Romans 1:18–3:20
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world,1 in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
2 Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. 2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. 3 Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
6 He will render to each one according to his works: 7 to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8 but for those who are self-seeking2 and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. 9 There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 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.
17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; 19 and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— 21 you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
25 For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. 26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded3 as circumcision? 27 Then he who is physically4 uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code5 and circumcision but break the law. 28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.
3 Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? 2 Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. 3 What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 4 By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,
“That you may be justified in your words,
and prevail when you are judged.”
5 But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) 6 By no means! For then how could God judge the world? 7 But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? 8 And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.
9 What then? Are we Jews6 any better off?7 No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 in their paths are ruin and misery,
17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being8 will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.
1 Or clearly perceived from the creation of the world 2 Or contentious 3 Or counted 4 Or is by nature 5 Or the letter 6 Greek Are we 7 Or at any disadvantage? 8 Greek flesh
Section Overview
It is important to observe that this section is a parenthesis—note how Romans 1:17 speaks of the “righteousness of God,” how 1:18 switches to the “wrath of God,” and how 3:21 returns to the “righteousness of God.” This section, then, serves to explain why the saving righteousness of God is so essential: the alternative is his wrath. This is a universal wrath, for the “whole world” is accountable to God (3:19) and fails to measure up to his righteous character as revealed in the OT (3:20). Moreover, God is not merely the creator of the world (1:25) but its judge (3:6; 2 Tim. 4:1, 8).
The subsections in the Section Outline below show the breadth and the depth of human sinfulness. They teach total depravity, the conviction that “every element of human nature is thoroughly infected with sin.” The section unfolds in four movements:
(1) Romans 1:18–32 gives a broad description of humanity’s suppression of God’s truth and idolizing of its own moral folly. The result is seen in dishonorable passions expressed in same-sex lustfulness and hookups. Paul goes on to detail nearly two dozen fruits of the “debased mind” (1:28) that arise because humans forsake the true God (and his righteousness) for their own (im)moral preferences.
(2) Once 1:18–32 paints a dramatic and vivid portrait of people wallowing in self-willed degradation, 2:1–16 turns on the reader with the accusation that “you condemn yourself” (2:1) because all people are guilty of the vices just described. People have a sense of what is right and wrong, but they do not live up to their own standards, let alone God’s holy and righteous character as reflected in “the law,” by which Paul most often means the OT.
(3) As a Jew, and as a man formerly convinced that he was “blameless” regarding “righteousness under the law” (Phil. 3:6), Paul has a keen sense of how people can condemn others but be at least as bad themselves. Thus Romans 2:17–29 debunks the illusory religiosity Paul once championed. “A Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart” (2:29). Without inner transformation through faith in Christ, the most stringent moral standards and religious traditions fall short.
(4) The final section (3:1–20), drawing on various OT passages, broadens Paul’s depiction of the human spiritual plight. Despite the undoubted advantage and privilege of possessing God’s prophetic word in their Scriptures, the Jews are judged unfaithful by those very writings. In fact, “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (3:9). The section concludes with God’s universal negative verdict on the “whole world” (3:19). Knowledge of sin is evident through conscience for Gentiles (2:15) and through the law for Jews (3:20). But man in himself has no remedy for this problem.
Section Outline
III. God’s Universal Revelation: Man’s Universal Unrighteousness (1:18–3:20)
A. Unrighteousness That Deserves God’s Wrath (1:18–32)
B. Self-Righteousness That Results in God’s Judgment (2:1–16)
C. Religious Hypocrisy That Confuses Ethnicity with Acceptance by God (2:17–29)
D. Divine Righteousness That Justly Condemns Every Human Being (3:1–20)
Response
(1) The world’s major problem is that people “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (1:18). Truth is the friend of goodness and hope; deception and lies undermine individual happiness and the good of all. Most of us have been betrayed by someone who covered up or even denied his wrongdoing. Whole nations have suffered calamity under lying political officials, unchecked military powers, corrupt business interests, or other manifestations of evil. Often, in the end people blame God, if there is a God, or deny God, since they assume the evil they see is incompatible with God’s existence.
