God's Standard for Judgment
Romans 2:1
Romans Lesson #023
June 23, 2011
www.deanbibleministries.org

Righteousness is a word that means something according to a standard. If you are going to let somebody come into your home they are going to meet the standards that you have set. God is the same way. If He is going to let somebody come into heaven He is the one who sets the standard. He wants them to measure up to His standard and He is not going to let them in just because they think that they have the right to be in there. God has a righteous character and He demands that anyone who comes into heaven meets His righteous standard and His righteous character. This is why Paul is writing this epistle to the Romans. It is to explain what God’s standard is and how it can be met, and how that standard of God’s character has been worked out and displayed within the framework of human history and individual lives. So he sets forth the principles that we see in those key verses in the middle of chapter one in vv. 17-20.

In verse 17 he lays down the theme verse for Romans: ^NASB “For in it {the} righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS {man} SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.’” The word there for righteousness is DIKAIOSUNE—the SUNE ending is an ending that indicates the quality of something. In the quote from Habakkuk 2:4 we read “the righteous will live by his faith,” and the word for “righteous” there is the noun DIKAIOS. That word group can mean either righteousness or justice. Righteousness is the standard of something; justice is meeting the standard. Romans 1:18 ^NASB “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” The Greek word there for unrighteousness is the noun ADIKIA—the a prefix is negative. So there is this contrast with verse 17 with the righteousness of God and the righteous shall live by faith, and the wrath of God which is revealed against unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth by unrighteousness. God’s approval is toward the righteous but His disapproval is directed toward the unrighteous. The phrase that is used to express that is “the wrath of God,” and a lot of people want to see something emotive in that and it is just not really an emotive term. It is an anthropopathism that indicates the harshness or strength of God’s justice in a negative sense, the harshness of the penalty of violating His righteousness.

The other thing that we see with wrath if we look at how it is used in the Scripture, and especially in Romans, is that it has a primary focus on wrath that is the outpouring of God’s discipline or judgment on human beings in time, i.e. within history, not a future wrath such as the Tribulation period. In Romans it is talking about the present tense outpouring of God’s wrath—“is revealed,” it is ongoing in present time.

From verse 18 on Paul speaks about how God’s wrath or judgment is going to be applied to those who are unrighteous. We saw one category of the unrighteous in vv. 24-32, and that has to do with a form of unrighteousness of those who have rejected God and it degenerates into immoral degeneracy. When we come to 2:1 it begins with a “therefore.” It is not the normal Greek word that is found for therefore, OUN, it is DIO which is the same word as in 1:24. So there is sort of an introduction to this section dealing with the wrath of God being poured out on the unrighteousness of men, then there is one category expressed by the first DIO in 1:24 and then a shift to another category of application of His justice starting in 2:1. So what we see it this breakdown of two different categories of degeneracy.

The sin nature is driven by the core motivation of the lust pattern, a variety of lusts, and we all have them to one degree or another. Everybody is different. There is everything from power lust, approbation lust, money lust, materialism lust, sexual lust; all kinds of different lust patterns, just desire on steroids to have certain things beyond anything that is legitimate. And the way one perceives getting those is going to be characterized by certain trends, and each of us has different trends. Trends can change over the years. If these trends are allowed to work themselves out over time then they are going to end up in one of two categories: moral degeneracy or immoral degeneracy. Most people think of degeneracy as something immoral, but someone who is self-righteously moral is so mired in his own arrogance and so degenerate in his arrogance that people often don’t recognize it, and that is the moral degenerate. Scripturally we look at the moral degenerate in terms of so many of the Pharisees; they are just loaded with all kinds of arrogance. No sense of grace, no sense of humility whatsoever; he is morally over the edge, morally degenerate.

What Paul has dealt with in Romans chapter one is the consequence of suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness in relation to the immoral degenerate; now in 2:1 and through chapter two he deals with the consequence of the moralist who emphasizes his own morality as being good enough to get into God’s heaven. Others call him self-righteous, but the problem with using that term is that it sounds as if he comes across that way, and they don’t necessarily come across that way. Others have a pseudo-humility and we don’t see the fact that they just feel like they are good enough to get into heaven. In chapter two Paul is talking about the moralist and the first eleven verses really focus on the moralist and it could be either a Gentile or a Jew. It doesn’t become clear that he is applying this to the Jewish self-righteous, like the Pharisee, until verse 12 where he begins to talk about the law. When he gets into the second part of this and begins to critique the Jewish moralist Paul refers to them as “the Jew,” just as the apostle John does in the Gospel of John. But these are not terms that are being used in an offensive or anti-Semitic way. Over the years people have come along and accused John of being anti-Semitic but he is referring to the leaders of the Jews, and he was Jewish himself, as was the apostle Paul. It is not a racial issue at all in an anti-Semitic way. Paul is very much pro-Jewish. He is anti-Pharisee, anti-Sadducee, anti the Jewish religious concept that by works you can gain approval with God. And that is not unique to Judaism. Every religion in the world other than biblical Christianity puts an emphasis on works. What Paul is going to point out in chapter two is that even those who avow a strong system of morality can’t measure up. No human being can measure up to the absolute perfect standards of God. Paul’s focus here is not one that is condemning Jews as Jews, he is condemning the approach of Pharisaic Judaism to righteousness through works. As he gets into this he is going to show that on the basis of divine revelation all are condemned, Jew and Gentile.

