5. Critical moralizers
Having described the depraved Gentile world as guilty and inexcusable (1:20, 32), Paul now passes the same verdict on a person whom he addresses in direct speech: You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else (2:1). Who is this person? He or she is an imaginary character with whom the apostle engages in dialogue. Indeed this individual, together with the category which he or she represents, is in the forefront of Paul’s mind throughout the first sixteen verses of Romans 2.
Many commentators (perhaps most) believe that, having portrayed and condemned Gentile society in 1:18–32, Paul now turns his attention to Jewish people. This is an understandable viewpoint, since the classification of the human race into Jews and Gentiles is mentioned on numerous occasions throughout the letter, and one of the apostle’s main purposes in writing is to demonstrate that Jews and Gentiles are equal in sin and equal in salvation. There are two objections, however, to the straightforward identification of Paul’s conversation partner at the beginning of Romans 2 as a Jew. First, it is not until verse 17 that he involves a Jew in direct conversation (‘Now you, if you call yourself a Jew’). Instead, in the earlier verses, although this is obscured by niv, he deliberately emphasizes that he or she is a human being, rather than specifically a Jew or a Gentile.
Second, if this section refers exclusively to the Jewish world, then 1:18–32 is the only picture Paul gives us of the ancient Gentile world – in which case it would seem to be an unbalanced one. For not all Gentiles preferred darkness to light, became idolaters, and were abandoned by God to sexually and socially promiscuous behaviour. There were others, as F. F. Bruce has pointed out:
We know that there was another side to the pagan world of the first century than that which Paul has portrayed in the preceding paragraphs. What about a man like Paul’s illustrious contemporary Seneca, the Stoic moralist, the tutor of Nero? Seneca might have listened to Paul’s indictment and said, ‘Yes, that is perfectly true of great masses of mankind, and I concur in the judgment which you pass on them – but there are others, of course, like myself, who deplore these tendencies as much as you do.’
Bruce continues:
Not only did he [Seneca] exalt the great moral virtues; he exposed hypocrisy, he preached the equality of all human beings, he acknowledged the pervasive character of evil . . . he practised and inculcated daily self-examination, he ridiculed vulgar idolatry, he assumed the role of a moral guide.
It seems probable, therefore, that Paul has such Gentiles in mind as he dictates verses 1–16. He is evidently thinking of Jews too, however, since he twice uses the expression ‘first for the Jew, then for the Gentile’ (9, 10). It may even be that the Jews are his ‘hidden target’ throughout, and that he begins in more general terms only to win their backing for his condemnation before turning the tables on them. But his main emphasis is clearly seen in his turning from the world of shameless immorality (1:18–32) to the world of self-conscious moralism. The person he now addresses is not just ‘you’ but ‘you who pass judgment’ (1, 3). He seems to be confronting every human being (Jew or Gentile) who presumes to pass moral judgments on other people.
This becomes clearer when we compare the people envisaged in 1:32 and 2:1–3. The similarities are evident. Both groups have a certain knowledge of God as creator (1:20) or judge (1:32; 2:2), and both contradict their knowledge by their behaviour; they ‘do such things’ as Paul has been describing (1:32; 2:2). What, then, is the difference between them? It is that the first group do things they know to be wrong and approve of others who do them (1:32), which is at least consistent; whereas the second group do what they know to be wrong and condemn others who do them, which is hypocritical. The first group isolate themselves entirely from God’s righteous law, in regard to both themselves and others; whereas the second group deliberately identify themselves with it by setting themselves up as judges, only to find that they are being judged for doing the same things.
The underlying theme of this section, then, is the judgment of God upon self-appointed judges. His judgment is inescapable (1–4), righteous (5–11) and impartial (12–16).
1. God’s judgment is inescapable (2:1–4)
Paul uncovers in these verses a strange human characteristic, namely our tendency to be critical of everybody except ourselves. We are often as harsh in our judgment of others as we are lenient towards ourselves. We work ourselves up into a state of self-righteous indignation over the disgraceful behaviour of other people, while the very same behaviour seems not nearly so serious when it is ours rather than theirs. We even gain a bizarre satisfaction from condemning in others the very faults we excuse in ourselves. Freud called this moral gymnastic ‘projection’, but Paul described it centuries before Freud. This device enables us simultaneously to retain our sins and our self-respect. It is a convenient arrangement, but also both slick and sick.
In addition, Paul argues, we open ourselves up to the judgment of God, and we leave ourselves without either excuse or escape. For if our critical faculties are so well developed that we become experts in our moral assessment of others, we can hardly plead ignorance of moral issues ourselves. On the contrary, when we judge other people, we condemn ourselves, because we who pass judgment do the same things (1). For we know perfectly well that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth (2). How then can we think (we who, though mere human beings, play God and pass judgment on others for doing what we do) that we will escape God’s judgment (3)? This is not a call either to suspend our critical faculties or to abandon all criticism and rebuke of others as misplaced; it is rather a ban on standing in judgment on other people and condemning them (which as human beings we have no right to do), especially when we fail to condemn ourselves. For this is the hypocrisy of the double standard, a high standard for other people and a comfortably low one for ourselves.
