Review - Condemnation by Divine Standards
Romans 2:7-24 · Hal Molloy · Jan 22, 2006
Romans (2005-07), No. 16
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826234293168

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We didn't quite finish down through verse 16 last week. So I want to do a quick review and I'll tell you why. What I'm going to do is read some portions of chapter 2. So go back to verse 5 on chapter 2 where it says, After the hardness and impenitent heart treasure up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who in that day will render every man according to his deeds. Seek for glory and honor in immortality, eternal life.

And verse 7 and verse 8, as we looked at last week, is a construction in the Greek. And verse 7 is led off, you could translate it, on the one hand, to them who by patient continuance and well-doing. And then verse 8, but on the other hand, unto them that are contentious, And do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation, and wrath. And down to verse 13. For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. And then it goes on to talk about the Gentiles who don't have the law, but by nature do the things contained in the law. Then down in verse 16.

It says, In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel. My son was here last week. Well, first of all, before we do that, let me see if I can get this going. Last week we asked the question, In terms of these two difficult verses, because verse 7 appears that one can be saved by his or her works, right? And verse 13, it appears that one can be justified by keeping the law. And as we looked at last week, and we looked at scripture, and we said, no, a man cannot be justified, no one can ever be justified by the law, and salvation doesn't come by doing good works. How does it come? By faith. By faith in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we ask the question, how do we resolve it? What is Paul saying here? And it's interesting.

Many commentators say, well, first of all, many commentators, as Jim and I have looked at it, don't even address these verses. They don't address them. They don't address verse 5. And if they do address them, Like in some of the reference Bibles, it says that verse 7 and verse 13 are hypothetical. It's not really what Paul is saying. And we said last week, no, Paul is saying that. Because if you make verse 7 hypothetical, you also have to make verse 8 hypothetical, because they go together. So then, how do you resolve what scripture is saying?

And so what we did is we we looked at the timeline, if you will, in terms of the church and the church being taken up when the Lord returns in the air and we're going to meet him in the air and those who are dead in Christ will be resurrected, those who are thus alive and He may come today.

But those who are still alive are going to be changed in a moment, in twinkling of an eye, and we're going to meet Him in the air. And we're going to be with Him forever, which is the Rapture. Following the Rapture is the Tribulation period, where God is going to pour out His wrath upon this earth. And then it's going to terminate. with the judgment of the nations. Christ is going to physically return to the earth, and he's going to sit on the throne, and he's going to divide all of the peoples, all of the nations, into two groups. And there's going to be a judgment.

And we saw that in between the rapture and the judgment of the nations, believers, there's going to be a bema, judgment, better referred to as a reward seat. Believers are going to be rewarded for the works that Christ has done through us by faith. Those works that we've done which was not of faith are going to be burned. Those works that were done through faith are going to survive the fire and they're going to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.

Then that's going to be followed by the Millennial Kingdom, which is a thousand years where Jesus Christ is going to rule and reign on this earth. And we're going to rule and reign with him, and we're going to be there with him. And all of the Old Testament saints that died are going to be resurrected right at the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom, and they're going to rule and reign with Christ for the thousand years. end of the thousand years, there's going to be the Great White Throne Judgment, where all of the unbelieving dead, the only ones that appeared before this judgment, are unbelievers. There will be no believers at this Great White Throne Judgment. So there is the timeline.

So when Paul talks about the day of wrath and the righteous judgment of God, what's he talking about? And especially when it appears, like in verse 7 and verse 13, that a man can be saved by works or a man can be justified by the law. And how does that all fit in with this? And what we did last week was to put in mind Paul's thinking.

And Paul anticipated the imminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we went through these passages of scripture where he thought that it was imminent. During his life, the Lord Jesus Christ would return. And he'd be caught up in the air. His body would be changed in a moment, a twinkling eye. He'd be with the Lord.

