SERMON: No Excuse!

Romans 1:18-20 | Twin City Bible Church | twincitybible.org/media/sermons

As humans, we tend to make excuses for our sin (blame-shifting, minimizing, rationalizing), but these will prove ineffective at the future great white throne judgment where unsaved individuals will be judged according to their works.

Our previous study of Romans 2:6-11 highlighted the crucial fact of God's total impartiality in judgment. Despite the potential perception that God would favor the Jews due to their status as His chosen people and their possession of the law, God does not show favoritism when judging lost sinners.

Today’s study in Romans 2:12-16 will explain why God is impartial; that both Jews and Gentiles are the same in two key ways. This principle applies broadly to all unsaved people, whether they have knowledge of scripture or not.

We’ll identify these two main points of sameness rather than a detailed verse-by-verse analysis:

I. BOTH HAVE A FORM OF THE LAW

• The group said to have the law refers to the Jews who have God's word.
• Those who do not have the written word of God in this context refer to Gentiles.
• Broadly, this can be understood as all religious people who know scripture and all non-religious people who know little or nothing about scripture.
• Whether they have access to written scripture or not, all people know something about right and wrong.
• Verse 12: "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".
• The term "for" connects this verse to verse 11, further explaining God's impartiality.
• "Without the law" refers to the Gentiles who did not have the written law of Moses.
• "Under the law" refers to the Jews who were given the law through Moses at Mount Sinai.
• Some Jews wrongly believed their possession of the law ensured salvation and that Gentiles needed to take on the Mosaic law to experience God's favor.
• Verses 14 and 15 provide a corrective to that thinking.
• "For when Gentiles who do not have the law do instinctively the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them".
• Even though Gentiles are without the written law, they are not totally without law.
• Gentiles, and in a sense all human beings, possess an unwritten, natural law, an innate moral sense of right and wrong.
• Because of this internal code, Gentiles sometimes do things prescribed in the written law, fulfilling some requirements of the Mosaic law.
• We are talking about the moral dimension of the Mosaic law, not ceremonial regulations concerning food, days, or circumcision.
• Many outside of Christ may honor parents, refrain from stealing or murder, love spouses, and be honest. This does not mean they truly love God.
• When God created humans, He planted a moral compass in them. Even in primitive cultures, people believe in right and wrong. All people believe in an "oughtness" and an "ought notness".
• Gentiles obey this moral law instinctively, by nature.
• Verse 15 states, "They show the work of the law written in their hearts".
• While this has some similarity to Jeremiah 31:31-34 about the new covenant where God says, "I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it my law," Paul is not referring to the spirit's work of regeneration in saved people.
• Romans 2:15 says "the work of the law" is written on their hearts, not the law itself as stated in Jeremiah 31.
• This means Gentiles, without the Mosaic law, still act out of a deep-seated conviction about right and wrong, reflecting God's moral code that has always existed.
• Verse 15 explains how this internal code affects choices: "their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them". This is the work of the law on the conscience.
• The conscience is a God-given faculty of the inner man that all people have for moral discernment, like a moral compass. It evaluates choices and either affirms or accuses.
• The conscience is not infallible and not our ultimate guide; scripture alone is.
• However, the conscience is a guard, and a good guard to the degree it is trained by scripture.
• The conscience reveals the extent to which a person follows their internal standard of right and wrong, rendering a verdict through an internal dialogue using legal terms like "accusing" and "excusing".
• Even atheists have a conscience and live by some moral standard that reflects God's law.
• Jews and Gentiles are on the same footing because the law of Moses judges Jewish conduct, and the conscience evaluates and judges Gentile conduct based on their internal moral code.
• This is why God can judge them impartially, and in the end, each is without excuse because they have violated what they believe is right and wrong.

