Romans No.3 God has no favourites

Oh, my God, why is motion in the view? I know how the comfort of my soul. I tend the care before my own tears. From whom does comfort descend? To the pleading stares of eyes, Oh, to be near them.

Thousand, thousand precious gifts God's King will supply. Hello and welcome, good to have you with us this evening. Let's turn straight away to the Book of Romans and to this rather somber passage through which we have to get before we get into a more bright aspect of Paul's teaching.

We're looking at Romans chapter 2 and though there's a margin division, a chapter division between obviously the last verse of the previous chapter and the first of chapter 2, in effect Paul's theme is exactly the same. You'll see what he's saying and I'll hook it on to what he's already been arguing in a moment or two when we've read through these 16 or 18 verses. Romans 2, you therefore have no excuse.

You who pass judgment on someone else, for whatever point you judge the other, 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 man, 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, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you towards repentance 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 give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.

There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil. First for the Jew, then for the Gentile, but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good. First for the Jew, then for the Gentile, for God does not show favoritism.

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, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ as my gospel declares.

Well, then, let's come to this passage of Scripture. I won't be following entirely my notes. Incidentally, I did the typesetting on my word processor, and occasionally I think there are two or three errors where I've pressed the wrong button, but the gist of what I intended to get out is there, so I hope you'll find it of help.

The notes are basically to be a revision for you if you want to go through the gist of what I've been sharing later on, either tonight or on a following occasion during the week, or if you just want to compile a little elementary commentary on the epistle of Paul to the Romans. As I say, this second chapter is a very, very bleak one, so let's start in the sunshine, then we'll go into the darkness, and I do promise you that by the time you get to the end of the third chapter, you'll be basking in the sunshine once again. Sometimes you can only appreciate sunshine by going through a patch of bad weather, and it seems to me that the apostle highlights the gospel of Christ and all its benefits in the 16th and 17th verses of the previous chapter, so let's read them through, and then he has to take us into the darkness to show us just how needful the light of the gospel is.

He says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, verse 18, verse 16 rather, of chapter 1. I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, he'll always say that, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. Now, those are glorious verses of Scripture.

You could really preach a cartload of sermons on them, almost taking every Sunday in one year, and you wouldn't have exhausted the truth because here is a great, light-bearing gospel of God spoken of, and of course it needs the life of our Lord Jesus Christ to fill it out in all its glory and in all its wonder because the gospel surrounds the Lord Jesus. He not only preached the gospel, he was the gospel. He was the proclamation, and he was the demonstration.

And the reason why the gospel is needed is, well, from the 19th verse of this first chapter through right to the end of the second chapter, the terrible state in which men and women have got themselves. Now, as far as Paul's concerned, there are just two categories of people. Actually, he's going to even boil that one down, but at least when he starts to argue, he sees just two groups of people.

There are the Jews, on the one hand, and the non-Jews, on the other hand. The Jews, they seem to have many advantages over against the non-Jews, the Gentiles, but the Gentiles, too, have certain things that God has granted to them which should enable them, one, to know of his existence, and secondly, to direct them as to how they ought to live their lives. Nobody could ever stand on the last day before God and say, you are condemning me on a basis of knowledge that I don't have.

That will be utterly impossible. Paul will show you how the Jews took what God had given them and they ignored it, or they didn't respond aright to his revelation. He will also show you that, on the other hand, the Gentiles are in the same category.

In other words, neither Jew nor Gentile can discover a way through to the immediate presence of God. Neither Jew nor Gentile, to express that differently, can cause themselves to be saved as a result of their human effort. They have broken the moral law and they have broken the Mosaic law.

Jew and Gentile are before God guilty, and Paul will bring in his verdict almost at the end of the third chapter when he says in the 19th verse, the whole world is held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law. That's his point.

That's what he's going to show. That both the Jew and the Gentile are in great difficulty. Now we saw his attack on the Gentile world.

That's what's in from the 18th verse through to the 22nd verse of the first chapter. He has the Gentiles, so to speak, in the court, and he convicts them of being guilty of having broken the moral law of God. They knew that God was, they knew what God wanted, they know it through their in-built awareness, their in-built intuition of the distinction between right and wrong, but they deliberately turned aside from that moral law.

