Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
Faced with evils and depravity — particularly those so widely publicized in our global culture today — it is easy for people to become moralistic and judgmental. Pressing home his case that sin is universal, Paul in his letter to the Romans now turns the spotlight on the sins of the righteous and respectable. In this sermon on Romans, preached at Greyfriars’ Classical Service on 15 April 2007, Rob Yule shows that the problem of evil is not with ‘them’ but with ‘me’, and that true self-knowledge consists in humble awareness of our own faults.
In the Old Testament there is a powerful story of how God sent the prophet Nathan to rebuke King David (2 Samuel 12:1-15). The king had committed a double crime: adultery with another man’s wife, then arranging the murder of her husband so he could marry her. It was a vintage celebrity scandal and abuse of power.
Nathan must have sweated over the right approach. Finally, he tells David about a rich man with large flocks, who took the only sheep of a poor man and killed it to feed a guest.
Hearing the story, David got angry. ‘The man who did this deserves to be punished,’ he said.
Nathan saw his opportunity: ‘You are the man!’
David had condemned himself.
Paul makes a similar move in this part of Romans. In the previous chapter he has painted a dark picture of the depravity of Greek and Roman society in his day. He particularly mentions homosexual activity as a symptom of the moral decline of society — because it is such a clear rejection of the Creator’s purpose for human sexuality. But he also mentions twenty one other forms of wickedness, including gossip, insolence, heartlessness, and boastfulness.
Paul’s fellow Jews would have approved this critique of pagan immorality. So indeed would some Roman moralists, like Paul’s noble contemporary Seneca. Then, in chapter 2, like the prophet Nathan securing the self-condemnation of King David, Paul turns the spotlight on them: ‘You are the man!’ ‘In passing judgment on another you condemn yourself.’ (2:1, NRSV).
The problem with sin is not them. It is me. As Socrates said, ‘Know yourself!’
In our day, it is the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn who comes closest to the moral self-awareness shown here by Paul:
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.... During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to be a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil. (The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 1 [Glasgow, Collins, 1974], p. 168)
In a more autobiographical passage, Solzhenitsyn reflects on a career that has parallels with that of Paul himself:
It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. (The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 2 [Glasgow, Collins, 1976], p. 597)
This humble awareness of our own faults, of our own capacity for evil, is a fundamental Christian awareness shared by Solzhenitsyn and St. Paul. It is at the heart of repentance and conversion.
In discussing the moralist who judges the moral performance of others, Paul sets out three principles by which God judges people:
‘Therefore, you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself….’ (2:1, NRSV). The standard we judge others by is the standard we show that we acknowledge, and therefore the standard we will be judged by.
This is the same principle that Jesus affirmed: ‘Do not judge, or you to will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.’ (Matthew 7:1-2). When you point your finger in accusation at another person, one finger points in judgment at that person, three point back in judgment on yourself, and one calls on God to bear witness!
God won’t forever ignore wrong behaviour. Most people misinterpret God’s patience and forbearance (2:3-4): think they’ll get away with wrongdoing without being judged for it. The fact that God doesn’t immediately punish wrongdoing doesn’t mean he is indifferent towards evil and indulgent towards sin. His forbearance is aimed at bringing the evildoer to repentance. We could compare God to a judge treating a first offender leniently: not to ignore wrongdoing, but in order to foster that person’s rehabilitation.
This principle refers not so much to our individual actions as to the settled disposition or direction of our life.
On the one hand some people’s lives are oriented toward God. These are people who by patience, self-denial and doing good seek God’s glory, honour and immortality (2:6-7). There is a double reward: peace in this life, and eternal life or immortality in the next. A good life lived for God, a self-denying life, showing patience or persistence in doing good, will be rewarded with peace, glory, honour and immortality — a share in God’s eternity.
On the other hand some people’s lives are oriented towards self. They are self-seeking, deny truth, and follow wickedness — leading to wrath, fury, anguish and distress (2:8-9). An evil life oriented away from God, a self-seeking life, denying truth and obeying wickedness, will experience wrath, fury, anguish and distress — the marks of a life separated from God.
Our present life is not a static condition but fluid. It is a proving ground in which we are either going up or going down, either progressing or regressing morally.
This orientation towards a future reward is very central in Christian ethics, though widely ignored today. The eighteenth century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Practical Reason (1788), even suggested that it constituted a moral argument for God’s existence. Kant maintained that the imbalance of justice and injustice in this present life requires the existence of a God who will punish evil and reward good, and a future life when this will happen.
What is the direction or orientation of your life? Are you living for yourself; or for God? Do you persistently seek good and do good? Or am you habitually self-seeking?
We live in a culture that panders to self. Paul Vitz, a New York psychologist, calls it a ‘selfist society’, and Christopher Lasch, the American social commentator, describes it as a ‘culture of narcissism’ — referring to Narcissus, the beautiful youth in Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection in a pond. Living in such a narcissistic, self-preoccupied culture as our own, it’s even more important that we overcome our natural selfishness if we are to make progress in the Christian life.
Self-seeking people live for here and now. God-seeking people live for future reward. One day God will punish evil and reward good. God will judge us according to the actions we commit and according to the underlying direction of our lives.
God is utterly fair and impartial. He treats equally Jew and Gentile, the religious person and the pagan, the Christian and the non-Christian — according to the light each possesses. We will all judged by what we know to be right — and by whether we live and do what we know to be right.
Jews and Christians will be judged by whether they obey the Torah — God’s written revelation, the law revealed in Scripture (2:12-13). Gentiles and those who’ve never heard the Gospel will be judged by whether they obey the Tao — God’s unwritten revelation, the law revealed in nature, written in their hearts and witnessed to by their consciences (2:14-15).
Many today claim that conscience and the moral law are entirely subjective or culturally conditioned. But C. S. Lewis has defended the objectivity and universality of the moral law. In the Appendix to his book The Abolition of Man (London, Geoffrey Bles, 1943), Lewis gives many ‘Illustrations of the Tao’ —examples collected from a great variety of cultures and periods of history, showing that the moral law is more universal and objective, and less relative and culturally-conditioned, than is commonly assumed by secular anthropologists and ethicists. It is truly a law ‘written on people’s hearts’, just as Paul says (2:15).
We will all be judged by the light we possess. Paul’s teaching is consistent with that of Jesus: ‘From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.’ (Luke 12:48b).
So we Christians cannot be judgmental, or complacent. Yes, there are shocking evils and depravity out there in society. But remember, we will be judged by what we know of God, and he expects of us a higher standard.
Rob Yule, 15 April 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
