Romans 2:12 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;
13 (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
This week a report was released about something that some of us have known for quite a while. We are facing government initiated inflation which has created poverty in our own country. This week it was reported that the “COVID rapid antigen tests” (acronym RAT) are unreliable. The acronym for this text is very fitting. It is a rat.
This news should not come as a surprise to born again Christians. Not only is the RAT test unable to test for the suggested virus, but the PCR tests are also ineffective. There are many doctors who have also warned against the poison shots that are still being promoted by ungodly officials. The only benefit in all these government dictates is to instil panic into the general population. They have been quite successful in doing that.
We have known for several years now that this whole COVID event was a WHO approved scheme to gain control over the world population. We have mentioned before that this was one of several test runs that is being used to prepare the world to receive the antichrist and eventually his mark.
The Bible declares that God will send them (the lost) strong delusion that they should believe a lie. Why is God going to do this? He tells us why.
II Thessalonians 2:11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
It amazes me that people are still going for covid tests. It seems that being assessed as having covid is a right of passage for people. God has given man the ability to think but we can see that when man rejects God, his ability to think rationally goes out the window.
The unsaved look at the same facts that the saved do. The unsaved come to a wrong conclusion because they have rejected the truth. They first need to be saved so that they can begin to think properly. The Holy Spirit is working in the heart of every lost person to show him or her of the need to be saved.
The Bible is the Word of God. He provides wisdom to those who are saved and who seek to follow Him. In our text God warns that those who have sinned without the law shall perish. Those without the law is a reference to the Gentiles. Verse 14 shows us this. The law is the law of Moses. It is more than just the 10 commandments. God gave the law to the Jews. The Gentiles were to be given the law through the faithfulness of the Jews. The law was given to help man to know how to live successfully. God showed the Jews that no man can keep the law in the flesh. That is why He taught them the law of the sacrifices. They were a type of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the law.
As we see, the Gentiles are not innocent. As we see further in this text, there is a law written in the heart of every person, Jew or Gentile. Every person has a basic understanding of right and wrong.
The Gentiles who reject the truth will perish without the law. The Jews, who were given the law would be judged by the law. They would be held accountable for the light that was given unto them.
In verse 13 God reminds us that it is not enough to hear the law. The Judaizers prided themselves in knowing the law of Moses. They knew how to distort it. Jesus came to teach the law as it was given. The Pharisees did not like that. They wanted the power to distort it to suit their pursuit of power. God shows us that it is not enough to hear the law. It is necessary to do the law to be justified. God is not teaching works salvation here. The law begins with believing in the true God, not just in a superficial way. It is believing that causes the right actions.
When God prepared the nation of Israel to leave Egypt, He gave clear and precise instructions to Moses. Moses needed to pass those instructions on to the people exactly as God gave them. God demanded absolute obedience to His commands. God promised that those who would obey His commands would be spared. Those who would not obey, would find their first born dead. This is a picture of salvation. God has given very clear instructions regarding salvation. There must be a genuine recognition of the true God. There must also be a clear trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation. It is His shed blood alone that can save. There is no salvation in getting some water poured on the person. There is no salvation in joining a church. There is no salvation in partaking in the Lord’s Supper.
Salvation is a gift of God. It is not a cheap gift. It cost God His only begotten Son. Many people and many religions have cheapened God’s salvation. Just believe in Jesus, they say. Don’t worry about your bad habits. They do not matter. You can keep all of that. Just believe in Jesus. Thus we have sodomites who claim to be saved. We have adulterers who claim to be saved. We have drunkards who claim to be saved, etc.
In verse 14 we are told that the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by NATURE the things contained in the law. How is it that in a pagan nation like Canada we have laws on the books against murder, against stealing, against lying, etc.? It is because the founders of this nation had a conscience and they put these things into our laws because they knew this was right. We know that our laws on murder, on stealing, on lying, and other things are distorted. In the end, each person will be judged according to God’s righteous law, not man’s corrupt laws.
Verse 15 shows us this. The law is written in the heart of each person. We see here as well that God designed each person with a conscience. The conscience can be seared. It can be weak and it can be pure. Every person is born lost but each person has a conscience. We have already noted this. It is important for parents to be saved so that they can influence the conscience of their children in a good way. Jesus warned that those who would offend a little child would be better off with a millstone hung around their neck and be thrown into the sea. God does not take kindly to adults who would hinder a young child from knowing the truth. There are thousands of parents who are guilty before God. They purchase the latest gimmick that somebody says is important for their child(ren). They set them in front of the T.V. or some movie as a babysitter. Many parents have rejected the truth and thus they do not expose their children to the truth. Our governments and most teachers are equally guilty before God. They are teaching children that biology does not determine gender. They try to convince boys to be girls and girls to be boys. They try to silence anyone who would speak up against this wickedness.
God is gracious and a few children will listen to their conscience and will be saved in spite of the wickedness of their parents.
Paul reminds us that our thoughts will either accuse or excuse us. If a person is saved they can have good thoughts. They will not always have good thoughts but they will have good thoughts most of the time. If a person is lost, they cannot have any good thoughts.
Romans 7:18 For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.
That statement may be offensive to lost people. Most lost people want to think they are pretty good and that they do many good things. God says otherwise. It is important to believe what God says. He made man and He knows the nature of fallen man. It is extremely important for adults to know the truth and walk in the truth so that they can help children to know the truth.
Rather than being enablers, we need to help people to deal properly with the guilt they are under. Our current culture has done much to encourage rebellion and sin. Having said that, we see that Cain was very stubborn. Even though God showed him what his problem was, he did not turn to God in repentance. He did not seek God’s forgiveness. He allowed his sinful nature to move him to hatred against his brother and then to murder him and then to lie about the events that took place. After that he accused God of being too hard on him. This same attitude is still quite common among the lost. Sadly, this same attitude is also found among those who profess to be saved. The tendency is to want to shelter sin, rather than address and be set free from the guilt of sin. God’s mercy and His forgiveness is an amazing thing. It is something we can learn from the Bible and we can experience it in our lives, when we listen to what God says.
In verse 16 we are reminded again that there is a day of judgment coming. God is working in the heart of each individual now, but as we have noted, there is a day that God has appointed to judge the righteous and to judge the lost.
The righteous are judged at the “judgment seat of Christ” (II Corinthians 5:10). There the saved will be judged as to their faithfulness to God after they were saved. Only saved people will be at that judgment. The lost will be judged at the great white throne judgment (Revelation 20:11-15). Only lost people will be there. They will be judged by Jesus Christ according to the gospel. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation . . . Those who reject that power, will be judged according to their works and they will be found wanting. They will be cast into the lake of fire for all eternity.
God reminds us of this in several places because He does not want anyone to appear at that judgment. The sad reality is that there are thousands of people in hell now already, awaiting that judgment. Today, anyone that is lost and reading this, is given another opportunity to turn to God in repentance and to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.
In our time, many have taken offence to the truth and some have run to the government to convince the ungodly rulers to enact laws that will silence the gospel and punish those who believe the gospel. This is also nothing new. The Judaizers tried to silence the apostles in the book of Acts. The apostles suffered at the hands of ungodly men, but they did not stop preaching the truth until they died. We need to have the same love motivating us (those who are saved) to preach the gospel of Christ today as well.
Pastor Bartel
