“Therefore 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 thing.” Romans 2:1

My, oh my! Today’s verse is, perhaps, and for good reason, the most underrated verse in all of Scripture. It very well might be the greatest verse in the Bible in that it transforms both our personal sanctification and our evangelism. It changes everything. It’s the red pill. It’s the nuclear bomb of apologetics.

How so? Because everyone is a moral absolutist making judgments on right and wrong. We’re constantly doing it. Fish swim. Birds fly. Snakes slither. Men and women make moral judgments. There’s no way to escape this fact and it shows indisputably how we’re alone on this planet as image-bearers of God. Sharks don’t stop to consider the morality of the situation before they treat your leg like a snack. Only men and women, created by God for Himself, are moral beings. The minute we judge anything as right or wrong, we admit this glorious truth.

Oh, and since it’s true, we know that Jesus Christ is Lord! Why? Because only Christ makes sense of the full subject (the plain fact and its implications).

First, a word of caution. This is about us too. This whole passage concerns all of fallen mankind.

We just spent the last chapter detailing the fall of mankind in general and we considered the horrific depths to which that downward spiral brings us. The danger is that our consciences, seared and distorted by sin, will read it all as an abstraction and we’ll fail to see that the whole thing, dreadful as it is, includes us in our fallen state. To address and correct this natural inclination, the Apostle Paul, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, shifts the argumentation to the individual reader.

Let’s admit it. You’ve read Romans 1 and thought of others, right? That’s what I do. We think of those reprobate sinners out there. We think of our enemies. We think of politicians. Maybe our in-laws. But, seriously, Romans 2 lowers a hammer blow upon all that nonsense. It’s meant to hit with full effect, so don’t pull away. Stay there and feel the weight of it. Consider it carefully, soberly and logically.

I’m convinced that every problem that arises in interpretation of Scripture comes from undervaluing God’s sovereignty and righteousness while overvaluing ourselves. We do this in great part because we don’t humbly sit before a verse like this. So much time and energy are spent on training up church members in apologetics, evangelism and so-called “practical theology.” But to even say “practical theology” is to admit the error. All truth about God is practical for the very reason that we’re utterly lost without Him. Why this mistake, you ask? Because we think we have an excuse.

If we understand this verse personally, that is, we comprehend that it applies to everyone on the planet, then our theological issues are set in order. We’ll stop coming to Scripture as the judge. We’ll stop pretending that God “has to make sense” to us and realize that He’s the standard of making sense. What’s going on is that Paul is saying what should be obvious: no one is morally neutral in life. We’re all judges and we’re judging all the time.

As chapter 1 drew to a close with a stunning crescendo of human arrogance, ugliness and falsehood, we’re all nodding our heads. Professing believers are saying, “yeah…you tell them, Paul! They’re awful people!” Non-believers, on the other hand, are saying, “you Christians are so judgmental…I’m not like that…it’s not good to be judgmental.” But what does the non-believer do instead? They judge according to a false standard.

Here’s the simple and stunning truth: everyone on the planet is judging right and wrong. Everyone is a moral absolutist. The minute we open our mouths to say, “yes or no”, to say some behavior is correct or not, we take off the mask of neutrality. We are the judge. Once we see this central deceit at the heart of human existence, our whole world will change! Either God is the judge of right and wrong, the ultimate moral standard, or something else is. There’s no escaping this issue. It keeps bringing us back to the cross of Christ, to the central lie of humanity, the Great Exchange detailed in Romans 1. That’s why we fervently try to avoid it.

There is and must be an ultimate, final standard. The minute someone says, “no, that’s not right” he/she admits it. The only question is: who or what is that standard? There can’t be a moral standard that’s impersonal. It’s logically impossible for moral authority to flow from an inmate thing. This obliterates all non-Christian epistemologies and metaphysics. Polytheism, pantheism, atheism, deism…they all crumble from this simple truth. If there’s not a supreme, personal moral authority in the universe, merely saying “no” about something makes no sense.

This is the biggest truth in the universe. Right and wrong, that is, moral authority, proves that Jesus Christ is Lord because only He makes sense of this obvious fact of life and its logical corollaries. (Islam, for example, has a great many internal contradictions and external inconsistencies that prove its impossibility).

So, again, to say that right and wrong exist, is to admit that morality is real. No one escapes this. The question is who the authority is. It must be, as we detailed, a person. And the person must be righteous or else the whole business falls apart. So, watch for it in your own mind now. Train yourself to keep catching how everyone is a moral absolutist while denying the true source of righteousness. Watch how the so-called evangelicals of tolerance, the atheists who say there’s no absolute, are incessantly issuing moral edicts. And watch how carefully they avoid any conversation about the source of their moral code, which they intend to impose upon everyone.

Yes, yes, indeed! Once you see this, the mask of unbelief falls off before your very eyes and you see at last the arrogance of unbelief. You see how every person intends to be their own god, refusing to acknowledge the true God. You see, once and for all, the great truth! It’s amazing. It’s exhilarating. “Let God be true though every one were a liar…” (Romans 3:4).

It’s the heart of the con. It’s the foundation of all evil. Here it is. Romans 2:1! It is the key to unmasking the hubris and pride of fallen man, even and especially in our own heart. We who dare call Almighty God a liar must sit humbly before this verse and repent of our “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). We must repent of using our own mind, or some other earthly authority, as our ultimate standard. We have no excuse. This makes it powerfully clear. Repent and be saved, for now is the day of grace still.