Romans 2:1-29: God's Wrath Is Inescapable

[0:00] Well, people have long been fascinated with the excitement of escape.

[0:15] In fact, behind the plot line of nearly every action film today stands two things. First, a life-defying situation.

[0:25] And second, someone with exceptional gifts or advantages who finds a way to survive the great ordeal.

[0:38] Our enthusiasm for escape isn't a Hollywood thing. It extends far back, even into the days of vaudeville, when thousands flocked to see the man.

[0:58] Harry Houdini, escape artist par excellence, known especially for his Chinese water torture cell.

[1:10] And in that trick, Houdini would escape after being lowered, head down, chained and shackled, into the cell filled with water.

[1:26] The escape would require him to be able to hold his breath for over three minutes. And to add to the flair of it all, he didn't do it behind a curtain.

[1:37] The onlookers were like you, there, and saw him from behind the glass. As we come to Romans 2, Paul introduces his readers to two would-be escape artists.

[2:03] Do you see them? Take a look at the text. He shows you the first, foregrounds him, really, in chapter 2, verse 1.

[2:15] He goes by the name of you, O man. The second is waiting in the wing. He won't take the stage until verse 17.

[2:27] Paul's name for him is you, who call yourself a Jew by name. Now, those two men neatly divide our text into two sections, but they also enter into discourse with Paul at the perfect time.

[2:50] After all, since chapter 1, verse 18, the apostle has been making the disturbing claim that all men and women, the entire human race, is consigned to God's wrath.

[3:11] A wrath that encompasses mankind's past, as well as, he argued in chapter 1, their present.

[3:24] And the wrath of God, which was being manifested both in the past and the present, against all mankind, came on account of humanity's collective commitment, universally applied, to be holding down, which is what suppressing means, holding down God's truth.

[3:51] And the ironic twist, as we heard last week, in the apostles' logic, not missed by careful readers, is that those men, in verse 18 of chapter 1, who were accused of wrestling truth down, were, by the end of the chapter, shown to be themselves, now forcibly held down by God.

[4:21] consigned to his wrath by the power of his continual suppression. Humanity is now shackled, locked up, without hope, of escape.

[4:45] Thankfully, thankfully, we now have two men who have stepped forward.

[4:56] They enter in chapter 2, and for any reasonably minded person, their presence instills some faint sense of hope.

[5:12] Perhaps there is someone anyone who can release us from this bondage and set us free from the wrath of God.

[5:32] These two stand erect. They possess the self-confidence that we have come to like in any who would dare to make a great escape.

[5:50] So let's take a look at them. The first, well, there have been countless conjectures as to the precise identity of that escape artist mentioned in chapter 2, verse 1.

[6:05] Could he be a representative of some in the house churches of Rome who would take issue with Paul on things to this point and his dismal portrayal of our condition before God?

[6:28] Some think so. They signal a verse at the end of the letter in support of their view. You don't need to turn there now, but I'll read it for you.

[6:38] Romans 16, 17, and 18 reads, I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.

[6:50] Avoid them. For such persons do not serve the Lord Jesus Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. Is our man these men?

[7:04] Possibly. Others would identify him as a representative Jew. And therefore, the same man as the one who I'm arguing comes as a separate man in verse 17.

[7:26] In other words, he didn't call him out by name until he got well into his argument. And if this indeed were the case, then the charges leveled against the men in chapter 1 would be seen primarily to be leveled against the Gentile world, whereas now as in chapter 2, he's going to level the same charges against the Jewish world.

[7:54] Is our man this man? Possibly. There's another fashionable view, third view, that identifies this escape artist as someone who represents all the strength and dignity of the Greek citizen, the ideals, of the moral, if not religious man.

[8:22] And if that is the case, it would give the overall impression then that what we've been reading about last week in chapter 1 refers perhaps to barbarian world, whereas the first half of chapter 2 would refer to the educated and elite world, and the second half of chapter 2 the Jewish world.