Sometimes, in a futile attempt to escape the inescapable, namely God’s judgment, we take refuge in a theological argument. For theology can be turned to bad uses as well as good. We appeal to God’s character, especially to the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience (4a). We maintain that he is much too kind and patient to punish anybody, and that we can therefore sin with impunity. We even misapply the Bible to our advantage and quote such statements as ‘the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love’. But this kind of manipulative theologizing is to show contempt for God, not honour. It is not faith; it is presumption. For God’s kindness is intended to lead us to repentance (4b). That is its goal. It is intended to give us space in which to repent, not to give us an excuse for sinning.
2. God’s judgment is righteous (2:5–11)
To presume on God’s patient kindness, as if its purpose were to encourage licence, not penitence, is a sure sign of stubbornness and of an unrepentant heart (5a). This can have only one end. It means that we are storing up for ourselves not some precious treasure (which is what the verb thēsaurizō Paul uses would normally mean) but the awful experience of divine wrath on the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed (5). Far from escaping God’s judgment (3), we will all the more certainly bring it upon ourselves.
Paul now expands on his expression God’s . . . righteous judgment (5b), and begins by stating the inflexible principle on which it is based. It is a quotation from Old Testament Scripture, namely that God will repay each person according to what they have done (6). The verse quoted is probably Psalm 62:12, although Proverbs 24:12 says the same thing in the form of a question. It also occurs in the prophecies of Hosea and Jeremiah, and is sometimes expressed in the vivid expression, ‘I will bring down on their own heads what they have done.’ Jesus himself repeated it. So did Paul, and it is a recurring theme in the book of Revelation. It is the principle of exact retribution, which is the foundation of justice.
Some Christians, however, are immediately up in arms. Has the apostle taken leave of his senses? Does he begin by declaring that salvation is by faith alone (e.g. 1:16f.), and then destroy his own gospel by saying that it is by good works after all? No, Paul is not contradicting himself. What he is affirming is that, although justification is indeed by faith, judgment will be according to works. The reason for this is not hard to find. It is that the day of judgment will be a public occasion. Its purpose will be less to determine God’s judgment than to announce it and to vindicate it. The divine judgment, which is a process of sifting and separating, is going on secretly all the time, as people set themselves for or against Christ, but on the last day its results will be made public. The day of God’s wrath will also be the time when his righteous judgment will be revealed (5b).
Such a public occasion, on which a public verdict will be given and a public sentence passed, will require public and demonstrable evidence to support them. And the only public evidence available will be our works, what we have done and have been seen to do. The presence or absence of saving faith in our hearts will be disclosed by the presence or absence of good works of love in our lives. The apostles Paul and James both teach this same truth, that authentic saving faith always issues in good works, and that if it does not, it is bogus, even dead. ‘I will show you my faith by my deeds,’ wrote James. ‘Faith [expresses itself] through love,’ echoed Paul.
Verses 7–10 unpack verse 6, namely the principle that the basis of God’s righteous judgment will be what we have done. The alternatives are now presented to us in two carefully constructed parallel sentences, which concern our goal (what we seek), our works (what we do) and our end (where we are going). The two final destinies of humankind are called eternal life (7), which Jesus defined in terms of knowing him and knowing the Father, and wrath and anger (8), the awful outpouring of God’s judgment. And the basis on which this separation is to be made will be a combination of what we seek (our ultimate goal in life) and what we do (our actions in the service either of ourselves or of others). It is very similar to the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, in which he set out the alternative human ambitions (seeking our material welfare or seeking God’s kingdom), and the alternative human activities (doing or not doing what he said).
Returning to Paul, on the one hand, there are those who seek glory (the appearance of God himself), honour (God’s approval) and immortality (the unfading joy of his presence), and who seek these God-centred blessings by persistence in doing good (7). That is, they persevere in the way, for perseverance is the hallmark of genuine believers. On the other hand, there are those who are characterized by the single derogatory label self-seeking (8a). The word eritheia was used by Aristotle of ‘a self-seeking pursuit of political office by unfair means’, and so here probably means ‘selfishness, selfish ambition’ (BAGD). Furthermore, those who are obsessed with themselves, and engrossed in self-centred goals, inevitably reject the truth and follow evil (8b). Indeed, they ‘suppress the truth by their wickedness’ (1:18). Both these expressions blame the rejection of truth on adikia, ‘evil’ or ‘wickedness’. To sum up, those who seek God and persevere in goodness will receive eternal life, while those who are self-seeking and follow evil will experience God’s wrath.