A better alternative is to realize that the world’s chief problem lies not with God but with people—and not people in the abstract but persons starting with ourselves. To build a better world, we have to have better people. Any prescription for improving the world that cannot reshape and reform individuals is doomed to frustration and finally failure, as many social experiments in modern times attest. Anyone seeking a better world but unwilling to undergo radical personal change beginning with repentance is dodging God’s diagnosis of where the problem lies.
(2) Versions of Christianity that deny God’s wrath are false. Since the European Enlightenment (eighteenth century) an understanding of Christianity often called “liberal” has gained traction. A former liberal summed up the mentality like this: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” That outlook is embedded in many organizations that carry the name “Christian.” Romans 1–3 affirms that the world, and especially those in the world that deny a wrathful God, is on a collision course with that very God.
(3) God has created individuals with a sexuality to be affirmed and rendered back to God for his glory. Genesis 1–2 describes man and woman made for complementary harmonious coexistence. In the longer run they were to “be fruitful and multiply” as they by their worshipful labors tended and enhanced the world in which God placed them. They marred that world by their sin. But redemption is not found in denial of our created sexuality or by affirming same-sex alternatives. That is the way of self- and social destruction. Hope is found in accepting our born sexuality and discovering God’s pleasure in the gift of sexual identity he has assigned to each of us.
(4) Religion can serve to justify self-righteousness and so separate people from God. “Liberal” religion was mentioned in Response 2 above. But “conservative” religion can function just as harmfully. Paul addressed pagans who sought to conserve their polytheism and moral decadence; he addressed Jews content that their traditions elevated them above other peoples. The gospel calls for change in God’s direction, not retreat into human self-confidence. There is no good future in a religious self-righteousness that takes pride in identifying the inferiority of others.
(5) What matters is God’s verdict, not what people think. Surveying the list of sins in Romans 1:28–32, it is easy to spot our own weaknesses. It is even easier to see the sins of others. But just as striking is the extent to which many of these ills and evils are defended by rationalization and truth-twisting. “Covetousness” (1:29) is normalized as the materialistic greed that drives consumerist economies. “Malice” is justified by the notion of fighting fire with fire. “Envy” is viewed as inevitable because others have what the envier lacks. Is life not about striving to get more of one’s share? “Gossips” view themselves as truth purveyors, not character assassins; “haters of God” (1:30) are just being intellectually honest; the “insolent” and “haughty” are just following the social mandate to “resist authority.” Most of all, giving “approval to those who practice” (1:32) vice and corruption can give us a sense of involvement in cutting-edge social innovation without risking the moral or even criminal risks such behavior may entail.
What people may widely affirm and applaud can be attitudes and actions God abominates.
(6) God’s written Word is his greatest gift. The authority of God’s oracles (3:2), a foundational element in Paul’s sense of the truth of the gospel message, is widely disparaged today. Some view all religions as equivalent, demoting the Scriptures to just another human religious reflection. Others promote parts of the Bible they like but reject what they find out of step with current social conviction. Many reduce the Bible to a few pet verses (like John 3:16) or concepts (like God is love) and view most of the rest of it with the bliss of their ignorance. Others draw a distinction between God or Jesus (both good) and written Scripture (not to be regarded with the reverence of God or his triune being).
Paul, like his Lord and Master Jesus, was a student, theologian, and proclaimer of the gospel message he found embedded in Scripture and therefore inseparable from it. Far from hinting at a distance between God and his Word written, Paul models a method of religious reasoning that hallows what the Scriptures affirm as God’s very words (Gk. logia, “oracles”). Christianity is flourishing worldwide where Scripture is read with the seriousness Paul approaches it; it is languishing where its truth and message are supplanted by lesser authorities. In the latter case it is not only the Scriptures that are being lost; God himself fades from view when we wrongly privilege rival sources of authority over his revealed Word.
