Scripture Daily

Context No. 797 of 4322 · Romans

Context · Reflection

Romans 2:1-9: in context

1Therefore you are without excuse, O man, whoever you are who judge. For in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself. For you who judge practice the same things. 2We know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. 3Do you think this, O man who judges those who practice such things, and do the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? 4Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? 5But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath, revelation, and of the righteous judgment of God, 6who “will pay back to everyone according to their works:” 7to those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life; 8but to those who are self-seeking and don’t obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, will be wrath, indignation, 9oppression, and anguish on every soul of man who does evil, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Paul has just finished a searing description of human corruption, the kind of catalog a religious reader would nod along to, condemning all those wicked people. And in the very next breath he wheels around and points at the reader who was nodding. Therefore you have no excuse, he says, whoever you are, when you pass judgment on someone else, because in judging them you condemn yourself, for you who judge do the very same things. The finger raised at another's sin turns out to be describing the one raising it. The clarity you have about everyone else's faults is the evidence against you, because you clearly know better and do it anyway.

Then Paul asks a question that reframes something people badly misread. Do you presume, he says, on the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? The fact that judgment has not fallen on you, that God has been patient and life has gone on, is easy to read as approval, as if God does not really mind. Paul says it is the opposite. The patience is mercy, a door held open, time given for you to turn. To take it instead as permission, and to keep on with a hard and unrepentant heart, is to store up wrath against yourself, drop by drop, in the very season God meant for your rescue. His goodness was reaching for your repentance, and you mistook it for a shrug.

I condemn in others what I quietly excuse in myself, and mistake God's patience with me for approval. Where am I reading the fact that judgment has not fallen as permission, when it is really mercy giving me time to turn?

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