Principles of God's Judgment - Grace

Today we continue to delve into the principles of God’s wrath as presented in Romans 2. 

Romans 2:1–6 (ESV) ¹Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.  ²We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.  ³Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?  ⁴Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? ⁵But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. ⁶He will render to each one according to his works:

We have learned in this passage that man is without excuse as he faces God’s judgment and that God’s judgment is according to truth.  The third principle we will look at is that God is gracious.  Unfortunately, man in his sinfulness is does not respond to God’s graciousness as he should.  A look through the scripture reveals many instances of God’s wrath in various situations, yet it also reveals many more instances where God’s wrath was withheld or put off for a time.  In reality, Adam and Eve were told if they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that they would surely die.  Yet God did not make them die physically as soon as they sinned.  He rather taught them about sacrifice and provided a covering for them.  Romans 6 tells us, “the wages of sin is death” yet all reading this have sinned and not yet died.  Though we deserve death God in His grace and mercy has not yet carried through with the sentence.  This alone should cause us to look to Him in repentance and sorrow for our sin.

Unfortunately, most individuals respond to God’s grace much the same as they would respond to the grace of police officers in not giving out speeding tickets.  Instead of realizing our failures and our sin we rather than slow down tend to drive faster, even when one is stopped and ticketed for speeding the response is seldom, “I deserved that”, but rather, “That’s not fair.”

God in His grace has not given us what we deserve, but rather than responding to his rich grace and forbearance by repenting, we harden our hearts.   And as verse five states,  We “store up” or “treasure up” God’s wrath on the day of judgment rather than averting it by repenting and asking God to forgive us believing that Christ’s shed blood is the only sufficient satisfaction of God’s wrath for our sin.  He indeed is our propitiation.

Our prayer is that you might truly recognize God’s grace and repent of your sins!