And Paul gives us a picture, which is not an exaggeration, of the bestiality of the Roman world from the 28th verse through to the final verse of the first chapter. Now, you've got to understand that when Paul argues and reasons, he does so in a sort of old-fashioned way. It's what you might call a Socratic method.

The Socratic method is really from the world of the Greeks. Somebody gets up and asks a question, you see, and then the answer comes back. And Paul here is imagining that there is an invisible person who keeps throwing in a question at him, you see.

And this person who puts these questions, it seems to me, is of Jewish extraction in Paul's imagination. And you first come across this interrupter in the second chapter. As Paul turns on him, and with the use of four or five pronouns, you, you, you, you, you, he begins to address the one who seems at this point to be taking a great deal of satisfaction in what Paul is saying.

Now, I don't want to be hard on Jewish people, because I think the same characteristic exists within the Gentile world. You know, it's possible, if you feel your morality is there and someone else's morality is there, and their immorality is being exposed, it's possible for you to feel smug as a result. A sort of smile comes on your face.

As you listen to the catalogue of their sins, their misdemeanors, and feel that you will, you're an exception. Now, as I say, this was quite a characteristic of the Jew, was it not? It was certainly a characteristic of that brand of Jew called Pharisees. You recall how our Lord put up the story of two men coming into the temple, one a Pharisee, the other a Republican, and the Pharisee didn't so much pray as offer a letter of congratulations to himself.

I thank God that I'm not like other men. And then he spins around and he sees this poor old sinner at the back, he says, I thank God I'm not like him. Well, it seems to me that that's the sort of person who's in Paul's thoughts as he comes to the second chapter.

You, who are smiling smugly at this catalogue of sins which I've described that are rampant in the Gentile world, you have no reason whatsoever to respond in this fashion. Because in principle, if not in degree, you are guilty of the same sort of thing that the Gentiles also are judged before God for doing. You, therefore, verse 1, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else.

You see, our Lord Jesus heightened our understanding of wrongdoing, didn't he? I mean by that, on the Sermon on the Mount, he says that the man who thinks about theft and accepts that as a possibility is as bad as the man who engages in thievery, theft himself. Or, to take the example that's more often quoted, the man who engages in mental adultery is as condemned before God as someone who actually engages in the act. Now, it seems to me that principle to Paul's reasoning, as he turns now his attention on the Jewish world, is this idea that somehow the Jews are better than the Gentiles because, well, there are certain things that they haven't gone into in the same fashion as the Gentiles have.

And in any case, they, because they are Jews, are certainly in a better perspective, as far as God is concerned, than the Gentiles are. You see, this was the heresy, wasn't it, in our Lord's day. You remember the Jews who came to him, and you read of them in the 8th chapter of John's Gospel, and they're so concerned that they are Abraham's children.

And they argue with the Lord Jesus on this basis. I mean, he tries to demonstrate to them that they're sinners, that they need forgiveness, and he shows that really they're alienated from God. He says, your father is the devil.

And they said, no, that's ridiculous, our father is Abraham, you remember? And Jesus says, look, God could create sons of Abraham from these very stones. The only benefit of being a child of Abraham is if you reproduce the lifestyle and the faith attitude of Abraham. But your Jewishness in and of itself is really of no advantage to you, especially as the same sort of sins in principle in which the Gentiles engage, you too are reproducing.

Look at verse 4. He must have the Jews in mind as he's arguing this. Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness? Now, that's a lovely expression. John was reading from Ephesians earlier on, and it made reference to the riches of God's grace.

Well, here's a synonym, the riches of his kindness. Do you show contempt for the riches? In what sense? Well, you see, in a very special way, God had shown his interest in the Jewish nation, hadn't he? I mean, they'd had the law, they'd had the prophets, and what's more, ultimately, they had the Messiah. All these things were for the spiritual advantage of the Jew.

And yet the apostle is suggesting by his question, which requires an affirmative answer, that they had shown contempt for the riches of the kindness of God. You think of the tolerance of God towards the Jews. For 30 years and more, walking the streets of Palestine was none other than God's own Son.

