The Judge in the Mirror

I invite you to go ahead and open your Bibles with me, to Romans chapter 2. We are going to be in Romans chapter 2 this morning, continuing walking down the Romans Road together. And last week, we moved past the introduction, and what I told you was not a pleasant section to walk through, but that is absolutely necessary.

You see, not everything that is good for you is pleasant. Both sleeping and going to the doctor are good for you, but only one of them is enjoyable. Were it up to me, I would much rather focus together on the pleasantries of the Christian faith. It is more fun to talk about the love of God than His wrath, and forgiveness than judgment, grace, love, and hope, than sin, death, and destruction.

But here’s the thing: We cannot comprehend one without the other. You can’t fully experience the love of God, the forgiveness and grace that He gives to us, or the hope He gives us for eternity, until you understand your own sin, the brokenness that it brings to your life, the death that it leads you to, and the judgment and wrath that it earns for you because you cannot understand your need for God’s salvation and love until you understand how desperate your situation is without Him.

And this is precisely our situation, as we return to Romans 2. Last week, we were talking about how God created us with knowledge of who He is, and with an understanding of what is good and right, and what is wrong. God made us to desire Him and to worship Him, but that when we replace our desire for our Creator with desires for other things, that we begin to worship those things. And we saw how false worship leads us to a corrupt thought life that leads us to corrupt actions. These things aren’t really natural to us, but we do them because we have exchanged our natural desire for God for a desire for a different god that really boils down to ourselves. And this path of corruption, that we call sin, is important for us to see because we corruption can lead us nowhere except to more corruption, until we arrive at the final corruption, death.

You’ll also recall, that we were talking about how this long list of sins, lying, gossip, slander, malice, arrogance, boasting, disobedience to parents, homosexuality, being unloving, being untrustworthy and unmerciful, murder-that is harbored ill will towards another, strife, all of these things are called unnatural corruptions that result from worship something other than God. And as we start this morning, it is important for us to see that all of these things lead us to the same place.

We are going to be reading this morning from Romans 2, beginning in verse 1. If you don’t have your Bible with you, that’s okay, the words will be on the screens for you, but I want us to read together from Romans 2, verse 1, and as we do so, I invite all who are able to stand with us in honor of the reading of God’s Word:

Romans 2:1–8 NASB95

Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.

Would you pray with me? Lord Jesus, thank you for this day and this time that we have together as your church. Thank you that we have the privilege of studying Your Word together, and that through it we have the opportunity to know You better and to be changed to be more like You. Would You send the Holy Spirit to be with us as we enter Your Word together. Would You help us, through Him, to understand more fully what we are reading, and how You would change us through it. We want You to be glorified in us and in the ways that we live our lives out before You, and we are asking You to help us to do that better today than we did before through our time together this morning. In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.

Thank you, you may be seated. And as you take your seat, you may want to go ahead and get out your listening guide, either from your program or from the Facebook thread, but I want you to imagine this morning that you were downtown at a restaurant, you can pick which one. And you overheard a conversation between two men, Let’s call them Bob and Harry. And Bob said “I’m not doing what that doctor wants to do to me. First, he wants to knock me out with some strong drugs and hook me up to a bunch of machines. Then, he wants to cut me open with a knife. Once they are inside of me, he wants to do all kinds of crazy things to clean out my heart valves. He says it’s going to take like 6 hours, and there is no way that I can do that.”

And so, Harry says, “that sounds serious, Bob. That sounds like something you NEED to do. You don’t mess around with your heart. If you don’t do that, don’t you know that you might die! Your heart is really important.”

But Bob responds, “You’re one to talk, Harry! Your doctor told you that you needed surgery too, but you’re not doing it.”

To which Harry replies, “yeah, but that’s different. You need work done on your heart. All I need is a new kidney!”

That sounds crazy, right? Who would do that? Who would insist on others around you dealing with what is killing them, while ignoring what is killing yourself? But this is exactly what our passage this morning is dealing with, because this is what we do. Start at verse 1 again with me:

Romans 2:1–2 NASB95

Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things.

