Kindness & Repentance (Romans 2:1-16)

So, like I said, we're going to be in Romans chapter 2, and we're going to be reading verses 1 through 16.

Romans 2 · chapter mention

So would you please stand with me for the reading of God's word?

It says, Therefore, every one of you who judges is without excuse.

For when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things.

Now, we know that God's judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth.

Do you think any one of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same, that you will escape God's judgment?

Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint and patience, not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment is revealed.

But wrath and anger to those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth while obeying unrighteousness.

There will be affliction and distress for every human being who does evil, first to the Jew and also to the Greek.

But glory, honor, and peace for every one who does what is good, first to the Jew and also to the Greek.

For there is no favoritism with God.

For all who sin without the law will also perish without the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.

For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God.

But the doers of the law will be justified.

So when Gentiles who do not by nature have the law do what the law demands.

They are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.

Their consciences confirm this.

Their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them on the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your word.

That you want us to hear and not just hear, but you want us to hear it and apply it to our daily walk with you.

So Lord, help us to be open to whatever that might be.

I pray that your Holy Spirit would be moving here inside of each one of us, Lord, and teaching us that you would use me as your mouthpiece this morning, and that you'd help me to rightly divide your word.

Lord, we also lift up all that's going on in Ukraine.

Lord, we just want to continue to pray for that.

Lord, we pray for those civilians that are in harm's way, for those refugees that are fleeing for their life.

Lord, I pray that you would use the churches in Ukraine, in the countries on the border of Ukraine to bless your people.

Lord, you let them be a beacon of light that's just shining in such a dark place right now.

Um, Lord, use our brothers and our sisters that are over there in mighty ways and show us how we can help on this end as well.

Lord, you can turn all things together for good, including things just like this.

So we pray that you would do that.

Today would be the day of salvation for so many that are over there.

Uh and that you would use this to spark revival, Lord, to help people see that they're they are mortal.

Lord, they're uh everybody is going to die.

And that you would use this situation so that they would know that they need you, Jesus.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

All right, verse one, it starts with therefore.

And we're gonna stop right there.

But don't worry, we'll have you out of here by dinner, okay?

We'll go a little faster after we get past this one word.

But therefore, when you're studying the Bible, when you see the word therefore, you go back to see what it's there for, right?

So that means we need to talk a little bit about what we covered last week.

Last week we talked a lot about judgment, about how miserable we are at playing God in our own life.

We talked about God's judgment actually being him allowing us to have what we want.

It's allowing us to have what our flesh desires, is really the type of judgment that we're talking about in this passage.

We talked about how self-righteous this side of the room is.

You remember that?

And we talked about how sinful the desires of this side of the room are.

And I see that some of you switched sides since last Sunday.

So I'm not sure.

No, I'm just kidding.

But we talked about how these two different groups that Paul's addressing in the Roman church, that they're trying to exist together.

You know, we have the self-righteous, we have this side that came from a pagan uh Roman religion and culture, and they're learning how to be in church together.

There's Jews that grew up under the law, and they were dotting every I and crossing every T, or at least trying to appear that way.

And they're sitting across from this group that grew up in this pagan culture that never really had to learn how to deny their flesh.

And today we're going to continue on with that theme of not judging each other.

You know, Paul specifically talked about the pagan side of the room in chapter one.

And then chapter two, he's gonna focus on this side of the room and speak to those that are self-righteous.

And I have a question for all of you.

Which is worse?

The unrighteous side of the room or the self-righteous side of the room?

Everybody's thinking the one I'm not on, right?

That's usually how it goes with us.

That's our how our flesh likes to look at things.

But let's look at the entirety of verse one now that we kind of see what the therefore is therefore.

It says, Therefore, every one of you who judges, so they're talking about the self-righteous side of the room, is without excuse.

For when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things.

So last week in chapter one, verse 20, Paul tells the Gentiles that they are without excuse because of God's invisible attributes that are so evident to all.

And I just pictured during that section when Paul's talking to this side of the room, that the self-righteous side of the room is probably kind of sitting a little bit taller, you know, maybe looking down their nose just a little bit further, saying, Yes, Paul, preach it, preach it.

But then chapter two comes.

And Paul turns to this side of the room.

He says, Uh uh-uh, hold on, I've got something for you.

You also are without excuse, because when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things, as he just said here in verse one.