And so from his perspective, this Day of Wrath, if we can... Well, I don't know what happened to it. But in Paul's life, it'll be coming up. So that we overlay Paul's life here. Paul, in his lifetime, thought that the rapture would occur. and that he'd be caught up in the air. However, that wasn't true.

And that the day of wrath, then, would follow. And the day of wrath is, as Jim pointed out when he went through the earlier verses, that the day of wrath is the tribulation period. And then the righteous judgment of God, one of those judgments is here, the judgment of the nations, and the other one is the Great White Throne Judgment. Now, my son who was sitting here said, Dad, you need to explain that this passage really can't be understood unless you interpret it in a dispensational framework. And what we've done is interpret it in a dispensational framework.

The fact that there are distinctions between peoples, between Gentiles, Jews, and the Church. You have to make those distinctions between peoples. You have to make distinctions between ages and periods. So the age of the Church, the age of the Millennial Kingdom, you have to make these distinctions.

If you don't make these distinctions, then you'll wind up like commentaries do and say, well, this Day of Wrath and this Judgment of the Nations is all over here, all lumped up together with the Great White Throne Judgment. So all these judgments are just piled up at the end of this quote, millennial kingdom. So what I thought I'd do is say, OK, how do I explain this rapidly so we can press on?

So that if we take a look at another framework of theology, which is not dispensational theology, but covenant theology, which is prominent today. And probably most commentaries, most books that you read, are written by covenant theologians. So what do they believe in terms of timing, in terms of ages, in terms of whatever?

Well, covenant theology basically believes in two covenants, a covenant of works, and a covenant of grace. And the covenant of works was with Adam and Eve, and that covenant of works ended at the fall. And from that point on, there's this covenant of grace, and the covenant of grace talks about God's forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. So then the entire period that we're living in is, according to covenant theology, we're living under the covenant of grace. Now, problem. If you go to scripture, you'll never find a covenant of grace. If you go to scripture, you'll never find a covenant of works. You'll never find those covenants. And then what covenant theology does is essentially You have Israel over here, and God had made promises to Israel, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God made these promises to Abraham.

Part of those promises was the New Covenant. So basically, the promises to Abraham was a land, a seed, and a blessing. And the blessing part of that covenant with Abraham was the New Covenant. And the Abrahamic covenant, as you go through Scripture, the Old Testament, was expanded. There was more information, there was progressive revelation about what does it mean in terms of the land and the seed and the blessing.

And the blessing part of the covenant was amplified by the New Covenant given in Jeremiah 31 verses 31 through 34, where God was going to remove the Jews' stony heart and give them a new heart, put a spirit within them, and he's going to remember their sins no more, etc. That was the New Covenant. Well, what covenant theology says is that, well, that New Covenant is our New Covenant, the Church's New Covenant, and since Israel rejected the Lord Jesus Christ, then all of those promises that were made to Israel are now ours. So they don't distinguish between promises made to Israel and promises or truths given to the church. There's no distinction. So they equate the church with Israel.

And furthermore, what they do is they say, well, if you're talking about the kingdom, yeah, the Bible talks about the kingdom, and the kingdom is going on right now. We're living in the kingdom age. And Christ is ruling in this kingdom age on David's throne, which is in heaven. Now, where is Christ's throne? If we look at dispensational theology versus covenant theology, where is David's throne that Christ is going to rule and reign from? Here, on earth. Right? In Jerusalem. So you get to see the distinction.

And then what happens in covenant theology is that all of the judgments and all of the resurrections are lumped into one big resurrection, one big judgment. So you put the judgment of the nations here, you put the great wine throat judgment here, you put the all of the resurrections here, resurrection of Old Testament saints, etc. So, do you see the distinction between dispensational theology and covenant theology? And when your theology is dispensational, I think that this passage in Romans that we're addressing becomes very, very clear. You can interpret it within the framework of dispensational theology.