What is Paul saying here? He is saying that all of those things that we just talked about and even things that we didn’t talk about, all sin comes from the same place. And just to make sure we’re on the same page, when Paul included unrighteousness, wickedness, and evil in the list in verses 1:26-31, he covers every sin. All sin is evil. All sin is unrighteous. It’s not like I can turn around and say, “oh, lying is a righteous sin, but that stealing, that is evil.” All of it is evil.

We have this way about us as humans where we rate and rank sin. We say this sin is worse than that one, but the reality is that, in God’s eyes, they are all the same. All sin is evil. All sin is unrighteous. So, even if your favorite sin habit isn’t listed specifically, it is still included in the “same things” and “such things” in verses 1 and 2. But all of these things, all sin comes from the same place.

We were talking about it last week, right? We were saying that all sin comes from corruption. All sin is born in our desire for something other than God, usually, that desire is for our own good above all else. But that desire turns to false worship that leads to corrupt thoughts, and corrupt actions. This is true about ALL SIN. And all sin leads to death and judgement. And as we get to where we are, what Paul is saying is this, that you and I are in danger. You and I are in danger because we are condemning others around us for their sin, and we ignore our own. We are the pot calling the kettle black. We are really good at calling out the sins of others and not dealing with our own.

If you’ve got your listening guide this morning, the first thing that I would like you to note and to remember this morning is this, that

Your judgment of the sins of others proves that you know you are guilty

I want to be clear here. I’m not saying that we, as believers, don’t need to call each other out for our sin issues. When we see sin in each other’s lives, we need to be accountable to each other, and to come alongside each other in love and to help each other to work through it. But what we are talking about is judgment and condemnation. I’m talking about when we look at a group of people that live a certain lifestyle, and we write them off as those we don’t need to love, and as those we should show no compassion to because “they are sinners.” I’m talking about refusing to love others around you because in your mind and in your heart, you have found them guilty before God, and you are waiting for His punishment to fall on them, it is only a matter of time.

And what Paul is saying here is that you better be careful. You need to be careful because in judging them, you are proving you are aware of your own guilt. You are proving you know right from wrong, that you know what the Lord commands, and yet you are choosing not to do it.

You see, you and I, we look at the action and the action only. We look at the stealing of a thief, or the lie of a liar as the problem. But the problem is much deeper. The action is the end result. God looks at the heart. Jeremiah 17:10 says

Jeremiah 17:10 NASB95

“I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give to each man according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds.

God looks at the homosexual, and the murderer, and the adulterous husband, and those living together outside of marriage, and those who are habitual liars, and the thief; God looks at the greedy person and the stingy shrewd who refuse to give to the Lord, He sees the gossiper and the slanderer.

God sees all of our sinful actions. And we want to rank them. We want to point at one and say it’s worse than ours that we overlook, but God sees all of those actions as the SAME THING! Why? Because corrupt actions come from corrupt thinking. Corrupt thinking comes from false worship, when you decide something is worth more to you than anything else. And false worship comes from that moment when you choose to desire something other than God as your foremost desire.

That is what it means when it says God judges your heart. He looks at you, and says “you are just the same as the person you are judging because, though your actions are different, the cause is the same; you are guilty of idolatry, you are guilty of false worship, you are guilty of loving yourself more than me.” Your fruit might not be the same fruit, but it is still rotten fruit, which means that you are a rotten tree, just like they are.

