Escape Clauses Romans 2:12-16
Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- December 12, 2004
12God will punish the Gentiles when they sin, even though they never had God’s written law. And he will punish the Jews when they sin, for they do have the law. 13For it is not merely knowing the law that brings God’s approval. Those who obey the law will be declared right in God’s sight. 14Even when Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, instinctively follow what the law says, they show that in their hearts they know right from wrong. 15They demonstrate that God’s law is written within them, for their own consciences either accuse them or tell them they are doing what is right. 16The day will surely come when God, by Jesus Christ, will judge everyone’s secret life.
When we attempt to share the good news about Jesus Christ with others, we often hear the question raised about the people around the world who have never heard about Jesus…What happens to them? Is it fair of God to punish them when they haven’t heard about the way of escape?
The question is often just a smoke screen to shift the focus away from the person confronted with the claims of Jesus on their life. Obviously, they need be concerned first of all about themselves and their own eternal destiny.
In 1981, a Minnesota radio station reported a story about a stolen car in California. Police were staging an intense search for the vehicle and the driver, even to the point of placing announcements on local radio stations to contact the thief. On the front seat of the stolen car sat a box of crackers that, unknown to the thief, were laced with poison. The car owner had intended to use the crackers as rat bait. Now the police and the owner of the VW Bug were more interested in apprehending the thief to save his life than to recover the car.
So often when we run from God, we feel it is to escape his punishment. But what we are actually doing is eluding his rescue. Source : Unknown. Our text today in Romans 2:12-15 speaks to this issue. First of all, there are those who will come under the condemnation of God’s Law because they have adopted a “life choice” of sin.. Our text says, “For all who have sinned…” and the word “sinned” as it is used here refers to the general choice of sin as against righteousness and holiness. The idea being that of a life choice of sin.
Gentiles do it without the Mosaic Law. They don’t know it as such and in their ignorance they break it. The Jews on the other hand, knowing the law, choose to ignore it. People have the idea that God is going to judge on the basis of human standards. When we considered the previous verses we noted that God’s standards are much higher than the standards of men. Human law proceeds on the assumption that the man is not a thief until he has actually stolen something. A man is not a murderer until he pulls the trigger, or plunges the knife into his victim. God’s verdict is that the man steals because he is a thief at heart, he kills because he is a murderer at heart. It is the heart attitude that condemns us.
You will remember the illustration I have used at other times about a radio spot put out by the Mennonite Church a number of years ago. The ad was speaking about adultery and gave the Biblical view of this sin: “In the head or in the bed, it’s all the same, all the same.” The point the Scripture makes is that the sin begins in the heart and then works itself out in our actions. It is not just the action that is the sin…no the sin starts long before the action in the heart and then the mind. Jeremiah tells us that the human heart is “deceitful and desperately wicked.” The human heart has adopted the delusion that “those who are not chiefly guilty shall somehow escape the judgment of God.
Be assured God is not going to use human standards as the benchmark for getting into heaven. We often hear people express the idea that everybody is going to go to heaven. People tend to think that because they are no better nor worse than everybody else, God is just going to let them in. If I have done a little better than you in life, I might just stand a better chance than you.
It is somewhat like the two boys in math class. One boy complained to his teacher that he thought that she had marked his paper unfairly by giving him a zero. The teacher asked him what he thought was unfair. The student said that his friend Billy said that eight times seven was forty-six, and I said it was fifty-four. “He was ten wrong and I was only two wrong,” said the boy, “and I deserve a better grade.” There are a million whole numbers from one to a million, but they are all wrong for the question of eight times seven except the one true answer, fifty-six.
So it is with the judgment of God, there may be a million and one opinions about the standards of righteousness required to get into heaven. But the only way of keeping heaven clean from the filth of human sin is to provide a way whereby God can deal with the sin of man and give him, by virtue of the Grace of God in the death of Christ Jesus on the Cross, the righteousness of God. If that righteousness is not placed to the account of the individual by accepting Jesus death as the payment for one’s own sin, he or she stands condemned already before God. Apart from Jesus there is no escape from the penalty and the destructiveness of sin.
