“Now we know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth. Do you think — anyone of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same — that you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Self-righteousness is not a good look. What exactly is self-righteousness, though? Oxford says it is having an unfounded certainty of one’s moral superiority. Essentially, it’s the feeling that you are better than the people around you. Of course, you don’t feel that, but I’ll bet you know a bunch of other folks who seem to as far as you are concerned. In somewhat more robust theological terms, self-righteousness is the mindset that you have made yourself right with God. If our culture generally condemns the Oxford sort of self-righteousness, it ranges from being more ambivalent to openly encouraging of this second sort. Paul doesn’t agree. Let’s talk about why.

Last night in Bible study, we had a conversation about spiritual pride. I asked the group if they thought the kind of spiritual pride on display through the Pharisees and Sadducees in a particular encounter with Jesus was something that still afflicted the church today. I was actually going to make it a two-part question where we started more positively with the idea that it is not and to then talk a bit about how we have overcome it, but the affirmative rumblings started rolling through group before I had even finished asking the initial setup question.

When I prompted the group for examples of how spiritual pride still manifests itself today, someone in the room shared about her experience not growing up in church and becoming a believer later in life. She is still very connected to her family, but she’s still the only member of her family who is connected to a church at all. She shared how her family often accuses her of what amounts to spiritual pride. She does her best to explain that spiritual pride has no place in the life of a follower of Jesus, and that she stays connected and involved with the church because she recognizes her need for grace and a dependence on Christ to help her overcome brokenness in her own life (which is the opposite of spiritual pride), but the message often falls on deaf ears.

Her story gave me a good opportunity to remind the group that while spiritual pride can often be a problem inside the church on the part of professed followers of Jesus, the perception of spiritual pride can be a significant sticking point for those outside the church when thinking about the church. Part of the reason for this is that being around someone we perceive to be more righteous and generally put together than we are can provoke guilt and shame for our own perceived failings. One of the ways we react to this is to try to attack or question or otherwise tear down the character of this other person to make ourselves feel better.

The other part of the reason for this perception of spiritual pride in the church on the part of those who aren’t is that we’ve worked really hard to earn it over the years. We have often been guilty of giving in to spiritual pride and looking down on those outside the church as our moral and spiritual inferiors. There’s nothing in the Scriptures, rightly understood, to justify such a view, but our inherent tribalism leads us into such a posture far more easily than we’d like to believe. There’s not much difference between believers and unbelievers in this regard. We will differ in which tribes we support. More than there simply not being anything in the Scriptures to justify the spiritual pride we sometimes feel toward those outside the church, there are fairly explicit warnings against such an attitude as well as condemnations for holding it. One such warning and condemnation is right here.

After making a blanket condemnation of sin and pointing out how our experience of the consequences of sin can sometimes serve as its own form of divine judgment on us for practicing it, there were some members of Paul’s audience he knew would be feeling pretty good about themselves. He knew this because he had encountered the same attitude in similar folks in other places where he had shared this message. These were the Jewish background believers in the audience who had grown up with the Law of Moses as something they sought to keep as a means of staying right with God. When they heard condemnations of sin like Paul had just written, and saw that most of the things on his list were specifically prohibited by the law they had spent their lives trying to keep, a bit (or a lot) of spiritual pride was a fairly natural result.

Because of all of this, the first place Paul goes after his general remarks about sin is to focus on the group of folks who were likely to judge people they perceived as being sinners. Yesterday we talked about his statement against making moral judgments of other people generally. In this next bit of text, he gets more specific.

“Now we know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth.” For those folks who were tempted to judge unbelievers in the culture around them as if they were God’s agent in such matters, Paul baits them into his point by seemingly giving them credit in their judgment. When God judges sinners, He does so based on the truth. The spiritually prideful people he was aiming at would have been nodding their heads in agreement here. “Yes, God’s judgment is based on truth. We believe in truth. Therefore, we are going to help Him hand out His judgments on those around us who are falling short of His righteousness.” Put like that, the problems with this kind of an attitude seem fairly obvious, but it is an exceedingly easy mental trap to fall into in practice.