Yes. I don't know if I missed it, Hal, but on the last one you had up there, that bottom line where it's the law, in covenant theology they're still under the law. Yes. And so in covenant theology, the rule of life for the believer today is the law. Right. Okay.

Now, what I'd like to do is to take this, all that we've talked about in Romans chapter 2, down through verse 16, and kind of summarize it in a different way, and look at it in an overview fashion in a different way. Now, I gave you a handout. It's a repeat of last week. Page 6 is a repeat of last week. And the reason it's a repeat is that after class last Sunday, Bob talked to me and said, you know, I don't understand this this chart, and I'll tell you what was confusing.

But, as we look at these 16 verses in Romans, the first 16 verses in chapter 2, and even if you go back to chapter 1, where it talks about all of the immoral people, those who when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, and became vain and empty in their imaginations, and they worshipped four-footed beasts, and they worshipped man, and they went off into all kinds of sin and homosexuality and lesbianism, etc. And it goes down through the whole list of sins.

And so those are works, if you will, or deeds of immoral people. And then when you hit Romans chapter 2, there are those moral people who are unbelievers, who say, well, I never do that. And what people do is they put themselves, if you can think of a ladder, and they put themselves in a ladder. And down here you have the homosexuals, the lesbians, the murderers, this, that, and they put sin on a scale. And they say, And a moral person is standing up here on the scale. And he's looking down at all these immoral people and saying, I never do that. I never do that. And they're always looking down. They never look up.

And in terms of the absolute righteousness of God, what God does is he takes that relative scale, he takes that scale that man has, and he goes boop, and he levels it. And he says, sin is sin. Whether you're a murderer or whether you're just angry at your wife this morning, sin is sin. And sin is a leveler. So that's what God does. So there are no grades of sin with him. Because anything that misses the mark, his mark of of righteousness is sin.

So, if you take a look at Romans chapter 1 and also chapter 2 verses 1-16, and 1-16 talks about those who judge others, who are unrighteous, who have sinned. It's interesting. They have sinned, it says, without the law or with the law. Either way, they're sinners.

They've missed the mark. And when it talks about sin, hamartia, the word simply means to miss the mark. And if you would think of a big target out here in terms of missing the mark, the mark, the center of that target, the bullseye of that target, is the righteousness of God. And every man misses that mark. We don't even hit the target.

Because when we get to Romans 3.23, we're going to find, for all have sinned, for all have missed the mark, And we think, well, we just missed it slightly. No, it says, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the word come short means to do an absolute turnaround from who God is. So we never even get to the target.

But anyway, it talks about those who have sinned and those who have heard the law. And just because they've heard the law doesn't mean they're doers of the law. Okay, so as it goes on, these are all unbelievers. These are works of unbelief. And these people are going to experience the Day of Wrath.

Remember, in Paul's frame of reference, the Day of Wrath was going to start the moment that the Lord returned, right? at the rapture. So, he's saying, you guys are going to go through this, you're stirring up wrath for this day of rapture, this tribulation period.

And, as you go through verses 1-16, this is a period of indignation, and the word here is and sometimes it's translated anger, and it's just the settled, righteous anger of God. And then there's wrath, the thumos, and this is more of an explosive anger, where the orge builds up and then it explodes, so that when you explode to somebody at work or your spouse, it's usually thumos, anger. We got our word thermal, heated. But it's usually, when we do it, it's unrighteous anger. When God does it, it's righteous anger. So there's a difference. And it goes on in verse 9, it talks about that these people are going to experience tribulation and they're going to experience anguish. Now, let me just go back.

Going into the tribulation period, who goes into the tribulation period? Do believers and unbelievers go into the tribulation period? only unbelievers. And why is that? Because all the believers are raptured with the Lord and taken up. So the only ones left are unbelievers. So they're the only ones that go into the tribulation period. Now, what happens during the tribulation period? If we go over to Revelation, we find out that God seals 144,000 Jews.

