Romans Bible study Tamil

Romans 2:11-13

Judgement of God Part 04

Romans 2:11-13, For there is no partiality with God. 12 For as many as have sinned without law will also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged by the law 13 (for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified;

Romans 2:1-16 are a single section and gives us the principles on which God judges men.

Romans 1:18-32, Romans 1:18-32, God has revealed His wrath in judgment against the sinful pagan world because the world is guilty of rejecting His revelation and then of descending into idolatry and horrifying vice. Men abandon God and God abandons men to the consequence of their own sin, and thus the wrath of God is at work. A very important question that is unanswered.

What about the good people? The people who are not murderers, liars, thieves, fornicators, adulterers, and homosexuals.

Where do they fit? Many moral people, basically outwardly good people, would probably agree with Paul’s condemnation of the godless pagan world in chapter 1.

Romans 2:1-16 we can derive ⁶ principles of God’ judgement. 1. Knowledge, 2. Truth, 3. Guilt, 4. Deeds,

5. Impartiality, and

6. Motive.

5. Impartiality

The traditional view of justice is the picture of the blindfolded statue with the scales in hand, trying to weigh out equity without being influenced by the appearance of anyone.

This idea that justice is blind simply means that justice does not want to take into account anyone’s looks or anyone’s position in life or anything other than the truth itself. In ancient Greece and Rome, justice was pictured not only with eyes that were blindfolded but with no hands, so that justice could not see, and justice could not receive. It could not choose on the basis of appearance, and it could take no bribes. It could not be bought.

An ancient story of a man with the passions of a father. He had to pass the death sentence on his own two sons for he was the leader of his country and his sons had conspired to overthrow the government. According to the historian, the youth stood before the man, who was named Brutus the Elder, and they

pleaded, and they wept, and they hoped their tears would be the most powerful defence with a loving father. The men who sat behind the ruler whispered, “What will he do? He said, “To you, the executioners, I deliver my sons.”

The historian wrote, “In this sentence he persisted inexorable, notwithstanding the weeping intercession of the multitude and the cries of the young men calling upon their father by the most endearing names. The executioner seized them, stripped them naked, bound their hands behind them, beat them with rods, and then struck off their heads, the inexorable Brutus looking on the bloody spectacle with unaltered countenance.

Thus, the father was lost in the judge.” That may be a good picture of how it will be someday with God, who offers Himself as a loving father, but someday the father will be lost in the judge. God’s justice is even more inexorable. God always does what is just.

God indicts the people in anticipation, as it were, of their sins of injustice, which will become a part of their life.

Leviticus 19:15, ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbour.

Why? “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.” God demands of them justice.

Deuteronomy 16:19-20, You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. 20 You shall follow what is altogether just, that you may live and inherit the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

Psalm 82:2, How long will you judge unjustly, And show partiality to the wicked? Selah

We can witness that they began to proceed directly along the path that was forbidden.

Proverbs 17:15, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord.”

Amos 5:11-12, Therefore, because you tread down the poor And take grain taxes from him, Though you have built houses of hewn stone, Yet you shall not dwell in them; You have planted pleasant vineyards, But you shall not drink wine from

them. 12 For I know your manifold transgressions And your mighty sins: Afflicting the just and taking bribes; Diverting the poor from justice at the gate.

Habakkuk 1:4, Therefore the law is powerless, And justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore perverse judgment proceeds.

God said be just, the people proceeded to be unjust, and God proceeded to chasten them. Now, the reason God hates injustice is because it is such a deviation from His own character. God is absolutely just! God will judge rightly without favouritism.

Someday those who would think themselves to be sons will find that the father is lost in the judge, for He will be just no matter who you are. V 11, For there is no partiality with God. God is righteously impartial.

He is not looking at the person on the outside. God is looking at the conduct to see whether it represents righteousness or unrighteousness. The issue is not whether a person is,

• poor or rich,
• Jew or Gentile,
• church member or not,
• a man or a woman,
• educated or uneducated,
• wise or foolish.

God is looking at the works. God’s sentence will be strictly on the basis of character. God will be impartial and cannot be bribed. God judges without respect of persons. Now, that phrase, “there is no respect of persons with God,” is the one word is a combination of the word “face,” your face, and the word “to receive.”

God does not receive your face!

1 Samuel 16:7, But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For[d] the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

God does not judge based on an outward appearance but the heart. God is not going to judge based on the surface. The word later became the word for partiality. God is not partial. Partiality is the fault of one who gives judgment with respect to the outward circumstances and not the inward merit.

To have respect of a person’s appearance is to rule in their favour for what you see on the surface rather than what you know to be true in the heart. Only the vice of an evil judge would so violate justice. God cannot, God will not do that.

The Old Testament gives this same principle again and again. The most elevated and exalted creature that God ever made was Lucifer, the son of the morning. Lucifer fell and is known as the devil or Satan.

Isaiah 14:12-17, “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, You who weakened the nations! 13 For you have said in your heart: ‘I

will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will also sit on the mount of the congregation On the farthest sides of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ 15 Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, To the [owest depths of the Pit.

