesterday and you find the keys were in there all along. We are all like this man at times. We think we are innocent and proudly, passionately declare we are; only to find out that we were in fact guilty.

Romans 3:10 “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:” This is the man we see standing trial today. A man who thinks he has it all together, but stands guilty.

The Evidence against Us

The man protests his guilt. He scream’s it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.

I have seen this thing with my kids at times. We come out into the living room and there are cracker crumbs all over the furniture. When one of us asks who made the mess invariably, the answer from every kids was “It wasn’t me.” Now there are two things I know, I didn’t make that cracker mess. I was in the room. I also know that crackers don’t just hop on out of the cracker tin, walk over to the couch and break themselves on the soft couch. Maybe thats how it happens in your house but not mine. I think I’d be looking for another house.

We don’t like to admit we are guilty. It takes work to get us to that point, but usually the best way to convince someone of their guilt is to show them the evidence. In a court of law, we usher out witnesses against the defendant and evidence.

Romans 2:1 “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.”

You judge others- It is funny how our society likes to say that there are no moral absolutes, but then when Christians say something is wrong, they get all upset about it. What they are revealing is that there is a moral absolute. For them the moral absolute is tolerance. But when we judge others for the things that they do, we are revealing that we know the difference between right and wrong. We know that actions like that are wrong. Paul is later going to show how the Gentiles have a law written on their hearts which is seen in the fact that they do abide by certain rights and wrongs and they judge them.

You do the same things- Our society thinks the greatest evil is to judge another person. In fact much of the bible seems to state the same thing; however a careful study of the word of God does not teach that we shouldn’t judge. Judgement after all merely means discernment. Rather Jesus told us in John 7:24 “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” This entire chapter is about God’s judgment. The religious self-righteous Jew is not guilty because he judges those who do evil. He is guilty because he does similar things in his own life.

The evidence against the self-righteous is their own hypocrisy. The problem with much of legalism, pharisaism is that it puts so much emphasis on external performance that some people adopt a set of behaviors on the outside, but their heart has not changed on the inside. This type of legalism pushes people to pretend to be something they are not. So what happens when they struggle with sin? They have to maintain the image so they hide it. There becomes a disconnect between their private and public life. Why are there so many scandals in churches? It is this very reason. Maintaining image causes them to cover up their sin and inauthentically pretend to be something they are not.

In the self-righteous heart, there is a rotten decay festering underneath. None of us are righteous apart from God’s grace; so anyone who lives this way must have an unattended, sore of sin hidden underneath. You may have other people decieved, but God knows what is in your heart.

1 Samuel 16:7 “But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”

Hebrews 4:13 “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”

There we stand thinking we have this case open and shut, but God brings out evidence against us that we thought we had hidden. We thought we had it taken care of, but there it is. God knows the reality of our hearts.

The verdict

Romans 2:1 “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.”

The verdict is that there is no excuse for our sin and we still stand guilty. Romans 1:20 “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” declared the Gentiles without excuse, but you self-righteous Jews are also without excuse.

Back to my illustration about the crackers on the furniture. When we finally figure out who made the mess the usual process is to listen to all the excuses. Maybe its they were watching a youtube video or they had to go feed the dog, or they got distracted playing with the toys.

When we are finally caught and it is undeniable that we are guilty, our next step is to try and make mistakes for all the things we have done. But Lord, I just can’t stop myself. But Lord, it is so pleasurable how could it be wrong. But Lord, you let me be tempted.

Or in the case of the Jews, Paul is going to argue against four excuses they try to make. We will deal with those as we work through the text.

Very rarely do excuses hold any water. Most of the time, excuses merely show that we didn’t prioritize doing right.

I ran into this all the time when working at CFA. People would be late to work and the excuse was traffic. The problem was they knew what traffic was like every day at that time. The real reason they were late is they prioritized something else and left late or they didn’t alot enough time to get there. It is excusable to have a bad day where unexpectedly traffic was worse than usual, but that is not what happens most of the time.

Before God we have no excuse. We suppressed the truth, we turned to idols of our own hearts, we chose to sin. And honestly, the self-righteous is even more guilty because his lifestyle shows how much more he knows about God’s law. America is much like Israel in one way. Our culture until recently has had a biblical understanding of what is right and wrong. But what this says about us is we still chose sin. And we are more guilty than the kid in Africa growing up under pagan superstitions.

Conclusion

Paul wrote this message primarily to unsaved Jews. They are the man being addressed and maybe you are a religious person but you have never been born again. Paul’s message is that religious people need the gospel too. If you came today and you do not know Jesus Christ as your savior, would you raise you hand today so I can pray for you. In a moment when the piano plays I would like you to come forward and let someone show you how you can have your sins forgiven.

But for the rest of us, there is still a lesson for us to get as 21st century Christians. We can be like these self-righteous Jews. We see what all the pagans are doing. I love Todd Friel’s commentary on society, The pagans are acting like pagans again. But in doing so, we miss the decay in our own hearts. John Stott in his commentary on the book of Romans wrote:

We work ourselves up into a state of self-righteous indignation over the disgraceful behavior of other people, while the very same behavior seems not nearly as serious when it is ours, rather than theirs.

What are the sins you are tempted to excuse in yourself while condemning in others. Do you look at others outside the church and just shake your head or do you see yourself as also merely a sinner saved by grace. If this is the attitude of your heart, don’t you think today is the right moment to make that right. Will you come?