Romans 2:12-16

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So, last week we looked at verses 6-11, and we talked about how verse 11 is a bit of a pivot verse getting into the next section. We will start with verse 11 tonight to get us into our passage, which will go through verse 16.
Romans 2:11–16 ESV
11 For God shows no partiality. 12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
This is one of those passages that seems (to me at least) to make a lot of sense at first blush, but on subsequent readings, it gets more and more difficult to digest. Scripture can be like that sometimes. And that is not to say there is not a simple reading of this passage; it is instead to say that there is more to it than one might first think.
The major thing I want you to take away from here is that this passage is not about “works” or “doing the law.” We are going to see Paul’s rhetoric tear down that line of thinking as we go along, and scripture is very clear in other places that works are not how we are made right.
What Paul is setting up for us here is the idea that continuing idea of being without excuse (Rom 1:20; 2:1). And you may ask why he is still going on about this idea of being without excuse, but I think if we stop for a second we will see that we are as stubborn and sinful as Paul’s first-century audience, and we are absolutely as prone to chase after sin - we don’t even have to wait to be tempted, we’ll just chase it on our own!
And because we are stubborn and stiff-necked people, we think we don’t need help. We act like getting help from God or from others somehow demeans us. And we say, “God, I got this. I am good. You just let me be.” And we move from sin to sin and we are condemning ourselves under the law, because we are rejecting God and exchanging the truth - His truth - for a lie.
Because we will never measure up to the law.
We will never be able to fulfill the law.
James 2:10 ESV
10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
James makes it pretty clear there. And that should actually scare the pants off of us. Because if we think for one second anything we do will measure up to a holy God, we are kidding ourselves. God calls us to be holy like He is holy.
Leviticus 19:2 ESV
2 “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
About the only holy I am is wholly unable to do anything in my own strength.
We must understand that when we try to drive the bus, when we try to do this “our way,” we are rejecting God. And when you start rejecting God, you are embodying all of the negative aspects of life that we’ve studied so far.
So, let’s take a closer look at these verses and see what is going on.
Romans 2:11–12 ESV
11 For God shows no partiality. 12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
As I said at the top, verse 11 is a bit of a hinge that gets us from this look at how God deals with us impartially into this idea of God’s judgment and the law. Your bible may even have that phrase at the start of this section of verses, “God’s judgment and the Law.”
Thomas Schreiner ties the two verses together like this:
“God is impartial (11).
In other words, those who sin without the law will perish without the law (12a), and those who sin with the law will be judged through the law (12b).”
But who is Paul talking about in verse 12? Who is without the law?
Well, he is talking about the Gentiles. The Gentiles were the ones who did not have the Law. F. F. Bruce notes, in his commentary on Romans:
“Sin unchecked leads to perdition one way or another, but Gentiles will not be condemned for failure to conform to a law-code which was not accessible to them. The principle is laid down that men and women are judged by the light that is available to them, not by light that is not available.”
What Paul is not saying is that, “well, they didn’t have the law, so they’re cool.” He has already said they are without excuse. But he does make a point to show his readers that God is just.
If I had a rule that everyone was supposed to take off their shoes when they came in my house, that’d be fine, right? Now, let’s say you don’t know that I have that rule. I haven’t told you about the rule. And I don’t have any sort of sign or anything that says, “please take off your shoes before you enter.” I invite you to dinner, you come to my house, you leave your shoes on, we have a lovely time, and when you leave, I tell you: “Well, it was great, but I’ll never have you over again because you are very disrespectful and gave no regard to my rule.”
You’d probably think I was nuts. Certainly that I am a jerk. You would not think that I was “just” or “righteous” or “holy.” Because I was judging you based on a standard you didn’t know. I didn’t give you the chance to obey or not, because you didn’t have all the information.
Now, when I invite you to my house, and I say, “hey, we have this rule, because we have some issues with dirt, or whatever, and we ask that everyone take off their shoes when they come in.” Then, you can decide: am I going to come in or not? If you choose to transgress, that’s on you.
Make no mistake, this is what the Jews were doing to Gentile Christians in the first century. See the book of Galatians for more on that. But they wanted to judge the Gentiles based on God’s law, and Paul is telling them that the law is only enough to condemn us all, it isn’t enough to save us. Because we all transgress the law. And God has already revealed enough to the gentiles for them to be convicted, even without His law. So no one is without excuse.
So, we see that the second half of verse 12 is dealing with Jews. But Paul knows the arrogance that we just talked about. That feeling of, “well, we have the law, so God loves us and not you!” **blow raspberry**
And so he indicts the Jews moving into verse 13:
Romans 2:13 ESV
13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.
Again, we can read verses 12 and 13 together like this (Schreiner):
“Those who sin with the law will be judged through the law (12b).
For the hearers of the law are not justified before God (13a), but the does of the law will be justified (13b).”
Paul reminds them that their heritage, their nationality, their religious identity, their membership in the Jewish synagogue are not enough. Yes, you’ve heard it. Now you have to do it.
Incidentally, I think this is why Paul uses the phrasing “the Jew first and also the Greek” in 2:9-10; The Jews should know better. They were actually given the law. The Gentiles didn’t have the law, but God had graciously revealed Himself to them anyway. But the Jews? They had Moses and the prophets. Think back to the parable Jesus told of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. These two guys die, and Lazarus is with Abraham in paradise, the rich man is in hell. Remember, the rich man is a Jew. He calls Abraham “Father Abraham.” This is nor coincidental. This isn’t so we have a fun children’s song. He is using his Jewish heritage. The rich man wants Abraham to send Lazarus back to warn his brothers. What does Abraham say?