[8:45] Is this man our man? Possibly. But who is he? Well, my own reading of Romans to this point, and as you are aware, we haven't preached through it before, so I reserve the right to change it by the time we finish at the end of the year, would lead me in another direction.

[9:13] Paul's term, you, oh, man, is ambiguous. I would argue intentionally so, and therefore, possesses an elasticity in usefulness for him and for us, much more usefulness than any one view could really argue for, or I would say any one view should claim.

[9:42] Two weeks ago, I mentioned that overly eager readers and preachers of Romans have for centuries pressed every word for such a precision of meaning that the fullness of that word can be missed.

[10:00] And here, I think, is another example. Press too hard for the identity of this first escape artist and you might miss him altogether.

[10:14] Not only that, you certainly wouldn't consider that that man could be you.

[10:30] In actual fact, this man is a hypothetical man. He is a literary construct, creation of Paul, in the style of ancient moral philosophers like Socrates, Epictetus, and he functions as the apostles' dialogical sparring partner.

[11:02] He needed someone to speak to at this point in his argument, and so he created you, oh man. Now, these types of things were done regularly in a literary style of diatribe.

[11:23] Writers would often create just such a person, not so much to impart information to the readers, but they created a person as a way of correcting or persuading or pointing out the errors of people who might be reading and raising real, not hypothetical, questions.

[11:52] Paul does this kind of thing on numerous occasions in the letter to the Romans. He does it as well in 1 Corinthians 15, 29-41. He'll do it in Galatians 3 on two occasions.

[12:04] James employs the same literary convention in chapter two and in four. Therefore, it would seem that what we have is an intentionally ambiguous interlocutor with whom Paul will carry on conversation to correct and persuade and point out the errors of any who would argue what he's been arguing to this point.

[12:40] So, if that is the case, then we should be more concerned, and I wish the commentators were more concerned, with the purposes for which Paul has created this man rather than the identity of the person himself.

[12:57] God, and the purpose that this man plays for Paul is clear. No one, not even you, oh man, exemplar of moral soundness, can escape from the guilty verdict that I have leveled in chapter one that stands against the human race.

[13:27] And who is there among us who at times has not thought that the sins of chapter one, verses eighteen to thirty-two, refer to others, and not ourselves?

[13:43] Who here has never once thought that he or she possesses a moral soundness that is capable of rising above the swelling tide of humanity which itself is drowning in the wrath of God?

[14:06] Those others, they, them, Paul writes, therefore, you have no excuse, oh man, every one of you who judges, for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself because you the judge practice the very same thing.

[14:31] We know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who do such things. Do you suppose, oh man, you who judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself that you will escape the judgment of God?

[14:46] 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 impentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.

[15:06] in a brief stroke, he has created a man of purported ability of escape and he levels it for its insufficiency of sound judgment.

[15:32] We're all insufficient. to be the arbiter of what is moral behavior.

[15:44] He laid that out clearly in chapter one when our own ability to reason had been given over to an inability to reason according to his moral character.

[15:57] And so how would we possibly think that we can rise above the rest of humanity as a person of moral soundness and be able to understand this is right, this is wrong, this person he or she will be fine with God.

[16:13] And that practice that you're doing, that is not fine with God. Do you see what Paul is doing in those five verses?

[16:26] He is arguing against the presumptions of a man who would claim that he has the moral capability to judge according to the judgment of God.

[16:38] Take a look, verses one and two, that man is confronted with his own culpability, his own duplicity, and therefore his own hypocrisy.

[16:53] Verse three, he's confronted with the inescapability of any right standing before God. Verse four, he's further confronted with the vile presumption upon the kindness of God, and he is charged, in the Greek, with a sclerosis of heart, a heartening of the artery, having taken all of God's goodness and kindness and patience and endurance and longsuffering, and he's just run it through his veins with disregard until his heart is hard.

[17:37] And verse five, something far worse than he's even mentioned to this point in the letter. To this point, God's wrath has been manifested in the past and in the present, but now, for the first time, Paul is arguing that the wrath of God will be manifested in a unique day yet to come.