And yet what did they ultimately do? They shouted, crucify him. And when he's been raised from the dead, who is it that's clambering for the death of Stephen? It's the Jews. Now, this is the amazing thing about the mercy, about the kindness of God.

He hasn't wiped them off the face of the earth because he has such an incredible patience and forbearing. But the apostle is very concerned to show that the Jews are as defective as the Gentiles inasmuch as they won't bring to God the one thing that he requires of men more than anything else. What is it that God wants from you? Well, he doesn't want your holiness because all your righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

He wants you to endeavor to be as good as you possibly can, but even when you've attained to that goodness, it falls far short of the goodness absolutely that God requires of you. So I put the question again. What does God want from the Jew? What does God want from the Gentile? Well, you've got the answer at the end of verse 4, haven't you? The kindness of God should lead you towards repentance, or what the apostle Paul will elsewhere call, 2 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 10, a godly sorrow, a godly sorrow.

Now, my good friends, I suggest to you this evening that not one of you would be here listening to me on a fairly humid Wednesday night if you hadn't shown that to God sometime in your spiritual experience, a godly sorrow for sin, for the sins that you had committed. Well, the Jews, by and large, were not showing this towards God, smirking at the wrongdoing of the Gentiles, guilty in principle themselves, and their guilt is made that much more because they had certain advantages over the Gentile community. The charge that Paul levels against the Jews in those opening four verses is that they abuse the very kindness, the very mercy of God.

Now, he leads us on in the fifth verse and through to the eleventh verse by showing us a picture of, if you please, three different types of men. And one is an exception. The other two that straddle the exception, they are folk who come under Paul's particular censure in the opening verses.

I suggest to you for ease of grasping what he's saying that first you have to have in mind the stubborn man, the stubborn and the unrepentant man, and that you find described, do you not, in the fifth verse. What does a stubborn man do? Well, he invests in the wrath of God. I can think of no other term to explain Paul here.

It's shocking, it's terrible, and yet unfortunately it's real. You see, unless you invest in the account or draw from the account of God's grace from the bank of heaven, you're in the other account. There's no neutral position.

Have you noticed that in Scripture? I mean, Jesus says this, doesn't he? You're either for me or you're against me. The pilot neutrality is not on the table. It's not an option that God puts your way.

You're one thing or the other. You've either entered into an experience of God's grace or being stored up for you is the wrath of God. Now, the wrath of God is a terrible thing.

In one sense, the wrath of God is already with us. Look at verse 18 of the previous chapter. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men.

I think you can demonstrate that historically. You can certainly demonstrate it in the 20th century. So many unpleasant, so many unhappy things in our world.

The wrath of God, illustrated in contemporary society. Go out to the third world, see something of the need and something of the hunger there. Go across to some of our estates here in Worthing and see the broken families.

See the furrowed brows of many a person who's been crippled by worry and so on and so forth. Well, what is this? I argue it is a manifestation of the wrath of God being revealed, that this wrath of God will come in a more absolute fashion. You see, the whole world is drawing to a day of judgment.

Now, it may not like to admit this, but this is what the Bible clearly tells. 1 Thessalonians 1 and verse 19 speaks of, rather verse 10, speaks of the return of the Lord Jesus. And it refers to those who wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead.

Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. So often in the New Testament, you get the word wrath used in association with God and his attitude towards sin. Well, you see, the man who is stubborn, the man who is unrepentant, the man who, over against all that God has done for him, refuses to bow his knee, refuses to bring this godly sorrow, then there's only one alternative for this man, and that is God's wrath.

The bank of heaven, it remains open, and he will ultimately draw his investment, either God's grace or God's wrath. It will come, the end of verse 5, when his righteous judgment is revealed. God will give to each person according to what he has done.

Paul is very, very clear that when God judges, it will be with equity, it will be absolute fairness, and he'll nail that point in a few verses' time. So, here is one type of man, the stubborn man. And stubbornness was a characteristic of the Jewish nation.

