Passage Read: Romans 2-3
Meditation Verses: 2:1-2
Thought
It is easy to look at unbelievers and think that they are so repulsive because of their evil deeds, to consider them beyond hope and utterly lost. That is, in effect, how Jews saw Gentiles, even if the Gentiles hadn't done anything notably wrong. Gentiles were just unclean in their eyes because of all the unclean things they did and ate. But Paul wasn't taking about that in Chapter 1. He was talking about men who refused to acknowledge God, men who knew of God but denied Him, men whom God handed over to complete depravity, the ultimate expression being homosexuality. But that was the end state, not all Paul said! They were also filled with all kinds of bitterness and greed and hostility and slander and everything else that is far too common among every group of people, including Jewish and Gentile Christians. That's why Paul could say that we who pass judgment on "those sinners" do the very same things. We may not practice homosexuality, but we do everything else Paul listed! Yet in repentance (hopefully), we have fled to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, cleansing and transformation. In so doing, we acknowledge that we once were just like those we now so easily condemn as hopeless. We forget how bad we once really were; we whitewash the memories of our old selves, such that now we'd never have anything to do with the same kind of people we used to be!
Application
I need to remember all the things Paul listed at the end of Chapter 1, and not just think of homosexuality as the only "real bad" sin. It may be a culmination of the rejection of God, but that doesn't make any of the other sins listed any less bad. I can't excuse any of those other sins in me simply because they're not homosexuality. And to judge others as irredeemable because of some penultimate sin is to miss the grace that worked in me and to deny that grace can work in others, who are better or worse than I am or was. Everyone needs to repent and believe in Jesus, so everyone needs to hear the Gospel. I cannot judge someone beforehand as hopeful or hopeless and speak the Gospel only to those I deem having hope. Everyone needs to be called to repentance, so that God has opportunity to display His unfathomable power and mercy. It is His to choose who believes and who remains condemned. I still wrestle against the same evil impulses that others give free reign to; if I have hope, so do they, because my hope comes not from me, but from the God who saves me.