Keeping Score

Read‍

Romans 2:14-16 “(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.”

Think

The group project was supposed to be split four ways. Instead, you built the slides, wrote the script, and stayed up until midnight finishing it, while one of your partners sent a thumbs-up emoji and disappeared. Then, during the presentation, he steps forward and confidently explains the slide you made as if it were his idea. The teacher nods and says, “Great work.” Something hot rises in your chest, and your jaw locks. Nobody has to explain to you what just happened. It isn’t fair.

Where did that feeling come from? Nobody sat you down as a toddler and gave you a lesson on fairness. Watch two little kids split a cookie and you will see it already there. One of them will inspect the two halves like a scientist with a microscope. Long before anyone teaches us right and wrong, something inside us is already keeping score.

Paul noticed the same thing about two thousand years ago. In Romans 2, he pauses in the middle of a bigger point to talk about Gentiles, people who didn’t have the law God gave through Moses. Even so, he says, they “do by nature things required by the law.” Deep down, they know some things are right and some things are wrong. Why? Because “the requirements of the law are written on their hearts.”

Travel to almost any culture in history and you will find different rules about food, clothing, and how to greet people. But you won’t find one that honors the person who betrays his friends. The details vary, but the core is remarkably similar, as if every human being came with the same moral instructions already installed.

So what does that have to do with whether God is real? If there is no God, then right and wrong are just opinions, like favorite ice cream flavors. You like mint chocolate chip, your best friend likes cookie dough, and neither of you is wrong. But nobody actually lives that way about morality. When someone mocks a kid with special needs in the hallway, you don’t think, “Well, I personally prefer that people not do that.” You think it is wrong. Actually wrong, for everyone, everywhere, whether they agree or not. That kind of real, universal right and wrong has to come from somewhere bigger than us. A law written on every heart points to a Lawgiver who did the writing.

Paul says something else is going on in there too: “their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” That sounds like a courtroom, because it is one. You know that late-night trial in your head? You replay something you said, and one voice says, “That was cruel,” and another voice fires back, “Well, they started it.” Your conscience is a witness on the stand, and it testifies whether you want it to or not.

This is where the passage gets uncomfortable. The same conscience that tells you what is right also tells you that you haven’t always done it. Forget God’s standard for a second. All of us have broken rules we ourselves believe in. And Paul says a day is coming “when God judges people’s secrets.” Every one of us has secrets our conscience has already ruled on.

But look at how that sentence ends. God judges people’s secrets “through Jesus Christ.” The judge is the same Jesus who went to the cross for you. That is why Paul can write a few chapters later, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” If you trust Jesus, your conscience can still accuse you, but it doesn’t get to hand down the final verdict. Jesus does.

For some of you, that accusing voice never seems to shut off, even after you have confessed and apologized. If that’s you, that voice is not God’s final word, and he is not still angry with you. Talk to a parent, a pastor, a counselor, or your small group leader. Sometimes we need help hearing the verdict God has already given.

Pay attention the next time “That’s not fair” rises up in you. You just heard evidence. Someone wrote that on your heart. And the One who wrote it knows every wrong you have ever hidden, and he sent his Son to take it on himself.

Apply

Settle one case – Think of one moment this month when your conscience told you that you were wrong and you ignored it. This week, do one thing to make it right: apologize, give someone the credit they deserve, or tell the truth you have been avoiding.

Pray

God, thank you for putting a sense of right and wrong in me, even when I don’t like what it tells me. I know I haven’t always lived up to it. Thank you that Jesus knows all my secrets and still died for me. When my thoughts keep accusing me, remind me that in Christ there is no condemnation. In Jesus’ name. Amen.