In verses 9–10 Paul restates the same solemn alternatives, with three differences. First, he simplifies the two categories of people into every human being who does evil (9) and everyone who does good (10). Jesus made exactly the same division between ‘those who have done evil’ and ‘those who have done good’. Second, Paul explains the two destinies. He describes the one as trouble and distress (9), emphasizing its anguish, and the other as glory, honour and peace (10a), taking up the ‘glory’ and ‘honour’ of verse 7 which form part of the goal believers seek, and adding ‘peace’, that comprehensive word for reconciled relationships with God and with each other. Third, Paul adds to both sentences, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile (9–10), affirming the priority of the Jew both in judgment and in salvation, and thus affirming the absolute impartiality of God: For God does not show favouritism (11).
3. God’s judgment is impartial (2:12–16)
That the judgment of God will be righteous (according to what we have done, 6–8) and impartial (as between Jews and Gentiles, without favouritism, 9–11) Paul now develops in relation to the law of Moses, which is mentioned here for the first time and has a prominent place in the rest of the letter.
Jews and Gentiles appear to differ fundamentally from one another, in that the Jews hear the law (13), possessing it and listening to it being read in the synagogue every sabbath day, whereas the Gentiles do not have the law (14). It was neither revealed to them nor given to them. Nevertheless, Paul insists, this difference can be exaggerated. For there is no fundamental distinction between them in the moral knowledge they have (since the requirements of the law are written on all human hearts, 15), or in the sin they have committed (by disobeying the law they know), or in the guilt they have incurred, or in the judgment they will receive.
Verse 12 puts Jews and Gentiles into the same category of sin and death. Paul makes two parallel statements, beginning with the words All who sin. The verb is in the aorist tense, however, and should be translated ‘All who sinned’ (hēmarton). Paul is summing up their life of sin from the perspective of the last day. The point he is making is that all who have sinned will also perish or will be judged, regardless of whether they are Jews or Gentiles, that is, whether they have the law of Moses or not. All who have sinned apart from the law (Gentiles) will also perish apart from the law (12a). They will not be judged by a standard they have not known. They will perish because of their sin, not because of their ignorance of the law. Similarly, all who have sinned under the law (Jews) will be judged by the law (12b). They too will be judged by the standard they have known. God will be absolutely fair in judgment. The way people have sinned (in knowledge or ignorance of the law) will be the way they will be judged. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous (13). This is a theoretical or hypothetical statement, of course, since no human being has ever fully obeyed the law (cf. 3:20). So salvation by that road is impossible. But Paul is writing about judgment, not about salvation. He is emphasizing that the law itself did not guarantee the Jews exemption from judgment, as they thought. For what mattered was not possession but obedience.
The same principle of judgment according to knowledge and performance is now applied more fully to Gentiles. Two complementary facts about them are self-evident. The first is that they do not have the law (of Moses). This is stated twice in verse 14. Externally, they do not possess it. Second, however, they do have some knowledge of its standards internally. For Gentiles who do not have the law nevertheless do by nature, instinctively, things required by the law. This is not a universal claim, for Paul does not use the definite article and refer to ‘the Gentiles’. He is simply saying that some Gentiles sometimes do some of what the law requires. This is an observable, verifiable fact, which anthropologists have everywhere discovered. Not all human beings are crooks, villains, thieves, adulterers and murderers. On the contrary, some honour their parents, recognize the sanctity of human life, are loyal to their partners, practise honesty, speak the truth and display contentment, just as the last six of the Ten Commandments require.
How then are we to explain this paradoxical phenomenon, that although they do not have the law, they yet appear to know it? Paul’s answer is that they are a law for themselves, not in the popular – though mistaken – sense that they can make their own laws, but in the sense that their own human being is their law. This is because God created them as self-conscious moral persons, and they show by their behaviour that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts (15a). So then, although they do not have the law in their hands, they do have its requirements in their hearts, because God has written them there. This surely cannot be a reference to God’s new-covenant promise to put his law in his people’s minds and write it on their hearts, as some commentators have suggested, since the whole context is one of judgment, not salvation. Paul is referring not to regeneration but to creation, to the fact that ‘the work of the law’ (literally) has been written on the hearts of all human beings by their Maker. That God has written his law on our hearts by creation means that we have some knowledge of it; when he writes his law on our hearts in the new creation he also gives us a love for it and the power to obey it.
In addition, their consciences are bearing witness, especially by a negative, disapproving voice when they have done wrong, and so are their thoughts in a kind of interior conversation, sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them (15b), as if in a court of law in which the prosecution and the defence develop their respective cases. It seems that Paul is imagining a debate in which three parties are involved: our hearts (on which the requirements of the law have been written), our consciences (prodding and criticizing us) and our thoughts (usually accusing us, but sometimes even excusing us).
