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Romans 2:4-29
False Security
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Romans
2:4-29. "Or despisest thou the riches of his
goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of
God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath
and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render every man
according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek
for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:
but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey
unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every
soul of man thou doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; But glory, honour,
and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew
first, and also to the Gentile: For there is no respect of persons with
God. For as many as have sinned without
the law shall also perish without the law: and as many as have sinned in the
law shall be judged by the law; (for not the hearers of the law are just before
God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the
law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law,
are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean
while accusing or else excusing one another; [cf. Hebrews 8:6-13]) in the day
when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being
instructed out of the law; and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the
blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a
teacher of babes, which hast a form of knowledge and of the truth in the
law. Thou therefore which teachest another, teachest thou
not thyself? Thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that sayest a
man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? Thou
that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking
the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the
Gentiles through you, as it is written. For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou
keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made
uncircumcision. Therefore if the
uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfill the law, judge thee, who by
the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law? For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly;
neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: but he is a Jew,
which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit,
and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God."
The False
Security Of The Religious Person
"This morning
I'd like us to open our Bibles to Romans chapter 2, and I've entitled my message
"false security". We've seen
in Romans 1 that the pagan person is lost, he needs the Savior, and is without
an excuse, able to look at nature and know there is a Creator [see https://UNITYINCHRIST.COM/dinosaurs/dinosaurs.htm]. The pagan person has turned his back on
God. We looked last week at the moral
person, how moral people need a Savior too. Just because they're moral doesn't mean they're perfect, and to be saved
you must have a perfect life-but it can be either your perfect life or Jesus'
perfect life credited to you. Most of us
would not offer God a perfect life, we've already ruined that opportunity. In fact, the Bible says 'All of us have
missed the mark, we all have sinned and fall short of God's glory and God's
will.' So the moral person is in
trouble. And the Bible warns us not to
harden our hearts. If you look at verse
4 now of chapter 2, it says 'Don't look down your
nose at the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience.' And then he warns,
in verse 5, about a stubborn heart. "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 word stubbornness there is the Greek word sclerotes. We get the word sclerosis from it, which
means a hardening, like arterial sclerosis. Well, people spiritually have a hardening of the heart, and hard
heartedness. And we've got to not allow
that to happen. In the Bible there are
many examples recorded for us so that we would learn, examples of men and women who hardened
their hearts against God. Somebody, I
can't remember who, said that our hearts are sort of like this, it's dependent
on what your heart is made of which will determine what the sun does to
you. The same sun that melts the wax,
hardens the clay. And we want to
pray to God that we have soft wax-like hearts, and that we worship God not in a
formal way, but in a real spiritual way. Beware of the stubborn heart, the hard
heart. Don't harden your heart.
Now in the next verses after this,
probably verses 6 to verse 13 are some verses often misunderstood by
people. And we're going to see a lesson
here in the importance of how to study the Bible. One of the reasons why I am so
absolutely convinced that we should study the Bible book by book, chapter by
chapter, and verse by verse is because when we do that we get the whole context
of what is being taught. Every
cult that I'm aware of, every false teacher that I'm aware of takes verses from
the Bible and uses them. I mean, I don't
know a cult or a false teacher who doesn't hold this book [the Bible] in his
hand, you take any cultic group around, they'll all
have a Bible in their hand. But the
problem is that they take a verse or verses out of context. They pull it out and they chain it together
