Paul has been talking to the Romans about some of the things men and women do when they decide they won't submit themselves to the authority of God. It is the nature of human beings to worship something, so when they refuse to worship God they end up worshiping themselves. This leads to the breakdown of the character and even the breakdown of society. Below Paul provides a list of things that human beings begin to do when they push God out of their lives.
"Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." (Romans 1:28-32) We could pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV and see plenty of examples of the type of behavior Paul mentions.
But he's telling us something even more frightening than that evil deeds abound in the world: there comes a point when a person has said "no" to God so many times that God stops pleading with him to repent. In the days before God sent the flood to a world gone mad, He cautioned that His spirit would not always strive (keep struggling, keep dealing) with man. (Genesis 6:3) There came a point in human history when God stopped pleading with mankind to repent and sent catastrophe instead. There can come a point in a person's life when God stops pleading with him to repent and allows him to turn his life into a catastrophe. We don't want to reach that point! We have no assurance that the God who is calling us to come to Him today will keep on giving us opportunity after opportunity. We don't even know if we will still be alive tomorrow. Why risk putting off making things right between our immortal souls and a holy God?
The apostle now moves on to criticize people who are hypocritical enough to judge others for committing the same sins they themselves commit. This brings us to a short discussion of some of the most misused passages of the Bible: passages that have to do with not judging others. These passages are often the only verses that are known by those who have rejected God. They say things like, "You can't judge me! You can't be a Christian if you judge the way I'm living my life. Nobody but God can say that what I'm doing is a sin." When the Lord Jesus spoke in Matthew 7 about not judging others, He was speaking to those who were judging others in a spirit of hypocrisy. When taken properly in context, right after commanding his listeners not to be judgmental, Jesus criticizes them for calling out their fellow man for the "speck" in his eye while having a "plank" in their own eyes. He was calling them hypocrites for condemning other people for committing what could be termed less serious sins while committing fairly severe sins themselves.
Jesus never said we weren't to recognize sin for what it is. We'd have to be complete fools and entirely ignorant of the word of God if we could not recognize sin. What He did say was that we are to be as wise as serpents but as harmless as doves. (Matthew 10:16) We can recognize the fact that a person is living far from God in a deep pit of sin without doing harm to them. We can compassionately tell them the gospel of a Savior who loves them without attacking them and pointing our fingers at them and screaming to them that they are on their way to hell. That type of attitude is unlikely to bear fruit, and it is especially unlikely to bear fruit when we ourselves are caught up in a sinful lifestyle. Everyone sins, but when we preach to someone who knows we are caught up in sins which have greater consequences than the sins they are caught up in, our testimony is useless.
Paul tells the believers at Rome that some of them are hypocrites. "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things." (Romans 2:1) He's saying the same thing Jesus Christ said to His listeners: "Examine your own life before examining the lives of others. Don't criticize your fellow man for doing the same things you do, and don't condemn your fellow man for committing sins that are presently causing less harm than the sins you are committing. Don't point the finger at your neighbor and call him a liar when you are involved in an adulterous relationship. Don't call your co-worker a backstabber while you are embezzling funds. Don't complain that so-and-so is always rude to you while in your heart you harbor a murderous rage toward someone who has done you wrong."
The word of God tells us what sin is. If we know the word of God we are naturally going to be able to recognize sin. We are going to be able to tell whether those around us are living for the Lord or living for themselves. If we couldn't tell whether our fellow man is living in a way that's causing harm to himself and others, how would we be able to tell who already belongs to Christ and who is still far from Him? But in ministering to those who don't know the Lord, we are to do it in love, always keeping in mind that we too are frail and sinful creatures who need a righteous Savior to give us good standing in the sight of God. We are to examine our own lives to see whether we are behaving in ways that honor the name of Christ. If we are not, who is going to want to hear our testimony? Who wants to hear the word of God coming from hypocritical lips?
No comments:
Post a Comment