BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT

It’s easy to nod your head in agreement that God’s judgment is warranted for people who sin in ways you do not. It’s another thing altogether to realize that the sins you do commit also warrant His judgement. Christians fundamentally acknowledge that their sin, whatever it is, is worthy of God’s wrath. They call out for forgiveness and they repent. Moralizers and religions hypocrites, on the other hand, are quick to judge people for their sin while minimizing and ignoring their own. Paul’s warning is clear: they will not escape God’s judgment.

ROMANS 2:1-5

Thành Phố Nam Định 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. http://theglutengal.com/gluten-free-recipes/side-dishes/fall-glazed-spicy-sweet-potato-dish/20141011_081837_opt  We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 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? 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? 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.

Ok, let’s get started with verse 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. 

Therefore – What is this there for? This is a rare occasion in which therefore actually looks forward, not back. In light of God’s judgement of sin, they therefore have no excuse for judging because they do the same things they judge others for.

…you have no excuse O man, every one of you who judges. To whom is Paul speaking? Paul uses a rhetorical device called diatribe. A diatribe is usually a series of questions or dialogue between a narrator and an imaginary critic.

HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING

Paul all of a sudden switches gears having railed on the wickedness of the lost world and enters into diatribe with an imaginary person who has been nodding right along with what he has just read.

This person is not real, but represents a real mentality: that of judging people for sins they do not wrestle with themselves while ignoring or minimizing the one’s they do. The audience is privy to a hypothetical lesson between Paul and this imaginary moralizer.    

Paul might have had pagan moralizers in mind like Seneca, Epictetus, or Plato but he was writing to the church, made up of mostly Jewish Christians, and Paul knew that they would have been in full agreement with him as they heard this letter read aloud. “Yes, Amen! You got that right! Preach!”  

But some among them were no better off than the rest of humanity, against which they cheer on the judgment of God. Moralizers reason that if they stay away from the “big sins” they’re doing all right with the big guy in the sky. They’re too good for His judgment.   

So, you appears to be targeted at religious hypocrites who bragged about how religious they were, who “boast in the law” but in real life contribute to people’s rejection of God by their hypocrisy as he says in 2:23-24.

The moralizers never dreamed they would face the same judgment as the world, that they themselves would be condemned. They were blind to their real spiritual condition. But God is not blind! God sees the true nature of the heart and He is not fooled by outward religion.

BLIND TO SIN

They judge people for their adultery, yet they practice the very same things when they lust in their heart. They judge people for stealing, while they rob even their loved ones of what is due them. They judge people for murder, and yet they stab people in the back to get ahead.

“The self-righteous,” to quote Kent Hughes, “have an intrinsic blindness to their own faults – they don’t see what they’re doing as sin.” Take for instance David when he was confronted by Nathan about sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband murdered. In 2 Samuel 12:1-7, Nathan confronts David with a lessor offense of a person of means taking from a poor man his only lamb. This caused David to go into a fit of rage and fury and demand the person be killed.

To be killed for an offense less significant that the one that he himself had committed! David should have paused and reflected and said, “Man I did something even worse than that.” But instead he was blind to his sin.

And when you’re blind to your sin, your willfully blind. And when you’re willfully blind, you seek to ease your conscience by getting super-righteous about other people’s sin. You think that by agreeing with God, by taking a stand for Him, that you atone for your own sin. But that’s not how it works. The Lord seeks repentance, not self-righteous indignation.    

Paul used the term prasso, or practice, to describe the sinful lifestyle of the moralizers. To practice sin is to sin habitually. People accuse Christians of being hypocrites because we sin. No, it’s not hypocrisy for a Christian to sin. It’s confirmation of why we’re Christian in the first place – we recognize our sin and we know we need Jesus to save us. What Paul has in view here is the practice of sin, or habitual sin, without repentance.

DO YOU SUPPOSE, O MAN…

Paul acknowledges that God’s judgment will fall upon the wicked that he described in chapter 1. He says in verse 2, We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Yes, we all know that God judges those who practice such things, granted. God will judge them. That’s real and we should not deny it. God’s judgment will fall upon the wicked whose lives are reflected by Romans 1:18-32. But, Paul continues in verse 3…

Do you suppose, O man (once again a reminder of who they really are. It’s like saying “Who do you think you are?!”) —you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you (which is emphatic) will escape the judgment of God? 

There’s some irony here. They can rightly proclaim God’s judgment on other people, but they fail to recognize they fall under His judgment, too. They think they are too good to be judged. They’re on God’s team because they agree that certain sins deserve His judgment. They think they’ll escape His judgement because they know His decrees. But their knowledge only condemns them instead.  

Christian hypocrisy is such a tragedy. Convinced that they occupy the moral high ground, religious hypocrites believe there is nothing in them that needs to come under intense scrutiny. “Let’s keep our focus on what people are doing out there while ignoring what people are doing in here,”

Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 how we ought to interact with sinners. Those outside the church, pursue with the Gospel. Don’t shrink from the Truth, but don’t avoid them. Those inside the church, on the other hand, don’t even associate with them. He tells us don’t even eat with someone who lives in unrepentant sin – like sexual immorality, or greed, or idolatry, or revelry, or drunkenness, or swindling.