Luke 16:29–31 ESV
29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’ ”
Luke 24:27 gives us another picture of how Christ uses the Law and the prophets to speak about Himself, as He discusses with the guys on the road to Emmaus after His resurrection:
Luke 24:27 ESV
27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
The Jewish people had everything they needed to see Jesus as the Messiah. But they didn’t see Him. They rejected Him. They heard the law, but didn’t do it. And so they are condemned by it.
Those that do follow the law, or do the law will be justified. Now, here again, we have to understand this in the framework of knowing that the New Testament writers are pretty much unanimous in the idea that we cannot fulfill the law, only Jesus can do that. Again, this is Paul’s rhetoric for moving us to the need for Christ. Because we cannot fulfill the law, and because we are judged and condemned by it, we need a mediator who can make us right before God.
As we move into verse 14-16, we see again the flow of the verses together.
Romans 2:14–16 ESV
14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
Paul is reminding the church in Rome that just having the law isn’t enough, and that even Gentiles can and do “right things.” When Gentiles do things that are morally right, what we would call “natural law;” they prove the ideas Paul laid out in chapter 1 where God has revealed Himself in creation and creation order. And we know this. How many of you know folks who are not Christians, or who don’t claim to be Christians, but who seem like genuinely good people? Folks that are faithful to their spouses. Folks that work hard, don’t cheat, help their neighbors and those less fortunate. We all probably know some folks like that. People that seem genuinely good, but don’t appear to have a relationship with God. And we sometimes wonder why that is.
Paul tells us why. God has revealed Himself in creation. But that isn’t enough. That is no different than the Jew who hears the law.
Now, commentators are split about verse 14-15, whether it relates to non-believers or Gentile Christians. I can go either way, but I am maybe more inclined to think this is talking about Gentile believers. Here is my reasoning:
Verse 14 seems to contrast Jews who thought possessing the law was enough with Gentiles who didn’t have the law but do the things God asks (therefore being a law unto themselves).
Verse 15 seems to be alluding to the promise in Jeremiah 31:33
Jeremiah 31:33 ESV
33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Paul seems to be correlating the promise of God to the people after the exile and extending it to the Gentiles here.
Paul also uses the word conscience here, which is interesting. F. F. Bruce notes this:
The word 'conscience' (syneidesis) is not current in classical Greek. It belonged to the vernacular tongue and attained literary status only a short time before the beginning of the Christian era. It meant 'consciousness of right or wrong doing,’ but Paul uses it (and perhaps he was the first to do so) in the sense of an independent witness within, which examines and passes judgment on one's conduct. In Christians this examination and judgment should be specially accurate because their conscience is enlightened by the Holy Spirit (cf. 9:1).
Christians can’t have Jiminy Cricket hanging around reminding us to “let our conscience be our guide,” because the Holy Spirit is our “conscience.” That Paul uses it here shows the sort of beginning of the term, as well as the understanding and growth in theological understanding of the Spirit versus conscience.
Which is where we have to be cautious when interpreting scripture. As we see from Bruce, the idea of the conscience was still coming into popular thought. That Paul was using this understanding here seems to indicate an ideology still in flux. And that is why the context is so important to interpretation. If we only see this with our modern understanding, we may miss the nuance and layers present in the original.
In all this, it seems that Paul is suggesting that the conscience of the gentile in question bears witness to what the law on their heart says. This means that, in view of their Gentile status and not having been brought up learning the law, and having not memorized the law, that in spite of all of that, God has made a way for them to still be convicted (15b - conflicting thoughts accuse and excuse) because He has made Himself known to them.
The end of that verse is where a lot of scholars get hung up (accuse and excuse), although for me I see it in my own life of not always doing what I should, and the Spirit convicts me of that; By the same token, there are things I do that I feel that the Spirit sort of puts His stamp of approval on. That is what leads me to lean toward redeemed Gentiles here.
And all of that confusion leads to questions about verse 16 - is that end time judgement or something else? If you see the Gentiles in 14-15 as redeemed, there seems to be this running thread through 14, 15, and 16 that sees the Gentile realizing that God is King, and there is that repentance, seeking to live a Godly life and not perish without the law, and seek to obey God’s commands even up until God ultimately judges all men by Christ.
And again, I think sometimes we get ourselves in knots over some of the verbiage and miss the simple fact that Paul is making. Ultimately, God judges all men by the law. But not the law of Moses handed down to faithful Jewish families over the generations. God judges all men by the true fulfillment of the law - Christ Jesus. Jesus is the rule by which God will judge. Because we cannot uphold the law. We cannot know everything about God by His general revelation.
The man who is stranded on a desert island and never hears about Christ has enough knowledge in nature to know God is out there, but without someone sharing who Christ is, no matter how good he may be, no matter how much he may love God as he has come to know Him in nature, if the man does not have Christ, he is lost. He is a dead man.
And that is why we must go! That is why we must go into all the the world. Because God expects us to be about His business, and if we don’t tell them, they die!
The gospel isn’t just a good idea, it’s a matter of life and death!
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