Principles of God's Judgment - Part 1

Dr. Bradford Reaves

The Epistle of Romans • Sermon • Submitted 6 months ago • Presented 6 months ago

Romans 2:1–5

Judgment

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Principles of God's Judgment

A guy was going 89 MPH. A cop pulled him over.

“Let me see your driver’s license.”

“I Don’t have one.”

“Let me see your insurance.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Pop your trunk.”

“I can’t - there’s a dead body in there!

The officer called the chief of police: “I have a guy who says he doesn’t have a license, insurance, and has a body in the trunk.”

The Chief arrives and he asks the man the same 3 questions and he cheerfully complies, giving him his license, insurance, and popping the trunk.

“My officer here said that when he asked for your license, you said you didn’t have one; when he asked for you insurance, you said you didn’t have any. And when he asked you to open your trunk, you couldn’t because you had a dead body in there!”

The Driver looked astounded, scratched his head, and said, “I guess the next thing he’ll say is that I was going 89 MPH! The driver put a spin on the officer’s reputation. Our reputation is important. (Credit: Sermon Central, John Gaston)

Principles of God's Judgment

There is a popular argument that accuses God of being unjust for sending people to hell who never had the change to hear the Gospel. When we studied Romans a couple of weeks ago, we discussed the reality of the wrath of God against sinful man. Part of our discussion is if the wrath of God is extended to those who do not know God or have never had the chance to hear the gospel. For example, a remote tribal village who never had an opportunity for the Gospel to be shared with them.

Principles of God's Judgment

The question was raised, is the wrath of God on such people just. It’s a fair question to ask, but with great theological consequences. The one side of the argument is if God is good and loving, could he condemn people who never heard the name of Jesus. The other side of that argument is if ignorance of the gospel absolves us from the condemnation of our sins, then presenting the gospel to these people would actually be unloving because now they would be condemned in hearing the gospel without a response of faith.

The key point to these arguments is that we are not condemn by our understanding or knowledge of sin. We are condemned by our very sinful nature. As we will study in a few weeks from Chapter 3:

Romans 3:23 ESV

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Justification

Our justification does not come by our goodness or theological greatness. Justification is when God pronounces a sinner to be righteous because the atonement for our sinful nature has been satisfied. We know that the only way one’s sinfulness can be legally justified is through the blood of Jesus Christ sacrificed on the cross.

Justification

“Properly understood, justification has to do with God’s declaration about the sinner, not any change within the sinner. That is, justification, per se, does not make anyone holy; it simply declares him to be not guilty before God and therefore treated as holy. The actual change toward holiness in the sinner occurs with sanctification, which is related to justification but, for definition’s sake, distinct from it.” (Ladd, G. E., A Theology of the New Testament).

Justification

In other words, God is not obligated to justify anyone. We are already condemned and by default every person born will go to hell. Salvation has nothing to do with what we deserve. It has everything to do with God’s action of grace. It is his kindness that delivers us. It is our obligation to share with others that message.

Romans 2:1–5 ESV

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. 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? 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? 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.

Chesed

What I want you to understand is that we are not being saved from injustice, but rather recipients of God’s kindness. The word here, chrēstotēs, means good, but not in the sense of the opposite of evil, but rather it means good in the sense of being generous, benevolent, and merciful. The Hebrew version of this word is chesed, which can be translated lovingkindness. But it is so packed with meaning that no single word in the English language comes close to defining it.

Micah 6:8 (ESV)

8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness [chesed], and to walk humbly with your God?

Psalm 23:6 ESV

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Psalm 25:8 ESV

8 Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

Psalm 63:3 ESV

3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

Agape

Another word we may used in the New Testament to describe God’s love is agape

Hebrews 9:15 ESV

15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

1 John 4:16–17 ESV

16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world.

Romans 5:8 ESV

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Chesed - Agape

So in our understanding of God’s judgement and righteousness it is imperative we understand that God is good and loving as are his righteousness and His judgment against sin. It is our love for sin that hardens us to the goodness of God and seeks out evil things.

As we studied last time, Romans 1:22–23 “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.”

Evidence of Chesed

Paul tells us that the evidence of God can be seen from the very creation of the world, but men continually turns away from goodness of God that is evident in creation to the sinfulness of man as seen in our immorality. You don’t have to tell a rapist that what did is wrong, he has to try to justify himself in a means to absolve himself in his own mind of the guilt. The immoral behavior permeates through a culture to the degree of homosexuality, murder, wickedness, greed, evil, malice behaviors become guarded in a society to the point that they will hate anything of God and the ones who love God.