The world around us is lost and they need Jesus. But woe to those who claim to be found and live as if they are lost. Woe to religious hypocrites. We ought to be far more concerned about the purity of the church than the purity of the fallen world. We ought to be way more convicted about our own sin than we are someone else’s.

DO NOT MISTAKE KINDNESS FOR WEAKNESS

Paul warns us this is presumptuous and dangerous. Verse 4 says, 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? 

The reason that God is patient with us and doesn’t squash us the moment we sin is not because He’s tolerant of sin. Nor is it because our sin fails rise to the occasion of His just wrath and eternal judgment. No, it’s because He wants to give us time to repent.

Do you take God’s patience and kindness for granted? Do you reason that since God hasn’t crushed you yet He never will? You are presuming upon the riches of His kindness.

To presume is to show contempt or to look down upon. People who keep sinning, and especially those who know what God requires enough to judge other people, are playing with fire.

I had an old, retired Command Sergeant Major tell me when I was in High School JROTC, “Don’t mistake kindness for weakness.” His message came across loud and clear. Don’t test me! Oh church, don’t mistake God’s kindness for weakness. Don’t test God by continuing to live in unrepentant sin. God’s kindness and patience is meant to lead you to repentance.

HARD AND IMPENITENT HEARTS

Sadly, Paul lays out a sober warning in verse 5 because he knows human nature. 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.

Remember to whom Paul was speaking here. He was addressing religious hypocrites, not born-again believers. Paul would later say in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Paul is not arguing that genuine Christians are amassing God’s wrath. Jesus bore our wrath upon Himself on the cross. Yet, Paul says that wrath is being stored up for the hard-hearted, impenitent heart. Perhaps the simplest resolution is that those in the church to whom Paul wrote and those who live this way today were never in Christ to begin with.

Saints repent and are slow to judge others. It’s that simple. It’s what we do. Born-again Christians repent when convicted of sin and they search their hearts long before they search others. They echo David who said, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!” Psalm 139:23-24

One of the things that Pastor Andy said that struck me last Sunday was how Paul first appealed to the sexual immorality of lesbianism because that was something his readers could easily get on board with. Then he addressed the more socially acceptable sin of male homosexuality.

Now Paul elevates his shocking rhetoric when he asks, 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? Whoa, Paul, we were with you when we were talking about sin out there in the world. And Paul is like, “Yeah, I’m sure you were, but I want to deal with sin in here.”

A CANCER WITHIN

When it comes to sexual immorality it’s tempting to think about sin with which we do not struggle. But there is a cancer in the church that needs to be dealt with. There is a sexual immorality that is socially acceptable in the world around us, and that is kept mostly silent among us.

We can no longer be content to turn a blind eye and stick our heads in the sand about the sexual sin of those within the church while condemning the sexual sin of those outside. God will not have it! Pornography is a cancer in the church and it must be dealt with.

I don’t always trust statistics, especially when it comes to dealing with something as taboo as pornography use. However, the most recent poll, which was eight years ago, indicates that a majority of men and a lot of women in the church view pornography regularly.

How can we nod our heads up and down and agree that sexual sin in the world deserves God’s judgment while many of our own people engage in sexual sin themselves?

Long ago I stopped being surprised when a man comes to me confessing pornography use. It doesn’t matter how old or young, mature or immature in their faith. It’s no longer shocking. It’s disappointing and sinful. It needs to be dealt with. But I no longer ask men if they struggle with pornography; I now ask to what degree they are resisting it.

LIFE AFTER PORN

It is something that can be forgiven and lives and marriages can be redeemed from it, but only when it’s dealt with. It doesn’t just go away. Take it from me, I know. In 2004 I was broken over my addiction to pornography and I confessed to Kellye the true nature of it. That evening I told her the details of what I was consuming and the frequency.

It was an incredibly difficult experience for my dear wife. She was already aware this was an issue for me, but coming clean and telling the whole truth was devastating to her. We called my childhood pastor over and he helped us develop a plan for reconciliation. It involved me sleeping in another room for several months and committing to full accountability and months of Christian counseling.

Though this remains an area that I can never fully let my guard down, I can tell you there is hope of restoration in marriage and in life when a man or a woman deals honestly with their pornography use.

CALLING ALL MEN

Therefore, on August 18th, 2023 I am calling the men of Wildwood Church to gather here for a rally that we’re calling, “You are not alone.” Why rally every man of Wildwood? First, because our enemy the devil uses the sin of pornography and other sexual sin to isolate people from one another. Men and women struggling in this way believe the lie that they are alone and if anyone caught wind of their sin, they’d be rejected. We need to make it abundantly clear: this is not the case.

