Inexcusable: A Survey of Romans 2:1-29

After blasting the gentile world for it’s crimes (in Romans 1:18-32), Paul now swivels the guns around and begins to lob shells at a new – and most unexpected – target. He begins his assault with a shocking charge: “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges.” His target is not the gentiles, but the Jews, who claim to be God’s people!

The Impartiality of God (2:1-16)

Paul’s charge is devastating, because Jewish people have been nodding along with him throughout the entirety of the previous section. Right when they least expect – and most assume that he is on their side – Paul turns around and says, ‘the result is, you all are the guilty ones!’

When Paul accuses ‘every one of you who judges,’ it isn’t because he’s against judgment. He’s been laying the ‘judging’ on pretty thick in the previous verses! In fact, he expects all his readers to join him in judgment. The crimes that he just outlined are too nasty for us to smile over and politely ignore. We ought to be outraged. But now that outrage needs to turn in a different direction: toward hypocrisy.

Paul’s challenge is simple. Since we know that God judges sins, why do we think that hypocrites will get a pass? The apostle uses a very significant word at this point. It’s a word that he will return to again and again: logidzomai (loh-GIHD-zoh-my). The Greek word means ‘to reason out.’ It’s an accounting term, and it has the implication of balancing the check-book. Add up the figures, deduct the balances, and make sure all the numbers check out. Paul asks us to do the calculations ourselves. Do you really think, when you reason it all out, that God is going to give hypocrites a pass, when he judges the pagans?

Then, in verses 4 and 5, Paul leads us to two treasure-heaps. The first pile of riches consists of ‘kindness and forbearance and patience.’ God has a storehouse full of these wonderful blessings, and that kindness exists in order to lead men to repentance. God wants to lead you on with gentleness to the point where you realize your sinfulness and repent.

The problem is that some people reject this kindness in favor of another treasure-heap. They prefer to be ‘storing up wrath…on the day of wrath.’ Rejecting God’s treasures of mercy, they begin building their own treasure-heap of wrath, which God will one day release on them. This is what hypocrites do.

In verses 6-11, Paul argues a basic truth about God’s character and actions. He shows no partiality. God doesn’t play favorites, and that’s why God’s judgment doesn’t give you ‘bonus points’ for being Jewish (or for going to church, for that matter).

Although God doesn’t play favorites, Jewish people have a unique position. Like a firstborn child, they have extra privilege and extra responsibility. The Jews have the privilege of knowing God’s law, and that makes them responsible to obey it. If they disobey, judgment comes on them first. This is the meaning of the phrase, ‘the Jew first and also the Greek.’

Paul is affirming the concept of ‘judgment by works.’ God judges people on the basis of their works. Those who do good receive blessing, and those who do wrong receive judgment.

We can imagine, in verse 12 that the gentile world is like the wild west. There is no law, and anything goes. But even in the wild west, the deputy will still shoot you if you are a troublemaker. In civilization, however, if you murder someone, the cops will drag you before the law, where you will be condemned and executed ‘properly.’ Neither place is safe for the bad guy – but one place operates under ‘law,’ and one place operates without it. God’s justice is similar: Jews will be condemned by the law, gentiles will perish without it.

No one ever walked out of court, declared innocent, because they had heard the law. (If anything, some people walk out of court, declared innocent, because they had not heard the law!). But innocence, ultimately, is not determined based on whether you know the law, but whether you follow it. That’s the point of verse 13.

Verses 14-15 are disputed, but probably refer to Gentile Christians who keep the law ‘written on the heart.’ He probably isn’t referring to the conscience, the ‘unwritten’ law, but to a very specific, written law: the law written by God on the hearts of all his people, in Jeremiah 31:33. The ‘conflicting thoughts’ in verse 15 refers to different gentiles. Some are condemned by their conscience, accused by it because they don’t know God; others are excused, because they follow the law that God has divinely written on their hearts.

The Jewish Hypocrite (2:17-24)

Paul’s argument is directed against unbelieving Jews – those who have refused the Messiah. There are two groups of Jewish people: those who truly follow the law, and will therefore naturally accept Jesus as Christ. They have soft hearts and are not guilty of the hypocrisy described here. There are also those who have hard hearts. This means that they reject Jesus as Christ and are guilty of this hypocrisy. In Paul’s understanding, there is no such thing as a soft-hearted, law-abiding Jew who has a relationship with God but continues to reject Jesus as Christ. Every pious Jew recognizes that Jesus is the Messiah.

Paul now continues his attack using a ‘diatribal’ style. It was a common method in Paul’s day, a rhetorical device in which the author carries on dialogue with an imaginary opponent, asking him cutting questions and forcing him to come to a certain verdict.

The Jew that Paul interrogates has a ‘safe space.’ It is the law – a document that he knows well, understands, and loves to retreat to. He feels that he has confidence in his life because of the framework of the law. He thinks that the law is a special gift of God to the Jewish people, and therefore, he must be under God’s special favor.

But this Jew has a subtle disdain for others. He looks down on non-Jewish people as ‘the blind,’ ‘those in darkness,’ ‘ignorant,’ and ‘infants.’ It’s a small but powerful picture into this man’s internal thinking.

Paul hammers him with a variety of questions, all designed to convict him of his own depraved status. How can this man dare to instruct others, without instructing himself? Is he guilty of stealing? Committing adultery? Profiteering from idols? Aren’t these the very things that he tells others not to do? Admittedly, the apostle uses the most blatant and shocking examples that he can, but we can fill in the blanks with all the ‘lesser’ sins. ‘Robbing temples’ may be an odd example, but it probably refers to Jews who make a handsome profit off the idolatrous tendencies of their gentile customers.

The high treason that these Jews commit is that they bring shame on the very God they claim to boast in. Paul alludes to Isaiah 52:5, where Jewish hypocrites bring shame on God, and God brings punishment on them. Despite the Jewish propensity for claiming to be the most ‘advanced’ moral nation on earth, Paul reveals the real reason why the pagans laugh at them: too often, Jewish monotheism is little more than a cover for them to despise their pagans neighbors, while committing the same crimes.

The True Jew (2:25-29)

If too many Jews resemble the self-righteous hypocrite of verses 17-24, Paul will now sketch an image of the Jew that God wants to form. God isn’t interested in the Jew whose pedigree is purer than a Siberian Husky. He doesn’t care about whether a Jew is a member of the covenant community, circumcised on the eighth day in exact accordance with the law. God is looking for the true Jew – the man circumcised in his heart!

Like a beautiful computer program with a fatal line of code, the genetic Jew may seem ‘perfect’ on the surface. Yet without a circumcised heart, he fails at what he is designed to be. Gentiles who obey the law, by contrast, resemble a basic but functional computer program. They may not be impressive, but their inward programming is right.

Paul says that this man is circumcised “by the Spirit, not by the letter” (v. 29). Discard any notions that you may have of the ‘letter’ and the ‘spirit’ of the law – Paul certainly isn’t referencing such modern ideas. Instead, a careful examination of these words shows what he is really after. The ‘Spirit’ is the Holy Spirit – the very gift promised for the new age. The ‘letter’ doesn’t refer to legalistic exactness, but to the Mosaic Law itself. True circumcision, then, is the  procedure in which the Spirit does spiritual surgery, rather than an operation performed by a physical doctor in accordance with Jewish rites.

Now, with the Jews left stunned in their seats, Paul has left all people inexcusable before God. Their only hope is the gospel.