“Aren’t those people just terrible?” In our increasingly polarized world, it’s easier and easier for us to pass judgment on whoever disagrees with us, isn’t it? But in today’s passage, Paul challenges us to take a look in the mirror – for all too often, the truth is that we are actually just as guilty as “those people” are.

This is even the case where it comes to our own purely human standards. After all, how many folks who oppose same-sex weddings are at the same time breaking their own marriage vows? How many folks who drive electric cars and rigorously recycle are living in desert cities where their thirst for drinking water is depleting ancient aquifers or drying up once-flourishing estuaries?

And if we can’t even keep our own codes of conduct, how much less are we able to follow God’s perfect law of love? How many of us love God so much that we are never anxious about our daily needs (Matthew 6:31)? How many of us love our husbands or wives so much that we never even look with desire at anyone else (Matthew 5:28)? And in these increasingly polarized times, how many of us truly love our enemies, praying for those on the other side of the political spectrum (Matthew 5:44)?

No, the sad truth is that, whenever we pass judgment on others, we are actually condemning ourselves (Romans 2:1). And that’s because all of us, Jew and Gentile, black and white, Republican and Democrat stand guilty before an impartial God (Romans 2:11).

So, instead of pointing fingers at “those people,” let’s take that look in the mirror. Let’s allow God’s Word to convict us of our sin, to drive us to our knees, and to be grateful that God has, in His perfect justice, provided a perfect Savior – even for sinners like “those people,” and even for sinners like us.

Romans 2:1-16 (ESV)

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 things.
2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.
3 Do you suppose, O man– you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself– that you will escape the judgment of God?
4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
6 He will render to each one according to his works:
7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;
8 but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
9 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek,
10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.
11 For God shows no partiality.
12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.
14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.