Romans: Righteous and Unrighteous Judgment | Young Adults Pastor: Sam Rapp

Amen.

Yeah, Katie, thanks for reading those verses.

I bet when you all heard about God's judgment and wrath, you were like, thank God we came to church on Labor Day.

So thank you for being here.

I'm glad to work through this text with you.

But again, yeah, good morning.

I'm Sam.

I'm one of the pastors here.

I'm glad to be with you.

If you do have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them.

Romans 2, 1 through 5 is going to be where we're camped out together this fall.

And as long as it takes us as a church, we're going to be working our way through the book of Romans.

This letter written by the Apostle Paul is written primarily to two major audiences.

The first is the former Jews who had become Christians, like Paul himself.

Maybe these people grew up hearing about the Torah, hearing about this coming Messiah, then they found Jesus and they converted to Christianity, but they still had a lot of their Jewish practices in them.

And then the other is the Gentiles, which was everybody that's not Jewish, people that had no idea of the religious norms, and many of whom lived pretty debaucherous lives, and also had come to know Jesus.

And this morning we find ourselves in a really poignant place in the letter.

Because for the second half of chapter one, Paul had just spent all of it explaining how these Gentiles who are suppressing the truth of God's existence and living in debauchery, will result in all sorts of sin and wandering and a lack of freedom.

And chapter one at the end, it leads us into chapter two into a very important tension that the audience of Romans would have felt and that we today also feel.

And this tension is that all of us, Christian or not Christian, if you're here this morning, we have decided in our hearts that there is a group of people that we can pronounce judgment on for some reason or another, right?

This is actually the great sales pitch of pretty much every political season since the 80s, right?

To sell you that there is a great enemy to your happiness, and it's them, right?

Now, maybe for you, it is a political party that feels like a them to you.

Maybe it's a certain parent or parenting style.

Maybe it's an ethnic group or a religious group.

Maybe it's Auburn fans.

I don't know.

Right?

Churches are even guilty of this.

Christians are guilty of this.

We're quick to pronounce judgment on another church, on another theological system, because it feels unsafe to us, right?

It's different, it's threatening.

Now, I don't know who your them is this morning, but of the Jewish audience that Paul was writing to, it was everybody he just listed in the second half of chapter one.

So imagine with me that you're a Jewish Christian.

You had just received this letter from Paul.

Maybe you grew up really morally and religiously conservative.

You were taught by mom and dad that going to synagogue was what you ought to do, that you were a chosen people, that Yahweh had set his love upon you distinctly.

Maybe you were a Jewish Christian, you're taught for your whole life that eating bacon is sinful.

And that going to Waffle House would doom you to judgment.

And you were taught from a young age that everybody out there was doomed under the judgment of God.

That everybody out there, and maybe the most important thing about these Jewish Christians is that they felt distinct.

Because of their uprising up their up raised up, that was a hard word to grab there.

That just was an absolute fumble.

There was a legitimate wall in the temple that, if you were a Jewish Christian, separated you from Jew and Gentile.

So these people receiving this letter had a very distinct them in their brain, right?

The Gentile sinners of the second half of chapter one deserved God's judgment to many of these people.

And so, as Paul is outlining all the sin and debauchery that these Gentiles were engaging in, you can almost feel the puffed up chest that the Christians were feeling, right?

And Paul, he's a master writer.

And Paul was a Jewish Christian.

Not only that, he was a Pharisee.

So he understood more than anybody what it's like to look down on them, right?

So I just want to say, before we dig in, please hear me.

This is a warning passage.

And I think it's easy in the church, especially knowing the resurrection of Christ has happened, it's easy to pass over these warning passages and go quickly to the resurrection passages.

But I just want to remind us pastorally today the warning passages are here for a reason in the text.

And so I believe that God's word is gonna speak to us this morning.

And so just as we read these words, I would encourage you, they are gonna be intense.

But read them not in the context of a God who hates you, but of a loving Father who knows what you need.

