Bearing the Image

Romans 2:1-4

January 26, 2025 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I was reading a devotional yesterday about a woman who was doing a lot of ministry work and suddenly came down with a recurrence of a previous cancer. She had assumed the lump in her abdomen was something else, and put off getting it checked out. Lots of prayer and surgery later, she is doing well, but you can’t help but read something like that or go through something like that and wonder why. It is the eternal question and the one we most often never get an answer to. Why do such devastating things happen? Why do bad things happen? We might ask the same question in the midst of the broken world we find ourselves in. The world is a mess, people are mad, relationships are struggling, and we keep asking why. But, unlike a lot of medical situations, I think we really know the “why,” though we don’t often admit it or don’t want to admit the truth. Author Becky Pippert described it several years ago: “The problem with the world is me” (cf. Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons, pg. 1; McKnight, Romans, pg. 55).

This morning we are continuing our series called “Unquestioned Answers,” focusing on some of the cliches that Christian use often without thinking about it, things we say that honestly aren’t all that helpful. When we say these things, we think we’re dispensing Biblical truth when really all we are doing is brushing people off. The state of today’s world demands that we think more deeply about the issues that confront us and one of those issues is sin and forgiveness. We live in a culture that largely ignores or has redefined sin, but it’s also true that the church (you and me) has become content to just throw stones at those “sinners.” We’ve got people classified into “us” and “them.” We are righteous; they are not.

Here’s the cliche we often use: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” I’ve said that; you probably have too, maybe even this past week. So what’s the problem with it? The Bible is very clear that sin breaks our relationship with God and it’s detrimental if not destructive to who we are as human beings. The Apostle Paul said, “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9). And all of that is absolutely true. The problem with the cliche is that it’s incredibly difficult if not impossible to separate the “sin” from the “sinner.” So we may say things like that, but we actually end up hating the sinner, condemning the person who has potentially made bad choices and forgetting that that person is still made in the image of God. There must be a better way than this cliche, and I believe Paul shows us that way in the passage we read this morning from the letter to the Romans.

Now, I want you to picture how this letter originally arrived. It wasn’t bound in a book; someone (chapter 16 seems to indicate it was Deacon Phoebe, 16:1-2) brought this letter to the churches in Rome and read it out loud to them the first time. Most scholars believe Paul wrote this letter as an introduction of himself and his ministry to the Roman church. He had not been to Rome but he hoped to come soon and use the capital of the empire as a base for a mission to Spain. So he wants them to know what he is teaching; he wants them to know who he is. He says in chapter 1 that he is thankful for the church that has grown there, and that he longs to visit them, but then he launches into what amounts to a long explanation of his theology. And I sort of imagine the people in the front row getting excited by what he says at first. He calls out the sin of the Roman Empire, which was pagan and sexualized in every imaginable way, and Paul says because of that the “wrath of God is being revealed” (1:18). He also says that people are “without excuse” because the evidence of God is everywhere. Still, the Romans have turned away from that evidence and chosen their own way instead. He says, “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools…” (1:22). I’m certainly glad we don’t live in a world full of fools like that, aren't you?

So I picture the people on the front row in the Roman church saying, “Amen” and “Hallelujah” and “You go, Paul!” Until Phoebe comes to what we know as chapter 2. Remember that there were no chapter breaks in the original letter, but I still think that Phoebe probably took a breath before reading this: “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things” (2:1). Wait, what? We haven’t done anything nearly as bad as the Romans have, Paul! They worship false gods and even the emperor! They aren’t faithful in their marriages and sleep with people they shouldn’t! How can you say we have done the same things? Remember that the early church was largely made up of Jewish believers, people who grew up with a highly developed morality. They were deeply committed to doing the so-called “right thing” and avoiding all the sins Paul has listed in chapter 1. And because of that, they tended to believe they were without sin. They were in right standing before God. They were like the Pharisee Jesus talked about in Luke 18. As he was praying, he said, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—…I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” In other words, I’m doing everything right, God. You obviously approve of me. But then Jesus tells about a tax collector who can’t even look toward God, who is simply praying over and over, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” To the surprise of everyone in the crowd that day, Jesus says the tax collector is the one who went home right with God (18:9-14), not because he had done everything right but because he had a humble heart. Paul is telling the Roman Christians the same thing: you judge others, you look down on others, and that is sin just as much as all the things you look down on them for (cf. Osborne, Romans [IVPNTC], pg. 60). The people on the front row are speechless by now.