Moses said, you remember, all day he ministered to a gainsaying and a disobedient people. Oh, the stubbornness of that nation. Oh, the hardness of heart.

But, of course, you cannot accuse the Jews of this streak without recognizing that it's also their present amongst non-Jews, it's amongst Gentile people. So, there's the stubborn man. He's going to be judged, and the wrath of God is left as his just dessert.

But then, more happily, we're introduced to the sincere man. Verse 7, to those who by persistence in doing good and seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life. Further reference in verse 10, glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good.

First the Jew, and then the Gentile. Now, in absolute fashion, of whom is the apostle Paul speaking? There is, it seems to me, only one person who illustrates the sincere man. We used to sing a chorus in our Sunday school about Jesus Christ, that he was always doing good.

And that was true, wasn't it? I mean, he never gave short change. He never did anything that was out of character with the gospel that he was proclaiming. The rich young man was right, although his theology wasn't comprehensive enough, when he says to the Lord Jesus, there was a basic, honest-to-goodness characteristic about our Lord Jesus Christ, one who never fell foul of the law of God.

Now, it's at that sort of goodness that we ought to be aiming. But the only one who's achieved it absolutely, as I say, is the Lord Jesus. And the apostle contrasts the stubborn man, the unrepentant man, the disobedient man, over against the sincere man.

But then he takes us to another contrast, which is equally as unhappy as the first one, the stubborn man. And this is the self-seeking man. Look at verse 8. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger, there will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil.

This is the self-centered man, you see. You remember on one occasion three potential disciples came along to the Lord Jesus. And not one of them was refused the right to join the apostolic band.

But they had to leave everything. And you recall how one of them said, well, let me go home first and bury my father. And another one had to go home and attend to his domestic affairs.

And another one had to go home and say farewell to his wife. Now our Lord Jesus isolated the fact that as far as all of them were concerned, there was an element of self, self-seeking. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

But my good friend, how difficult it is for us to be self... how hard it is for us to be selfless, how easy it is for us to be self-seeking. Not seeking first the kingdom of God. And as a result, well, we come under the God's condemnation.

So what have we discovered the apostle Paul is saying? Well, I remind you, he's directing his comments towards this somewhat smug representative of the Jewish nation. If you like, the moral minority who feel that, well, all these terrible crimes are so far displaced from them that Paul's teaching has got no common denominator, no throughput to them. And Paul established the fact that indeed it has, because they having fallen short of the righteous requirements of God, they who have shown stubbornness and self-seeking, on the day of judgment, they have got no way in which they can claim that they are innocent before the Lord on the basis of what He has done for them and His just requirements on their lives.

And so what does the apostle now go on to show us? Well, he has yet to underline the point that when God deals with these two categories of people, Gentile and Jew, He will be absolutely fair. Now you and I who have read through the story of Abraham in the first book of the Bible will know that basic to Abraham's grasp on the character of God was the fact that the judge of all the earth would do right. And I go so far as to say this, that when the day of judgment comes, even those who are consigned to an eternity outside of God will not have the right nor even the will to say that God was unfair in the way that He dispensed His justice.

All the world, all the universe will see that this God and Father of our Lord Jesus is equitable, is righteous, is just in all His dealings. And so Paul brings in, as he will constantly comment in these opening chapters, his evaluation of the judgment of God. God does not show favoritism.

God does not show favoritism. He will be honest, well, obviously honest He will be fair with those who never had the law of Moses. Verse 12, they won't be judged by the Ten Commandments that they were never given.

And those who did receive the Ten Commandments and the law of Moses, they will be judged as a result of that particular piece of gracious dealings that the Lord doled out for them, the Jewish nation. Yet Paul is very concerned for the Jews to appreciate again, we've already seen him arguing this, that it's not just the possession of the law that's going to help them. Verse 13, it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight.

It is those who obey the law. Mere possession of truth does not save. Now don't you see that that has a throughput in the Gospel era amongst Gentile people.

You might know the Gospel, you might have heard the Gospel preached, but what God is looking for is an obedience to the message of the Gospel. That and that alone will save you. And so we're told that there will be a final judgment and the Jews will be checked over against the Mosaic law and the Gentiles will be checked over against the moral law.