We need to be careful. I’m not saying we need to tolerate sinful lifestyles in the body of Christ. I’m saying, rather than judging a sinful world for their sins, we need to show them love and compassion like Jesus loves us and we need to deal with our own sin. You need to stop looking around the world and judging the sins of others, and deal with the sin in your own life, first. Rather than attacking the world for their sins, let the church of God be a people that are freed from it, so that the world around us, as we love them, will see the difference. Look at verses 3-5:

Romans 2:3–5 NASB95

But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,

Your judgment of the sins of others proves that you know you are guilty, and, as you continue taking notes, the second thing that comes out of that is,

When you judge others, you exchange God’s grace and forgiveness for His wrath and judgment

It is easy to pass judgment. It is easy to look and say, “people like that are going to hell. He’s going to hell, she is going to hell. Those people deserve what is coming to them, and I don’t feel sorry for them.” But here is the thing, when you say that, you are stepping in the shoes of God. You are condemning them, when you yourself were forgiven.

In Matthew 18:22-35, Jesus shares a parable that I’ll tell you now

There was this king that decided to call in the debts of those in his kingdom that owed him money. And so, the king’s servants brought in a man that owed the king millions of dollars, and the king demanded that the man pay him what he owed. And when the king found out that the man didn’t have the money to pay him back, he commanded his servants to take away everything that the man owned, and to sell the man and his whole family as slaves.

But, before they could drag him away, the man threw himself on the ground and pleaded with the king. He said, “Oh, great king, I can’t pay you back yet. But please be patient with me. If you give me more time, I promise I’ll pay you back everything that I owe you.”

When the king heard this, his heart was filled with compassion. And not only did the king release the man to return to his home and family, but he also forgave the man of all his debts, so that he owed the king nothing.

The man who had been forgiven left the palace, and was on his way home. And on his way home, he saw a neighbor that owed him about 75 dollars. And so, the man grabbed his neighbor by the throat, and he said “It’s time for you to pay me back! Where’s my money?”

But his neighbor fell to the ground and began to sob. He pleaded with the man, saying “I don’t have the money right now, but give me more time and I will repay you.”

But the man just snarled at his neighbor. He called the guards and had his neighbor thrown into a debtor’s prison to work off the money that he owed him. When he did that, some of the king’s servants saw it happen. And they went to the king and reported how this man had treated his neighbor. And when the king heard what the man had done, he burned with anger. He had his servants bring the man who he’d forgiven back before him, and he said to him,

“You wicked slave! I forgave you all of that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not shown mercy to another when I should you so much mercy?” And the king threw the man into prison to be tortured until his debt was repaid.

Friends, we have to be careful that this isn’t us. You need to be careful with this. I need to be careful with this. When we claim to be among those that God has forgiven, and yet we judge and condemn the world around us while continuing to live in our sin, we are fooling ourselves. You cannot claim the grace of God for yourself, while condemning others for their sin. If you are going to judge others for their sin, denying them the forgiveness you have already received, denying them the patience, the tolerance, and the grace that you had, what you show is your true fruit. What you show is that you never really surrendered to Christ in the first place. In Luke 6:37, Jesus said

Luke 6:37 NASB95

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned.

Jesus didn’t say to let sin go. He didn’t say that it was okay for us to live in sin. He said that we are to forgive others because we have been forgiven. He says that God is the one who judges sin, but the right response for us is to go and sin no more ourselves, while we reach others in love and invite them into the Kingdom. Lead them to Jesus. Let His Kindness in you, His goodness in you, His grace in you lead them to Him. Let Him help them work out the sin in their lives, even as He is helping you.

Let me ask you a question: when you came to Christ, were you righteous? Of course not! Because if you were righteous, you wouldn’t have any need for Christ in the first place. That is the same place that every single person that is lost in our world today is. And instead of focusing on how evil they are, we need to focus on loving them, as God routes our own sins out of our lives. Look at verse 6-8 with me:

Romans 2:6–8 NASB95

who will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.

This is why we need to be careful, friends, not to judge others and to route out sin from among us. You need to be forgiving and forbearing with others, who are sinners just like you are. You need to be diligent in working sin out of your own life, but you have to extend God’s love and mercy to others around you. Because, as you judge others, your knowledge of God’s truth and your own guilt leaves you with no excuse. And your judgment of others is a rotten fruit; because no one that has truly been forgiven would withhold that healing from others. And so, you are choosing God’s wrath and judgment over His grace and forgiveness.