Isn’t it interesting that the sins we get so worked up about are always someone else’s or the sins that we don’t participate in? We don’t say it this way, but we often think God may be irritated by my sin, but he’s really angry about yours! Yours is always a lot worse than mine! I remember many years ago at Annual Conference, another pastor came up to me while someone was making a speech against gambling and the pastor said to me, “Why don’t we ever talk about the sin of gluttony?” It’s because the sins we get upset about are always someone else’s. We’re the Roman Christians, glad when someone else’s sin gets punished and thinking ours don’t matter. But they do. God does not have a sliding scale for sin. Here’s the truth: “God is against anything that keeps us from more fully bearing his image” (Myers, Unquestioned Answers, pg. 100). God hates sin. But God loves us more than he hates sin. He loves us so much he doesn’t want us to participate in sin, in those things that pull us away from him. We’re going to come back to that idea in a moment.

But before we get to that, we want to notice what Paul says happens when we judge others: we “show contempt” toward or despise three things (2:4). In other words, by treating others as less than me, by judging their sin as worse than mine, I am demonstrating to God that I don’t really understand what he is like. First of all, I despise God’s kindness, or that could also be translated as his gentleness. This has to do with what we Methodists often call “prevenient grace,” that God is kind toward everyone, regardless of their spiritual state, because that’s who he is. Here’s how Jesus described his father: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). We might say he sends snow and cold on the good and the bad, and fires consume the homes of the moral and the immoral. That’s one of my problems with the memes that go around whenever there is a disaster of any sort, claiming divine protection for supposedly Godly people. For one, most of those are fake, but beyond that, it’s simply bad theology that lines up more with the American dream than with the Bible. God allows rain, snow, fire and pestilence on the good and the bad. He sends the sun and the moon and the light and goodness on all people. He is kind, even to those I am fond of judging.

Paul says when I judge others I am also despising God’s “forbearance,” which is one of those big words that really means self-restraint. He holds back his hand even though he is offended by our sin. Jesus hinted at this when he was describing the end of time; he says that “Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24). People disagree on what that means, but underlying his statement is a divine self-restraint. God could snap his fingers and take care of all the sin in the world in a heartbeat, but he doesn’t because, again, he loves us and practices forbearance.

And the third thing I am despising when I judge others is God’s patience, which is related to his self-restraint. To those who wondered why Jesus hadn’t come back yet, Peter said this: “The Lord is not slow about keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9; cf. Osborne 61). When we point out the sin in the world (the sin of other people, of course) and we ask why God allows it, that’s the answer. He is patient. He wants all people to repent, and he’s willing to allow the time for them to do it. And when I judge “those sinners” and expect God’s judgment right now, I despise his patience. Two of the disciples once did this. There was a time when Jesus and the disciples were not welcomed into a village, and James and John asked Jesus if they could call down fire on the village. Jesus just went to another village (cf. Luke 9:51-56). He is patient. Make no mistake—there will come a day when God will judge the whole world. But judgment is his job, not mine. Scot McKnight says there are three things for us to remember: “God alone is the Judge. God alone will judge. God is fair” (59). We’re going to talk more about that next week, but that’s the essence of what Paul wants the Romans to understand.

And that brings us back to Genesis, to gaining a right attitude toward sin—yours and mine and everyone else’s. It’s not about yours being “worse” than mine or mine being “worse” than someone else’s. That’s not the focus of Scripture. The focus is this: sin has broken the image of God in us. From the very beginning, we were created in the image of God (cf. Genesis 1:27), all of us. Those who try to develop a hierarchy of the sexes forget that Genesis establishes that both male and female were created in the image of God. That doesn’t mean we look like God physically; I don’t know what God looks like. In the ancient world, image bearing was a common practice. When a king conquered a particular area, an image of that king (some physical representation) would be set up to remind the people who was in charge, who controlled that area. So when Genesis says we bear God’s image, the author is saying we represent him and are the proof that God is in control of the world. Later on, in the Ten Commandments (cf. Exodus 20:4), God forbids making any physical idol that is supposed to look like him because he already has image bearers: you and me and every person in the world (cf. Myers 102-103).

But the way we bear his image is not physically. Like I said, I don’t have any idea what God looks like. Instead, he says the way we bear his image in the world is to live the way he instructs us to live—which just so happens to be living the best way possible in this world that he designed. Incredible, isn’t it? We are meant bear his image with our very lives.

But, unfortunately, not long after the beginning, it all went horribly, terribly wrong. The story is literally as old as time, and I’m not going to rehearse all the details this morning. But basically Genesis says our first parents, Adam and Eve, chose to do the one thing God told them not to do. And while some think God was being cruel by punishing them, what actually happened was the natural consequence of telling God, “Leave us alone.” Through their actions, Adam and Eve pushed God away, and the world we live in has ever since experienced what it’s like when we refuse God’s touch and God’s direction. We were told to “walk this way, live this way,” and we said, “No thanks. We’ll do it our own way.” That’s sin and it broke the world. And so today we experience this brokenness in a variety of ways. Mental illness and major depression are at all-time highs. More people today die from drug overdoses than from car crashes or shootings. Children today are the most vulnerable they have ever been to experience physical or sexual abuse, and a third of sex-trafficking victims are children (Myers 104). This is not the world God intended when he said, “Let there be…” We see evidence every day that the world is broken by sin.