16 “Those who see you will gaze at you, And consider you, saying: ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, Who shook kingdoms, 17 Who made the world as a wilderness And destroyed its cities, Who did not open the house of his prisoners?’

If there was ever one that God might have dismissed because he was so exalted, it would have been that one, but God cast him rapidly out of His heaven for He has no respect of persons, not even the supreme personage of all His creation.

If God has no respect against r him, rather, when he sins against God, He will have no respect of persons toward someone lesser than that being. This principle is repeated throughout the New Testament.

Acts 10:34, Then Peter opened his mouth and said: “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality.

Galatians 2:6, But from those who seemed to be something—whatever they were, it makes no difference to

me; God shows personal favouritism to no man—for those who seemed to be something added nothing to me.

Galatians 6:7-8, Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. 8 For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.

Ephesians 6:9, And you, masters, do the same things to them, giving up threatening, knowing that your own Master also is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.

Colossians 3:25, But he who does wrong will be repaid for what he has done, and there is no partiality.

1 Peter 1:17, And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; Romans chapter 2, we can see that again. A phrase repeated at least six times in the New Testament is the key to our passage. God is no respecter of persons. Whoever you are, He promises to judge.

John 5:28-29, Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life,

and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. Paul says in verses 6 to 10, exactly says the same thing that judgment will be made based on an objective criterion of good works. Now, as we have been pointing out to you, good works are not the cause of salvation. It is a gift of God, not of works.

Ephesians 2:8-9, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. Our works, then, can become an objective criterion by which

God will judge. There will also be a subjective criterion and that is faith. God knows who a believer is because the names are written in the book of life. Those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ will be judged and they will be granted eternal life. That is the subjective criterion, because they have put their faith in Christ. The objective is that their works will in fact support the subjective and make manifest the reality of that saving faith.

God judges based on deeds, that is a principle in the Old Testament and the New Testament. V 6, “He will render to every man according to his deeds.” God will judge men based on their deeds. God is going to pay the proper wages according to the deeds of our life.

Last lesion we saw that God can judge every person based on his deeds.

How? Because you can always judge an unbeliever because his deeds are evil. Believers’ deeds are righteous. It is not that an unbeliever always sins, and a believer always does righteousness. It is that an unbeliever never does righteousness, but a believer sometimes does righteousness and manifests the life of God in his soul.

So, the righteous deeds that flow from a redeemed life are manifest by a person who seeks glory, honour, and incorruption. In other words, he has a heavenward view.

A truly regenerated person is going to show it in his heavenward view. He is going to seek glory. He is going to seek heavenly honour. He is going to seek the incorruptible. He has a Godward perspective. By the deeds of both, they are obviously made manifest.

Man does not seek on his own can seek glory, honour, and immortality. Man does not have the capacity for that. God says to them that here is the standard. If you want eternal life, if you want glory, honour, and peace, then you have to show works in your life.

You must be a heaven seeker. You must be a kingdom seeker. You must pursue true righteousness.

Does anybody do that on their own? No! Everybody here in chapter 2 is still under condemnation. They are still under judgment because nobody does that on his own.

What about my best deeds? All your righteousnesses are filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6) You could do good, but you could have a wrong motive. Any other motive than glorifying God is a wrong motive. Maybe you did good to salve your conscience, maybe you did good because you were pressured by your peers to do good.

Maybe you did good for a myriad of reasons, and they might even be nice reasons, but if you did not do good specifically to glorify the God of heaven, then you fell short of the standard of true righteousness. Men will be judged on their deeds.

Romans 3:20, Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

We all manifest the knowledge because we condemn others. We will all be judged on the truth, and the truth is we are sinners, no matter what kind of mask we wear. We have all been guilty of treading on the grace of God, and none of us can produce the kind of deeds that ought to be produced.

Romans 3:10-11, As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; 11 There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God.

Man on his own does not do that, and so he is condemned in this text because he does not produce these kinds of works. Justification by faith alone applies to the time of entrance into salvation, but not to the time of judgment.

We are saved by faith alone, but we will be judged, says Romans, by our works.

What does that mean? When God in free grace receives the sinner at the time of his conversion, he asks nothing but that we believe and submit to Him. That is all! But from that moment on, the believer enters a responsibility of obedience, and then the mark of that believer becomes the obedient pattern of his life. We call it the fruit of grace.

Faith does not mean that now I have received Jesus, I can do whatever I want. On the contrary. True faith always results in holy living. Now, there are lapses, there are times when we fail, but there must be some evidence there of seeking after God and glory, honour, and incorruption because that is the standard by which we will be judged.

James 2:9-10, but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. So, if we broke one law, we have broken it all.

James 2:14, What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? An important question.

Can faith save him?

What if he has no works?

Is faith enough to save him?

James 2:15-18, If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

The only way to demonstrate true faith is by works. Faith without the product is dead. Not living faith, dead faith.

Verse 20 sums it up: “Faith without works is dead.” Then it goes on to say that “Abraham our father was justified by works.” You say, “Oh, my word, heresy.” Martin Luther choked on the epistle of James. He called it a very “strawy”

epistle” He didn’t like it very well because he didn’t understand that as he should have. Abraham was justified, not by God, but he was justified by those about who said, “He truly is a righteous man, it is evident in his works that God has changed his life.” “By works his faith was made perfect,” it says in verse 22.