You know, Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7, uh verses 3 through 5.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

I think we have the slide for that, right, Joshua?

There we go.

He says, Why do you look at the splinter in your brother's eye, but don't notice the beam of wood in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the splinter out of your eye.

And look, there's a beam of wood in your own eye.

Hypocrite, first take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.

Romans 2, 1, where we are here today, Matthew 7, verses 3 through 5, which is behind me, they're really talking about the same thing.

Matthew 7:3–5

And it's about judging others instead of dealing with our own sin first.

Because you know whose sin is the hardest to see?

It's ours, right?

It's easy to see it in other people, but it's so hard to actually see it in our own lives.

Yet we have some heinous sin in our life.

Um, or we were looking at, I'm sorry, we're looking at somebody that has heinous sin in their life and we're judging them.

But at the same time, those people are looking back at us and judging some heinous sin in our life as well, and saying, I can't believe that they do that.

And we're looking at them saying, I can't believe that they do that.

Like we see Jesus in John 8.7, how he said, Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

You know, when I feel especially riled up over someone else's sin, it's usually because I have some glaring sin in that exact same area.

Or I have extreme self-consciousness in that exact same area.

And that's why I end up hypersensitive to certain sins, because that's usually the spot that I'm struggling the most.

You know, like Ben mentioned last week, someone says that they can't believe that someone is gay and that it's such a distortion of God's plan for marriage and sexuality, and then you find out that that same person is addicted to or struggling with porn.

Like that kind of judgment happens all the time where we can so easily see it in somebody else, but we have some glaring sin in our own life that we're completely blind to.

You know, we have enough issues of our own to keep us busy, don't we?

We don't need to be the moral police for God.

Now, there are times God will ask us to get involved in restoring somebody that's living in sin, but he never calls us to be the judge of that person.

That's his job, as we're gonna see here in verse 2.

Look at verse 2 with me.

Now we know that God's judgment on those who do such things is based on truth.

So God is truth.

He cannot tell a lie, he is perfect in every way.

And honestly, when you think about it, who else would you rather have judge you other than God?

Because other than God, you're gonna find people that are liars, that are corrupt, that can be bribed to some capacity.

God is perfectly qualified to be the judge of everyone, whether he's judging the unrighteous or the self-righteous.

Yet we in our pride think that he needs help.

We somehow think that we are righteous enough to help God in his judgment.

And that's where we put ourselves when we judge others, on the same plane as God.

And that's really scary to think about when we elevate ourselves to that place.

And Paul addresses that here in verse 3.

He says, Do you think any one of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same, that you will escape God's judgment?

You know, verse one says, When you judge another, you condemn yourself.

Still on that same theme.

We're all on the same playing field here in this room.

We're all dealing with sin in our life to various capacities.

God's on a different playing field.

God's way up here.

And we're not.

We're like way down here.

But when we judge others, we're trying to say that we're on the same playing field as God.

And then we look down our nose at the lower playing field, you know, pronouncing judgment on those people that are way down here that are exactly like us.

And when we try to play on the same level as of as God, what we're actually doing is we're condemning ourselves.

That's what this verse is talking about.

You know, because we look down, we say, wow, those people down there, they're heinous sinners.

And God looks at us and he says, Yes, you are.

You're not up here with me.

You're still down here.

Even if you think you are, you're still down here.

But when we're judging in our pride, we elevate ourselves to that same place as God.

And when we do this, we pronounce judgment on others out of our pride.

And verse four is going to tell us how God does it.

And it's the furthest thing from pride, how God actually does judge others.

Verse four says, or do you despise the riches of his kindness?

Restraint and patience, not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance.

You know, verse four shows us how God approaches judgment.

And he does it perfectly.

And it says he does it with the riches of his kindness.

He does it with restraint and he does it with patience.

I don't know about you, but I'm so glad that this is how God approaches judgment.

Otherwise, we wouldn't be here.

We'd all be judged and gone, I think, by this point.

If the perfect judge approaches his judgment toward us in that way, how do you think God wants us, as imperfect as we are, to approach others?

I think with kindness, restraint, and patience, right?

And in reality, there are only a few times where this is what God calls us to do.

And it's always in the context of a relationship regarding another believer that we know.

If God calls us to call out a sin in somebody else.

And Matthew 18 gives us just the perfect picture of how we are supposed to do this in the few times that God actually does call us to do this, to call out a sin in a brother or sister.