II. BOTH HAVE FAILED TO LIVE OUT THE LAW

• Verses 12 and 13: "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 it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified".
• This is the first occurrence of the term "sin" in Romans.
• Sin is a transgression, breaking God's law, falling short, missing the mark, rebellion against God, iniquity (distortedness), self-righteousness, impurity, idolatry.
• Regardless of who a person is, if they do not repent of violating whatever level of God's law they know, the verdict is the same: they are sinners and will perish.
• "Perish" here refers to hell, described in Mark 9:47-48 as where "the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched" and in Matthew 8:12 as outer darkness with eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth.
• Even though Jews possessed the law, God does not show favoritism because the law can justify only when obeyed perfectly. Reading, hearing, or studying the law is not enough.
• Justification is God's judicial decision to regard a sinner as being right before Him, having a right standing through saving faith. Saving faith includes repentance from sin and disobedience.
• Obedience and holiness manifest whether a person has saving faith and are done out of love for God.
• If the judging of a person's works results in the pronouncement that they were saved, that declaration is justification. Works do not save or earn justification but confirm saving faith.
• Theoretically, justification could be secured through perfect obedience from conception to death, but due to sin, no one can achieve this.
• Some Jews in Paul's day wrongly thought they could do the law.
• Galatians 5:3 states that someone who relies on the law "is under obligation to keep the whole Law".
• James 2:10 says, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all".
• God's way of salvation has always been by faith, not by works of the law.
• Without saving faith, the lack of perfect works will result in condemnation and eternal perishing at the great white throne judgment.
• All will be judged according to their response to the revelation God has given them. Those with scripture will be judged by that knowledge (perfect obedience and love for God), and those without will be judged by the moral knowledge in their consciences (perfect obedience to that internal code and honoring God). No one meets this standard.
• All people form a system of morality and defend it, but God will judge them by their own standards: were they perfect and consistent in living by them? The answer is no(!); all fail and are sinners.
• All will be judged by the light they have. Many religious people will be condemned for disobeying God's law, and many others for disobeying the moral light they had.
• God knows all and will judge impartially.
• Verse 16: "This will happen on the day when according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus".
• "That day" refers to the future day of judgment.
• The conscience accusing and excusing now foreshadows the Lord's verdict at the end.
• The gospel, though good news of salvation by grace through faith, demands judgment because without judgment, there is no need for rescue.
• "My gospel" means the gospel Paul was given and believed.
• Gospel preaching includes the fact that God will judge the secrets of people's hearts, including motives.
• The final judgment is serious because God knows all things, hidden or not.
• Sinful actions or motives not confessed and forgiven in this life will be exposed in the next.
• This final judgment will take place through Jesus Christ (John 5:22 - "the Father ...has given all judgment to the Son...").
• In Acts 17:31, Paul preached in Athens that God "has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead," referring to Christ.
• At the final judgment, all failures to live according to the light a person has, even secret failures of the heart, will be revealed and judged by Jesus Christ, the one who died for those failures but was rejected.

Some conclusions:

1. The Need for a Healthy Conscience
• The conscience is God's gift and should be nurtured to restrain sin and promote godly choices.
• Sin corrupts the conscience and can silence it or sear it (1 Timothy 4:2), causing the moral compass to lose direction.
• A good conscience (1 Timothy 1:5; Acts 23:1) is desirable.
• There are weak (Romans 14) and strong (Romans 14 & 15) consciences, but neither is perfect.
• We need the clear teaching of scripture to help our conscience serve as a guard. We must feed it with scripture and strengthen it with right choices.
2. The Right View of Judgment
• Ultimately, all people are judged according to the light they have, not what they don't.
• God will judge the religious by the written law and the non-religious by the law in their hearts.
• The reality is that no one has ever lived up to the light they have, and the unforgiven will perish because all are sinners.
3. The Necessity of the Gospel
• We are thankful that the judge is also the savior.
• This gives us hope because even though God knows our secret thoughts and we have violated His law and ignored our consciences, and His judgment is impartial and just, the judge Jesus is also merciful.
• “Our sins, they are many, but His mercy is more.”
• The judge will forgive and acquit anyone who trusts in His life, death, and resurrection, confessing their sins and seeking His mercy. He loves to save believing and repentant sinners.
• This is our hope for judgment day!
• Even if our consciences condemn us now, we have confidence in our savior. We rest in this.
• Thank God for the gospel (John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life").
• He who hears His word and believes Him who sent Him has eternal life and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life (John 5:24).
• There is refuge in the gospel in Christ. We take our refuge in Him.