Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.
3,000 years ago, the prophet Nathan walked into King David’s court and told David about a wealthy man who stole the only lamb of his poor neighbor. It was his only valuable possession. He stole it, slaughtered it, and served it for dinner.
David was furious. He demanded justice. He said, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die!”
Then Nathan calmly said these four words: “You are the man.”
David had just pronounced judgment on himself. He didn’t need an outside accuser, because the rope he was about to be hanged with was the one he had braided himself, strand by strand, with his own words and his own standard of justice.
That is exactly what Paul does in Romans 2. At the end of chapter 1, he gives us a list of sins, and we nod along. Yes, the world is a mess. Yes, those people deserve it.
Then, like Nathan, he turns to us and says this:
[1] Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.
If you go back and consider the list of sins at the end of the first chapter, it’s intentionally diverse. Paul lists things like gossip and pride alongside murder and hatred of God. He’s trying to catch us all in this net, even the children who are disobedient to their parents.
[2] We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.
[3] Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?
And, of course, the answer is no. We will not escape the judgment of God, because we are all guilty of doing the same kinds of things that we judge other people for. But some of you might not be convinced that’s true, so let me share a helpful illustration.
Francis Schaeffer called this verse “the invisible tape recorder”. He said imagine that you have an invisible tape recorder hanging around your neck, recording everything you say about other people… how they should live and behave.
Then, at the last day, God (the judge) will remove the tape recorder and say to us, “I’m going to be completely fair in my judgment. I’m going to judge you only by your own words on this tape recorder, your own standard of human behavior.”
How many of us would pass that test? How many of us can say that we have lived by the standard we expected of other people? No one… there’s not a single person in history who would be able to stand against the judgment of his or her own words!
God could play a clip of us talking about someone else and then show a video clip of us doing the exact same thing! Many times over! I caught myself doing it a couple of times this week in preparation for this sermon.
That’s the point Paul is making.
[4] Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
This is an important follow-up question. Do we assume God will be merciful to us? Mercy is not getting what we deserve. It’s when the punishment is too small for the crime.
And God has been merciful towards us, by delaying His judgment. He will not overlook our sin, but He has delayed the judgment. And there’s a purpose in God’s mercy. It’s meant to produce repentance.
[5] But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
This reminds me of Hebrews 10. If we go on sinning deliberately after having knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin remains… only an expectation of fiery judgment. Without repentance, there is no faith. They are two sides of the same coin.
Paul says that people who refuse to repent are storing up wrath for themselves. This is the image of a levee. We feel safe at the moment, protected by the levee. But water is building up on the other side of the levee and one day it’s going to break, and all that judgment will come crashing down on God’s enemies.
Now, pay close attention to the next three verses.
[6] He will render to each one according to his works:
[7] to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;
[8] but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
Peul here is laying out the standard of the last judgment: God will judge every person according to what they’ve done. That doesn’t contradict salvation by grace; it sets it up.
In chapter 3, Paul will show that no one meets this standard on their own merits. Everything good in a Christian’s life is grace. But the standard itself has not changed.
Jesus said very similar things. In Matthew 7, Jesus says, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and cast into the fire.” In Matthew 25, Jesus says, “The wicked will go away into eternal punishment and the righteous to eternal life.”
The catch is, when Jesus says these things, He’s usually talking to people who think they are righteous and deserve eternal life. It’s a wake-up call to the self-righteous.
Am I the kind of person that really deserves glory and honor and immortality? Is that what the invisible tape recorder says about me? Am I seeking after righteousness or am I self-seeking?
On the last day, the evidence will be visible. The fruit will be visible, for better or for worse.
And at the end of verse 8, we’re in the middle of a rhetorical device known as a chiasm. Paul is now going to reinforce his argument in reverse. It’s a way of saying, this is extremely important. Pay close attention.
[9] There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,
[10] but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.
[11] For God shows no partiality.
And now we’ve come full circle from chapter 1. The Gospel is for everyone who believes. Why does it need to be for everyone who believes? Because the Jews aren’t any better than the Greeks. They were chronologically first to hear the message, but they not more valuable to God.