(7) God cares enough to confront persons and peoples. For many this section of Romans may seem like a self-righteous rant on Paul’s part. Who does he think he is? But for those who have been called to repentance by Jesus and God’s Holy Spirit, Paul is simply a confirming mouthpiece conveying a message that wounds in order that it may heal. God speaks savingly in what Paul writes. The righteousness of God in the gospel message has no rivals in the resources of humans. The gospel call is radical in its denunciation of human pretensions to self-sufficiency, that it may be revelatory in its gracious offering of an adequate antidote and superior option.
This antidote and offer are precisely what following sections of Romans present.
Or clearly perceived from the creation of the world
Or contentious
Or counted
Or is by nature
Or the letter
Greek Are we
Or at any disadvantage?
Greek flesh
1:18 Just as “the righteousness of God is revealed” (v. 17), so is the “wrath of God.” A future divine wrath was taught by John the Baptist (Matt. 3:7; Luke 3:7) and Jesus (Luke 21:23; see also John 3:36), whose teaching on the subject is highlighted by his warnings about hell (e.g., Matt. 10:28). Both the OT and Judaism of Paul’s time affirmed the “contrasting fates of those who align themselves with the God of Israel and those who do not.”
God’s wrath is poised to fall because of human “ungodliness and unrighteousness.” The general human tendency is not to seek and honor God’s truth but to “suppress” it, as the following verses describe. Paul likely describes the religious outlook and resulting moral squalor of the Roman world as he frequently observes it, but it is not only Gentiles who are guilty of these sins. Paul will speak specifically to forms of unrighteousness among his fellow Jews, and indeed of the entire human race, in later sections.
1:19–20 These verses kick off an explanation of how humans “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (v. 18). Compelling proof of God exists among humans because “God has shown it to them” (v. 19). This is a natural knowledge of God, the sense experienced by people in all places and times that there is something “out there” in or beyond the stars, or something “deep inside” human existence or consciousness, that transcends mere man. We are not alone.
God discloses his existence especially through the created order. In nature’s vastness and yet intricacy God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature,” are displayed (v. 20). Paul uses two verbal terms for human perception, rendered “clearly perceived” in the ESV. This underscores the convincing and explicit evidence for the existence of the creator God. But man in Paul’s era, and still today, manages to deny such knowledge (e.g., in atheism) or twist it into perverted forms (e.g., in polytheism, false religions). It is a given in much modern Western thought (going back to Kant) that God (if there is one) is essentially unknowable. Paul argues here that this position is not philosophical brilliance but obstinate misinterpretation of the cosmic evidence. There is no excuse.
1:19–20 These verses kick off an explanation of how humans “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (v. 18). Compelling proof of God exists among humans because “God has shown it to them” (v. 19). This is a natural knowledge of God, the sense experienced by people in all places and times that there is something “out there” in or beyond the stars, or something “deep inside” human existence or consciousness, that transcends mere man. We are not alone.
God discloses his existence especially through the created order. In nature’s vastness and yet intricacy God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature,” are displayed (v. 20). Paul uses two verbal terms for human perception, rendered “clearly perceived” in the ESV. This underscores the convincing and explicit evidence for the existence of the creator God. But man in Paul’s era, and still today, manages to deny such knowledge (e.g., in atheism) or twist it into perverted forms (e.g., in polytheism, false religions). It is a given in much modern Western thought (going back to Kant) that God (if there is one) is essentially unknowable. Paul argues here that this position is not philosophical brilliance but obstinate misinterpretation of the cosmic evidence. There is no excuse.
1:21 This verse explains why people are “without excuse” (v. 20). In short, their refusal to acknowledge God in creation results in intellectual (“their thinking”) and moral (“their foolish hearts”) bankruptcy. In both cases the verb forms are passive tense, pointing to God’s active role in their delusion. As Paul writes elsewhere, “God is not mocked” (Gal. 6:7). People cannot flee his judgment by declaring him to be irrelevant. Given what can be known of God through natural observation, not to “honor him as God or give thanks to him” is a disastrous course of (in)action.
1:22–23 “Claiming to be wise” matches “futile in their thinking” in verse 21. “They became fools” matches “their foolish hearts were darkened.” “Became fools” can be understood as pointing to God’s action: the same God who reveals his righteousness in the saving gospel received by faith (v. 17) reveals his wrath (v. 18) by making fools of pseudosophisticates who spurn his gracious self-disclosure in nature (and in his Son).