And I don’ want you to miss this, friends, because our last point here this morning is this:

God is not fooled: you will be judged by your fruit

Perseverance, the glory of God, honor to God, these things are Kingdom purposes, and if they are in your life, they are evidence that you will have eternal life with God in heaven. These things are evidence that you are truly saved. These things, in verse 7, are God-honoring purposes. They are things that God says will appear in our lives when we are living for Him. In other words, if God is the central desire of your heart, if you are a Jesus tree, you will grow Jesus fruit.

We’ve talked about this before friends. Jesus says in Matthew 7:17-20

Matthew 7:17–20 NASB95

“So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “So then, you will know them by their fruits.

You will know by your fruit. If your fruit is the judgment of others, while your own life is still full of sin, what kind of tree are you? Everyone of us still has sin in our lives, amen? So, if we are all sinners, what place do we have in judging anyone? You will be known by your fruit.

Verse 8 is a scary verse, friends. It is scary because what it says is that wrath and indignation await those whose god is themselves. Wrath awaits those who would hide behind God’s forgiveness with no transformation in their own lives, while they judge others. It is scary because God is not fooled. God is not fooled, but you might be. You might be fooling yourself.

See, make no mistake. Every sin that you have ever committed, every thing that you have ever done wrong is going to be judged. There will be punishment for every sin you have committed. I don’t care who you are, who your daddy is, how long you’ve been in church, how clean your undies are, every single sin you have ever committed will be judged and punished because God is a righteous judge. The only question is, who pays the debt. Who will pay that punishment: either it will be Jesus, or it will be you.

Either Jesus’ death on the cross covered your sin when you found forgiveness in Him, or you will suffer the wrath of God that your sins have earned. It is one or the other. I want my sins to be covered by Jesus. I’m not going to tell my friend to have life-saving surgery and not have that surgery myself. Friends, there are some dark and dirty hearts in this world, and yours is one of them. And your neighbor, your banker, your barber, your teacher, they need a heart transplant-but so do you. And I can’t speak for you this morning, but can I just say that I don’t want to be focused on bringing God’s judgment to them while I die myself. Instead, I want to be bathed in the grace of my Savior. I want to drink of His forgiveness. And as He cleanses me of my sin and my shame that He takes on Himself, I want to carry His grace and forgiveness to others just like me.

This morning the altar is open, friend. Is our world falling apart? It is. Is the whole thing broken? It is. Is that anything new? It isn’t. And if you want to change it, if you want to reach this world for Jesus, that change isn’t going to start by pointing at their brokenness, but by dealing with your own. So, today, the altar is open for anyone that is tired of judging everybody else but themselves. Jesus is ready to meet every broken heart the remembers they have sinned and fall short of His glory, and who He has called them to be. His forgiveness is waiting on anyone that is ready to live a life of carrying that same grace and forgiveness to others that need Him. And this morning, He is calling on you to put down your gavel and to kneel at the cross. Won’t you look at your fruit this morning? And if you find it lacking, if you find that it’s the wrong kind of fruit, would you come and find it’s not too late for you to be made new? I’m going to pray for us, and I’m inviting you to come. If today you hear Him calling, harden not your heart.

Let’s pray together: Lord, Jesus, forgive me. Forgive me for picking up your gavel, and judging others for sinning against you, when I am sinning against you myself. Forgive me, Lord, for continuing to put myself and my own desires above my desire for You. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for your grace and mercy that I find only through your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, teach me how to extend that grace to others. Open my eyes to see where I am failing to love, as I judge others for sinning like I do. Lord, help me to uproot the sin in my life, so that I can better show your love for others. Make me a new tree, Lord, a good tree that will grow good fruit, a servant that will persevere in doing the things You have called me to do so that You will be glorified in me. Help me to show Your kindness to those that don’t yet know You, so that they may find the same forgiveness in You that I have. In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.