[18:05] What will this future wrath look like, given what we have seen? It already has been.

[18:25] There is a day when we will each stand before the judgment seat of God, and there we shall know for certain that his just judgments are just, and our judgments have never been just.

[18:49] We are without hope save his sovereign mercy. And so this man, who's been on the stage now for all the five verses, has head down, almost as if he's into Houdini's water torture cell.

[19:15] He's been incapable of escape, and any among us who would stand before the truths of chapter one, and think that we can rise above it, are only catapulting ourselves into further judgment with every judgment we pronounce.

[19:44] That's why he says, to one, you are without excuse, or without defense, before the divine tribunal.

[20:00] I am in a family of seven kids, I was one of seven. I hate to think of how many times I told my brothers or sisters not to do something, and then went ahead and did it myself.

[20:14] this truth is true for all pastors who stand before you and proclaim the standards of the living God, and proclaim that which is just and unjust, and call you to live according to his holiness, yet all the while knowing we stand with you in ungodliness.

[20:49] This truth is true for all parishioners, all religious folk who frequent churches, mosques, synagogues, all throughout the world today, bowing before him.

[21:10] this truth is true for an ever-growing horde of urban irreligious people who show increasing disdain toward all Christians and a superiority toward the rest.

[21:33] It is universal, and according to Paul, inescapable. When you begin to understand the depths of what Paul is saying in these verses, how can we do anything other than cry out with the words of Isaiah, woe is me!

[22:00] Who is that man? Thou art that man. And if you don't read the Bible with yourself under the inescapable wrath of God, you have misread the Bible entirely.

[22:26] Greater judgment will be upon us for those seasons in our life when we do. believers should be the most humble of all God's redeemed creations.

[22:50] Isaiah said, not only woe is me, he says, I am undone, and I dwell among a people who are undone. This interlocutor flips it all on its head.

[23:03] The difference between Isaiah and this man is incredible. This man says, I'm all buttoned up even though I dwell among a people who are undone.

[23:15] what a tragedy to be the man who finishes reading chapter 1 verse 32 where he claimed that you not only practice these things but approve of those who practice them.

[23:32] What a tragedy to finish reading that verse and then to come center stage as an escape artist and to claim that somehow, well, Paul, some may do these things and give hearty approval to the others who practice them, but not me.

[23:53] Not me, Paul. I'm not of that depraved lot. I have a moral soundness and therefore I don't approve of those things that they practice. I'm different.

[24:06] In fact, I pronounce judgment on those who practice them and thereby show that I am able to escape from the wrath of God that is marked out for them. Well, I've been that man many times.

[24:24] The insufficiency of moral soundness that might enable us to escape from the universal condition of God's wrath.

[24:38] And so Paul goes on in verses 6 through 11 to clear the table and say, let me get the terms out there.

[24:50] Let me get the terms for any who would escape from the wrath of God. These are the terms. Verse 6, he will render to each one according to his work.

[25:04] to those who by patience and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.

[25:17] Those are the terms. there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek, for God shows no partiality.

[25:34] Those are the two great terms. God will judge each of us according to our works. God will judge us without any partiality. Those are the terms.

[25:44] Now don't get confused by Paul's line of reasoning here. He's not contradicting himself from what he has already said, that a relationship with God only comes from faith to faith.

[26:01] And he's not contradicting himself with what he's going to spend two chapters in four and five hammering home that faith alone is what establishes relationship with God. He is not in these verses saying that you can attain salvation by doing that which is good.

[26:18] He is in these verses simply claiming that the judgment of God will be according to your works. He doesn't speak about your potentiality to actually do it perfectly.

[26:31] Something we know he doesn't hold. And so there it is. And as an aside, I shouldn't go there, but I will. This verse six, he will render to each one according to his works.

