Romans 2:17-29; The Heart of the Matter

Jason Sterling February 8, 2026 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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Transcript

Romans 2 Sets The Stage

SPEAKER_00 0:23

You have a copy of the Bible. Uh turn with me to Romans chapter 2. Romans 2 this morning. We've been in a study in the book of Romans. As we move into the new sanctuary, we just keep coming back to the foundation of this church, the foundation of every church. It's not buildings are awesome and beautiful and great and we need them. But the foundation of the church is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's our what gives us security as we move into the future. That is our hope. That is our foundation. And so we've been looking out in uh at Romans. It's a very comprehensive look at the gospel through the Apostle Paul. This morning, Paul is going to examine whether or not we actually have the gospel, or we just have a religious appearance that looks like the gospel, but it's not actually the gospel. So this morning, look at Romans chapter 2, 17 through 29. It's in your bulletin. It'll also be on the screen. This is the word of God. But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law. And if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth. You then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? When you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who you who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For as it is written, the name of God is blaspheme among the Gentiles because of you. For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have written the code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God. Let me pray and let's ask for the Spirit to help us this morning. Let's pray together. Father, do come challenging passage again this morning from the Apostle Paul. But this is your word for us this morning. You have brought us here, and I pray that you would teach us and correct us and train us and save us, perhaps. Those that maybe need to hear, give them ears to hear. I pray for soft, receptive hearts. Give me boldness and courage, but also grace. Help all of us to encounter Jesus. May He be our only hope. In his name we pray. Amen. You go to your annual cardiology appointment. The nurse takes your vitals, takes your blood pressure. It looks good. Your pulse rate looks good. You answer all the right questions. You look healthy. Things look just fine on the outside. And the doctor says, I want to dig a little deeper. I want to actually get a look at your heart. I want to get a look at what's going on on the inside of you. And so I want to do an echocardiogram. I want to do an EKG. I want to do a stress test. I want to be thorough. And the doctor does those things and they find an irregular rhythm. And they find clogged and blocked arteries. And they find damage, perhaps, that you never knew existed in your heart. Everything looked fine on the outside, but when they examined your heart, they actually found problems that could kill you. That's what the Apostle Paul does in this passage. He goes deeper. He gives us a heart exam. Not what you know, not your theology and how good it is, and how much you know your theology, uh, not your religious practices, not how good you look on the outside and how much you have it together. He goes inside. He goes straight to the heart. And what he finds there will drive you in one or two places this morning. It'll drive you to despair, or it will drive you running with all your might to Jesus. And that's what I'm hoping for. That's really the purpose. These first few chapters of Romans have been very difficult. Why is Paul being so hard and confrontational? Jesus. He wants us to give up hope in everything else but Christ alone. Three things we're going to see this morning. Paul's going to examine our knowledge, our religious practices, and lastly, our heart. Knowledge, religious practices, and our heart. Again, before we dig in, let me mention, let me say two things very quickly. Um this is confrontational. Paul is not trying to be mean, he's trying to drive you to Jesus. Secondly, remember the context. Paul is still talking to religious people, morally decent people. It's really interesting. He spends about a half a chapter on pagans, and he spends a whole lot of time talking to church-going people. And so he's still talking to us this morning, people who are morally decent, religiously active, people just like us. Please listen carefully this morning. The worst thing you can do this morning is to ignore this and say and pretend like you're just fine. Listen to what the Word of God says to us this morning. And the reason why we need this, because the longer you're a Christian, the longer you sit in church and get more involved in the church, the more we need to heed words like Paul has for us this morning. So let's dig in, examine your knowledge. Number one, that's our first heading. And as always, we'll just work through the scriptures. Look at verses 17 through 20. Uh, the Jews here, a pretty impressive