Sums it up in – well, you can read every verse clear to 26, but 26 is a good sum. “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” The point is that Men are going to be judged by their works, and the only way that you or anyone else on the face of the earth could ever produce one single righteous work would be when your spirit was energized by the indwelling presence of God through salvation.

When salvation truly occurs, you will produce the works which become the attestation to the legitimacy of your faith. So, God will judge by works. And when it comes to God’s judgment, we come into the next element of principles of judgment, and that is: God will judge

with impartiality, verses 11 through 15. Verse 11 sets the section in motion. It says, “There is no respect of persons with God.” When God goes about judging men by knowledge, by truth, by guilt, and by deeds, He will do so absolutely, without favouring anyone, based only on the subjective reality of their faith in Christ and the objective confirmation of that in their works.

How could God judge everybody the same? God will not be unfair; it does not necessarily mean that everybody will get the same reward or the same punishment. We know there are degrees of reward. We know that when we face the Lord Jesus Christ at the Bema Seat, some of our works will be gold, silver, precious stones, some will be wood, hay, and stubble.

Some of us will have a lot of wood, hay, and stubble and very little gold, silver, precious stones, and some will have very little wood, hay, and stubble and a lot of gold and silver and precious stones. There are crowns promised to believers who are faithful in the Scripture, and some of us will have some of them and some of us will have all of them.

So, we know there are degrees by which God will reward, and the same is true in punishment.

God is fair. He does not favour people, nor does He hold people responsible when they did not know as much as someone else knew who is more responsible. So bound up in the statement “there is no respect of persons with God” is the fact that He does not favour certain people, and secondly, that He deals fairly with everyone according to the light or the knowledge they have had.

V 12, “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law.” The fact is there is no respect of persons with God. If you do not have the law, you will be judged as one who did not have the law.

If you have the law, you will be judged as one who had the law. God will be utterly, fair. In the final eternal judgment, God will show His equity and God will show His impartiality by dealing with men according to the light they possess.

If they did not possess the law, they will not be judged as those who possess the law.

If they possess the law, they will be judged as those who possess the law. That is the basic principle. He has just said that men will be judged according to their deeds, Jew, or Gentile. The Jew has the law, the Gentile does not have the law.

If a man has the law, he will be judged on that basis. If he does not, he will be judged on that basis. V 12, we have two distinct groups of people. “As many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law.”

What law? The law of God, the Mosaic law. This is a term to designate Gentiles who do not have the written Scripture. They had no prophets, They had no biblical writers, They did not have the written revelation of God. He does not mean they are without any law.

Paul will get to that in verses 14 and 15.

They have a law written in their hearts, he says that. But they are without the law in the sense of the Mosaic law. They are without special revelation – Moses, the Scripture, the prophets. Throughout history most people who have lived in the earth have been in that category.

Most people that come into the world do not ever hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. In modern times, with development of media and the translation work that is wonderfully being done today, we are really getting the Word out. But most people who have lived on the face of the earth have not had the law of God. They have not had the written Scripture.

What about them? Will God judge them when they never had the law? Yes, but God will judge them as those who never had the law. If they never heard the gospel, will He hold them responsible? V 12, “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law, Perish, means to destroy, to put to death.

It is used of eternal death in Matthew 10:28, and Luke 4:34.

It best understood that it is ruined so that it no longer can serve its intended purpose. All people were created for the glory of God and for fellowship with Him, and when they do not come to God, they are then apollumi, they are ruined as to that purpose and intention.

Our Lord, for example, uses the word apollumi when men put new wine in old wineskins and the wineskins apollumi, they were ruined by the new wine. They perished, they ceased to have any function or usefulness.

Revelation 19:20, Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image. These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone.

Revelation 20:10, The devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. So, God will condemn those who have never heard, and even without the Scripture, they will perish.

Their perishing will be without law.

It means it will be commensurate with them not having the Scripture, which means that it will not be as severe as it will be for those who had the Scripture, but it is nonetheless perishing. It is not less than hell, it is hell.

It is that those who had the law do not receive hell while the others receive less than hell, it is that they receive a greater hell than the hell the others receive.

Why? V 12, “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law, Even though they did not have the law of God, they sinned. The wages of sin is death.

Will those people who never heard perish? Yes!

What does perish mean? It means the same thing to them that it meant when it was said in Revelation of the beast, they will be cast alive into a lake burning with fire and brimstone. Man does sin, even though he does not have the written law of God because he has in him a sin principle and because he chooses a lifetime and a lifestyle of sinfulness.

Specially revealed law, Scripture is not the precondition of sin. Men sin without Scripture. They are guilty and they are perishing. The parable relating to the servants.

Luke 12:47-48,

They both get beaten. They both are punished. They both perish. But the greater punishment comes to those who knew the most. V12. Those who sinned without law shall perish. Their punishment will be a perishing, a damnation, for they have sinned against God. But it will be a lesser judgment than group two.