And as Paul pointed out, it does us no good to point to other peoples’ sin and say, “They are the problem.” No, we are all the problem. Now when we face a medical issue, we usually end up seeing lots of doctors to try to figure out what the problem is. So let’s suppose a doctor does figure it out and gives you a clear direction for healing. Maybe it’s a more healthy lifestyle, or some medication, or more exercise. Doesn’t really matter what it is, let’s suppose the doctor says, “Do this and you won’t have this problem again.” Then let’s suppose we say to the doctor, “Well, Doc, I appreciate all your work on my behalf, but I think I’m going to ignore your solution and just keep doing what I’m doing. Thanks anyway.” That would be crazy, right? That would be irresponsible. But that’s exactly what we have done with God. We have refused to accept his solution because we think we know better. That was the problem in the Roman church and it’s the same problem today, two thousand years later. Thanks, God, we will take it from here.

I think it’s because God’s solution looks too simple. We think it can’t possibly be that easy. God’s solution is threefold. First, we learn to see each other as image bearers, each and every person (whatever their sin) is made in the image of the eternal God. Doesn’t matter what you think of them or whether you like them or not; they are made in the image of God and therefore have eternal worth. Every. Single. Person. Second, we learn to receive forgiveness from God. But that, of course, requires admitting that we have sinned, that we are broken. (So it means admitting the truth.) And I’ve had conversations with people who think the things they have done are too bad, that they couldn’t be forgiven. That simply couldn’t be further from the truth. There is nothing God can’t forgive and there is nothing God doesn’t want to forgive, right here and right now. Later on in this same letter, Paul will put it this way: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus gave his life on the cross so that we could be forgiven. We’re going to talk more in depth about what that means during Lent this year, but for now just know that it’s true. Forgiveness for whatever you have done is possible. And not only is it possible, but it’s guaranteed when you ask.

And there’s a third piece of the solution. A word that shows up over and over again in the New Testament is the word “reconciliation” (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:18-20). Reconciliation refers to the healing of a relationship, and while it is often referring to our relationship with God, there is also a call for us to reconcile with others whom we have hurt and who have hurt us. Brokenness between people needs to be forgiven and healed as well. Forgiveness isn’t just vertical; it’s also horizontal. You see, when we use that slogan, “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” we are implying that we are better than others, just like the believers in Rome did. “They” are less righteous than we are—that’s what we are saying. It’s like we’re putting our thumb on the scale. Apart from God’s mercy, none of us have any hope, and so we have no reason to hold grudges against others because Christ died for that other person just as much as he did for you. That’s the good news of the Gospel that John Newton tried to capture in his famous hymn: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!” Even me. Even you. Those people in the front row at the Roman church had no reason to withhold forgiveness from those in their community. And I have no right or reason to withhold grace and forgiveness from the people in mine. Leave the judgment up to God; we’re called to be the forgiving people Jesus wants us to be (cf. Myers 107-110).

One time Jesus had an expert in the law approach him. A lawyer, and worse than that a religious lawyer. He had a question for Jesus, maybe one that they had been talking about in the pub down the street where all the lawyers gathered every day for lunch. “Teacher,” the man says, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Now, at this point, he’s probably expecting a long list of requirements, a guide for holy living, or maybe (just maybe) an affirmation that says, “You are already in, man. You’re good.” But that’s not what Jesus does. He doesn’t react; he chooses to relate (cf. Myers 110) by asking a question. “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” In other words, “What do you think?” So the man gives what Jesus says is the correct answer; it’s actually the same answer Jesus himself gives when he is asked which commandment is the greatest of them all (cf. Matthew 22:34-40). The lawyer says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” That’s right, Jesus says, you’ve got it. “Do this and you will live” (Luke 10:25-28). Do this. Do what? Sounds to me like—Love God. Love People. Love Life. Love—that’s what people made in the image of God do. They don’t pass judgment. They don’t act superior. They don’t condemn. They love. They forgive. They live like Jesus. And when they do, they will change the world.

Love the sinner, hate the sin? As with all of these cliches, there’s partial truth here. But since we are all sinners, how about we love the sinner—every sinner—seek to forgive the sins against us and be forgiven, and leave the rest up to God? Let’s pray.