resume. Lots of credentials, he's listing. Called themselves Jews, relied on the law, boasted in God, knew his will, trained in theology. They were convinced that they were the teachers. Everyone else should listen to them. Notice the two key words, phrases, rely on the law and boast in God. They're not just possessing knowledge, okay? They are relying on it. They are trusting in it as their confidence before God. That's what he's going after. And after building up their credentials and telling them how great they are, Paul lowers the hammer in verses 21 through 24. He demolishes them. He does a little theological trash talking, if you will. And he does it through a series of questions. Let's go through them. You who teach others, you do not teach yourselves. You're so busy instructing everyone else and telling everyone else what they need to believe, and how much you know that you never take the time to actually apply those things to yourself. Again, a danger here. The longer you're a Christian and around the church, the better we get at this. The better we get at, and we stop letting things and passages in the word, we stop letting them land with us. And we stop applying the Bible to ourselves. I was really convicted by this, because it's a serious danger if you're a preacher to stand up here every single week and say, Let me tell you what you need to hear. No. Always to myself first, by the grace of God. May that never be true. What Paul is correcting them. I need this. I need what I preach every single week. We all need it. That's the first thing. And then secondly, he says, you preach against stealing. Do you steal? Adultery? Do you commit adultery? Paul is doing Sermon on the Mount stuff here. What Jesus did with the law takes it deeper, going past the actions into your heart. And what he's showing is that the same heart attitudes we often condemn in others exist in our own lives. We look at someone else's envy, but we ignore our own. We look at someone else and say they lust, they struggle, but we ignore it and excuses in ourselves, or we get outraged at someone's dishonesty, but we rationalize it in ourselves. And Paul is getting at a root attitude here, and it is an attitude of superiority. Theological, cultural, and moral superiority. Hear this is never a mark of grace. An attitude of smugness and superiority is never a mark of grace. And he continues on here, you abhorred idols, but and do you, you who abhor idols, do you rob temples? No Jew would ever bow down to a physical idol. They despise pagan worship. Again, Paul going deeper, he's going past the externals, he's going to the heart, and he's saying, You keep all these religious rules, but you are bowing down to idols inside your heart. 24. The name of God is blasphemy among the Gentiles because of you. That's a strong word there. Listen carefully to what Paul is exposing. He is not saying you struggle with sin, therefore you're condemned. That's not what he's saying. Every sin, every Christian struggles with sin. We all have gaps in our lives between what we know and how we live. We all do. That's the whole point of the gospel. So what is Paul saying? What he is condemning is trusting in your knowledge to make you right with God. Here's the difference. The struggling Christian says, I know what's right, but I still fail to live that out. I need Jesus. Help me, Jesus. I need your righteousness. The self-deceived person says, I know what's right, I teach what's right, therefore I'm good. I'm acceptable to God. One person's knowledge drives them deeper into the gospel. The other person's knowledge, notice, drives them deeper into themselves to trust themselves, becoming a substitute for the gospel. And the substitution is very deadly. Anytime we use the law as a way to life, it leads only to death. Moralism can mask your sin. It cannot master your sin. We know the rules. We're just often better at hiding our failure and faking it. And when we present ourselves as better than other people, the world around us, verse twenty four, we are putting graffiti on God's glory, blaspheming his name. All we're doing is simply uh showing the world just religious people who have it all together. And it's not the gospel. It's a counterfeit. That's what Paul's trying to show them. Only the gospel produces people who commend God to the world. Moralism cannot. And so as you hear this passage, don't ask. Let me think of all the people that need to hear this. Our first question is what is does this say about me? Am I still learning? Am I able to say I don't know? Or am I always the expert and the person with all the theological and Bible answers? Does Bible knowledge make you humble or make you proud? Does it expose your need for grace or convince you that you need less of it? Paul's not condemning the struggle, he's condemning trusting in your expertise instead of trusting in Christ. And so where does that lead us? We need some gospel. So here's some gospel. Jesus perfectly lived what he taught. He was completely consistent, zero hypocrisy, and God credits his obedience to you. Not