Paul’s second conclusion in relation to his argument that all are without excuse is Romans 2:1 ^NASB “Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.” The phrase “without excuse” is the same Greek word as is used in 1:20, and it is only used two times in the New Testament. The one Paul is going to define here is he who is judging others. He is still talking about the consequences of wrath. When does it come? Now; it is not talking about the future, it is talking about the present time just as in chapter one.

“… everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.” As he draws this conclusion at the beginning there are three things that we should note. First of all he is drawing a conclusion which is not a conclusion from the list of sins and the stages of sins in 1:24-32 but it is a conclusion that comes from the rejection of God and rejection of the evidence of God’s existence which he described in vv. 18-20. So verse 24 gives one conclusion; 2:1 gives a second conclusion. Second, with this “therefore,” Paul transitions from the first group of immoral degenerates who are without excuse to the second group of moral degenerates of the self-righteous who are also without excuse. Both groups come under the judgment of God, the wrath of God, as is evident from the statements in chapter one and in 2:5-8.

What Paul says in this section is the human beings are going to react in one of three ways to the knowledge of the existence of God. The first way is that they are going to reject it and then as God takes away the restraint of their sin nature they are going to spiral down into immoral degeneracy. The second group is going to reject the existence of God and God is going to allow them to spiral down into moral degeneracy. The third group reflects those who want to accept the existence of God on His terms rather than on their terms. This idea that all have sinned and come under the judgment of God, which is what Paul’s conclusion will be in Romans 3:23, is not some New Testament Christian teaching. This goes back into the Old Testament, and one passage that makes it very clear in the Old Testament is Isaiah 53:6 ^NASB “All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.” Isaiah is talking about the entire Jewish nation under the covenant to Moses. That is who he is referring to by “all”; it is all in the nation who are under that covenant. He compares them to sheep: All of us (literally) are like sheep. Sheep have absolutely no ability to take care of themselves. God created at least one creature that can’t function, live or survive without man, and is a perfect illustration of why evolution could never be true. Darwinian evolution is based on the assumption of the survival of the fittest, that the reason there are certain species is because they survived with the traits that they have because they were more fit to face the challenges of survival than others who had different mutations. It presumes something of fitness on the part of these species. Sheep have no fitness. The shepherd provides everything for the sheep and of the shepherd isn’t there the sheep can’t even find a drink of water. Sheep have no sense whatsoever and they are perfect illustrations of what human beings are in terms of their understanding of God. In the concept of Darwinian evolution nothing can survive unless it can do it on its own. Sheep can’t survive without man, so that shows that sheep cannot have evolved for hundreds of thousands of years before human beings because they never would have made it.

“Each of us has turned to his own way.” The Hebrew word translated way means a path or a road. It is the same word that is used in Proverbs when it says “There is a way”—there is a path or a road—“that seems right to man, but the end thereof is death.” We have all decided that every path leads to God—except one: Christianity, because they say theirs is the exclusive path.

In Romans chapter two Paul says: “Therefore you are without excuse.” He is talking to the self-righteous moralist, the person who thinks that somehow by religious works, by moral effort, ethics, his own integrity he can gain the approval of God. Then he says, “everyone of you who passes judgment.” It is better translated “all you who judge” or “anyone who judges.” The word “judge” is the participle form of KRINO, and KRINO has a wide range of meanings. It has the idea of separating, distinguishing, exercising discernment in decision making, considering, reflecting upon something, the idea of judging in the act of a legal judge sitting on the bench adjudicating a trial, the idea of deciding something. So what does Paul mean by judging here? It has to be here the idea of judging in the sense of being God, making negative judgments about whether or not a person is approved by God. It is exemplified in the Gospels by the Pharisee who comes into the temple and sees the beggar outside, looks down his nose and says, well thank God I’m not like him. That is judging, saying I am better than he is, I am superior to him in the eyes of God; pure arrogance. So the sense of judge here is in the sense of that arrogant condemnation of others where the person judging has no right, no knowledge, no basis to do that.