So let's look at Romans 2:1 together.

Romans 2:1

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.

So, point number one for us this morning.

We have four points.

We might not struggle with that, but we are also guilty of sin.

All right, so Paul flips here the language of chapter one, talking about the non-religious people kind of out there in the world.

To the religious people here in the room receiving the letter of Romans.

And Paul writing here, he's writing under the inspiration and authority of the Holy Spirit.

And so in this, he's using a really master word choice here.

And uh this verse here, Paul uses a Greek word that happens only two times in the whole New Testament.

And the other time it's used in chapter one of Romans.

So look at this.

The Greek word is anapologetos.

So chapter one says this.

Paul's talking to the Gentiles.

He says, for his invisible attributes, namely his God's eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

So they, the non-religious people rejecting God, they are without excuse.

Okay.

Romans 2 1.

Paul flips it.

Therefore, you, Jewish, Christian, religious person, have no excuse who judges, right?

Paul is so intentional.

He's saying, Hey, the unreligious people who are rejecting the glory of God revealed in creation and living in sin, they have no excuse.

And to the same level, he's saying, you Christian who pass judgment on them, you have the same level of a lack of excuse, right?

Why?

Because people who are in the church who understand the gospel understand the doctrine of sin more than anyone, right?

So how could a sinner saved by grace alone cast judgment on a sinner who has yet to experience that same grace?

The idea of judgment here in this verse is the idea that the religious person is elevating themselves to a place of divine judgment, right?

Except the big issue, and we know this, is that if we're honest, we're not able to judge righteously.

Now, this is not to say that the people of God should get really soft on things that the scriptures are clear about, right?

But this is to say two things.

One, I'm not God.

And two, no one is judged into believing in Jesus.

Right?

You know the second point is true.

Like when you go to maybe a concert on the square or even the art festival this weekend, you you might see somebody with a huge sign with flames on it that says, Hell is coming.

Judgment is coming, repent now because hell is coming.

And listen, I am as pro-evangelism as the next guy.

But every time I see a sign with flames and fear-mongering, I cringe to the core of my being.

And listen, God is sovereign.

He can use things like that.

But generally speaking, no one is called into the gospel typically by being screamed at, right?

I mean, think about the way Jesus did ministry.

The people Jesus was harshest to were not the outsiders.

He was harshest at the Christian at the Jews, right?

No one was won over by Jesus by being screamed at.

They were won over by being wooed into the gospel, right?

So if we want our family member or coworker or friend down the street to believe in the truth of the gospel, the last thing that's going to be desirable to them is for us to be a self-righteous jerk, right?

So I would invite you this morning to honestly think about what people groups in our culture and in our world you are most prone to cast judgment on.

Who in your life feels like a them, right?

Maybe it's a specific person, maybe it's a group of people, maybe it is a political party or an organization.

But I think where it gets really subversive for us is there are sin struggles that other people deal with that we would never imagine struggling with, right?

And so it's easy to look at somebody who's struggling with something we see as really bad.

And we think, oh, well, I'm doing pretty good.

In the opening verse, Paul wants to drive home in us that, yes, we might not struggle with some of the things of Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

But we are far from perfect.

And Paul, he's again, he's a master storyteller.

He he might even presume upon the devil's advocate, right?

The devil's advocate might say, Paul, you just spent a lot of verses talking about homosexuality.

And Paul, I don't, I don't struggle with that.

So I'm good.

But Paul might say, as Jesus would say, hey, what about the lust in your heart?

What about what about the porn addiction?

Paul, I don't struggle with murder like those in chapter one, right?

Like those sinners.

But Paul and even Jesus would say, if we have hate in our heart, we find ourselves guilty of murder too, right?

Paul is not saying this to condemn us.

He's not saying this to condemn you, but he is saying it to sober us.

And I think the soberness that that brings us to is hey, we we need to take our own sin seriously, right?

Honestly, we probably need to take our own sin more seriously than we take others' sin, right?

