Romans 2:1-5 "The Irony of Judging Others"

Introduction:

The Church at Rome had a mixture of both Jewish and Gentile believers in it. The Jews probably loved hearing Romans 1:18-32. They may have thought that Paul was speaking primarily to those Gentiles in the congregation.

But in Chapter 2 Paul shifts gears to the implications of God’s judgment according to the moral law. This would have been right in line with ideology of the Jewish believers.

The moral law reveals God’s standard by which all people will be judged.

This should inform our evangelism. Who needs saving? All those under the condemnation of the law, both Jew and Gentile. And that leaves all of us unqualified to exercise righteous judgment over others according to our own personal standard of perceived righteousness.

There is a principle of judgment that governs it at a human to human level. Look at verses 1-3

I. The Principle of Judgment(1-3).

A. There is a self-condemning aspect tied to us as humans exercising judgment.

This is because all human beings are guilty of sin. It is impossible to judge someone rightly using one’s own individual standard without condemning one’s own self. Which, in the end, exposes the hypocrisy of the one exercising the judgment.

We may judge someone for violating the moral law but we may be breaking that same moral law. We may detest liars but yet we lie ourselves at times.

Someone may condemn a person for practicing homosexuality while they are themselves secretly committing adultery in their marriage.

Or one may be condemning the adulterer while they themselves are busy practicing fornication. They justify their own action while condemning others.

There are many aspects of morality that can bring out human hypocrisy in any situation. At any point when a person assumes that their own perception of self-righteousness gives them the authority to judge others there is a self-condemning affect that can come back upon them.

Remember the words of our Lord from Matthew 7:1-5: “1 Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

God is the judge and His standard is right and true. It is never the moral high ground of the believer in and of himself that constitutes the moral standard.

Realizing this prepares us to do ministry. Sometimes the log in our own eye has roots in self-righteous pride. To help others to get the speck out of their eye we have to get the log out of our eye.

The righteous standard is God’s standard of moral order and that standard tells us the truth about all of humanity.

But when the gospel of Jesus Christ changes you and confronts you in your sin you come to realize you have no moral high ground. God alone has it.

Reminding ourselves of this and contextualizing our evangelism in this truth makes God’s standard the issue. Our hearers may have a hard time understanding this.

We may tell them but most of the unbelievers we will encounter will still think of our message as being a moralistic one. Come join us and be a good person like we are.

They find this ridiculous because they probably already believe they are a morally good person in God’s eyes.

Through the years the most common answer I hear to the question: “If you died tonight and were to stand outside the gates of heaven and God were to say to you why should I let you into my heaven?” The most common answer by far is, because I am a good person.

It is not us they need to be concerned with. It is God that we all need to be concerned with for all have sinned and none of us are excluded from accountability before God.

This includes the sin of our hypocrisy. This was the sin that Jesus most openly accused the religious leaders of. They presented themselves as righteous but behind the scenes were planning His murder.

Jesus told them in Matthew 21:31: “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.”

This is because you can’t enter the Kingdom on your own righteousness and you can’t judge others with yourself as the moral standard for that judgment without condemning yourself in the end.

Human pride can blind us to how we see unbelievers in the world but it can also blind us to how we see our own sin before God. Look at verses 4-5:

II. The Misconceptions of Judgment (4-5).

A. This is the Fallacy of False Presumption (4-5).

It is very popular to deny today that God is a God of wrath and that He will inflict eternal judgment on unbelievers. And those who argue for such ideas usually argue that God is kind, long suffering and patient.

God’s kindness and patience is meant to lead you to repentance. God’s character being reflected in His kindness, long suffering and patience has a goal.

The goal is repentance from sin. This is where a persons disposition towards sin changes because of regeneration. When someone is regenerated there is a change that takes place in how they feel about their sin.

Remember those old radio’s you had to dial in to hear the station. You turned it to the point that there was less static and to where you could hear more clearly.

The Holy Spirit’s job is to dials us in to God’s frequency so that the static of our fallen nature gets tuned out. Some of this takes place at regeneration but it continues throughout the believer’s life as they are being sanctified.

True believer’s are in this fight as they are being dialed in by the Holy Spirit using the word of God to put us on the same frequency as Him.

Christian God is in the business of confronting our sin and calling us to repentance because He is a Holy God and He understands the destructive nature of sin. We are so blind to it.

We may even declare the benevolent characteristics of God but if we deny the necessity of repentance from our sin we are not truly embracing the biblical gospel.

Hard hearts are very content with the perception of righteousness but seldom embrace sanctification and repentance as normal to the Christian life.

This is why to presume upon the benevolence of God without the presumption of obedience to Him is a fallacy. Theologians call it anti-nomianism and it has been around since the early church. “Shall we continue to sin so that grace may abound?” (Read Romans 6).

Conclusion

The world sees no difference between us and them. We are doing the same things they are. No doubt we have the same sin nature as they do but we have the transforming power of the Holy Spirit through the gospel working in us.

When they do notice, the difference is simple. It is Christ that makes the difference. Emil Healy, It changed my life it could change yours. He loved people and he loved to engage them in conversation.

God changed us Christian. Would we be obedient to Him in letting Him use us to bring change to others?

Believers: Are you in the fight for repentance? Is sanctification an ongoing pursuit in your life. What is it God is calling you to do? Confess your sin and rest in Him.

Unbeliever: Believe the gospel Let’s Pray!