Sermon 2 – Sin and Misery

As you know, we are working our way in the month of January, really racing through the month of January, through the whole of the book of Romans – Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night. We’re going to cover all of it, which means we’re covering large sections of material. Let me encourage you, as you follow with us, to be reading those portions in advance as you come so that you can come familiar with the passage.

Take your Bibles in hand now as we turn to the second in our series. This morning, you will remember, we looked at the first seventeen verses where Paul explains the message, the mission, and the manifesto of the Gospel. The Gospel manifesto in particular, verses 16 and 17, really provides the thesis that Paul defends and applies throughout the body of the letter to the Romans. You remember what Paul said in verses 16 and 17. “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” Faith alone receives the righteousness of God as a gift. There is no hope for humanity except here. That’s Paul’s thesis.

And in chapter 1 beginning in verse 18, running right through chapter 3 verse 20, which is our passage for tonight, Paul is going to deal with three excuses that people commonly offer as a way to avoid the implications of that basic thesis. In chapter 1 verse 20, Paul says, “So they are without excuse.” Chapter 2 verse 1, “Therefore you have no excuse.” Our consciences, chapter 2 verse 15, “either accuse or excuse.” And in chapter 3:19, “the whole world will be held accountable to God.” Paul is systematically removing the major excuses that people offer for rejecting Christ and refusing to trust in the Gospel.

The first objection is found in chapter 1 verse 18 through 32. People will say they do not have to believe the Gospel and receive the saving righteousness of Christ because they were never told that they needed to believe the Gospel. “I didn’t know.” It’s a common excuse. “God can’t condemn me for not believing in Jesus if I’ve never heard about Jesus.” That’s objection number one.

Then there’s a second objection which you’ll see in chapter 2, 1 through 11. This time, people will say, “God can’t condemn me even though I don’t believe in Jesus because I’m not as bad as you. I may be a sinner, but I’m decent, I’m upstanding, I’m better than most. Compared to some people, I’m a good guy. You know, graded on a curve, I don’t really need the righteousness of Christ.” Okay, so the first objection, “I didn’t know.” The second objection, “I’m not as bad as you.”

And the third objection, chapter 2:12 through 3:8, “I’m religious and so I’m exempt. Because I have the Bible, I say my prayers, because I have the means of grace, because I’m outwardly religious, I don’t really need anything else to satisfy God’s requirements.” “I didn’t know.” “I’m not as bad as you.” “I’m religious and so I’m exempt.”

And as Paul deals with each excuse, he’s going to show us that none of them will stand up to scrutiny. In fact, whatever our objections to the contrary, Paul is going to show us that God is actually righteously angry with every single one of us. Every single one. And there are no excuses. There are no hiding places from the wrath of God unless we hide away, as we were saying this morning, under the righteousness that He offers us freely in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to be received by faith alone.

Before we unpack all of that, let’s pause and pray and then we’ll read some of the portions of the passage that we have before us. Let’s pray together.

O Lord our God, we come to You, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, pleading the promise of Christ, that those who do so might be filled. By Your Word and Spirit now, hear us, come to us, and grant us that righteousness that is the only hiding place from the wrath and curse of God for sinners such as we. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.

Romans chapter 1 at the eighteenth verse. This is God’s Word:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 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 impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”

Then turn forward to chapter 3 verse 9. Chapter 3 verse 9, and Paul’s conclusion to this first section of his letter:

“What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:

‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.’

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

Amen, and we praise God for His holy Word.

Ignorance

Well let’s think about the first excuse for not trusting the righteousness of Christ as your only hope for acceptance before God. It’s the excuse of ignorance. “I didn’t know.” Have you heard that excuse – “I didn’t know”? It’s not a very effective excuse in my circumstances. Try telling the traffic cop when your car is being towed, “Well I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to park there,” you’ll find very quickly that ignorance of the law is no excuse. In the same way, ignorance of the truth doesn’t mean it’s not true and ignorance of the truth is no excuse. But Paul’s response to the, “I didn’t know” excuse actually challenges the fundamental basis, the idea of human ignorance. Do you see how he argues beginning in chapter 1 verse 18? The passage actually, in chapter 1 verse 18 through the end of chapter 1, explains the human condition, doesn’t it, in rather chilling and accurate terms.

It describes it under three headings – revelation, suppression, and degradation. In 18 through 20, Paul talks about revelation. Do you see that? “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what could be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them, but his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made, so they are without excuse.” This is Paul’s natural theology. He is talking about what theologians sometimes call general revelation – revelation that comes to all people, everywhere, equally through creation itself, bearing eloquent testimony to the presence and power of God. His eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived in the things that have been made. No one anywhere is without this revelation, this testimony to the existence of God.