What do we mean by the moral law? We'll look at verse 14. Gentiles who do not have the Mosaic law, when they do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves. You say, I don't understand that.

Well, it's really quite easy if you just shake your head and get those little cogs chugging over in your brain. You see, as I was trying to show you last week, the most primitive person does know a distinction between right and wrong. Not so? Well, they know that to bash an old lady on the head in the middle of the Zairean jungle is as wrong as for a young person to mug a senior citizen here in Worthing.

There is, I would argue, even an inbuilt knowledge of morality, a knowledge that it is wrong for you to take someone else's wife. How does this knowledge come about? Well, through the vehicle of conscience. Verse 15.

Since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness and their thoughts now accusing and now even defending them. You see what Paul is arguing? It's a brilliant argument. It's absolutely watertight.

The Gentile on the day of judgment will have brought before him his inbuilt understanding. Remember how I argued it earlier on and last week particularly that God is and what God requires of him. So it will be on that basis.

No Gentile will ever be able to say to the Lord that wasn't fair. And no Jew will ever be able to say to the Lord that that wasn't fair. And there will be no echoing aloud in the court on that final day that we are Abraham's children.

That is not sufficient of itself will be the response should even a whisper of that be suggested. So God's dealings will be fair. There will be a final judgment.

It will be a thorough judgment. Everything that we have done, everything that we have spoken, even those secret sins will be brought for examination on that day. Now that's horrible, isn't it? It's a frightening thought.

This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ as my gospel requires or as my gospel declares. Now having run through that I can conclude with just a couple of minutes of application. You see, you've got to go into the darkness, the somber aspects of chapter two of Romans to appreciate over against this the marvelous way that God has devised to make men and women right with Himself.

You see, as far as the Gentiles are concerned they had this moral law but it's not going to justify them before God because they've broken it. All have sinned, all the Gentiles, and come short of the moral law of God. And as far as the Jews are concerned they've all broken indigree, the Mosaic law.

So both these laws operate like a lighthouse. They can warn of the rocks ahead but when you're on the rocks a lighthouse is utterly unable to come to your rescue. It only has the function of warning.

But when the ship is in trouble you need more than a lighthouse. You need a light boat. You need a lifeboat.

You need someone who will come across the storm-tossed sea and pluck you from off the rocks and bring you back into the safety of the harbor. Now that, my friend, is what God has done. He's done it not through the moral law.

He's done it not through the law of Moses. He's done it in and through our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the only way whereby you, whereby I can be saved.

So the Apostle Paul, having come full circle takes us back to that shaft of light in the 16th and 17th verses of the opening chapter. I'm not ashamed of the Gospel. Why not? Well, there's the dynamo of God.

Here is God's way of ministering into the situation that is so impossible throughout the world in both categories of society. Here the salvation of God is revealed to everyone who believes. The believing Jew and the believing Gentile.

For in the Gospel God's way of righting wrong is revealed. And how do you apprehend that Gospel? Well, not by what you do in terms of works but by your obedience to the claims of Christ on your life as you respond in faith to what the Lord Jesus has accomplished on the cross of Calvary. For my dear brothers and sisters it is by faith that we are made righteous and it's by our perpetual faith in the living Christ that we ultimately will be ushered into the immediate presence of God and the wrath on that day of judgment shall be escaped because of what He has done for us.

I think we've got a song or a hymn or something that's buzzing around in my mind. Oh, what a Savior that He died for me. Can anyone get the first line? I think that's the chorus.

That is it, is it? It's not in the supplement but we've got it written out I think on the overhead. That's right. Let's just stand and just relax a little bit as we stretch and let's sing of this great righteousness of God and if any friends want to leave us at this point because they were praying earlier then they're very welcome to go.

Let's stand and sing this within the context of what I've been sharing. Oh, what a Savior that He died for me. Oh, what a Savior that He died for me From condemnation He has made me free He hath delivered from the sons in me And in the last divine Verily, verily, I say unto you Verily, verily, this is ever new He hath delivered from the sons in true And in the last divine