So Matthew 18, it says, If your brother sins against you, go tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have one your brother.

But if he won't listen, take one or two others with you, so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses, every fact may be established.

If he doesn't pay attention to them, tell the church.

If he doesn't pay attention even to the church, let him be like a Gentile and a tax collector to you.

So it's in the context of somebody that you know, and it always has a heart first to restore that person that you're approaching.

And to do it as God would, with kindness, with restraint, and with patience.

And then God gives them another chance, as you notice.

And then he gives that person another chance before he actually cuts them off from the church.

And even then, it's not our judgment that we pronounce on that person if we're getting into that place of spiritual discipline from the church and cutting somebody off from it.

It's not our judgment, it's God's judgment that he's using his church to carry out.

So Paul gives this huge list in chapter one of these horrid sins that these people have been given over to, like we saw in Romans chapter one, and then follows it up with don't judge.

Because it's not our job to judge those that are not following Christ.

And it's not our job to judge Christians that we aren't in relationship with.

And we can take it even a step further.

It's not our job to judge Christians that we are in a relationship with.

Now, I'm not talking about being discerning toward their sin.

I'm talking about judging the person.

So if you are in a relationship with a person and you notice sin in their life, first, we better pray that God would remove the plank or the beam from our own eye first and expose the pride and the sin in our own life first.

And then ask God if you should bring up that sin with that person.

And then, if he says yes, you approach the person in all humility, with all kindness, restraint, and patience, just as God does, and then you mention the sin with a humble heart, with the heart to restore that person.

Not to just call them out and banish them, but with a heart to restore that person from the sin that they're living in.

And in that scenario, is that really judgment on our part?

Or is it really desiring to see that person grow closer to Christ?

It's the latter, right?

Just wanting that person to grow closer to Christ.

Now, the biggest difference between judgment and correction on our part, when God does call us to this, is pride.

It's the condition of our heart.

Judging another person always involves pride and self-elevation up to where God is.

And I don't know about you, but I've never seen pride result in kindness.

Verse 5 tells us what happens if we do judge.

So look at verse 5 with me.

It says, Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment is revealed.

So to be clear, God's wrath towards sin was poured out on Jesus on the cross.

It's forgiven for those that have accepted Christ, who have repented and asked Christ for forgiveness for our offenses against Him.

But God says in multiple passages in the Scripture that if you want forgiveness, you have to forgive.

And then as you can see behind me, the verses in Luke, Colossians, and Ephesians all support that same idea of forgiveness.

So there's this idea that in all of those passages, and in the passage we're in today, that if you are truly walking by the Spirit, that you're going to be the first to forgive, and that you're going to be ready to forgive a lot, just like God does.

He's at the ready to forgive a lot.

And Jesus even says, we need to be ready to forgive 70 times seven.

That should be ready to come out of us, having that forgiveness towards other people.

You know, as followers of Christ, we're called to have a lot of forgiveness and kindness at the ready.

Because it's God's kindness that leads to repentance.

And I think it's foolishness if we think he would have us do it in any other way.

There's this idea that we see in Scripture that if we're not forgiving others, then maybe we're not really walking with Jesus.

And that's really what this next section is about in Romans verse 6.

Look at that with me.

He says, He will repay each one according to his work.

Eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality.

But wrath and anger to those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth while obeying unrighteousness.

Here's the good news of the gospel.

Whose works will we be judged by?

You can respond.

No, whose works if we're following Christ?

Whose works will we?

It's a Sunday school answer.

Jesus, there we go.

Yes.

That's the good news of the gospel, that it's Jesus' works that we're going to be judged by.

Remember, this section of Romans is for the Jews that have been following the law, the self-righteous side of the room.

And Paul is letting them know that you may think you are righteous, but every time that you lied, every time that you entertained bad or lustful or murderous thoughts towards somebody else, every time that you cheated, every time that you judged somebody else, you're going to be judged for that.

Now, for the followers of Christ, which Paul's going to be developing this as we get further into Romans, he's telling them Jesus' works are now ours.

So we will be paid according to Jesus' works.

So if you have not accepted Jesus, you will be judged by your own works.

And it's not a, you know, well, I did more good works than bad works on the cosmic scale or whatever.

You know, so that way I'm going to get to heaven because I'm really not a bad person.

The Bible teaches that only one bad work, only one sin is enough to corrupt you.