And what do they do? Evangelize. They go out into the world and preach the gospel to the entire world. And they preach the gospel. And what's the result of that? You have believers. There are Jews and Gentiles that believe. So coming out of this tribulation period, or during the tribulation period, you have believers. And so believers are righteous persons, and they're righteous, and their works that they do are out from faith, because they have put their trust and faith in Christ. So their works are out from faith.

Now, page six, which you had last week, Bob thought that all of this, that being righteous was a result, he said, you can miscommunicate. It looks like that those who endure good, glory, honor, etc., and seek for eternal life, that that makes them righteous. You could look at that chart that way. But I made an addition. Righteous persons, that is, their works out from faith are these. They endure in good work, seeking glory, honor, incorruptibility, eternal life. It's very interesting. So, when it talks about their seeking, like eternal life, what does that mean?

What's interesting is this, the word seek there, ze teo, is a word which means to seek after something, to try and find something that you don't have. So, I don't have a Mercedes. So, if I'm seeking Mercedes, I'm seeking after it and trying to find something that I don't have. That's one aspect of seeking. Another aspect of seeking is going about something which you already have. So that you can already have eternal life and you're just going about in it. So, Zeteo, this word seeking, means just to go about in what you already have.

So, just to show you that, turn over to Colossians. Colossians chapter 3. Colossians chapter 3. Look at verse 1. It says, be risen, and actually the word is co-risen, if you then be co-risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Now, here's the question, what are the things above? It says to seek those things above. So let me ask this question. What do we have? What do we have above? What do we have in the heavenlies?

Every spiritual blessing. Is there anything lacking? Are we totally complete in Christ? He's given us everything, and there's nothing lacking? So now, if we translate this, seek in order to find something you don't have to obtain it. Wrong translation, isn't it? Because we've got it. We've got everything. We've got every spiritual blessing.

But it's just to seek it. Which means, go about. Go about in what you already have. seek in terms of going about in what you already have. So you see the difference here. So the same thing is true here, that they're seeking, they're going about glory, that is God's glory, His honor, His incorruptibility, the eternal life that they already have. Does that help clarify the verses? Alright, we'll press on.

And they're doers of the law only because they're righteous and the Spirit of God is the one that's keeping the law through them. Then we come to the righteous judgment of God. and in verse 5 and in verse 16. And as you go through that entire passage, you find something out about his righteous judgment. You find that his judgment is according to truth in verse 2. It's according to righteousness in verse 5. It's according to man's works in verses 6 through 10. It's according to a law system in verse 12 through 15.

And it's according to the gospel in verse 16. So depending upon which judgment this is, whether it's at the beginning, at the end of the tribulation period, or the beginning of the millennium, or at the end of the millennial kingdom, if it's at the beginning, it's the judgment of the nations. And that judgment is either unbelievers are condemned and believers go into eternal life. Now, I want you to see that, so turn over to Matthew chapter 25. I don't want to go through the whole paragraph. We kind of went through it last week. Jim went through it, and I just kind of summarized it last week. Look at verse 46.

This is after the judgment. The sheep on his right hand, the goats on his left, unbelievers on his right hand, the sheep on his left. And it says, and these shall go away into everlasting punishment. Those are the ones on his left hand. Those are the unbelievers, the unrighteous. But, look what it says, but the righteous, into life eternal. So you see at the end of that judgment, it's either condemnation or eternal life.

And this hasn't happened yet. That future, yeah. And Paul thought this was going to happen seven years after the Lord returned, while he was yet alive, and then taken up, and seven years after that, this was going to be the judgment. Then the other judgment is at the end of the Millennial Kingdom, the Great White Throne Judgment. Those coming to that judgment are the unbelieving dead from all ages, And as you go through the context, you see that they're condemned. They go into everlasting hell. Okay. Any questions? Perfectly clear, like mud. Okay. Back to Romans 2. Verse 17.