And the conclusion that Paul draws from that is that everyone is therefore without excuse. “But wait a minute, Paul. That the mountains and the sky and the stars testify that there is a God, well I can understand that, but none of those things communicate anything to me about Jesus. Nothing about His work; nothing about salvation by faith. Nothing about the Gospel. And if I’m responsible to believe the Gospel and all I have is general revelation and I never actually hear that Gospel, how can God hold me accountable? Surely ignorance of the Gospel is in fact an excuse.”

And here’s where the second great aspect of Paul’s treatment of the human condition comes in. Revelation first, then suppression. Look at verse 18 again. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” Everybody knows there is a God. There are no such things as atheists; only people who claim to be atheists. But in our natural condition, we suppress the truth we know in the things that we can see so that we reject the truth, we distort it, we abuse it, we deny it. The Greek word translated here as “suppress” means “to hold down.” We are hindering the truth, smothering the truth, restraining the truth so that it does not operate upon our consciences as it should.

Verses 21 through 23 even tell us how we do that. Do you see it in verses 21 through 23? “For although they knew God” – there it is very clearly, all people everywhere know God – “though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Our problem isn’t that we don’t know the Gospel, although if we are to be saved we must come to know the Gospel. Our problem actually is that even the truth about God that we do know, that He has shown us in His great kindness in the things He has made, even that truth we reject and suppress and distort and refuse and repudiate so that we prefer to worship creatures and not the creator. We exchange the glory of the immortal God for images. The claim that ignorance of the Gospel is an excuse, that it somehow gets us off the hook, it simply falls apart when we realize that even the truth that we do have we reject wholesale. We twist it to make creatures, ultimately to make ourselves the objects of our worship.

There is a famous quote that is wrongly attributed sometimes to C.S. Lewis, usually to G.K. Chesterton; it was actually first penned by Chesterton’s sometime translator that says, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing; they then become capable of believing in anything.” “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing; they become capable of believing in anything.” That’s Paul’s point, right? We are inveterate worshipers. We can’t help it. We worship something, but by nature we take the testimony of God to Himself in the things that He has made – His attributes, His wisdom, His power and so on – that everything every day is telling us all about, and we suppress it and we become futile in our thinking and darkened in our minds. We strap and we posture and we claim that we are wiser than the foolish Christians who believe such nonsense, but claiming to be wise we become fools and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Revelation and then suppression lead into the third thing that Paul tells us is true about human beings – degradation. Back in verse 18, Paul said the “wrath of God is revealed from heaven.” Now in what way is God’s wrath revealed from heaven. Well Paul tells us; here’s how. In verse 23, we exchange the glory of the immortal God for images. In verses 24 through 32, Paul describes God’s response. You see it in verses 24 through 32? “Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to dishonoring their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, amen.” The revelation of God’s wrath comes in His giving us up to our lusts to the things that we crave. In verses 26 and 27, God gives us up to sexual sin, specifically homosexuality is mentioned as an epitomizing sin where we exchange the natural use for the unnatural use. In 28 through 34, there is an even more detailed list. “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness, gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

It’s a chilling, though laser focused analysis of life as we know it, isn’t it? This is the world that we live in, isn’t it? This is the world that we inhabit. The claim that “God can’t hold me accountable because I never heard the Gospel” just won’t wash. You knew some things about God, and even what you knew you reject and distort and suppress and deny. You worship the creature. You worship yourself. You use your idolatry to justify all manner of wickedness and vice and you don’t rest simply in doing it, you approve of those who do. You create a culture, Paul is saying. You foster an atmosphere where these things become normalized. But Paul says what you claim to be evidence of your liberation is actually the revelation of the wrath of God. Now that is chilling. It is itself the wrath of God playing out all around us. You see, it doesn’t fall, God’s wrath does not typically fall in the form of a lightning bolt splitting the skies, leaving a greasy smudge where a sinner used to be. No, no, God simply gives us what we want. He gives us up, Paul says, to our lusts, to our debased minds, and then He holds us accountable for the lives we choose. Do not say you are without excuse. God is dealing with you justly, solemnly, righteously. So excuse number one – “I didn’t know.”