Verse 23 unpacks the terse seven words (only four in Greek) of verse 22. Rejection of God results not in benign neutrality but in the replacement of the “glory of the immortal God” (who is invisible; v. 20) with visible “images.” Warnings against this practice were age old in the OT and Judaism (Deut. 4:15–19). This idolatry is a direct affront to God and incurs his displeasure. To pursue it is to “be utterly destroyed” (Deut. 4:26). The wrath of God that heads up this section (Rom. 1:18) is not an idea new to Paul but a promised response of God seen throughout the history of Israel, going back to Moses and beyond. Idolatry carries with it the debasing of those who practice it, as verse 25 will make explicit.
1:22–23 “Claiming to be wise” matches “futile in their thinking” in verse 21. “They became fools” matches “their foolish hearts were darkened.” “Became fools” can be understood as pointing to God’s action: the same God who reveals his righteousness in the saving gospel received by faith (v. 17) reveals his wrath (v. 18) by making fools of pseudosophisticates who spurn his gracious self-disclosure in nature (and in his Son).
Verse 23 unpacks the terse seven words (only four in Greek) of verse 22. Rejection of God results not in benign neutrality but in the replacement of the “glory of the immortal God” (who is invisible; v. 20) with visible “images.” Warnings against this practice were age old in the OT and Judaism (Deut. 4:15–19). This idolatry is a direct affront to God and incurs his displeasure. To pursue it is to “be utterly destroyed” (Deut. 4:26). The wrath of God that heads up this section (Rom. 1:18) is not an idea new to Paul but a promised response of God seen throughout the history of Israel, going back to Moses and beyond. Idolatry carries with it the debasing of those who practice it, as verse 25 will make explicit.
1:24–25 How low can people go? While in recent years same-sex relations have been glamorized in some sectors of society, Jesus confirmed that God’s will for marriage has always been lifelong heterosexual monogamy (Matt. 19:4–6). Alternatives may be fashionable, but they are expressions of God’s abandoning people to the “lusts of their hearts” and to “impurity,” which can also be translated “vileness” (BDAG, s.v. ἀκαθαρσία).
These verses reflect not a low but rather a high view of sexuality. “Dishonoring . . . their bodies” by same-sex erotics implies that opposite-sex relations can have the effect of honoring human bodies. God intended marital relations that have the potential for fruitfulness and population of the earth (Gen. 1:28). Old Testament teaching affirms the virtue and joy of physical intimacy in marriage (Prov. 5:15–19). Elsewhere Paul condemns the forbidding of heterosexual marriage (1 Tim. 4:3). Paul is not sour on sex. He seeks to warn readers of the grimy origins and consequences of misuse of one of God’s greatest gifts: human sexuality.
Romans 1:23 spoke in general of the “exchange” of God’s glory for figments of human imagining. Verse 25 identifies same-sex practice as a specific example of what happens when God’s truth is “exchanged” for “a lie” and when veneration of “the creature” substitutes for worship of “the Creator.” So great is Paul’s regard for God that he segues here into the first of five doxological exclamations in Romans. Paul models intuitive and spontaneous praise to God for the excellence and nobility of his good gift of human sexuality!
1:24–25 How low can people go? While in recent years same-sex relations have been glamorized in some sectors of society, Jesus confirmed that God’s will for marriage has always been lifelong heterosexual monogamy (Matt. 19:4–6). Alternatives may be fashionable, but they are expressions of God’s abandoning people to the “lusts of their hearts” and to “impurity,” which can also be translated “vileness” (BDAG, s.v. ἀκαθαρσία).
These verses reflect not a low but rather a high view of sexuality. “Dishonoring . . . their bodies” by same-sex erotics implies that opposite-sex relations can have the effect of honoring human bodies. God intended marital relations that have the potential for fruitfulness and population of the earth (Gen. 1:28). Old Testament teaching affirms the virtue and joy of physical intimacy in marriage (Prov. 5:15–19). Elsewhere Paul condemns the forbidding of heterosexual marriage (1 Tim. 4:3). Paul is not sour on sex. He seeks to warn readers of the grimy origins and consequences of misuse of one of God’s greatest gifts: human sexuality.
