Rom. 2:1, 17 The Sin Of Religion

SPEAKER 01 : 0:05

What comes next in Romans is a bit of a jolt. It’s a bit of a surprise. Paul says in chapter 2 verse 1, Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are, who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things. And who is he talking about? when he talks about O man. Well, coming on later in the chapter, he says, you who are called a Jew and rest on the law and make your boast in God and know his will and approve the things that are excellent being instructed out of the law. So, wait a minute. Paul is now going after his own people. Let’s get the context. Remember chapter 1 is stating that God’s judgment and wrath, his loving wrath, is upon the suppression of his nature and his personhood and his power and grace and mercy. The world suppresses God. And that world is in such a state of suppression that its mind has become darkened. Its mind has become futile and purposeless. That emptiness, which is what the word futile means here, that emptiness leads them to feel such a void that they panic and go after other gods instead of returning to God. which shows, of course, that humanity is born to worship. When they reject God, the only one who should be worshipped, they find alternatives to worship. We are all worshippers of idols in one way or another. And what God does in response to this is to give people over, to give humanity over to its idols. Not because God rejects humanity and has abandoned them, but because he’s now engaging with them in a very peculiar way. What kind of way? To reveal himself to humanity through their emptiness. Once humanity begins to realize that the alternatives they have sought after instead of God are so much junk and garbage, and leave the soul utterly bereft, then the soul is more ready to receive God’s mercy. Now, all that’s in chapter 1, and we assume, It’s talking about the pagan world. Well, yes, it is. But now Paul turns on the Jewish people and says, You are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are, who judge, for in whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself, for you who judge practice the same things. This is 2 verse 1. Now, most certainly, he’s talking about most of the leaders who are willing to condemn. You remember how that came across in the gospel so often. You remember the Pharisees when talking to the people who came to believe that Jesus had performed a miracle on that blind man. They called those people bastards. That was the word that they basically used. They know nothing of God. The Pharisees had contempt for the world of the Jewish world. They had contempt for it because they were judging. They thought they were superior to the common people. But here is Paul turning on, now listen, religion. Religion. I say to you, based upon what’s coming in Romans chapter 2, that the severest judgment that God has for the world is the religious world, is for the religious world. Why do I say that? Because what Paul is about to reveal is that religion adheres to rules and rituals and morality and forgets the intimate relationship between the sinner and God. You and I are sinners before the Lord, but we are also men and women of faith who trust in God’s mercy towards us. Now remove that equation and remove that relationship and the way it works in God’s mercy flowing to us while we are humble before him and ask him for mercy and seek to follow him. Remove that equation, and what you have is the most cold, heartless, religious adherence to rules and regulations, and the heart of God has been carved out of humanity, carved out of religious humanity. Now, some of you listening may understand this quite well, because you’re listening to a religious broadcast because perhaps you don’t go to church anymore. And why don’t you go to church anymore? I’m not making an excuse for you. I’m simply expressing a dynamic. Many have been wounded by the church. because many have experienced only religious leaders, moral leaders, who make judgments on others in a cold and heartless way and have no sense of the mercy of God towards sinners. Nor am I making an excuse for sinners. Sinners are sinners. They’re rebels. We’re all rebels. We’ve all done wrong and evil. But we come to God for mercy because And when we come to God for mercy and he gives us that mercy, we enter into a beautiful personal relationship with our Heavenly Father. If you were to read the Gospels all over again, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, especially John, I would think, although it’s all there in all the Gospels, you see the intimate fellowship that Jesus has with his Father. He’s not a religious leader. He’s not a moralist. He’s not a guru. He’s not teaching you how to rise and transcend your humanity. He is teaching us how to come before our Father as children. who have wandered away and who need to come back, and we ask that he welcome us. And we learn to do it through the Son, Jesus, who becomes for us our atoning sacrifice, the method God has for forgiving us through the sacrifice of his Son. So you see, it’s all very deeply personal. So what we have here then in chapter 2, verse 1, let’s read a few verses. Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge. For in whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge practice the same things. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. And do you think, O man, you who judge those practicing such things and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads to repentance? Now, of course, there have to be judges. There have to be people in the world that determine or express what is right and wrong and the necessary judgment and so on. But he’s talking in a personal way about the hearts of the judges. And he gives a clue, well, more than a clue, in verse 3. Do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering? You see, this is a rhetorical question. He is saying, in fact, they do despise the riches of his goodness. This is a judge void of the heart of God. Judges must judge, but they must also judge in humility, knowing that they too are under the same judgment, not exercising a judgment that suggests their superiority. Paul is describing religion with its heart cut out. And religion with its heart cut out is horrendous. There is nothing more unattractive and more fearful than a powerful religious leader who knows nothing about the atoning work of Jesus Christ. So much of religion today has become moralism. Now, moralism is a position taken by those who are religious that’s joined the group because the group represents a moralism that they want to pass on to their children and their children’s children. Let us suppose that a certain person had a bad life when he was youthful. He was a drug addict or he was promiscuous or whatever. He may have been a drunkard, but he finds conversion and he gives his heart to God and and yet he forgets the meaning of it in a true way, and he marries and has children, and then he becomes fearful that his children will grow up to be like him when he was a youth and did all these dissolute things. And so what does he do? He searches and looks around for a moralistic church, a church that has good morals and nice family members with a man and a wife and two children. He doesn’t think about redemption. He thinks about moralism because he wants his children to have a good example of moralism, of the moral life. And when somebody comes into the church off the streets who’s a down-and-out sinner and needs grace, he gets his children, he pulls his children to his side and moves over to the other side of the aisle because he doesn’t want his children to see that dissolute sinner from the streets come into the church. What a bad example that would make to his children. Now, do you see what has happened? He has lost the heart of the gospel. He has simply brought his children into a religious clique of moralists who have forgotten what it means to be redeemed. Now that’s where Paul is going. You will find in this chapter that Paul uses many strange arguments that many Christians have misunderstood to make his point. He takes on the devil’s advocate position, Paul does, and says, okay, you want to keep the law? All right, do so, keep it. And he says, because only those who are obedient to the law will be justified by it. And there are certain silly, foolish Christians who think that Paul is saying by that, that they can be justified by the law. Well, of course that’s not what Paul is saying, and it’s obvious by the following chapters, chapter 3, where he says that no man or woman will be justified by the deeds of the law. What Paul is saying is that, okay, you want to be a moralist? Go ahead and try it without redemption, and you will find you’ll come a cropper. That’s an English expression. It means something like you will fall on your face. Look, my friends, there’s only one way to fall on our face, and that is before the loving mercy of Jesus Christ. Thank you very much for joining me today. Colin Cook here and how it happens. Now, I know some of you have been intending for a long time to make a donation to the ministry, but we all do the obvious, which is put it off. We’ve got other things to do and there are more urgent things and so on. And you say, I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time. Well, I wonder if you would please do it now. The ministry needs your help. It’s listener-supported radio. You can make your donation online at faithquestradio.com. Thank you very much for all your support. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.