What About-ism

Then Paul deals with excuse number two. Look at chapter 2:1-11. This time the argument is, “I should not be condemned for not believing the Gospel because I am better than most people.” It’s a species of “what about-ism.” Have you come across “what about-ism”? You might see it often, parents, in your children. You’re caught red handed, or they’re caught red handed in some offense, some infraction, and instead of defending themselves – or maybe you do it; you don’t defend yourself – what you say is, “What about her?” or “What about him? They’re worse than me!” Look how Paul deals with that in chapter 2 verses 1 through 3. “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?” Paul’s dealing with hypocrisy, and he points out that while we sit in sneering, casual judgment on the behavior of others, we are agreeing in our judgment with God that that behavior is worthy to be condemned. What we conveniently overlook is how deeply implicated in the very same sins we ourselves continue to be so very often. And so by condemning others we are condemning ourselves.

Paul is closing down every line of escape, isn’t he. Do you see that? God does not grade us on a curve. He doesn’t use different standards for us and for all the people we think are worse than we are. He uses the same righteous standard and we all fall short of it. To think otherwise is to presume upon the riches of God’s kindness and forbearance and patience – verse 4. Now we do this all the time, don’t we? “Because God is rich in kindness and patience and forbearance, I think my sin doesn’t matter. It’s no big deal. Because God hasn’t judged me in any obvious way that I can see, God can’t really care too terribly much about my sin. God’s going to overlook it surely, especially since I’m not nearly as twisted as that guy, not nearly as lost as that girl.” But that, Paul says, that is to presume upon God and to misunderstand His patience completely. He isn’t indulging us when He exercises His patience with us in our sin. He’s not indulging us. He’s not like some addled grandparent wrapped around a grandchild’s finger who can never quite bring himself to discipline his grandchild. No, God is patient with us in our sin because He wants us to repent before it’s too late. That’s what’s really going on.

“Don’t you know,” Paul asks, “that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? So listen, the time is short. One day the accounts will come due and final judgment will fall. As of right now, if you refuse to trust in Christ Paul says you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath.” And everyone, Jews and Greeks – verses 6 through 11 – will be judged by the same standard. Are you presuming upon God’s kindness right now, I wonder; excusing your sin while you judge other people for the very same sin, grading yourself on a curve, telling yourself you don’t really need to repent, you don’t need to get serious about the Lord Jesus or about changing your life because sure, you’ve stumbled here or there but you’re not nearly as bad as the other guy. Listen, the only reason God’s final wrath has not overtaken you is because He is so kind to give you time yet to repent, to turn from your sin and yourself to Jesus Christ. That is your only hope.

Religious Objections

So the first objection is about ignorance – “I didn’t know.” But even what you did know, Paul says, you suppressed and twisted and rejected and exchanged for a lie, so that’s no excuse. The second objection is about comparisons – “I’m not as bad as you.” But the truth is, your heart is as guilty of sin as the next guy, and God is going to judge everyone by the same standard and we all fall short of that standard, for, verse 11, “God shows no partiality.” And that leads us to the third excuse in chapter 2:12 through 3:8 which is about religion. The first excuse is about ignorance. The second, about comparisons. The third is about religion. “I’m religious, so surely I’m exempt. I’m religious, so surely I’m exempt.”

Now we don’t have time to go through every part of Paul’s argument here, but the core of this excuse is that some Jewish people in particular were saying they were special, they stand in a different class of human being; they have the law of God, chapter 2:12-24; they have circumcision, chapter 2:25-29. But Paul says that when Gentiles, non-Jews who do not have God’s law do what the law requires, they showed the same law is written on their consciences so that the religious and the irreligious, Jew and Gentile alike, are going to be held accountable to the same standard. Verse 14, “when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves.” So you Jews, you’re not really quite so special after all. You rely on the law and you boast in God, he says, verse 17. They approve what is excellent, verse 18. They consider themselves guides to the blind, verse 19. But for all your confidence in the law, you break the same law yourself and you dishonor God. The law requires Jews to be circumcised but if they break the law, verse 25, their circumcision becomes uncircumcision. You’re no better off than a Gentile. And vice versa. Verse 26, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? So you see what really matters is not whether you are religiously observant and externally obedient to the ritual requirements of the Mosaic law. The real issue is the heart.

So look at verse 28. For no one is a Jew who is one merely outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart; by the Spirit and not the letter. So Paul moves in these chapters – do you see this – from a generally pagan rejection of the Gospel and from that initial excuse, “I didn’t know so I can’t be held accountable,” he moves from that to religious excuses – “I’m better than the other guy and I’m religious and moral and upstanding. I have the Bible. I have God’s covenants. I have the ordinances and sacraments of Scriptural religion so I don’t really need to repent.” And I think it ought to give us here tonight real pause to see here how easily a profession of the true religion becomes a cloak for a rejection of the one thing that counts above everything else. Isn’t that a scary possibility?

