Judging Others and Being Judged (Romans 2:1-16)

Today I spoke on the next bit of our series in Romans. This week I came down with a bit of a cold, and so by Thursday, my one goal was to try and finish this talk and be well enough to deliver it. By God's grace, I was able to do that. I do think this talk could have used a bit more polish to tighten the points and flow/structure, but in saying that, I am just self-justifying against a standard I fell short of?

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Judging Others

Last week, after men’s convention, a few of the guys went out for burgers. While we were there, an NRL game was on the big screen. One of the teams got to kick a goal. The trouble is the ball went up, hit the pole and bounced off. I said, “Isn’t kicking that ball his full-time job? Like surely all week, that is like the one thing this guy trains for, he just has one job,” To which, I think it was Nathaniel who said, “Have you ever preached a dud sermon? Isn’t that your job”

This rightly put me in my place. I was judging this poor footy player for making a mistake in his job, ignoring the fact that I have preached some dud sermons, which is like my job, right?

Jonathan warned us about this last week. In case we felt like finger-waving at all those sinners out there, in case we felt like saying that we are better than others because we know God and read His word, then today's passage is for us. It should humble us, as we look to ourselves and see that everyone is on a level playing field with God. We judge people by a standard we can’t live up to, and God, He will judge us fairly to His perfect standard, even if we claim we didn’t know what it was.

Last week, we started to see the extent of the problem that we all face when it comes to being misaligned with God. Last week, we saw that people suppress the truth about God, and they do their own thing. Today we look at those who claim to know God, who claim to know God’s ways, and yet this doesn’t put them in a place.

Paul turns his attention to these people

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2:1–4 NIV)

Paul is now probably writing this section to the Jewish people in the Roman church. They might have read last week's section about those who are greedy, or gossip of haters of God, and they might be thinking, “Yes, stick it to them, Paul. Amen.”

But Paul says, if you are judgy towards people for being disobedient to God, then you are only condemning yourself, because you also are disobedient to God. You are also greedy and a gossip, and when you break God’s rules, you are functionally ignoring Him. All sinners are suppressing God’s truth when they break His laws. If you break the law at one point, you are a lawbreaker. You, a mere human, when pointing out another fellow human who is a lawbreaker, only show that you are a hypocrite, because you also break God’s law.

God has a perfect standard, a straight line, and yet we often tell others how they should live, not realising that we don’t line up to our own rules.

Francis A. Schaeffer (in the Church at the end of the Twentieth Century), put forward this thought experiment. What if everyone was born with a tape recorder around their neck, and every time that person made a moral judgment, it would record that? Every time they said, so-so should have done this, or so-so and ought to have done that. At the end of their life, when they die, God takes the tape recorder and plays it, so that each person hears their own voice playing all the moral statements they bound others to do. This could become a very long recording of moral judgments, and when that is finally done, God says to the person, who has never read the Bible, “Now where do you stand in the light of your own moral judgments?”

It reminds me of this line in a Less Than Jake Song (Magnet North), “Everyone here hates everyone here for doing the same thing that they do” 

God judges based on truth. We judge others, but make excuses for ourselves. Other people, they are mean. I’m not. I was just tired and having a bad day. Other people are self-centred, I’m not; I am just setting some boundaries. Other people are greedy, but I’m not; I am just being prudent with my savings.

This passage says we should reflect on our own hypocrisy, knowing that judgment is coming. But we have time, before that comes. In God’s kindness and patience, He is delaying judgment so that we can repent.

Christ offers forgiveness of sins to all who repent and come to Him, but sometimes we can become too casual with this. We might think [with the French sceptic Heinrich Heine who said] too cheaply, “God will forgive, that’s his job”.

We need to constantly remember that sin is a serious matter, whether we are in Christ or not...a lack of concern about sin is incompatible with true faith (Romans Contemporary Significance)

Every time we are not directly punished for our sin, that is an opportunity for God to show His kindness to us so that we can go back to Him. God never gets tired of us going back to Him. That is what He wants, that is what we are made for.

However, sadly, we are told, there are those who do not come back to God. Maybe they assume they are automatically fine with God, they may know what the Bible says, they may come to church, and yet they are still unrepentant. Paul tells them,

But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” (Romans 2:5–6 NIV)

Judged By God

Those who do not repent of what they have done will be judged, and judged fairly. For in verse 11, “God does not show favouritism” (Rom 2:11). Those who do good will be given eternal life, and those who are self-seeking and reject the truth and follow evil ways will get God’s wrath and anger.

Paul shows the Jewish believers that they shouldn’t think that just because of their historical position with God, they will be right. Paul says, both judgment and reward comes first to the Jew and then to the Gentile. The Jews received the word of God first, so they will be judged by God first, and then the Gentiles.

The simple truth is that all people, those who think they are in the good group and those who think they aren’t; all people will be judged for their actions. And at a basic level, we sort of know and want this. We all want justice to come to those who seem to get away with evil. We all sort of think that the way we live our lives, the actions we do, good or bad, have consequences and should be punished or rewarded by God. He made everything, so He has the right to set the standard, and He is fair.