[26:44] It's introduced us to a phrase that the new perspective has been flying about for 30 years. And for those of you who are familiar with the debate, I just want to say that the quote of verse six, it's almost impossible to read this word works, is anything less than the things which gain you merit in standing with God.

[27:04] I don't know how else you can take that as some partial construct of lesser works done within the covenantal people of God. No, he will render everyone according to their works.

[27:20] The second and final thing Paul wants this purported escape artist to know before this one drops his shoulders and sits on the stage and crawls off in unceremonial shame is this.

[27:32] On the final day, divine trial, the great ordeal, is going to be carried out with absolute impartiality. It will be no respecter of persons, no respecter of privileges, no respecter of positions, all these things that man purported in his soundness would stand him in better stead.

[27:53] So that when you get to verses 12 to 16, having stated the terms for judgment, he now just reinforces those terms in these verses.

[28:06] So in 12 to 16, he's reinforcing those terms. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

[28:18] For it is not the hearers who are righteous before God, but the doers will be justified. For the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they become a law in themselves even though they do not have the law.

[28:31] They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their consciences bear witness! not their delivering thoughts, their conflicting thoughts will at times excuse them, but at times accuse them.

[28:52] On that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus, his gospel has come back in this chapter. Paul's claim is that that great day is coming on that day.

[29:07] Jesus is the one through whom, that's the preposition here, Jesus is the one through whom all judgment will be made.

[29:26] So what he has argued for in the first half of chapter 2 will be true for all, that those who thought themselves to be at some advantage on that day will be sorely mistaking. Jews and Greeks alike will each stand naked in the presence of God and be called to account and their consciences will in the end demonstrate that we do not have the moral soundness to escape his wrath.

[29:55] So the faint hint of hope, he's left the stage. outlier of the outlier might have called this particular escape artist, takes the stage in chapter 2 verse 17.

[30:21] Gladwell of course is the author of the presently popular book Outliers as well as the tipping point and blink and an outlier is defined in the dictionary as someone who is situated away from or classified differently than the main or a related body.

[30:41] That's exactly what the escape artists are. Someone who claims that they stand outside the rest. The rest. So here's the Jew.

[30:57] After all he might reason, are not the Jews God's own people? And therefore marked out as those who escape the everlasting! Just judgments of God? Haven't we all been thinking that as children of Abraham and reading of the Torah and all of the Hebrew scriptures that when the day of the Lord comes his judgments!

[31:17] come out upon the Gentile world and we escape because we are his own? And so Paul, with the skill of a master rhetorician, allows you who call yourself a Jew by name to come on to the stage in hopes of performing his own artistry of escape.

[31:39] And within a few short verses, Paul proves that he too is inescapably locked up to judgment and consigned with the rest of mankind to God's wrath.

[31:50] Not because he's somehow insufficient in moral soundness, although he is that, he is inadequate in regard to spiritual legacy.

[32:01] His spiritual legacy does not exempt him from the wrath of God. I mean, take a look at this. We'll do this very quickly because this just flows from Paul.

[32:14] There are three perfectly balanced sequences of artillery fire, each sequence possessing five rounds of battery that Paul levels against this once assured man in the presence of us all.

[32:31] Take a look at the first sequence in verses 17 and 18. He takes aim at this man's sense of privileged identity that was his by what he had been called a recipient out of the law.

[32:48] I mean, look at it. You rely on the law. One. Boast in God. Two. Know his will. Three. Able to distinguish the things that are superior to other things.

[33:01] Four. Because you are instructed from the law. And then without even so much of a pause, Paul goes on to unload a second sequence of five rounds, aimed this time not at his identity but at his privileged responsibilities, the responsibilities that God had given the Jews in the world.

[33:26] So he goes on. And if you are sure that yourself are one, a guide to the blind, two, a light to those who are in darkness, three, an instructor of the foolish, four, a teacher of the children, having in the law the embodiment!

[33:42] of knowledge and truth. So, one sense he's, he's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, your identity. You're going to argue on the basis of your identity?