But as thou art called a Jew, and rest in the law, and make thy boast of God, and know his will, and approve the things that are more excellent being instructed out of the law, and art confident that thou thyself art a God of the blind, a light of them who are in darkness, darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, who has the form of knowledge and of the truth and the law.

Thou or you, therefore, who teach another, teach thou not thyself? You that preaches a man should not steal, do you steal? You that that say a man should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You that abhor idols, do you commit sacrilege? In some translations it says rob temples. You that make yourself boast of the law through breaking the law, don't you dishonor God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you as it is written. Now he's going to be looking at unrighteous people again, and he's not looking at immoral people, but he's looking at religious people, and specifically he's looking at the Jew. And he's talking to the Jew.

So what I want to do now is just an overview of verse 17 through 24. And it's interesting, as you just look at verse 17 through 24 in terms of the big picture, the first thing you find is that Paul addresses individual Jews. The whole context is every time you see Jew, it's in the singular, except when you get to verse 24. But in the whole context, it's singular versus plural.

Why do you think that is? Why do you think Paul is addressing you as a Jew, you as a Jew, singular, and not saying, all Jews. Absolutely. And the sin nature is so subtle, right? The sin nature is so subtle, and it says, oh, he's talking about those other guys. He's talking about Jews in general. He's not talking about me. But when he makes it singular, he's saying, you. And it makes you stop and think.

In this context, it reveals why religious Jew is condemned. And that condemnation continues out through Romans chapter 3 and verse 8. The other point we see is that any religious person, even a Jew, is unrighteous and is condemned. Now, the question is, why is the Jew condemned here?

The Jew is condemned because of his hypocrisy, and as you look at this As you look at the totality of this whole paragraph, it's these unfaithful Jews, and they're condemned because they're hypocritical. They say one thing, but they do another. So they have a profession, but it's empty. And they talk the talk.

Can we identify with that in the Christian community? Do you know of Christians? See, I won't say you, but don't you see that all the time in Christians in terms of, especially when you get into business dealings and a person says, well, and if a real estate or whatever, and says, well, I'm a Christian, and then you tend to trust that person because that person says, I'm a Christian, and you expect him to be very honest. Isn't that the expectation? And then you start dealing with this person, and pretty soon you see that he's very, or she is, I'm not talking about... And then the person who's the client says, I thought that person was a Christian, but there was this empty profession.

And so what happens is that their deeds didn't follow their profession. or their walk wasn't according to their talk. And so what we expect is that one's walk is going to be the same as one's talk. So if you're going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk, right?

So that's what was happening, by the way, with the Jew. So then as you break this paragraph down, 17 through 24, you find that verses 17 through 20 addresses a Jew's professions, his profession or his talk. We'll get into this and we'll see how he talks. He's going to talk the talk. verses 21 through 24, it addresses a Jew's deeds or works, or his walk. And we're going to see that the walk is not the same as the talk. In verses 21 through 23, Paul asks five questions as to whether a Jew's profession, that is, his talk, is the same as his walk. And he asked these probing questions in terms of their talk and their walk. The other thing about this paragraph in verses 17 through 24, verse 17 starts off, but if. New American Standard. Does it start off with but if? Yes.

Oh, okay. King James. Who has King James? Nobody has King James. Only I have King James? Mine is a New International. It says Now You. Now You. Okay. And King James says Behold. So it doesn't translate, but if. Okay. The if there starts off a conditional sentence, and a conditional sentence goes something like this. There's the if part of the sentence, which is the condition. And then there's the conclusion part of the sentence, or the result of it, which is the then.

So, if I stand out in the rain, if I do, then what's going to happen? I'm going to get wet. So, if this is true, that I stand out in the rain, then this is also true, then I'm going to get wet. So usually a conditional sentence says, if the condition is true, then the result is true. If I stand out in the rain, then I'm going to get wet.