Let's look at verse two.

Paul says, We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.

Point two, God's judgment is consistent, fair, and just.

So Paul is elevating the stakes, right?

You, O man, who judges.

And he's reminding us that our judgment as human beings is not going to be consistent.

It is not going to be fair, and it's not going to be just.

We might even put really good spiritual language on it, right?

Like I'll bless their heart, right?

But we are not fair often.

But the good news, and something I'm banking my eternity on, is that God is a good judge.

God is consistent, he is fair, he is just, his standards don't change.

And unlike you and me, God's not emotionally reacting to situations in heaven.

And he actually knows the thoughts and intentions of people's hearts, which we don't, right?

And here's one of the clear ways that we know we're made in the image of God.

We long for justice in the world, right?

We want the horrible atrocities of history to be judged, right?

And that's a good desire in us.

We want it in our government, we want it in our judicial system, we want justice in our lives and in our families.

The hunger for justice is a good hunger.

It's a hunger you have because you're made in the image of a God of perfect justice.

Isaiah, in the beginning of his prophecy, he's speaking to the people of God, and this is what he says: learn to do good, seek justice, correct opposition, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.

So, yes, we we ought to be a people who seek to make earth as it is in heaven, right?

To seek the welfare of the city we live.

We should do those things.

Now I want to talk about quickly what is the judgment of God.

Because God's justice and God's judgment are not entirely the same thing, but they're very much related.

And I think these verses speak a lot into them.

So, what's the difference between God's judgment and his justice?

Well, God's justice is his moral standard of righteousness.

That doesn't change.

And then his judgment is God's rightful execution of that justice, right?

And I'm talking about justice here because the verse explains that God's judgment rightly falls.

It falls with justice, in other words, right?

And this is why, for a moment, I want to talk about the cross.

And why the cross is so mind-blowing.

The cross is so mind-blowing because though sinners rightly deserve God's judgment, Jesus took it on himself.

Why else do you think Jesus cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

But because the judgment of God had fallen upon him.

Paul explains a little bit more of the theology of the cross in Romans 3.

He says this, it was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Right?

That old hymn, because the sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free for God.

The just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me.

And the the really cool thing about the gospel is that for anybody, regardless of past, present, future, what they've done, what they haven't done, uh, they could go all the way into the second half of Romans 1 of debauchery.

And yet their case would be pled by a God who died.

And so, on the cross, the judgment that should rightly fall on a sinner rightly fell on the sinless Savior.

And it's actually his judgment is poured out so much so it's as if Jesus was guilty himself of your sin.

So the justice we seek by judging other people, it's actually coming from a good motive, which is that justice should be done.

But it's coming and landing on the wrong place.

Because you and I are not God.

We're not the perfect judge.

So the right place is not to look down on other people, but to the cross.

Where we see the image of God's judgment and justice happening in history, where God and the flesh was flesh was judged for you.

Now there is space, as fellow believers, of course, to call out sin in one another, right?

It would actually be incredibly unloving to let each other go on sinning.

But loving rebuke, loving challenge is so much different than self-righteous judgment.

It looks different, it feels different, it's experienced different.

Look at what Jesus says in Matthew 7.

These will be familiar verses to you.

Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, judge not that you not be judged.

For with the pronoun the judgment you pronounce, you will be judged, and with the measure you use it, it will be measured to you.

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own?

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?

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.

Right, Jesus is hitting here on the same tension that Paul is.

The holier than thou mentality that produces a lot of self-righteous people who are blind to their own sin and shortcomings.

And Christians have been guilty of this for 2,000 years, right?

I once heard a preacher say that the temptation for Christians is to have a PhD in others' people's sin, but have a kindergarten elementary education of our own, right?

I feel that temptation, don't you?

And judging people makes you feel good, right?

That's part of why we do it.

But the more we stare at Jesus and the cross, the more we will be aware of our own sin, of the log, right?

And the more soberly and humbly we will see other people and the speck in their eye.

Right?