Our text tells us that those “who have sinned without the law will perish…” What are we to understand about this word perish? It does not mean “to cease to exist.” No, it means that the thing is so ruined that it no longer serves the purpose for which it was designed. Jesus said this is what happens when men put new wine in old wineskins. The skins are said to “perish”. The new wine ferments and will split the old wineskins and the wine will be lost. The old wineskins will “perish”…that is, will no longer serve the purpose for which they were designed.
Probably the favorite Bible verse of most believers is found in John 3:16 “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The word perish is the same as found in our text…and means that this person who believes in Jesus Christ, in all he said and did for us, will not be so ruined by sin that they no longer serve the purpose for which they were designed. Those who do not believe will perish, because they do not believe. We don’t have time to go into it today, but the New Testament clearly defines the end result for those who do not believe in Jesus. It will be a place of conscious and unending torment. The image we are given in the New Testament is that of the lake of fire that burns forever as the place where unbelievers will go. It is either literal fire or something so much worse that there is no word for it in man’s language. This might be the closest human language can get us to the reality awaiting those who make this “life choice of sin”.
What about those people who have not ever, nor will ever hear about Jesus and the offer of escape he makes to us in the pages of the New Testament? Verse 14 tells us “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law unto themselves.” The moral man who has never heard about Jesus Christ shows by his conduct that he bears in his heart the traces of the original writing of the Law of God on the hearts of men. All the rites and ceremonies of any religion whatsoever bear witness of the primitive knowledge of God that was there. Counterfeits always presuppose the genuine. And when the heathen make laws to punish adultery, murder and theft, and when they approve the uprightness of character and the honoring of a contract, they confess that the Law of God from the creation of man still lingers as whispers echoing in their ears.
All men will stand condemned because they cannot even faithfully keep the human standards they establish because of the Law of God that remains in our hearts. No one can keep these standards. We all fail somewhere. And God holds us accountable. No one has ever been able to keep God’s law. Failure in one part of it means that we have failed to keep it at all. We are all guilty. Scripture tells us that “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
Having said all of this, we must recognize that God has provided us with a means of escape. God Himself has provided His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sin. He has become the ransom payment for our sin. He took our place. A.B. Simpson is reported to have said that the gospel "Tells rebellious men that God is reconciled, that justice is satisfied, that sin has been atoned for, that the judgment of the guilty may be revoked, the condemnation of the sinner cancelled, the curse of the Law blotted out, the gates of hell closed, the portals of heaven opened wide, the power of sin subdued, the guilty conscience healed, the broken heart comforted, the sorrow and misery of the Fall undone.
Let me close with this: The story is told of pioneers who were making their way across one of the central states to a distant place that had been opened up for homesteading. They traveled in covered wagons drawn by oxen, and progress was necessarily slow. One day they were horrified to note a long line of smoke in the west, stretching for miles across the prairie, and soon it was evident that the dried grass was burning fiercely and coming toward them rapidly. They had crossed a river the day before but it would be impossible to go back to that before the flames would be upon them. One man only seemed to have understanding as to what could be done. He gave the command to set fire to the grass behind them. Then when a space was burned over, the whole company moved back upon it. As the flames roared on toward them from the west, a little girl cried out in terror, "Are you sure we shall not all be burned up?" The leader replied, "My child, the flames cannot reach us here, for we are standing where the fire has been!"
What a picture of the believer, who is safe in Christ! "On Him Almighty vengeance fell, Which would have sunk a world to hell. He bore it for a chosen race, And thus becomes our Hiding Place." The fires of God's judgment burned themselves out on Him, and all who are in Christ are safe forever, for they are now standing where the fire has been.
That is the escape that God has provided for us. You and I know someone who needs to hear the good news about Jesus. Let’s commit ourselves to seeking the opportunity to share it with them.
--Dennis Gleason
