Bible Study: Romans 2:1-11

Romans 2:1-11 God’s Righteous Impartial Judgment

I. Hypocrisy in Judgment Brings Judgment by God (2:1-2)

• Condemnation is brought upon the one who judges because he practices the same things as the one he is judging (2:1)--A play on words regarding judgement in the Greek (BDAG) draws attention to the hypocrisy involved: the one who judges vs. the judgement he receives for doing the same things.
  
• Not only does the judgment of God come, it comes rightly (2:2).  God’s judgment is not arbitrary like pagan notions of judgment done by alleged pagan deities.
  

II. Two Exposing Questions: Hypocrisy & Presumption of God’s Goodness (2:3-4)

• Man often presumes that he can escape God’s Judgment for doing the same things he condemns. What an utter fool! (2:3)
  
• Man thinks God will simply give him a pass and wink at his sin. (2:4)
  

             1. Man’s ‘thinking lightly’ here is best described as man looking down on these attributes of God with contempt or aversion seeing them as having little value (BDAG)

                 A. His ‘kindness’ is His quality of being helpful or benevolent (BDAG).

                 B. His ‘forbearance’ is refraining from the enforcement of something (as a debt, right, or obligation) that is done (BDAG).

                 C. His ‘patience’ in this context is a state of being able to bear up under provocation (BDAG).

                 D. All of these attributes are supposed to bring man to repentance, but man looks upon them with contempt instead.

III. Impartial Wrath Stored Up: Hard and Unrepentant Heart (2:5-11)

• The word used for ‘storing up’ here means to do something that will bring about a future event or condition (ie. a lifelong habit of gluttony will lead to a health crisis).
  
• It is the stubbornness and unrepentant heart that is bringing about a future event, which is the ‘day of the wrath and revelation of the righteous judgement of God’.  
  
• God did not arbitrarily decide to have a Day of Wrath; rather, man’s continuous rebellion causes the need for God to render Justice in His appointed time.  
  
• As rebellion increases so does the need for wrath; the Day of Wrath is not only increasing in intensity because of sin, its necessity is being fueled by sin. (1:5)
  

             1. To Each According To His Work (1:6-11)

                  A. God will render to each man according to what he has done (1:6)

                     i. Perseverance in Good vs. Selfish Ambition (1:7-8)

                        a. Who by doing good seek glory, honor, immortality: eternal life (1:7)

                             -To seek such things are not evil; God has set eternity in the heart of man, but eternal life must be achieved God’s way.

                        b. Selfish ambition and disobedience to the truth reaps wrath (1:8)

                    ii. To the Jew First & Then To the Greek Impartially (1:9-11)

                             -Tribulation & Distress comes to both Jew and Gentile alike; the Jews first because they have the most knowledge of God (1:9)

                             -Likewise, glory, honor, and peace to those who do good (1:10)

                             -God is impartial, lest His Justice be denied. (1:11)