Second, if you have found victory over this sin or it has never entangled you, you are exactly the kind of man others who do struggle with it need to come alongside them. We need you to walk in accountability with men who are struggling and fighting their flesh. To reject them or look down upon them is to do exactly what Paul rebukes in today’s passage.

Third, we need to fight against pornography whether we’re struggling with the temptation or not. Pornography is wrecking our families and our nation. It’s making people empty and incapable of normal, intimate human relationships. Not only that, but it victimizes some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Christians need to fight this the same way our forefathers fought slavery. To just accept that pornography is here to stay is to give Satan exactly what he wants. 

WHY WAIT?

Great, I’m in! By why wait until next August? Two reasons. I know men and I know the excuses we make to avoid doing something uncomfortable. Number 1: Calendar conflicts. I’ve deliberately scheduled this on a Friday evening, hopefully before local football season begins next year. And I’ve scheduled it ten months from now because few men that I know look that far ahead. The truth is that most of the men in this church will either be here or they will make a choice not to be. But it won’t be because of a scheduling conflict.

Number 2: Having battled this addiction for years, I know that when it comes to accountability, I am much more open to honest engagement with other men when I can point to deliberate action on my part to make progress and live faithfully. I want to give you 10 months to go to war with your flesh so that you can say with integrity, I may not have made it through these 10 months perfectly, but I’ve fought faithfully to put this to death for the glory of God and the good of my family, church, and community.

I want to remove every obstacle possible. Short of coming to your house and forcing you into a car, I want to do whatever I can to get you here. No one’s going to force you, but if the Lord has led us to tackle this issue head on and you reject it, what does that communicate? If you’re living in this sin with no desire to go to battle against it with the support of other men, you ought to be concerned.  

A WORD TO SPOUSES

Now, a word to spouses who may experience tonight or this week or sometime over the next 10 months what my wife experienced 18 years ago. There is hope. No matter how bad you think the situation is, there is hope of reconciliation and restoration. In fact, your marriage can be restored and become even more beautiful and stronger as you work through this together. This has certainly been our experience. With the power of the Holy Spirit and the help of your church, it can be yours, too.

You may not want to know this about your spouse, concerned about how it will impact your relationship if you find out about it. But the reality is if there is pornography use in your marriage, it’s already impacting your relationship whether you know it or not.

The question is not if pornography impacts a person or a marriage or a family, but to what extent, for how long, and what are you willing to do about it? We’re pulling together resources and we have people who can help you process this. Just don’t give up hope. 

Notice, I said spouses and not wives. The reality is that it may be husbands who come to learn their spouse has a pornography addiction. Our men’s rally is not for women, but our women’s ministry and our biblical counseling ministry recognize this is a real problem for women, too. They are considering what resources and support women need to battle this issue, as well. It’s just that while I have no doubt there are some women wrestling with this, I believe it’s a wrestle for many, if not most, of our men. We need to deal with this men. We need to deal with it now. 

FOUR THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE CONFESSING

A final word of caution. Four things to consider as you think about addressing this with your spouse:

1. Pray – for your spouse’s heart to be prepared and for divine timing.
2. Commit – to telling the whole truth. There’s nothing worse than having to come back and confess more half-truths or deception.
3. Seek help – From an elder or Connect Group leader or Christian mentor – whether it’s just advice or asking for their presence. Satan seeks to isolate, don’t let him!
4. Own it – This is sin. It’s a betrayal of your spouse and of God. Don’t marginalize it or try to justify it. And trust me it’s a lot better when the offending party initiates.

Church, what the Lord has called us to in taking the gospel across the street and around the world, of every member a missionary, will be impossible to see to fruition if we’re unwilling to deal with our own sin first. The gospel calls sinners to repentance. How can we possibly proclaim that message while refusing it ourselves?

I want to close with the comforting words of 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  

Will you confess your sin, sexual or otherwise? Will you submit it to the Lord no matter what it costs you in terms of comfort, time commitment, rebuilding, reconciling, accountability? God is faithful and just to cleanse you of all unrighteousness. The altar is open. Come. Taste His amazing grace. Be set free. 

Bibliography

Bruce, F. F. (2008). Romans: An introduction and commentary. Inter-Varsity Press.

Doriani, D. M. (2021). Romans. P&R Publishing.

Hughes, Kent R. (1991). Romans – Righteousness from Heaven. Crossway.

Kruse, Colin G. (2012). Paul’s Letter to the Romans. W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Longenecker, Richard N. (2016). The Epistle to the Romans. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

MacArthur, John. (1991). Romans 1-8. Moody Publishers.

MacArthur, John. (1991). Romans 9-16. Moody Publishers.

Moo, Douglas J. (2018). The Letter to the Romans, Second Edition. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Mounce, Robert. (1995). Romans. B&H Publishing.

Schreiner, Thomas R. (2018). Romans, Second Edition. Baker Publishing Group.

Sproul, R. C. (2019). The Righteous Shall Live By Faith – Romans. Ligonier Ministries