Thoughts on Romans 2:2

Thoughts on Romans 2:2
By Dr. Norman R. Wise

And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. (Romans 2:2)

YLT Romans 2:2 and we have known that the judgment of God is according to truth, upon those practicing such things.

Paul is saying that “we” see or perceive that God’s judgment of just wrath is administer in accordance to the truth about our ethical conduct and not simply the perception that we or others may have of our righteousness. Those who judge others also commit the very crimes that they condemn others for doing. This is part of everyone’s broken humanity. The worst “sinner” is inclined to become filled with righteous wrath when someone sins against them.

Others hide their sinful thoughts and desire either by having an outward life of decency and an inner suppressed world of vice, or by giving way to bitterness and self righteousness inwardly as they deny their own temptations and evil desires. Paul says that we know that God will hold all human beings in a righteous judgment of their attitudes and actions. As the preacher says:

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 13 The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: afear God and bkeep His commandments, because this applies to cevery person. 14 For aGod will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.

Our “knowledge” of this ethical universe comes from our conscience. The conscience is the reflection of God’s law in our heart which has been downloaded into our sub-consciousness by God in our creation (Romans 2:15). Now our conscience can become wrongly informed because of a dysfunctional home and cultural environment. It can report to us evil as good and good as evil. It can also become “seared” and made dysfunctional if we practice not responding to it in a healthy manner (1 Timothy 4:2; Titus 1:15). We can become hard hearted and unable to feel the pain of guilt which conscience produces when we do wrong. The fall and curse can distort and hinder our ability to properly judge right and wrong and for this reason the objective Word of God must be used to purify and awaken our conscience. When our conscience is functioning properly it is not wise or good to violate it.

This verse also tells us that the conscience is only warning us by a self judgment of the judgment of God upon our actions. The properly functioning conscience produces guilt, shame, and fear of God. That is why one of the primary aims of all Christian instruction can be seen as the redemption and restoration of our conscience.

NAU 1 Timothy 1:5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

In a time when there has been a consistent attack upon the standards of the Word of God being used to inform and instruct the conscience and the militant promoting of relativism as the new absolute moral standard, we must be careful to guard our conscience and seek to keep it rightly informed and sensitive. The lost of conscience makes the preaching of the gospel useless. Where there is no guilt there is not hunger for the salvation offered by Jesus Christ and His death upon the cross. While Jesus Christ can be offered as a means of gaining “success” or “happiness” in such a situation, He cannot be offered as a true sacrifice for objective moral guilt before the face of God. We must first make sure our own hearts are sensitized to sin and then strive to awaken the conscience of our society.

C.S. Lewis saw the danger of our times in which we educated people to see all “values” as just subjective feelings or socially subjective impressions that had no objective reality. In other words conscience was not tied to the law of God but was simply a psychological/social conditioning with no reality behind it. Such people he warned would be people without “chests”, without hearts, and without conscience.

When a society had succeeded in indoctrinating a generation in such views and values then it would face a horrible reality. The very “virtues” needed to make society survive are being ripped away from a generation through modern culture and education, and now society itself is in danger of collapse.

“And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive', or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man -

Therefore, we must help people “know” that the judgment of God will come upon every human being in accordance to truth and that in light of this “the fear of the Lord” is the beginning of wisdom. This is the great need of our times to have our own conscience and that of our society awakened.