[33:53] Secondly, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you're going to argue on the basis of your responsibilities and your privileges? And then the third crescendoing rattle of artillery comes in the form of these rhetorical questions.

[34:09] One, you who then teach others, do you not teach yourself? Two, while you preach against stealing, do you steal? Three, you who say you should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?

[34:21] Four, you who abhor idols, do you rob temples? Five, you who boast in the law actually dishonor God by breaking the law.

[34:31] The ironic force of how each sequence ends should not be missed. An appeal for escape has been made on the grounds of what the Jews received from the law, verse 18, which was followed by a second appeal for escape from what the Jews had received in the law, verse 20, and yet both are turned completely around by the end of the questions to put the man by Paul.

[35:03] The truth of the matter is that God has been dishonored by your actual transgression of the law. I mean, the prepositions are killer. The whore, I can't imagine, since I'm not Jewish by birth, the whore of being disrobed like this in a public letter often proves to be too much for any self-respecting, self-confident Jew to swallow.

[35:42] On this account, many Jews continue to reject Paul and his gospel and the Christian faith, and his history of anti-Semitic charge fills the air whether or not there is any respect given to the actual argument of Paul.

[36:15] But Paul has said what he wanted to say. For the escape artist on stage, one would think that the humility by the end here of verse 24 would have been enough.

[36:36] But it wasn't. It goes from bad to worse. Paul has more things to say. Here Paul, in verses 25 to 29, claim that in some cases, an occasional outsider or Gentile actually will have it over them, the insider or Jew, on the day when God comes to judge the secrets of the hearts of every man because external things don't matter with God.

[37:17] And if someone comes along, having been given less to go on by God, but nevertheless exceeds the conduct of those who had been given everything from God, the former will actually sit in judgment and condemn the latter.

[37:38] Their identity and their privileged responsibilities may in the end actually only incur greater wrath. when God exposes the hearts of us all.

[38:01] Blessed is the man whose praise therefore is from God and not man. Now, I don't know how many Jews we have here today, perhaps a few, and if so, you now know that according to the logic of Paul, your most privileged election and privileged it is, and your most glorious responsibilities and glorious they are, are in no way strong enough to be keys which you release from your pockets on that day that would permit you to escape what is now certainly clear to be the inescapable wrath of

[39:14] God. And for the rest of us who are not Jews don't think for a moment that the principles that are argued here by Paul don't apply by way of principle to many of you who here has grown up in the Christian faith from childhood?

[39:47] Would you not consider yourself to be a child of the promise? Who here has been frequenting gospel believing churches from their infancy?

[40:03] and therefore been the recipient of incredible blessings? Baptism? The Lord's Supper?

[40:17] But none of these give you an advantage over the irreligious reprobate who never frequented a church and swore the name of Christ for decades on end.

[40:44] In fact,! there will be some on judgment day who have done better with the limited knowledge of God that they had been given given given than those of us who have known it all throughout the years.

[41:21] and so we close. Neither man is of help to us yet.

[41:40] Now the second man, the Jew, must stay on the stage through next week's sermon question, because while the first has left speechless, the second has significant questions which Paul should answer on the basis of what he has said.

[42:07] And so he will raise his voice and plead for understanding but we are here, a tangled mess of rope and chain collapsed in fetal position on the stage of life and God's chains to this point at the close of chapter two hold fast.

[42:43] for every man of moral soundness and every man possessing the Mosaic law are both as are the rest inescapably under the charges that have been leveled against mankind.

[43:03] Thank God. Thank God for the Lord's Supper. and now you know why I have preached from behind it so that this picture of the gospel would somehow stand mercifully between you and my words.

[43:45] Let us pray.

[43:55] we celebrate the memorial of our redemption O Father in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving recalling the death of your son his resurrection and ascension and we offer you these gifts sanctify us that we may faithfully receive the holy sacrament and serve you in unity constancy and peace and at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom all this we ask through your son Jesus Christ by him and with him and in him in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory is yours almighty father now and forever amen