Romans 2:2 ^NASB “And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things.” ^NKJV “according to truth.” There is a standard, “according to the truth.” The article is there, it indicates a specific, absolute, universal transcendent truth. The judgment of God is according to truth. Why? Because God knows everything. God’s standard is perfectly righteous; that is His character. God is omniscient; He knows all the facts. There’s not one little fact that escapes His knowledge, so only He can make a perfect decision. And because He is absolute truth, and it is impossible for Him to lie, there is no shadow there, so God’s judgment is going to be according to a perfect standard. Only He can judge according to a perfect standard and His judgment is against those who practice such things—not the ones who are committing all of those sins in chapter one but the ones who aren’t committing any of those sins and think that they are superior to those who are because they are not doing those things. Their arrogance makes them just as guilty as the arrogance of those who are immoral. Paul uses the Greek word OIDA. GINOSKO is another word in the Greek for knowledge; it has the idea of coming to learn something, going through the process of studying growth and learning, whereas OIDA has to do with seeing something intuitively. It is used in the Gospel of John to refer to the omniscience of God but it is also used of recognizing a self-evident conclusion.

Romans 2:3 ^NASB “But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same {yourself,} that you will escape the judgment of God?” We think that because we are not committing all of those horrible sins of those people we don’t like that somehow we are not going to get the same judgment they are. But Paul is saying no, even the moralist is just as guilty of sin an d falling short of the glory of God as licentious and the one who is involved in all of the moral degeneracy.

What Paul says in these three verses is just a reflection of what Jesus said in Matthew. In the sermon on the mount Jesus is addressing the problem that within first century Judaism the Pharisees, in order to keep the Jews from violating the Torah, had built a wall around it of various traditions and prohibitions so that as long as people didn’t break those they knew they wouldn’t break any of the 613 commandments in the Torah. Those traditions, though, came to have the same authority as the commandments in the Mosaic Law. So the Pharisees are putting this burden on the people that they have to not only watch out for the 613 commandments but they can’t violate the 1,500 other regulations and traditions that they had built up around the observance of the Torah. Jesus addresses this in the first five verses of Matthew chapter seven.

Matthew 7:1 ^NASB “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.” He is using the verb KRINO, but He is not saying don’t make evaluations, don’t make decisions. He is not saying it is wrong to have judges in a courtroom. He is talking about the fact that judgments were made by the Pharisees as to individual spiritual status based on their observance of that person’s external behavior. That is what is under condemnation by Jesus. He is saying nobody can put themselves in God’s place and look at somebody and determine whether they are in a right standing with God or not. Part of the reason is because we all sin at times and our standing before God is based on His grace and not based on our behavior. When He says, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged,” He is saying the basis of your self-righteous, vindictive criticism of somebody is the basis for your judgment as well. [2] “For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”

The first sin is judging somebody, and that means condemning them on the basis of their behavior in terms of their spiritual status before God. This wasn’t being critical of somebody, it was far beyond that; this had to do with determining their spiritual standing before God. The second issue that comes along is that you are now going to be judged on the basis of the criticism that you made of the other person; that discipline is going to be given to you. So you are going to judge somebody and you are going to get disciplined for that, and then that discipline is going to be compounded again as it is brought back on you. Then Jesus begins to illustrate it. Matthew 7:3 ^NASB “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”

Matthew 7:4 ^NASB “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye?” Then the accusation: [5] “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Romans 2:4 ^NASB “Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” The answer there, again, is yes. They are despising the grace of God because they have decided that rather than accepting a free gift they want to earn it. The hardest thing for Christians to learn is grace orientation, because we live in a society that say we don’t get anything for nothing. What Paul says here is that when the grace of God is rejected and you put the emphasis on works you are in essence despising the fullness of God’s goodness, His patience, His longsuffering, that the goodness of God, all of these blessings, is to change your mind and to turn back to God, to accept the free offer of grace.

Romans 2:5 ^NASB “But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” The two words, “hardness” and “impenitent heart” are Greek words SKLEROTES and AMETONOMETOS. The first represents a hardness; you have strengthened your heart against God. The second is impenitent, it is not going to turn, it was not going to say I was wrong and God was right; there’s no sense of humility or turning to God. What this is doing is loading up your savings account with divine discipline. This is to an unbeliever. He is going to reap the consequences of what he has sown. The word translated “storing up” is the present active indicative of Greek word THESAURIZO, from which we get our English word “thesaurus,” treasury of words. So you treasure or store something up. So the more the unbeliever rejects the grace of God and the more he refuses the turn, the more he stores up divine discipline. This isn’t talking about end-time discipline. The wrath revealed in 1:18 is explained in present time in vv. 24-32. The wrath of God which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, which includes the moral arrogance of the moral degenerate, is being revealed in time.