And disqualify you from spending eternity with God.

And you will be judged for each one of those bad works if you're not found in Jesus Christ.

And if you are found in Christ, eternal glory in God's presence is awaiting you, regardless of what you did in your past life.

And if you're trying to do things on your own, verse 8 says, Wrath and anger are awaiting you.

And verse 9 goes on and piles on a few more things.

Look at verse 9.

It says, There will be affliction and distress for every human being who does evil.

First to the Jew and also to the Greek.

But glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does what is good.

First to the Jew and also to the Greek.

For there's no favoritism with God.

It doesn't matter who you are.

Doesn't matter what your heritage is, what your socioeconomic status is.

Doesn't matter what side of the sanctuary that you're sitting on.

You're either found in Christ or you're not found in Christ.

And the fate of those found in Christ is eternity with God, experiencing glory, honor, and peace, as we just saw in verse 10.

And being judged by the works of Christ and no longer by our own works.

And the fate of those doing things on their own, you know, those that are given over to their unrighteousness or to their self-righteousness, those that are given over to their lustful flesh, the result of that is eternal separation and damnation in hell.

Suffering wrath, anger, affliction, and distress, as we just read.

You know, when our options are painted like that, doesn't Jesus just seem like the overwhelming, clear, like, yeah, I want to go in that direction.

I want Jesus to be the one who I'm judged by.

Not my own works, but by his works.

I want that.

I'll take that, yes please, every day of the week, right?

And then Paul goes on in verse 12.

He says, For all who sin without the law will also perish without the law.

And all who sin under the law will be judged by the law.

Again, we're going back to the sides of the room.

Without Jesus, both sides are going to perish.

Whether they were raised with the law or whether they were raised without the law.

You know, just knowing the law doesn't save you.

Just reading your Bible doesn't save you.

Just going to church doesn't save you.

Why?

Look at verse 13.

For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified.

And I know that you may be thinking, wait, you just said that it's not by our works that we're going to be saved, but by Jesus' works, right?

But now this verse looks like it might be saying that doers of the law are justified.

So how you know how does that work?

Well, instead of me trying to explain it to you, James does such a better job.

It's on the next slide.

James 2, 14 through 20.

So I'm just going to read it to you because he explains exactly what we're talking about.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works?

Can such faith save him?

If a brother or sister is without clothes and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, Go in peace, stay warm, and be well fed, but you don't give them what the body needs, what good is it?

In the same way, faith, if it does not have works, is dead by itself.

But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works.

Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works.

You believe that God is one.

Good.

Even the demons believe and they shudder.

Senseless person, you're willing to learn that faith without works is useless.

So faith and works go hand in hand.

You can't say I have faith in Jesus and be calloused and not care about everything that's going on around you in your life.

And if you don't have faith in Christ, you're not going to have the motivation.

Why would you have the motivation to do things to further the kingdom of God?

That's why it says in verse 13, the doers of the law will be justified.

And hear me in this.

Please hear me in this.

Not justified by their works, but their works will be evidence of truly following Christ in faith.

That's what this verse is really talking about here.

Now, Paul's going to address again what he alluded to in chapter one.

The question of what about those that didn't grow up with the law?

Or those that didn't grow up in our context with a Bible.

Or those that grew up maybe on a remote island and never had the chance to hear God's word.

Verse 14.

They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.

Their consciences confirm this.

Their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them.

On the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel, through Christ Jesus.

So, question.

And you can respond.

Is it okay to kidnap somebody and then force them into slave labor?

Good answer.

Do people think it's wrong that have never read the Bible?

There's something that God has instilled in each one of us that says, that's wrong, to kidnap and then force somebody into slave labor.

There's something that God has instilled that just says, that's wrong.

That's not okay.

Even if you've never opened your Bible, you know that that's wrong deep down inside.

Our conscience has the work of God's law written on it.

Not God's law.

Notice that.

It doesn't say God's law is written there.

The work of God's law is written on our hearts.

Being able to discern right and wrong.

So that even if we've never read God's law, we still know that wrong is wrong.

That's what the work of the law is that's being referred to here.

I want to again revisit verse 20 from last week, and I'll just read it to you.

It says, for his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made.

As a result, people are what?

Without excuse.

God created us, according to verse 15 here, with the work of the law written on our hearts.

And no one is without excuse.

