08 Oct All Need the Gospel
Read: Romans 2:1-5
Last Sunday Pastor Ken preached from Romans 1:24-27, as we considered the bitter end of idolatry and the power of God’s grace. This Sunday Pastor Jason will preach from Romans 2:1-5, where Paul shifts the focus from licentious, Gentile idolaters to legalistic, Jewish idolaters. Also, we will again celebrate the ordinance of Baptism together! As you prepare your heart for our corporate gathering, let these words from Timothy Keller challenge you and spur you on to reject idolatry and worship the one true God.
Heart Preparation
Romans 1 and 2 are setting before us the same two people that Jesus does in his parable about two sons (Luke 15:11-32). There, Jesus gives us a father with two sons. There is a younger brother, who loves sex with prostitutes and squanders the father’s money; he’s licentious, he’s materialistic, he’s disobedient to his father. But then there’s a second son; he’s obedient, and he’s compliant with everything the father says. And yet the point of the parable is that they’re both lost, both alienated from the father, and they both need salvation. Now here, Paul is saying exactly the same thing. Romans 1 is about younger brothers, and Paul says: They’re lost, they’re condemned, worshiping idols of the hand— sin, the kind of sin everyone thinks of as sin. Now he turns to older brothers in Romans 2 and he says: You people who are trying so hard to be good, you think God owes you because you’re better: you’re lost too!
Paul says: You’re the same. We can’t see it in our English translations, but when in 2:5 he talks about “your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart,” Paul is using two Greek words— sklerotes and ametanoetos— which in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, are always and only used of those guilty of idolatry (eg: Deuteronomy 9:27). Though religious obedience looks godly, in fact it is a form of idolatry. The religious person may have utterly rejected all the current, external idols that society around is worshiping; statues, or casual sex, or career, and so on; but they have idols in their heart. They find their self-worth in their morality; they find their savior in their rule-keeping. They worship their goodness, because their goodness will save them, right? Wrong, says Paul: “You are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath” (v 5).
Religious People Need the Gospel
Paul is showing that religious people need the gospel as much as unreligious people; and that religious people run from the gospel as much as unreligious people. The heart of the gospel is that God’s righteousness has been revealed, so that it can be received (1:16-17). When we rely on anything or anyone but Jesus to give us righteousness, we are refusing to accept the gospel. Relying on God’s rules is as much self-reliance and God-rejection as ignoring God’s rules.
Excerpt from Romans 1-7 for You, by Timothy Keller
Song List for Sunday
- Even So Come, by Chris Tomlin
- You Alone Can Rescue, by Matt Redman
- Kindness, by Chris Tomlin
- Hallelujah, What a Savior, by Breakaway Ministries