But what about those who don’t know God’s laws? Is it still fair that they are judged by God’s standards, even if they didn’t know them? By what standard are they judged?

In the next bit, we are told that everyone has a standard or a law that we know we should live by. The Jews were given the torah law, which was written and codified for them, but the Gentiles by nature have their own law. They know there is right and wrong, it's written on their hearts and their conscience affirms and convicts them.

All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. (Romans 2:12–16 NIV)

Judged by ourselves

Possession of God’s law is not what counts, but obedience to God’s law is what counts. And all, Jews and Gentiles, know something of God’s law. Whether their history involved God giving them the 10 commandments on Mt Sinia or not. All people know God’s law.

Just as last week, we saw that nature tells us something of God, that His invisible qualities are shown in creation. That is, it should be clear that we are creatures and so created and need to worship our creator.

This week, we see that our nature tells us about God, that we have some moral standards that we think people should behave in a certain way. We have this built-in alarm that goes off when we see something wrong. When we see something that is off kilter from how we think the world should be, we point it out.

So everyone, Jews and Gentiles, has access to the law. We possess it. The issue is: if we obey it or not.

You may have heard some atheists say something like: “You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion.”

They think it is terrible and silly to be told what is right and wrong from an ancient book. As if for some reason, if it wasn’t written down, we would have no idea if murder or adultry or stealing was wrong.

But what Paul says is that by nature, people have a law that they live by. And this shows, not that we don’t need God to tell us how to live, but it shows that within us, God has already told us how to live. It is written on the hearts of everyone.

We all have a conscience that judges our own inner thoughts and actions. It’s how our creator has made us. Sometimes our conscience condemns us, sometimes it defends what we do. This conscience that we all have shows that there is a natural law, that all people know, and yet, having the law is different to obeying the law.

It was this idea that brought C.S. Lewis to Christianity when he was an atheist. Lewis was judgy about the world and had opinions on how it should be, but then he wondered where did that idea come from, he says:

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

He goes on to say, if the universe was senseless, why did he have a sensible idea of justice? How is that possible? By what standard did he see the world as crooked? Where did the idea of a straight line come from?

It came from his conscience. God has put this straight line in the hearts of everyone so that we know it and will be judged for obeying it.

And not only are we judged for our obedience, but in verse 16, we are also going to be judged for our secrets. Our own internal hypocrisy is also known to God. We might say and do the right things in proper company, but our thoughts and motives, the ones that our conscience might accuse us of, will also be what we are judged by.

This can be a worrying prospect. As Jonathan said, this part of Romans is like in a heist movie, where there is a scene where they explain how hard the vault is to get into. Paul is explaining our predicament and how hard it is for us to be right. We aren’t up to the bit later where we see how clever the main characters are in getting into the vault. We aren’t up to the Good News where we see the wisdom of God who saves us from this predicament.

If last week, it didn’t feel like you were addressed, maybe this week you might have felt seen. Maybe there are things that your conscience has been telling you to stop doing, or start doing. Maybe there is clear teaching in the Bible that you have heard, that you know, that you now might have to obey.

The Good News is that you have time to come back to God. God is delaying His judgment for people to repent, to admit that we have fallen short of His law and the standards He has put on us. We can come to Him anytime, He will hear us, and He will save us. We will see later that in the Gospel, God’s wisdom is shown in how he can make us all right. That in Jesus we get His obedience.

And in coming back to God, in knowing that we are crooked and misaligned, this can help us to be humble and not judgy towards others.

We could be judgy towards those who don’t know the bible and whose life is not going well due to poor decisions. We may have some sense of moral superiority towards them for all the religious things we do, and at how wise we are in managing our lives.

We could be judgy towards fellow Christians who fail, because they should be better. They know what the Bible says, and they didn’t live up to it.

But we shouldn’t point the finger at either group. We are not superior to others because we know more things. Our intellect is not what is keeping us safe. Christ and His perfect straight line that is given to us is what saves us. God is going to judge all people fairly, so this should humble us and give us a heart for those around us.

And lastly, the fact that God’s law is written on everyone’s hearts might be an encouragement for evangelism. God’s truth might be suppressed in people, but that doesn’t mean it is absent. Everyone we know is made in God’s image. Everyone we know has a moral standard that has been written there by God. This means they are not as far from God as they might think they are. We can ask them questions about what they think is wrong with the world. We can admit that just because we have the Bible doesn’t make us good and straight. We can admit our shortcomings, and then point out the great solution for everyone, Jew or Gentile, that faith in Jesus is how we are made right with God. That is the Good News, but that is skipping ahead a bit. More of that in the coming weeks.

O God, who knows the secrets of every human heart,

We confess that we are quick to judge our neighbour,

Yet slow to acknowledge the same failings in ourselves.

Deliver us from the pride of self-righteousness,

And remind us that your kindness is meant to lead us to repentance.

Help us to live by the law you have written on all hearts,

Help us to listen correctly to our conscience in the light of your truth.

Transform our judgment into a humble and holy compassion,

So that we may share your Gospel with gentleness and grace.

For if the law is engraved on every heart, let our lives reflect its beauty,

Until that day when you judge the world through Christ Jesus,

Our Advocate, our Savior, and our Lord. Amen.