God’s Goodness To Little Goody Two-Shoes

UNSHAKEABLE: To be an intolerant, arrogant, hypocritical, coercive, pious religionist is perhaps the worst enemy of the advancement of God’s kingdom. These are the types who say one thing but do another. They spout piety yet behave anyway but pious. They sit in judgment over the world’s evil, yet their hearts are full of the very sin they condemn. They make church all about themselves and very little about reaching a lost world with the Good News. And more than any other repelling factor, these religious do-gooders keep seekers from church, sully the reputation of God before a watching world, and solidify the excuses of sinners not to darken the doorway of the church because “of all the hypocrites who go there.” Here’s the deal, dear friend: make sure you are not in that camp. Open your heart to God right now and ask him to examine you. Don’t let hardening of the spiritual arteries lead you down the Pharisee path. There are enough of them in your church — it doesn’t need one more.

Unshakeable Living // Romans 2:3-4

Since you judge others for doing these things, why do you think you can avoid God’s judgment when you do the same things? 4 Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?

It is one thing to be a willfully sinful pagan, but it is quite another to be an odiously sinful religionist, which is the type of person Paul turns his theological guns on here in this passage. This one is of that tribe of people who fill the pews of churches every Sunday, perhaps sitting inconspicuously right next to you — self-righteous, spiritually arrogant, smugly sanctimonious, and self-absorbed. As John McClintock quipped,

The Pharisees are not all dead yet, and are not all Jews.

To be an intolerant, arrogant, hypocritical, coercive, pious religionist is perhaps the worst enemy of the advancement of the kingdom of God. These types say one thing but do another. They spout piety yet behave anyway but pious. They sit in judgment over the evil of the world, yet their hearts are full of the very evil they condemn. They make church all about themselves and very little about reaching a lost world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And more than any other repelling factor, these religious do-gooders keep seekers from church, sully the reputation of God before a watching world, and solidify the excuses of sinners not to darken the doorway of the church because “of all the hypocrites who go there.”

But, as Paul says in Romans 2:1-4, these religious moralists are without excuse, because the theological knowledge they possess brings them even greater accountability before God. The very judgment that God has pronounced on willful pagans will fall upon these folks as well. (Rom 2:3). It is these who will likely hear those haunting words spoken by our Lord, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” (Matt 25:41) In truth, it is they, themselves, who never really knew the God in whose name they sat in judgment over the world.

So, just what is their problem? Mainly, their self-righteousness has led them to focus only on the external acts of religious piety while ignoring the more important inner core of the heart — love, devotion, compassion, kindness, and purity — that so greatly matters to God. In so doing, they have minimized their own sinfulness before a holy God and have lost whatever connection with him they might have once, if ever, enjoyed. According to Romans 1:5, their hearts have become “hardened”, (“stubborn”—NIV), which in the Greek language is the word, sklayrotace — the word from which we get sclerosis, the hardening of the arteries—a silent, invisible but deadly condition. That is exactly what the religious, hypocritical, judgmental moralist has — hardening of the spiritual arteries — and that indeed is a problem.

Even while blind to their own sickly condition (Rev 3:17), yet again, the Good News is still at work in their lives. Paul says in Romans 2:4 that God’s common grace (“goodness”) is upon even these do-gooders. He has allowed them space to come to the truth rather than face the judgment they deserve (“forbearance”). He has given them a period of time (“patience”) for his grace and forbearance to bring a change of heart, behavior, and life-direction (“repentance”).

And while we are not to mistake God’s kindness for softness, isn’t it amazing that God’s grace still reaches out to the most annoying sinners of all—those sanctimonious saints sitting in their pew, turning people away from God right and left by their religious hypocrisy and spiritual coerciveness? Yet our stubbornly loving God continues to woo even these goody two-shoes to himself through his own goodness to them. Lord have mercy!

So here’s the deal, dear friend: Let’s make sure you and I are not in that camp. Open your heart to God right now and ask him to examine you. Don’t let hardening of the spiritual arteries lead you down that path. There are enough goody-two-shoes in your church — it doesn’t need one more.

Neither does a world that God so desperately desires to redeem!