Judgement in America

There is something happening in America that is becoming more conspicuous that this is where we are at today. We’re not heading there, we are here.

Nashville Shooting

This week, 3 pages of the Nashville Shooter’s manifesto was leaked. It is clear that this disturbed girl was being poisoned by CRT and DEI teaching. She was targeting ‘white privilege’ and Christians.

Southern Boarder

Down on the boarder, a journalist recorded people who were being bussed from a Boarder Patrol processing center to the Tucson airport to fly anywhere in the country. What is most concerning is these aren’t poor migrant workers from Central America trying to get a job. More than half of these people were from places like Senegal, Nepal, Morocco, and The Congo.

Military Cargo Ship

Last week a US Military cargo ship was temporarily blocked from leaving port by Palestinian activists.

European Union

The EU has been virtually invaded with people from Islamic countries. This is intentional! What happened in Israel on October 7 will very likely be repeated somewhere in Europe and could very likely happen here in the United States.

FCC

Meanwhile the FCC is preparing to launch some of the most stringent regulations that will target and hobble conservative news outlets and even churches who livestream and broadcast services.

The Is Spiritual!

What we must understand is this is spiritual.

Cultural Collapse

So Paul launches into Romans as we continue our study setting out from the beginning a case against man. We have nothing to deserve in us but the wrath of God. And we’re not talking about eschatological judgment but judgement right now in human history, whereby nations that turned their backs on God. And we are seeing this in our own nation as with sexual immorality, then to homosexuality, and then finally to a corrupted mind, from which come all sorts of evils that dominate the culture.

Celebrating Hamas

That is why you have people in the streets today chanting and praising Palestine and the events of October 7 in Israel. They are actually celebrating Hamas. Even people in the LGBTQ community are chanting for Hamas despite the fact they would be thrown from the top of building in Gaza for their sexual immorality; or women who are holding up signs demanding justice, not realizing that they would not be allowed to speak in public, let alone show up in public without being covered. They don’t condone that, they just hate Jehovah God and God’s people that much.

Antisemitism

So as Israel continues their defense and war against Hamas, around the world there is a growing antisemitic drum being beaten by pro-Palestinian groups. Much of these narratives are being fueled by colleges and universistites. There are people who are going around tearing down hostage posters. In Los Angelis a jewish man was killed by a Palestinian activist.

Antisemitism

The violence is being directed toward Jews and that will continue to ramp up and we will see an increase in violence toward Christians, which is the most persecuted people in the world. So doesn’t it seem bizarre that last week President Biden announced a government program to curb islamaphobia?

What is Our Response?

So what is our response to be to people. It is not to be judgement. This is what Paul is saying in in our study. “Do you suppose you will escape God’s judgment?” Moral people - like the Jews of Paul’s day and others - feel exempt from judgment because they’re good, moral, religious, people on the outside. We haven’t escaped God’s judgement - His judgement on us was transferred from us to His own son. Therefore, we should not stand in judgment before people who are outwardly sinful. On the contrary, we know God’s law so we should be humble and praise God that we have experienced his chesed… His Agape love.

Romans 2:4 ESV

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 especially true of Israel. They were given the Law of God. They knew the conditions of God’s covenant, His promises, and the arrival of Messiah Jesus.

Romans 3:9 ESV

9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin,

Common Grace

The entire world is the recipient of God’s grace. All sinners live under a measure of God’s goodness. We call this common grace. Every person is the recipient of air, sunshine, all the blessings of this world. The greatest sin we can express is to make light of the chesed of God. That we are recipients of his Agape love. This is what is going on in the American Church today and in our nation. We call ourselves moral or blessed and all the while abusing God’s tolerance and goodness.

Psalm 86:5 ESV

5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you.

His Goodness, Not Ours!

What has happened today is that we have become so good at being good. We can talk a certain way. Setup our churches with lights, and comforts, and instruments, and good preaching that pretty soon we don’t need God. And if something happens in church that disrupts our comfort we become incredulous. God doesn’t want us comfortable - he wants us hungry. He doesn’t want us to spin things around so we make ourselves look good. He wants to be humble and repentant.

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