The remedy for a self-righteous heart is looking at the sinless savior murdered.

Alright, let's look at verse three.

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?

Point three, pointing my finger at sinners does not lead to my own justification before God.

When I say justification there, I mean innocence.

To judge other people, I don't know if you've ever thought about this.

It kind of I feel like the Lord gave it to me this week.

Judging other people is its own form of salvation by works, right?

Because what's happening in that process is you're saying, God, you should think really highly of me, not because of Christ's righteousness, but because of my righteousness.

You should, you should think higher of me than them, God, because look at these things I'm doing for you.

Right?

That's literally salvation by works.

Jesus shows us this in the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee.

This is one of my favorite parables.

Look at this, Luke 18.

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt.

So two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, a Jewish leader, and the other a tax collector.

The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week.

I give tithes of all that I get.

What a great prayer.

Amen.

But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat 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 everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

And man, it's so easy to do exactly what the Pharisee did, right?

I mean, he was using metrics for salvation that God never prescribed.

Fasting twice a week and tithing.

I don't know if you know where that verse is.

I don't.

So the question is, right, how does Hebrews 11 tell us that Old Testament people were saved?

It's by faith.

By faith Abraham was saved.

By faith, Moses was saved.

So this dude says that he gets salvation because of these two random things that he does, right?

I would encourage us this morning to think about the metrics we place for salvation or morality that God never prescribed.

And in Marietta, it might not be tithing or fasting.

But for us, again, it's maybe not tax collectors, but I would encourage us to fill in the blank there, right?

God, I thank you that I'm not like fill in the blank.

I don't know who that might be for you, but I would encourage you to think about it, to consider it.

Who might be the fill in the blank there for you?

Right?

Paul sobers us in this verse.

He says, Do you suppose you who judge them and are also guilty that you will escape God's judgment?

Versus our heart, we don't like to talk about these things very often.

What Paul is saying is, hey, Jewish Christian receiving this letter, you're gonna stand before God one day too.

And I wouldn't bank your salvation on being a little bit better than the next guy.

That's a bad thing to bank your eternity on.

Your salvation, my salvation, is not going to come because we're a little bit better than the tax collectors.

It only comes through Christ's righteousness given to you.

Let's close out our passage.

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?

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.

Our fourth and final point: God's character frees you from the life of judgment and cynicism into the life of repentance and humility.

I actually think a lot of the Pharisees in the Gospels were so hardened toward Jesus and towards sinners, because I think they forgot what God was like.

I think they probably walked around honestly, like many of us do, with just feeling a little bit anxious and not sure that God's actually set his gaze of love upon them and you.

So I want to talk for a second about family of origin stuff.

Married to a therapist, so that's you know part of my reality.

So talking about family of origin stuff.

Many of you in this room have and had wonderful father figures.

Maybe they were emotionally present with you.

You could cry with them.

You could bring yourself to them.

I praise God for that.

Many of you in this room, probably the majority, had pretty good dads.

They supported you, they uh raised you up, they had financial means for you, they went to your games, but maybe you never felt like you could tell them really what's going on in your heart.

Maybe they were a little distant.

Maybe you'd never seen them cry before, or you had never felt safe to cry in front of them.

And then maybe there's people in this room who had horrible fathers, abusive, neglectful.

I'm sorry if that's you.

But I think what I want to say is our experiences with our earthly fathers will inform how we view our heavenly father.

Right?

It'd be easy to view our heavenly father like our earthly father, as a little bit distant, not present.

And I think the Pharisees, and again, many of you here in this room, are probably feeling that God's just kind of generally unhappy with you.

A little distant, a little cold.

Paul is reminding us here so shockingly in these very harsh verses that God is not like that.

He is a God rich with kindness.

Who, hey, God wants to know how you're doing.

He actually wants to sit with you in your tears.

So when we're prone to judging other people, what we're doing is we're actually forgetting what God's like in that moment.

