#23 - Piper - God's response to Hypocrisy - Romans 2:1-5
Piper spends the first bit of the message reviewing why he is going through the book of Romans so painstakingly slow.
It is worth it to give two of those reasons:
1. Romans is the best summary of the Christian gospel in all the Bible. Martin Luther called it “really the chief part of the New Testament, and … truly the purest gospel.” John Calvin said, “If we have gained a true understanding of this Epistle, we have an open door to all the most profound treasures of the Scripture.” In other words, if you get Romans you get Christianity.
7. Finally, the impact of this letter on the church and the world has simply been unparalleled. It was a quote from this letter that God used in 386 to convert St. Augustine, who became the most influential teacher in the history of the Church. It was Romans 1:17 that converted Martin Luther and unleashed in the sixteenth century what we know today as the Protestant Reformation. It was the exposition of this letter in 1738 that awakened John Wesley and unleashed what came to be known as the Great Awakening in England and America, with all its amazing transformation for the good of our two countries. And, to take just one 20th century example, an unconverted Greek Orthodox student, Dumitru Cornilescu, started translating the New Testament in Bucharest in 1916. In Romans he was overcome with the reality of the great truths of the gospel of Christ and was converted. He published his translation in 1921 and it became the standard Romanian translation, but he was exiled by the Orthodox Patriarch in 1923 and died some years later in Switzerland.
This sermon focuses on the moral critic who judge other hypocrites. The response of God to hypocrisy is kindness and justice. After examining the sins of the gentiles, he now turns to the Jew and those in this world who judge those who do such sins. We are all sinners and we all deserve the wrath of God.
I thought this was an interesting illustration of our sinfulness of our age:
I preached in the park this summer, and when I came to the issue of how sinful we are, one of our women told me that a person near her said, “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Friday, I was in Orlando to give a message and heard the speaker before me say, It is a great irony that the twentieth century is the bloodiest century in history—not just because of the Holocaust, but because of millions killed under Stalin in Ukraine and millions killed in China under Mao, and perhaps 20% of the population of Cambodia executed under Pol Pot, and 800,000 Tutsis killed in Rwanda, 30 million by abortion in America—it is a great irony that at the end of the bloodiest century in history there are people who deny the existence of evil and there are still people who believe that human beings are basically good, and just need education, not salvation. If our century teaches anything it is that the uneducated have no corner on depravity.[1]
So here are Piper’s two main points:
God Is Just
God is just. When Paul says to the hypocrites in the first verse, “You have no excuse,” he shows God’s concern with justice. If these people had a legitimate excuse for their sins of judgmentalism and hypocrisy, God would be unjust to judge them. But the whole point of this passage is to do exactly what we saw Paul doing in Romans 1:20 and 32 in regard to the Gentiles. He wants to show that they are without excuse. In other words, when judgment comes from God because of sin, it will not be unjust. No one will be able to raise any legitimate objection.
So the first thing to learn about God and his response to hypocrisy is that God is just, and his just judgment is coming not only on the so-called pagan people who live in sin, but also on the moral and religious people who disdain the pagan people, while doing many things that show they don’t trust and love God. That list in 1:29–31 includes things like “greed,” “envy,” “gossip,” unloving,” “unmerciful.” Has any of us been as merciful and loving toward others as he or she ought to be?
God Is Kind
But the second thing this text tells us about God and about his response to hypocrites is that God is kind. In fact, you will notice in verse 4 that Paul speaks of the “riches of his kindness.” That means that he is not just a little bit kind, but that he has huge resources of kindness to pour out on us. In fact, he is pouring them out on us all right now.
Isn’t that the implication of the other two words Paul uses to describe God’s kindness? He uses the words “forbearance” and “patience.” In other words, God’s justice does not demand that he punish us for our sins immediately. But his kindness leads him to forbear and to be patient with us. That word “patience” in the original Greek (the language Paul wrote in) is just like the English word “longsuffering.” It means that God may endure months and years and decades of our stubbornness and resistance to repentance.
The very fact that any of us is alive today is owing to this great kindness of God. He could have been done with us many years ago and taken us away to judgment. But here we are. And this should amaze us. Thursday is Thanksgiving. And today is a Thanksgiving Celebration. And O how thankful we should be for the riches of God’s kindness, and for his forbearance and patience. We are alive. We are present under the proclamation of his gospel. And we have this clear word from Romans 2:4, “The kindness of God leads you to repentance.”
Steve Allen
ACTION Zambia
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