Verse 16 concludes this section. Paul has stressed that we cannot escape God’s judgment (1–4); that it will be a righteous judgment (5–11), according to our works, including the fundamental ambition or direction of our lives (what we ‘seek’); and that it will be impartial as between Jews and Gentiles (12–15). In both cases, the greater our moral knowledge, the greater our moral accountability will be. Now he adds three further truths about Judgment Day, ‘the day of God’s wrath’ (5).
First, God’s judgment will include the hidden areas of our lives: the day when God judges people’s secrets. The Bible tells us repeatedly that God knows our hearts. As a result, there will be no possibility of a miscarriage of justice on the last day. For all the facts will be known, including those which at present are not, for example, our motives.
Second, God’s judgment will take place through Jesus Christ. He claimed that the Father had entrusted all judgment to him, and he regularly spoke of himself as the central figure on the day of judgment. Paul declared in Athens that God had both set the day and appointed the judge, as Peter had earlier told Cornelius. It is a great comfort to know that our judge will be none other than our saviour.
Third, God’s judgment is part of the gospel. For God will judge people’s secrets, Paul wrote, through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares (16). This probably means that the good news of salvation shines brightly when it is seen against the dark background of divine judgment. We cheapen the gospel if we represent it as a deliverance only from unhappiness, fear, guilt and other felt needs, instead of as a rescue from the coming wrath.
4. Conclusion: God’s judgment and God’s law
The universal knowledge of God’s law, which Paul has been demonstrating in verses 12–16, is an essential basis both of the divine judgment and of the Christian mission.
First, the law is a basis of divine judgment. Paul’s point has been that God has no favourites; that Jews and Gentiles will be judged by him without discrimination; and that both groups have some knowledge of his law. Consequently, no human being can plead complete ignorance. We have all sinned against a moral law we have known. Whether we have come to know it by special or general revelation, by grace or nature, outwardly or inwardly, from the Bible or in the heart, is largely irrelevant. The point is that all human beings have known something of God (1:20) and of goodness (1:32; 2:15), but have suppressed the truth in order to indulge in wickedness (1:18; 2:8). So we all come under the righteous judgment of God.
Verses 12–16 were not written to give us hope that human beings can gain salvation by morality. Natural law can no more save sinners than natural religion. For whatever we may have known of God from creation (1:19f.), or of goodness from conscience (1:32; 2:15), we have stifled it in order to go our own self-seeking way (2:8). Besides, the purpose of these chapters is to prove that all human beings are guilty and inexcusable before God (3:9, 19), and in particular that nobody can be justified by observing the law (3:20).
Second, the law is a basis of Christian mission, of both evangelism and social action. Take evangelism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was quite correct to write from prison, ‘I don’t think it is Christian to want to get to the New Testament too soon or too directly.’ What he meant is that, until the law has done its work of exposing and condemning our sin, we are not ready to hear the gospel of justification. True, it is often said that we should speak to people’s conscious needs, and not try to induce in them feelings of guilt which they do not have. This is a misconception, however. Human beings are moral beings by creation. That is to say, not only do we experience an inner urge to do what we believe to be right, but we also have a sense of guilt and regret when we have done what we know to be wrong. This is an essential feature of our humanness. There is of course such a thing as false guilt. But guilt feelings which are aroused by wrongdoing are healthy. They rebuke us for betraying our humanity, and they impel us to seek forgiveness in Christ. In this way conscience is our ally. In all evangelism, I find it a constant encouragement to say to myself, ‘The other person’s conscience is on my side.’
The possibility of securing justice in society is another reasonable conclusion we can draw from Paul’s teaching in verses 12–16, even though it is not part of his direct purpose in the context. What he is saying is that the same moral law which God has revealed in the Bible he has also stamped (even if not so legibly) on human nature. Since he has in fact written his law twice, internally as well as externally, it is not to be regarded as an alien system, which we impose on people arbitrarily, and which it is altogether unnatural to expect human beings to obey. On the contrary, there is a fundamental link between the law in the Bible and the law in human nature. God’s law fits us; it is the law of our own being. We are authentically human only when we obey it. When we disobey it, we not only rebel against God, we also go against our true selves.
In every human community, therefore, there is a basic recognition of the difference between right and wrong, and an accepted set of values. It is true that conscience is not infallible, and standards are influenced by cultures. Nevertheless, a bedrock of good and evil remains, and love is always accepted as superior to selfishness. This has important social and political implications. It means that legislators and educators can assume that God’s law is good for society and that at least to some degree people know it. It is not a case of Christians trying to force their standards on an unwilling public, but of helping the public to see that God’s law is the law of human being and of human community. If democracy is government by consent, consent depends on consensus, consensus on argument, and argument on those who will develop a case for the goodness of God’s law.