This is what chapter 2 is all about. Judged by the exact same standard, God will reward or punish every single person accordingly. Do not assume that you will be judged differently because of your family history.
Paul here is doing the exact same thing Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount. He’s leveling the playing field. There’s no home court advantage when it comes to eternal salvation.
God doesn’t favor the rich or the poor. He doesn’t favor the educated or the uneducated. He doesn’t favor religious people over pagans. He doesn’t favor one kind of sinner over another kind of sinner.
That’s the argument. And those who consider themselves to be religious, who look down on others, are condemned by their own self-righteous judgments.
But the Bible’s concept of humans passing judgment on one another is often misunderstood. I need to clarify some things.
When the Bible talks about judging other people, it’s talking about an attitude of moral superiority over other people. It’s a double standard, in which we hold others to a high standard while holding ourselves to a comfortably low standard.
Jesus illustrated it plainly by saying we focus on the speck of dust in someone else’s eye but ignore the log in our own eye. That’s the kind of judgment that we should avoid… the prideful kind that lacks self-awareness.
But in our culture, this concept has been twisted in such a way that nothing is objectively sinful. Everyone does whatever is right in their own eyes and the worst thing you can do in our culture is call someone else’s life choices sinful or wrong.
That’s not the kind of philosophy being endorsed by Scripture. We are allowed to look at sin in someone else’s life and call it like we see it. If the Bible says something is wrong, then it is wrong. Refusing to pass judgment on someone is not the same thing as affirming or making peace with other people’s sin.
The point is that God is the judge. He applies His standard for us equally, but we do not. Therefore, we should approach other people’s sin with humility, patience, and grace… not lowering God’s standard for ourselves or anyone else but also recognizing that we are all equally at the mercy of God.
In fact, God uses relationships, especially in the church, to reveal our sin and lead us to repentance and faith through accountability and sometimes discipline.
That’s not coming from a position of our moral superiority, but from the loving pursuit of the Father through the household of faith. The purity and peace of the church is impossible if we ignore one another’s sin. Instead, we ought to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another.
That’s not the point of our text, but I think it’s an important side note because of how often I hear people misuse the concept of judging others.
The attitude in churches is often that moral superiority, right? You’re not welcome here at all unless you’re “good” like us. And that’s not ok.
But the attitude in the world is equally bad. “It’s my life. I can do whatever I want.” Not even God gets to judge us.
Neither of those attitudes is correct. When we see someone else’s sin, the proper response is never pride but sorrow. We should think to ourselves, except for the grace of God that would be me!
Anything good you see in the life of a Christian is something we credit to God’s grace, because we know what we deserve. If I were to stand before God on the last day with only MY works, what would I get? The wrath and fury of God.
Remember what happened to King David. He heard a story about a man who had done wrong, and he pronounced the verdict without hesitating: “The man who has done this deserves to die.” Then Nathan said, “You are the man.”
If the story ended there, David’s story would have been finished. His own words had set the standard, and he had failed it. But Nathan had one more thing to say: “The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.” There were heavy consequences still, but David’s life was spared.
How can that be? David said the man deserved to die, and David was the man. The verdict was fair. God didn’t pretend otherwise, and He didn’t lower the standard. So how does the guilty man live?
Paul will answer that question in chapter 3, but he has already hinted at it. There is a righteousness of God being revealed, a righteousness received by faith.
When God plays back the invisible tape recorder of our life, no one is passing that test. We will all be condemned by our own words, just like David. Paul teaches this as plainly as he can, because he wants us to stop trusting ourselves.
But there is One who lived by His own words. He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. His tape is spotless. And at the cross, He exchanged tapes with us. That is the righteousness received by faith.
If you came here today as the judge, the one who’s good at spotting what’s wrong in everyone else, hear this: God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.
He has been patient with you. Don’t mistake that patience for God’s approval. Come down from your high horse and admit your own sin.
But if you’re here today and you already knew you were guilty… you’ve been carrying shame and guilt around like a heavy weight… know this: the ground is level at the cross, and the invitation is open to everyone, religious and rebellious alike.
And when we see sin in someone else’s life, may we respond with humility instead of pride. Because except for the grace of God, that would be me.