We're forgetting that he's a God of kindness and we're actually operating as if he's distant and angry, and that we need to take on some of his judgmental responsibility.

Right?

God, you're you're kind of far off and lacking, so I need to fill in the gaps here and judge these people that I think are worthy of it.

And what happens here, when we miss what God's like are two things.

One, we're quicker to judge others, right?

We're quicker to judge others.

And then two, we grow soft on our own sin.

So of course we we grow cynical.

We assume the worst in others.

We get we begin to take God's grace for granted.

Instead of seeing his grace and kindness as something to collapse into, we see it as something to take advantage of, right?

I actually think it's ironic uh that this passage is landing on Labor Day weekend.

Um, Labor Day is actually a pretty new idea.

It began during the Industrial Revolution, the end of the 19th century.

And at that time, workers were working seven hours a week, uh, seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

Uh children were working.

It was a truly brutal environment.

And so on September 5th, 1894, uh 132 years ago, yesterday, happy anniversary.

Uh, about 10,000 fed up workers, they marched through New York City to protest and make a statement about working conditions.

Here's a picture of kind of like a flyer.

Uh I think that's a fascinating picture.

So, about two years later, President Grover Cleveland, he signed Labor Day into existence, into law.

So the question is, why did those workers get to that place of protesting?

They got to that place because they wanted to be seen.

They wanted the government to know that things were not as they ought to be.

Right.

So they stopped their work and they marched.

And they were angry because they were working themselves to the bone.

And I think the temptation for us as Christians, as religious people, is to look at those outside of the church and say, look how hard we're working in here.

And yet at the same time, that hard work leading to judgment and pointing fingers, right?

So the temptation is to forget the gospel, to forget where salvation actually comes from.

That it doesn't come from our labor.

It doesn't come from our work.

It comes from the full and finished work of Jesus as he died for you.

So if you're a Christian here in the room this morning, I'll just invite you to remember the gospel afresh today.

To see the finished work of Jesus as something to collapse into.

To see the ways that maybe you're tempted to judge other people and repent of those things.

And be reminded of the gospel.

And if you're here this morning, you're not a Christian, maybe you've experienced Christianity as something very judgy.

I just want to say I'm so sorry.

If that's turned you off to the gospel, I'm so sorry.

There is nobody more approachable in the universe than Jesus Christ for you.

As we close, we're gonna uh come to the table, of course, here in a few moments.

And then Sam's gonna lead us in this song before the throne of God above.

It's one of my favorite hymns.

I mentioned it earlier.

I would just invite you to think so deeply through the words of that hymn that because the sinless Savior died, you are counted free, beloved.

Set free from judging others and set free from the judgment of God on you.

Let's pray.

Our Father and our God, we we give you thanks that you are a God of judgment, that you will judge the evil of the world rightly.

Lord, you have judged the sin of the world and the death of your son.

And so, Lord, we give you thanks that you are a God who's consistent.

You are a God who rightly thinks about the universe.

You are a God who takes the wrongs of the world and does not overlook them, but judges them.

And Lord, all of us here this morning too rightfully deserve to be judged.

And yet Jesus in our place took it upon himself so much so it's as if he did it himself.

And so, Lord, I just pray for this morning for anybody in this room who's maybe feeling condemned under the under the idea of judgment or overwhelmed by it.

I pray that you would just let them take a deep breath, that the judgment has been paid, that Jesus is enough for them.

Lord, I pray for anybody in this room who has felt judged by Christians, that they would see the love of God as something to be wooed into.

Lord, for any of us in this room who maybe have been struggling with judging others and feeling self-righteous and feeling really good about ourselves in ways maybe we ought not to, Lord, I pray that you would just humble us this morning under the cross.

And I pray, Lord, that as we celebrate Labor Day this weekend, we be reminded of the Sabbath rest we enter into as Christians.

That one day we look forward to the day where all toil and labor is done away and we're set free into an eternal reality of rest.

We love you, Lord, as we come to the table, help us see the gospel more clearly.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.