Or, Man’s Incriminating MoralityRomans 2:1-4November 7, 2021 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins

Introduction

It’s been said that the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know. That has some truth in it, but there is a related second-cousin axiom, that the more you know, the more you realize how much other people are wrong. The Information Age has increased the amount of information we have to judge others with.

This fault-finding bent is a corruption of the imago Dei in all of us. As much as homosexuality is a front-door assault on any reminder of the righteous Creator, so a critical sprit is like mirroring God, He who is the righteous Judge, under six feet of motor oil. We’ve really have done it; mankind has lowered the standard of what it means to be God so successfully that not only can we define good and evil like a god, we have also rigged it so that it’s always someone else doing the evil. It’s not whether or not there will be judges, but what degree of hypocrisy can cover your judgy-pants.

Paul moves from describing obviously immoral men to addressing ostensibly moral men. An immoral man might try to present himself as an honest thief or as a man-she, a “moral” man proclaims himself as judge and jury. It’s genius, even inspired, how he does so. A “therefore” bridges what we have as a chapter break between Romans 1 and 2, arguing from those abandoned to their own lusts without excuse to those living according to their own laws without excuse. The immoral know better than they act, the moral prove their guilt as they judge.

Who are these judgy-pants persons? Are they Jews rather than Gentile/Roman pagans? Paul calls Jews out by name in verse 17, and contrasts the Jews with the Gentiles before that (verses 9-11), so it’s not clear that he constrains his concerns to Jews. Are these “conservative” pagans? Maybe, though any conservatism is hypocritical because, as Paul points out, they do the things they denounce. Are they the abandoned, debased-mind, fully oblivious to the irony of their cognitive dissonance pagains? It applies to all of them, to any man making judgments of others. If the gavel hits, you can’t acquit.

While I don’t think that this paragraph is about Christians, we do know that sin still dwells in our members (Romans 8:23), so you can find church ladies of both sexes wearing judgy-pants as well.

For Paul’s purpose starting in Romans 2:1, it doesn’t matter what their (ethnic or religious) identity is, and it doesn’t even matter what standard they use. The judging habit incriminates them. It would be like a man claiming he’s not bound by Constitution law pleading the fifth (amendment). His appeal to the law shows he’s under it.

It’s worth a moment, for your edification, to ask if Romans 1:28-32 or 2:1-4 (and following) better describes our current cultural condition. My pastoral perspective says that it’s this paragraph. Self-righteousness is a cardinal reality and just a different sort of threat than unrighteousness. It is always harder to repent from what you judge to be your virtue. The majority of our neighbors and nation love judging the sins of others, and that doesn’t require agreeing on what sins are.

The Caesars were wicked, yet the wise knew that the emperor had no clothes. Today we have our own little Caesars, holding court wherever we think we can, and the yet the judgy-pants have no pants, or no leg to stand on.

No Excuse for Judging (verses 1-2)

Unlike the descriptions of the revelation of God’s wrath, chapter two is more personal; it’s second-person.

Therefore, O man, every judging-one, you are without excuse, for you judge yourself in which you judge another, for the judging-one does the same things.

Some form of “judge” is found four times in this first verse (four more times in the next three verses, along with a couple more related ideas). Paul isn’t writing to a specif[...]