with some other verses out of context, and they build their false doctrines. [There is a biblical way of putting together
a Bible doctrine, letting the Bible interpret itself. It is based on Isaiah 28:9-10, which states
"For whom shall he teach knowledge?. For precept
must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, here a little, and
there a little." Using a Strong's
concordance and taking related words like "fatherless",
"widow" and "poor" and looking up each passage Strong's
lists them in throughout the Bible will reveal God's teaching about how we
should feel and act toward this group of people. It will yield the Bible doctrine on
"fatherless, widows and the poor". Looking up every passage that deals with a resurrection of the dead will
yield what the Bible has to teach about how and when God is going to, or has
resurrected people in the past. But as
you use this method, be sure to read the whole paragraph in context with the
surrounding Scriptures or page this word appears in to gain its proper
contextual meaning in the passage. This
method of learning to add like Scripture to like Scripture can be a valuable
tool for properly discerning Bible teachings. But it must be used wisely. No Bible doctrine should ever be based
solely on one Bible verse or passage. And
sadly, many mainstream Christian denominations base some pretty universally
accepted doctrines solely based upon one or two tiny Scriptures. Also one Scripture should never be used to subtract from the
meaning of another. It's not like
algebra where say one verse has a negative value and another a positive value,
so one subtracts from or cancels the meaning of the other out. It doesn't work that way. All Scriptures are additive in value-they all
add to the meaning of other related Scriptures. Say you're doing a study on healing and look up all the passages where
the word "heal, healed" are used. Be sure to look up other passages showing where God didn't heal. Get the whole truth on the subject or else
you may be led to a false conclusion that it's God's will to heal everyone who
asks him--as some groups erroneously teach (health & wealth "Faith
Christian Churches"). Get the whole
truth on a matter, then your doctrinal understanding of God's Word will be
sound.] Now false doctrine will lead to
false living, which you'll believe, and this will be lived out in your
life. And that's why it's so important
that we teach the Word of God, all of the Word of God, and we see it in its
context. And so you can't take the
verses, these next few verses that we're going to read, pull them out of
chapter two. You've got to leave chapter
1 tied to chapter 2 and chapter 3 in order to rightly understand it. [And that's all well and good until you get
to OT books on prophecy, where various prophecies pertaining to different times
can all be found in one chapter, then this interpretive style goes out the
window, and the "here a little, there a little" interpretive method
takes over. Use wisdom. And realize, in the area of prophecy to apply
Paul's statement,
The Meaning Of Verses 6-13
Now let's look at
these. Maybe you've taken them out of
context before. I don't know. It says in verses 6-13, "God will render to every man according to his deeds. To those who by perseverance and doing good
seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life. But to those who are selfishly ambitious and
who do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and
indignation. There will be tribulation
and stress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first, and also of
the Greek. But glory and honor and peace
to every man who does good, to the Jew first and also
to the Greek, for there is no partiality with God. 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, for not the hearers of the
law will be justified before God, but the doers of the law will be
justified." Now verses you can
understand. There's some verses there
that-'Oh, wait a minute, I thought we were saved by grace through faith?!-he's
saying here 'It's not the hearers of the law, but the doers who'll be
justified.' It says, 'Those who do good, they will be given eternal life. But I thought it was a gift.' Hey, hey, calm down. Don't you
understand? I've been telling you, the
first chapter of Romans was to show the whole pagan world is lost. Now he's talking to the moral people--talking
to people who think that by their 'law keeping' they have a pretty good chance
of heaven. 'Hey, I'm a moral man, I've
never stepped out on my wife, I've never cheated on my taxes, I've never told a
white lie, I'm a pretty good guy, I'm not worried about heaven. I believe the good man upstairs knows who his
men are here on earth [chuckle].' Turn
to Romans chapter 3, verses 10-12, "As it is written there
is"--how many righteous gang?--"none righteous, not even
one. There is none who seeks for
God." What's the next three
letter word? "ALL have turned aside, together they've become useless. There is NONE who does good,
NOT EVEN ONE." Now in chapter 2
he's talking about good people there. [This statement by Paul is talking about everyone Paul has talked about
in chapters 1-2, the pagan, the moral both with and
without the law.] But God looks for
perfection, and we're talking about salvation. And really, to be able to be saved, you've first got to understand the
bad news. And as you witness to people
