Principles of God’s Judgment (Part 1)

Romans 2:1-5

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. ² But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. ³ And 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? ⁴ Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? ⁵ But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,

(Verse 1-5) - After reading Paul’s severe condemnation of those who have abandoned God and plummeted into the gross sins mentioned in 1:29-31, one naturally wonders about how God deals with the more upright, moral, and religious person who has a sense of right and wrong, and leads an outwardly virtuous life.

Many such ethically upright people would heartily concur with Paul’s assessment of the flagrantly immoral people he has just described. They obviously deserve God’s judgment. Throughout history many pagan individuals and societies have held high standards of conduct. As one writer points out, the Roman philosopher Seneca, a contemporary of Paul,

“might have listened to Paul’s indictment and said, ‘Yes, that is perfectly true of great masses of mankind, and I concur in the judgment which you pass on them - but there are others, of course, like myself, who deplore these tendencies as much as you do.

Paul imagines someone intervening in terms like these, and he addresses the supposed objector.… How apt this reply would have been to a man like Seneca! For Seneca could write so effectively on the good life that Christian writers of later days were prone to call him “our own Seneca.” Not only did he exalt the great moral virtues; he exposed hypocrisy, he preached the equality of all men, he acknowledged the pervasive character of evil… he practiced and inculcated daily self-examination, he ridiculed vulgar idolatry, he assumed the role of a moral guide. But too often he tolerated in himself vices not so different from those which he condemned in others - the most flagrant instance being his connivance at Nero’s murder of his mother Agrippina.”

Most Jews of Paul’s day believed in the idea that performing certain moral and religious works produced righteousness. Specifically, they could earn God’s special favor and therefore eternal life by keeping the Mosaic Law and the traditions of the rabbis. Many even believed that if they failed in the works effort, they might forfeit some earthly reward but were still exempt from God’s judgment simply because they were Jews, God’s chosen people. They were firmly convinced that God would judge and condemn pagan Gentiles because of their idolatry and immorality but that no Jew would ever experience such condemnation. They loved to repeat such sayings as, “God loves Israel alone of all the nations,” and “God will judge the Gentiles with one measure and the Jews with another.” Some taught that Abraham sat outside the gates of hell in order to prevent even the most wicked Jew from entering.

In his Dialogue with Trypho, the second-century Christian Justin Martyr reports his Jewish opponent as saying, “They who are the seed of Abraham according to the flesh shall in any case, even if they be sinners and unbelieving and disobedient towards God, share in the eternal kingdom.”  Just as a side note, this kind of thinking is remarkably like the thinking of some modern Christian scholars who teach that anyone who names the name of Christ will enter heaven, even if the utterly reject and even blaspheme His name after their profession.  So long as they have had that one “moment of faith” – they’re in!  Solomon was right when he taught that all things are merely the same thing repeated again and again!

The issue here is clear – upon what measure does God judge?  By what standard will God measure our worthiness at the day of His judgment?  There can be no more fundamental and important question than this to life and to eternity.  It touches on virtually every area of our lives and has impact on far more than we can even imagine because it is our understanding of this truth that lies at the root of our experience of eternity.  We need to note that it is not our proper understanding of this matter that determines where we spend eternity, but rather, our proper understanding of this matter demonstrates whether or not we are truly a Christian, Biblically, or not. 

One becomes a Christian, not by any outward action or any apprehension of a truth or set of principles.  One becomes a Christian by means of the regeneration of God and one believes as a result of that regeneration enabling him to believe and receive the gift of God’s salvation.  This is not to say that understanding and knowledge is not a part of the equation or the process, but that it is essential that we keep it in its proper place, that is, after the work of God has been done, as a response to the work; not before the work of God is done and as a prerequisite for that work.  The difference is critical.  We will develop why it is critical in future studies in the great book.  However, we do wish to make the point that the understanding of that point, clarity on this issue, does indicate whether or not one truly understands the Gospel of Christ.  For one to believe something other than what we have here described at best demonstrating a lack of understanding of the work of God; and at worst shows a lack of genuine salvation. 

Now, we don’t want to fall into the very thing that we are arguing against in another form.  We don’t want to substitute one kind of knowledge for another in the salvation process.  There must be knowledge of the root truths of the Gospel for salvation to occur.  That is clear.  When God regenerates, He does it by means of His own power, and that power enables the individual to then respond to the Word of God in faith as that Word of God does its work.  God always does His work perfectly (though not always to the same degree) and thus there are certain things that we can be sure He communicates and communicates perfectly to everyone who is regenerated.

The point I am trying to make is that there are things that every believer knows because they are things that God communicates to Him as a part of the regeneration/salvation process.  A part of that is an understanding of just what the Gospel is about.  No one who is truly saved will misunderstand these things.  It is true that this understanding might be faulty or incomplete, but it will not be completely opposite of what is true.  That is what we are getting at here.  There can be disagreement among believers about these cardinal doctrines of Salvation.  But that disagreement crosses a line when it begins to be about what the Gospel is fundamentally all about.  Genuinely saved people will not disagree on the issue of who saved them and about fundamentally how that salvation occurred. 

It ought to be the great joy of the believer to profess that salvation is wholly and completely of God.  He will not hedge his bets and reserve a portion of the credit for himself or for man in general.  There will not be any “buts” or “althoughs” prominent in his proclamation of how he, or anyone else, became a believer. 

God judges salvation based on the presence of a righteousness that exceeds any righteousness man is capable of generating.  If that righteousness is there – then admission to His presence is granted.  If it is absent – then admission to His presence is denied.  That is the root issue.  Boasting in the power of men is demonstrative of the absence of grace in a life – not the presence of it.  The life where God has done a true work is anxious and eager that God get the credit He deserve and only secondarily concerned with the theological understanding of things including the agency of man’s will, etc.  Once there is clarity about Who the Author of salvation truly is, then we can go an and talk about the part the choice of man plays in the process. 

Even the unregenerate have the basic knowledge of good and evil built into them and into society. Consequently many people today recognize and seek to uphold the moral standards of Scripture and profess to be Christians. But also like Seneca, because they are not true believers in God, they lack the spiritual resources to maintain that divine morality in their lives and are unable to restrain their sinfulness. They trust in their baptism, in their church membership, in their being born into a Christian family, in the sacraments, in high ethical standards, in orthodox doctrine, or in any number of other outward ideas, relationships, or ceremonies for spiritual and even eternal safety.

But no one can understand or appropriate salvation apart from recognizing that he stands guilty and condemned before God, totally unable to bring himself up to God’s standard of righteousness. And no person is exempt. The outwardly moral person who is friendly and charitable but self-satisfied is, in fact, usually harder to reach with the gospel than the reprobate who has hit bottom, recognized his sin, and given up hope. Therefore, after showing the immoral pagan his lostness apart from Christ, Paul proceeds with great force and clarity to show the moralist that, before God, he is equally guilty and condemned.

In doing so, he presents six principles by which God judges sinful men: knowledge (v. 1), truth (vv. 2-3), guilt (vv. 4-5), deeds (vv. 6-10), impartiality (vv. 11-15), and motive (v. 16).

I need to be sure that I am preparing men to face the judgment of God which will be according to righteousness and that I, as best I am able, judge in the same fashion.