because knowledge qualifies you, but because Jesus lived the life that you could not live and died the death that you deserve. The law was never meant to make you righteous, it was meant to show you your need for a righteousness outside yourself. That's what Jesus provides you. That's what Paul is driving us towards. And so that is the first exam to examine our knowledge. Secondly, Paul exposes and examines our religious practices. Look at verse 25. You might have found yourself in these 25, 26, 27, like what is happening here? Verse 25, for circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. What? Let me explain, Lord willing. Circumcision was the covenant sign. God instituted it with Abraham. It was not a man-made ritual, it was a God-ordained ritual and mark. And it was a way to mark God's chosen covenant people. And so if anything should count before God, surely this should. And Paul says the ritual or religious practice without heart change, without obedience, means absolutely nothing. You can have God ordained sign, and you can still be cut off from God. Circumcision was supposed to be a humbling sign. It was supposed to be a reminder that if you broke covenant, you'd be cut off from God forever. Back in the Old Testament, it was a way to drive you to say, God, I need grace. I cannot do this without you. But over time, the Jews twisted it. Instead of pointing out their need for grace, they started to use it as proof that they didn't need grace at all. We're circumcised, they would say. We're in, we're safe. They turned the sign that was meant for humility into a badge of presumption. And the Apostle Paul says, you have completely missed the point. Verses 26 and 27. Let me summarize what he's saying there. The person without the ritual, but with a changed heart, it's better off than the person with the ritual, but has no change. Because they thought it guaranteed that circumcision guaranteed that they were in and that they were accepted. But Paul says on judgment day, God will point to the outsider with a changed heart and say, you're in better standing than the insider with all their credentials with no changed heart. All this talk about circumcision and uncircumcision can seem like a million miles away from us sitting here in February of 2026 in Birmingham, Alabama. And so what does this mean for us? We don't practice circumcision as a religious marker, but we do have our own religious rituals and practices, don't we, that we trust in? I was baptized. Therefore, I'm a Christian. I was confirmed. I went through the communicants class. I had all the answers right. I'm in. Everyone knows me here. And Paul says the ritual without the reality is worthless. Because you can be baptized and spiritually dead. You can take communion every single week and have no communion with Jesus. You can be a member of the church and not be part of the body of Christ. The difference between this point and point one, point one is he's going after trusting in knowledge here. It's trusting in external markers to make you acceptable with God. Think about it this way think about a wedding ring. It is a sign and a symbol of your covenant commitment. The ring itself doesn't make you married. It points to something that's the service that's something that happened when you stood before God in witnesses and made vows. Now imagine a man. Who never takes his wedding ring off every single day, keeps it on, but completely ignores his wife, treats her with contempt, and lives like he's single. And he says, What are you talking about? Look, I'm wearing the ring. You see it? The ring without the relationship is worthless. And that's Paul's point. You can have the signs. You can completely miss the reality that the sign points to. And so, what external markers or practices or rituals are you trusting in? The most dangerous delusion is the person who is in a very dangerous place is the person that sits in the pews every single week and says, Well, I've checked all the boxes. And so God will accept me. And Paul's answer is, not if your heart is unchanged. Because on judgment day, God will not ask you about your rituals and practices. Remember Matthew chapter 7? Jesus saying all the people would come and say, look at all these things, Jesus. And he says, What? Away from me. I never knew you. Not about what you did. It's about who you know. And do you know Jesus? The ritual without the reality won't save you. Lastly, let's look at our hearts. Paul gives us the solution. Look at verse 28 and 29. And this is basically just saying it's not external, it's internal. It's not what you do, it's what God does in you. Look at 29. Circumcision is a matter of the heart by the Spirit. Remember, circumcision represented a cutting away the dead, the rebellious parts, so that we could love and obey God. But here's the point: you cannot circumcise your own heart. You cannot perform spiritual surgery on yourself. You cannot make yourself spiritually alive. So then what's the point of the rituals? Jesus. They all point to Jesus, circumcision, pictured being cut off from God, and Jesus was cut off from God at the cross so that you and I never have to be. He bore the curse. He was cut off from the Father so that you by faith could be brought in. Baptism. You hear me say a lot, baptism doesn't save you. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus saves you. Baptism is a sign that points you to the gospel, that points you to the one who does save you, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why the Apostle Paul says, by the spirit, not by the letter. The law can diagnose your problem. Only the spirit can cure your problem. To say it another way, religion says try harder. Gospel says you can't, but God can by his spirit. Maybe the cold weather, the change in weather often brings about a dead car battery. Maybe that's been you this winter. But think about getting in your car. It will not start. The battery is dead. And let's pretend that you get out and you've wax your car, you clean your car, you clean the inside, you even put new tires on it. It looks awesome from the outside. And you get in, did that help your battery? It still won't start. The problem is not external, it's internal. You need power from outside yourself. You need a jump. Someone else has to provide what you cannot generate. That is the difference between religion and the gospel. Religion is polishing the car and hoping it starts. The gospel is admitting that you're dead and crying out for power outside yourself to come and save you. Admitting that you cannot jumpstart your own heart, that only the spirit can make you alive. And the good news is that God freely gives his spirit to those who ask. And maybe you're sitting there this morning and you're thinking, how do I know that the Spirit's made me alive? How do I know that I'm alive and not dead? That's a good question. And I encourage you to keep looking into that question. Let me give you a couple of thoughts. We could talk about it for a long time. But the fundamental mark of being spiritually alive is faith itself. Do you believe in the gospel? Do you confess that Jesus Christ is Lord? Not just intellectually, but your whole life is oriented towards Him. Beyond that, think about the fruit of the Spirit. So the fruit the Spirit produces love and joy and peace and patience and kindness. Another mark would be a growing hatred for sin that drives you away, that doesn't drive you away from Jesus, but actually drives you to Him. Love is another mark we see in the scriptures. You love the people around you. Your life is more dependent on God rather than you're simply trying to manage life on your own. Very important here. These are not a checklist to earn salvation. Please hear that. But they are evidences that the spirit is alive in you. And it's not about perfection, no, it's about direction. Dead hearts don't fight sin, they excuse it. Dead hearts don't love Jesus, they use him. Dead hearts do not cry out for God, they trust themselves. But if the spirit is alive in you, the marks of the spirit will start, again, not perfectly, but increasingly start to manifest themselves in your life. And maybe you're still not sure and you're thinking, I don't know. Well, the very question that you hunger for assurance, the desire to actually know Jesus rather than just know about him is actually pretty good evidence that the Spirit is at work in you because dead hearts do not care about that question. And so, do you know God? Or do you just know about him? Is your faith real? Or is it just religious? Very difficult questions. And some of you are saying, I need Jesus. What do I do? Admit that you're dead. Declare spiritual bankruptcy that you cannot save yourself. Believe the gospel. I need a righteousness that I do not have, that I cannot earn, that God provides through Jesus Christ. How do I get it? By faith, not by more knowledge and trying harder and rituals, by faith, trusting that Jesus has done it all to save you. And lastly, cry out for the Spirit. God, give me a new heart. Make me alive. And here's the promise. If you cry out for God, He will not turn you away. Because Jesus says, whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. Not whoever cleans up first, not whoever has perfect theology, whoever comes to me, I will not cast out. That means you. Right now. Just as you are. God says to come. You see, at the end of the day, we are all just beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. And that bread is the Lord Jesus Christ. Will you come to Him, whether it's for the first time or the hundredth time? Come to Jesus. Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you came for us, that you died for us, that you have made us alive. Would you forgive us for our pride, for trusting ourselves instead of resting in you alone, in your righteousness? Would you help us to be a church that boasts in Jesus Christ alone? That when people walk through the doors here, they will say, I don't know, but these people love Jesus and He's their only hope. That's what we're after. We need you to do that through your spirit. Would you do that in Jesus' name? Amen.