So the condition part is verses 17 through 23. Here's the condition. So the condition is this empty profession, or the talk, and the evil works in the walk. Now, if that's true, then there is the conclusion part, or the result. And the conclusion of the result is in verse 24. So if the condition is true, If these are just empty professions in terms of the talk, and evil works in terms of the walk, then the result is true. Somebody read the result for me in verse 24? Okay, so there is the result.

So if you talk to talk, but your walk is not according to your talk, then God is being blasphemous throughout all of the nations through you. Now, the you there is plural. It's the only place where the you is plural. So let's look at the first section, which is 17 through 20, which is the if part with respect to their profession, their talk. And then we're going to look at their walk. And it goes like this.

I'm going to do this kind of rapidly if I can. you're called a Jew, and if you rest upon a law system, and if your boast is in God, and if you know His will, and if you approve the things excelling or which are better, and the way you do that is by being instructed out of the law, because you have a reference, you have a standard, so you know which is excelling, you know which is better, because you have a divine standard, And if you yourself having confidence that you feel very confident to be something, and what you are is you think that you're a guide to the blind, you think you are a light to the ones in darkness.

Aren't these nice things? Don't they seem okay things? And if you are an instructor of the foolish, or teach of babes, those who are immature, but you're having, it's a little parsable there, it says you're having the form or appearance of something. You have the form or appearance of knowledge, So you project that appearance, that you have this knowledge and truth in the law. It continues on now in verses 21 through 23, and if this is your walk, it talks about... Yes, question? No, it doesn't. It doesn't say an if. What I did is I'm carrying this if all the way through to verse 23. Okay, so let's stop there.

So the question is at verse 21, thou therefore, is that where you are? Thou therefore who teach another teaches thou not thyself? So the question is, could you put the then there? Right? I can see that you don't, but as I was reading and I thought, the if was up there and here's the therefore. When I first went through this, I kind of put the then there, but then as I kept reading in the context, I said, boy, it's still... It still appeared to me as part of the condition. I may be wrong. Let's assume, at least at this point, that it is.

And if this is your works, and he's still questioning. If this is your profession, if this is your works, your walk, you're stealing, you're committing adultery, you're robbing temples, you're dishonoring God. so he goes through all of that and so this is your profession and this is this is your walk then conditional sentence right then this is the result the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you and and now he's talking to all the Jews and it's interesting that he would go from singular to plural here, because of you all. Okay, that's what verses 17 and 24 look like. And what we'll do next week, we'll go through a couple of these. I don't think we'll go through every single one. But we'll go through some of these. So what's the problem in terms of, so you're called a Jew? Okay, but what's wrong with that? What's wrong with resting upon a law system? What's wrong with boasting in God? If I'm glorying God, boasting God, what is wrong with that? If you're doing things opposite... We'll see that next week.

The interesting thing is this, that the Lord Jesus Christ knew the heart of the Jew. He knew the heart of a Jew. And we're going to look at how the Lord Jesus Christ looked upon their hearts. And who else knew the heart of a Jew real well? Paul. Because he was a Jew. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He knew the heart of a Jew. And so we'll look at what Paul has to say about some of these things. Let's close.

Again, our Father, we are ever so thankful for your love for us, your grace. We just thank you for your word and thank you, Father, that as we look at this entire passage of scripture, you reveal to us what the sin nature is like and what it's all about. Because you're going to conclude here that for all have sinned and come short of your glory. And so Father, The unbelieving heart is so deceitful and so desperately wicked above all things.

And who can know it? And only you can know it, Father. And only you can present what we're going through. Because in and of ourselves, we could never see this. And Father, we just do thank you that as we come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, we come to know more about who we were in Adam and what that sin nature is all about. So as we go through the study, Father, we pray that not only Christ would be revealed, but the old man would be revealed in terms of who and what He is. And we just give you thanks that you died for Him, you died unto Him, and we're no longer in Him. And we just thank you for that wonderful blessing that we've been made a new creation in Christ. And we pray in His name, Amen.