So a Gentile can say, you know, well, I didn't know it was sin to kill somebody.

You know, I never I'd never read that anywhere.

God says, no, no, no.

I gave you a conscience, and you knew wrong was wrong, whether you knew the law or not.

You knew deep down that that was wrong.

None are without excuse.

Now I want to talk about the conscience a little bit because we can sear our conscience.

We can lie to our conscience.

Our conscience can be deceived.

But the conscience that God gave us didn't start that way.

Our consciences have been corrupted by sin.

Our sin and the sin of others against us have corrupted our consciences.

But all of those shortfallings of our conscience that I just mentioned, being lied to and all that, it starts because we ignore our conscience.

Or somebody else was ignoring their conscience and harmed us.

And sometimes our conscience can be deceived in the other way.

Where we have a conscience that is giving us more laws than God gave us.

And their mind knew that, but their conscience hadn't caught up to that yet.

And their conscience was still screaming, this is not okay.

Feel guilty, feel guilty, feel guilty.

You know, and this has happened to me in my own life in different ways, where I wouldn't do something, or I would do something because I was counting it as righteousness.

But it wasn't biblically informed.

My conscience wasn't biblically informed in those ways.

I was adding to God's law, and my conscience was wrong.

So where am I going with this?

This is why it's so important to stay in God's word.

Our consciences need to be informed by God's word to make sure that they're not lied to and that they're not hurt from past things and that we're not deceiving our own conscience or ignoring it.

That's why God's word is so important.

Our consciences have to be informed by God's word.

So, and I want to close with this.

I want everybody to turn to Colossians chapter 3, verse 12.

Colossians 3:12

So a handful of books in your Bible to the right.

You'll see we're in Romans and then Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians.

So Colossians 3 starting in verse 12.

And I want to end with this this morning.

So this is Paul writing Colossians, same author of the book of Romans that we're in right now.

And he just does such a good job of tying this all together in these verses.

I thought it'd be good for us to get our own eyes on it all together.

So Colossians chapter 3, starting in verse 12, he says, Therefore, as God's chosen ones, that's us, that's his followers, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

If anyone has a grievance against another, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.

Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity, and let the peace of Christ, to which you are also called in one body, rule your heart and be thankful.

And I think that sums up so well the first half of Romans chapter 2.

Romans 2 · chapter mention

We here are all from such diverse backgrounds.

You know, some of us growing up with Bibles in our cribs, and some just picking up a Bible for the first time, week maybe even just weeks ago.

And everything in between, I think, is represented here today.

And God's calling us to dwell in unity and show each other the kindness that He has shown us and the long-suffering and the patience that we've all experienced in Him.

Realizing that we're all a work in progress.

We're all in that process of sanctification, of becoming more like Jesus.

And I guarantee you, we're all gonna be offended by somebody in this room.

And I guarantee you, you're all gonna offend somebody in this room.

But let's live in humility with forgiveness and kindness at the ready for each other.

You know, there's enough judgment and hate and pride out in the world that we're bombarded with every week.

You know, it's my prayer that we can find the opposite of the world when we come in here and when we're around each other.

Would you please pray with me?

Lord, I pray that it's the cry of our heart that you would show us how to function together as a body of Christ in unity with one another.

Lord, having patience and long-suffering and kindness and for forgiveness at the ready with each other.

Just realizing that we're all imperfect, we're all making mistakes daily, we're all sinners, Lord, that we we thank you that you've paid for the wrath that we deserve, that that was poured out on Jesus on the cross for us.

But Lord, help us with the fleshly desires that we battle on a daily basis.

Lord, that that flesh that we are still dealing with, that we're gonna talk about next week quite a bit.

Lord, that old man that is still desiring the things of this world.

Lord, I pray that the old man would decrease daily and that you would increase daily in our lives, and that we would have patience with one another, realizing that we're all on the same playing field, but we're just dealing with different things.

Lord, help us to realize quickly when we see sin in others that we need to examine ourselves.

Lord, that you would use that to humble us first.

And then if you desire for us to bring up correction to a brother or sister, Lord, that you would help us to follow Matthew 18, that you would help us to remove the plank from our own eye before we look at the speck in our brothers.

Lord, I just pray that you would show us how to function together and just have tons and tons of grace upon grace with one another.

Because that's what you've done for each one of us.

Teach us how to love each other as you have loved us first.

That's our desire.