and you share with people, you need to be able to give them the bad news first,
and don't be embarrassed about it at all. Don't be embarrassed to tell somebody, 'You've missed the mark.' That's what "sinning" means, the
word "sin" is an old English word "sinne"
and it was a game, a bow and arrow game. And when you played with a bow and arrow you put a big target up and
then you would shoot at that with your bow and arrow and you would try to hit
the bull's eye, and if you hit the bulls eyes, you
were "on mark." But if you're
like me, when you have missed the mark, you have "sinned", it was
called a "sinne". And it sort of hung on, and people began to
talk about it, and people understood that when you sinned, you missed the
target--and we all have missed the targets. [1 John 3:4 "Sin is the transgression of the law." That's the Bible's definition of
"sin".] The best of us have
missed. But God requires perfect
accuracy, all the time. But you say
"Oh, but I'm not perfect!" Good! You've got to come to that
realization. Now you understand that the
wage, the pay of 'missing the mark' is death. God says death, hell, is what you deserve because of this. But, Jesus has taken your place. He experienced the punishment for your sin,
and traded places with you, and if you will accept him by faith, God will credit
all of Jesus' goodness and perfection and accuracy to your account. And you will be looked upon in God's sight as
being perfect because the righteousness of Jesus Christ will cover you. That's the gospel. But why do I need a savior unless I
first realize I'm a sinner. So his whole
point here in the first three chapters is to show "Hey, world, shut you mouth. There's
nothing that you can say that will make you right before God except "Jesus
save me.". There's nothing you can do that will make you right before God except
believing on Jesus Christ. And so when
he says that God is going to judge us according to our works, that's true if
you're outside of Christ, and he's talking about people who are not saved, you
will be judged by what you do. If you
are not a Christian you will be judged by your performance. Yikes! That's dangerous, isn't it? The big video screen comes down, you see all
of the things you've done in the dark, the things you've done in secret, your
thoughts, your motives, your intentions, will all be flashed before the whole
watching world. I'm glad I'm in Christ,
all of my life has been swallowed up by his life. And if my life would come on the screen you'd
see--Jesus walking on water, you'd see Jesus healing people, you'd see Jesus
worshipping his Father perfectly, you'd see Jesus'
life, because that's what God sees. It's
Christ's life, covering a Christians' life. Well, "not the hearers of the law" he says in verse 13,
"but the doers of the law are just before God." In other words, if you're going to try to be
saved by law, you'd better not just say "Oh yes, I believe in the 10
Commandments, Oh I live by the Golden Rule, I believe that we ought to turn the
other cheek." You hear people like
this, you know. the problem is, why don't you do it then? God's not going to judge you someday--if you're outside of Christ--he's
not going to judge you someday on what you say you believe. He's going to judge you by what
you do. Talk's cheap, God knows
that. God thinks your actions speak
louder than your words. That's why the
beautiful thing about the Christian faith is that when Jesus comes into a person's
life, there is a change of life, a change of nature. There will be evidence in your life that you
are a new person. I'm very concerned
about Christians who say they are Christians, but they aren't living any
different a life than somebody in the world. And they say, "Well, I believe 'once saved, always saved.' Well, I know there will be people in hell who
believe that. "What do you
mean?" Well, I know there are
people who think they are saved because they 'got baptized', or
'confirmed', or went to church or said a little prayer [at the altar call
even], they think they're saved, but they're not. And someone gave them a slogan "Once
saved, always saved". I guess I do
believe that once you are "born-again, you can't get
"unborn-again." But are you
born-again? Are you really a child of
God? [cf. II Corinthians 13:5-read it.] You need to examine yourself. If you're living a life that is contrary to
God's will and God's Word and you know it, how can you say you're a child of
God??? I don't understand that. Because your walk doesn't match your talk,
and Jesus is not a savior who just, you know, is a savior in word only. He's a savior who comes into a life in
power. And you need to know, maybe,
Christians, that you have to say "No" to your fleshly
desires. You might have to say no to a relationship, you might have to say no to a job. Following Christ might cost you
something. It cost Him everything to
save you. And it might cost me a
little to follow him. But Jesus says
there isn't anybody who has left houses, lands or family or friends that won't
receive 10 times, I mean many times more not only in this life, but in the life
to come. [transcript of a connective expository sermon on Romans 2:4-29 (page 1), given by Pastor J.
Mark Martin, Calvary Community Church, P.O. Box 39607, Phoenix, Arizona 85069]
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