But then Paul turns the tables on them. “Do you think – anyone of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same – that you will escape God’s judgment?” Wait, what? God is judging me now? On what grounds? I do the same things they do? Well, I did it that one time, but look at all the other good things I’ve done. Okay, so there was that other time too. And that one. But at least I knew the Law and tried to keep it. They didn’t do that much.

Nope, Paul says. If you did those things too – and you did some of those same things too – then you are in no place to judge. You are in no place to judge because when you judge you claim by your very judgment to be morally unstained by sin. You claim by your judgment to not need God’s mercy yourself while at the same time purporting to withhold it from them. Yet in being guilty of sin yourself, you face the same judgment they do from God who judges based on the truth. Specifically here, He judges based on the truth of what you’ve done. Do you really want to set yourself apart from God’s kindness and grace like that? “Do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience?” Have you forgotten that “God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”

Instead of spending your time judging others, you need to shift your focus around to being grateful for that very kindness of God. You need to focus on marveling at His restraint. You need to stop seeking to find just where the limits of His patience are. You need to commit yourself to the path of repentance He is keeping open for you in Christ.

The truth about being judgmental on the part of followers of Jesus is that it is a symptom of a heart that has not fully grasped the wonder of grace. Part of the reason Paul spends so much time at the beginning of his letter to the Roman believers here talking about sin is that our coming to a firm and clear understanding of our utter brokenness and inability to save ourselves from sin’s deadly grasp apart from Christ is essential to our subsequent embrace of the Gospel. The Gospel says that you and I need to be saved, and that Jesus is the only one who can do that. Our needing to be saved necessarily implies that we can’t save ourselves. We don’t even contribute to the process. As Paul later clarifies, God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. It was while we were stuck in sin and not really even looking for a way out that God moved to offer us salvation in Christ. As long as we think we’re even somewhat okay with God on our own, embracing the Gospel is simply not something we are going to do.

The more fully we recognize and accept our brokenness in sin, though, the more fully and deeply and gratefully we will marvel at the miracle of grace. In fact, we’ll spend so much time marveling at God’s grace to us in Christ that we won’t have any time to spare for judging those who don’t measure up to God’s standards (or, as is more often the case, standards we’ve set and hold ourselves that are designed merely to mimic God’s standards, but which are really about safeguarding our own convenience and comfort). We’ll be too busy sharing the message of grace with everyone willing to listen to us and even people who aren’t.

This hits for us in two ways. First, if you find yourself in a place where you know you are judging others, take a pause in your judgment and reflect a bit on when was the last time you really marveled at God’s grace. Remind yourself of the fact that the same grace that saved you also has the power to save the people you are judging. The words of the old Gaither Gospel song really are true: “I’m just a sinner saved by grace. When I stood condemned to death He took my place. Now I live and breathe in freedom with each breath of life I take. Loved and forgiven, backed with a living. I’m just a sinner saved by grace.” When you get your mind and heart more fully around that, judging others will be the last thing on your schedule.

Second, if you find yourself being criticized and condemned by others for being judgmental and spiritually prideful and self-righteous, rather than getting on your high horse over the accusations, pause for a moment and reflect on whether or not there’s any truth to them. Could it be that you’ve given so little attention to the grace and mercy, the kindness, restraint, and patience of God in your spiritual conversations with others, that you’ve come across more judgmentally than you intended? How can you include more grace and less judgment in your Gospel conversations?

Ultimately, Paul’s right: God’s kindness is what leads us to repentance. Self-righteousness and spiritual pride only lead to rule-keeping which is a pale and pathetic imitation of the life that is truly life in Christ. Judgmentalism makes people more religious, not more faithful. Kindness is what leads to repentance. That was the case for you. And it will be the case for the others around you when you allow God’s kindness to shine through you. Through this lens, the cultural slogan that “kindness counts” really is true. So, let’s make sure that we count.