Fusion: No Curve

Fusion 1/20/11: No Curve (Romans 1:18-2:5)

One of the funniest things someone can say is "I don't care what other people think of me." It is funny because the sheer fact that someone has to verbalize that statement is in and of itself a negation of it's truth. The truth is that everyone cares what others think of them. Everyone cares about where they stack up compared to others. In our flesh, we are people who are overwhelmingly concerned about where we are compared to others.

Last week, we talked about how we can misunderstand grace by believing that God came so that we can just be better than other people. This is really what is at the heart of the most common belief about God, Salvation, and Heaven.

Think about it.

How many times have you had a conversation with someone where they said, "I am a good person." Most often, they were saying this while you were involved in a conversation about life, death, God, heaven, hell, judgment, or salvation.

I believe that many people who are professing Christians struggle with this as well. They convince themselves that faith and grace is just about being better than the average person. It is just about being good.

The Jewish believers who made up most of the early Roman community of faith struggled with this thinking as well. They believed in Christ, but they were still placing hope on how good they were compared to the Gentile believers who had just left behind a pagan worship system.

This way of thinking is a lot like viewing God's judgment as a curve system.

We have all had the professor who teaches a class that everybody finds difficult, and so this professor grades the class on a curve. Nobody actually has to get in A or know all the material, you just have to do better than the average person. Remember, that feeling of elation when you walked out of a test that you got a C on, at best, and then found out that almost everyone you knew in class bombed the test? It is a great feeling.

Why? What are we celebrating?

In curve grading, we root for other people to fail. We hope for the standard to be lower. We feel good about ourselves for getting what should have been a D because the rest of the class failed completely.

We do this in our spiritual lives as well. We excuse sin because it isn't as bad as someone else. We rejoice in judging others because it makes us feel more righteous.

These are the feelings the Jewish believers in Rome had towards the Gentile believers.

Their hope was placed in morality, that they were better. Morality has nothing to do with God, though. Morality is no savior. Placing their hope in their own morality, these believers were headed for an eternal disappointment.

So in Romans 2:1-5, Paul reminds them of two very important truths.
1.God doesn't grade on a curve.
God is completely holy and perfectly righteous, and that is what he demands. Jesus came because perfection was required. When we put our hope and trust in being better than someone else, we are confident in our morality. Yet, scripture tells us that our very best is but filthy rags to a Holy God. In the presence of a Holy God, we need something better to offer than that. Jesus is our hope and our perfection. He is the one who has the perfect score. This is important for us to remember, but God doesn't grade us on a curve.

2.Judgment is not a place where grace lives.
If we stop looking at everyone else and trying to figure out where we measure up, we can truly open our eyes to see ourselves. We can remember that we too are guilty; no less and no more than anyone else. If we believe that God is able to forgive us, that He extends grace to us, then we will realize that He is extending grace to all. If we judge others, if we place confidence on our righteousness, then we better be perfect. If not, the same law, the same list of rights and wrongs, we used to judge someone else will be used to measure us. There is no grace for us there.