Do you see it in Paul’s challenge to the Jewish people to whom he is writing? That the true religion can actually become a mechanism – that’s what it was to them, a mechanism – to hide a deeper rejection of the one thing that counts above everything else. You can have the form of godliness and deny its power. You can be Jews outwardly, Paul says, Presbyterians outwardly, members of First Presbyterian Church outwardly, baptized outwardly, when what you really need if you are to have hope before God on the great day when Jesus comes to judge, what you need is a new heart; a new heart by the Holy Spirit. The great evidence of which is the complete abandonment of trust in your own religious performance, your own righteousness. And instead, a penitent faith that clings only to the righteousness of Christ. I wonder if you’ve been using your religion, your presbyterianism, to keep Jesus at arm’s length. Is the main use of church on Sunday to appease your conscience for the way that you live Monday through Saturday? Have you become practiced at the polite pleasantries of church life – giving, praying, smiling, singing, serving even, while your heart truth be told is still a cesspit of vice and your mind filled with judgmentalism and pride? Are you a Christian only outwardly or do you have a new heart?

In chapter 3 verse 9 through 20, the last section of this part of the letter, Paul concludes his argument. He brings all the threads together, he sums up. Whether our excuses are religious or irreligious, whether we excuse ourselves because we think ourselves ignorant of the truth or better than other people, exempt because we are religious folks, whatever our excuses may be, here is the conclusion of the matter. First, he says sin is universal in its reach. Verses 10 through 12 – “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” Number two, sin is pervasive in its extent. Verses 13 through 18 – “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Notice Paul speaks about our faculties – throats and tongues and lips and mouths and feet and eyes, about our life trajectories, our path, our way. And his point is, every part of us is guilty with the stain of sin. Every faculty of our human nature is saturated with rebellion against God’s way.

And notice what sin does to us – it dehumanizes. Do you see that language in the passage? Our throat is an open grave. The venom of asps, of poisonous snakes is under our lips. We become animal-like and brutish and beastly. No one escapes the reach of sin, and the sin that reaches us all penetrates to the very core and distorts and debases our humanity, effacing God’s image. And the result, Paul says, in verses 19 and 20 is this – “every mouth is stopped and the whole world held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

Here’s the point. Back to chapter 1:16-17 and Paul’s thesis. You need the righteousness of God in Christ, received by faith. Why do you need it? Do you see why you need it? Because you have no hope in yourself – not in your religion, not in your excuses. You must find a refuge somewhere and there’s no refuge available but Jesus Christ. I need Him and you need Him because we have no excuse. None. Our guilt is inescapable. You can’t say, “I didn’t know,” since what you do know you rejected and hated and trampled underfoot and worshiped the creature and not the creator. You can’t say, “I’m better than the other guy,” because you’re not. God does not grade on a curve. You can’t say, “I’m religious and so I am exempt.” What matters is the heart, not your religious performance.

And the truth is, your heart is rotten to the core. So is mine. By nature we are sinners all the way through, and so we have no hope in ourselves. None. Zero. We must flee for refuge to the righteousness of another. We need what Luther called a “Justitia alien” – an alien righteousness. The righteousness of another. The righteousness of Christ. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’” You have no other hiding place. Flee to the only refuge for sinners – the righteousness of Christ. Let’s pray together.

Our God and Father, we bow before You and we confess how easily, how prone we are to minimize and excuse our sin, to downplay it, to grade ourselves on a curve, to judge others and acquit ourselves, to point to our religion, our good works, our performance and say, “Look how good we are. Oh sure, I’ve sinned here and there, but God will wink at my sin because after all, I’m a good guy. How can He hold me accountable since I didn’t really know?” But the truth is, all of these things are an attempt to justify ourselves when we stand guilty and condemned before the righteous tribunal of heaven and all our excuses evaporate in the midst, in the bright sunshine of God’s righteous judgment. And so now exposed before You, we cry to You for mercy and we come running back together to Jesus. Thank You that You have provided in Christ a hiding place – His righteousness, His and only His will do. And so we look to Him, rest on Him, and rejoice that though our sins are as scarlet, in Christ You wash them whiter than the wool. Hear our cries. Have mercy upon us, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.