Romans 1:23 spoke in general of the “exchange” of God’s glory for figments of human imagining. Verse 25 identifies same-sex practice as a specific example of what happens when God’s truth is “exchanged” for “a lie” and when veneration of “the creature” substitutes for worship of “the Creator.” So great is Paul’s regard for God that he segues here into the first of five doxological exclamations in Romans. Paul models intuitive and spontaneous praise to God for the excellence and nobility of his good gift of human sexuality!
1:26–27 “For this reason” (v. 26) refers to the fact that “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature” (v. 25). God alone is to be worshiped and served in all things. Human sexuality is a gift not to be squandered. It is not sexual passion or pleasure in general that is described here. It is rather their misuse, which results in being handed over to “dishonorable passions.” What does this mean? Paul is not vague, nor does he single out either men or women. Both alike run afoul of God’s “good and acceptable and perfect” will (12:2) when they exchange “natural relations for those that are contrary to nature” (1:26). By “nature” Paul does not mean that which is culturally acceptable but points to that which man’s moral nature compels him to affirm innately.
The description of lesbian activity in verse 26 is matched in verse 27 by a description of same-sex attraction running amok in men. Four phases of the misdeed are listed: (1) men devote to other men the romantic ardor God gives men for women; (2) men are inflamed with defiling desires for other men; (3) men perform, literally, “the shameful act” with other men; and (4) as a result these men suffer the implications of the sin in which they have indulged. Such implications could be the guilt and burden of their sin in this life, the punishment of their sin in the day of judgment, or both.
1:26–27 “For this reason” (v. 26) refers to the fact that “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature” (v. 25). God alone is to be worshiped and served in all things. Human sexuality is a gift not to be squandered. It is not sexual passion or pleasure in general that is described here. It is rather their misuse, which results in being handed over to “dishonorable passions.” What does this mean? Paul is not vague, nor does he single out either men or women. Both alike run afoul of God’s “good and acceptable and perfect” will (12:2) when they exchange “natural relations for those that are contrary to nature” (1:26). By “nature” Paul does not mean that which is culturally acceptable but points to that which man’s moral nature compels him to affirm innately.
The description of lesbian activity in verse 26 is matched in verse 27 by a description of same-sex attraction running amok in men. Four phases of the misdeed are listed: (1) men devote to other men the romantic ardor God gives men for women; (2) men are inflamed with defiling desires for other men; (3) men perform, literally, “the shameful act” with other men; and (4) as a result these men suffer the implications of the sin in which they have indulged. Such implications could be the guilt and burden of their sin in this life, the punishment of their sin in the day of judgment, or both.
1:28 This verse returns to the key thought of verse 21: people “knew God” but by dishonoring him “became futile in their thinking.” In verses 24–27 the consequences were spelled out in terms of same-sex error. Now in verse 28 Paul extends the consequence of their “debased mind” in other directions. As “God gave them up” in the sexual domain (vv. 24, 26), so he withdraws the restraints of a mind steered by common grace—grace that causes many people to live generally moral and decent lives in most situations. But now, having tried God’s patience beyond its gracious limits (cf. 2:4–5), people “do what ought not to be done.” A vivid description ensues.
1:29–31 While Paul can be taken as describing the morals and practices of the Greco-Roman world he has been raised up to evangelize, these verses describe observable human behavior as judged by God’s standards in all places and times. Heinous qualities and deeds such as those Paul describes are not confined to certain eras, geographies, or demographics but are endemic to the fallen human condition.
It should be recalled that Paul is an apostle of the Lord Jesus, who stated similarly: “From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:21–23). Paul in this section of Romans is concurring with a view of the human heart that he has not invented.
Jesus spoke of what comes “from within.” Paul speaks in Romans 1:29 of people being “filled with” and “full of.” These respective descriptions amount to the same bleak portrait. Paul speaks first of “unrighteousness,” the opposite of God’s righteousness to which he has already referred (v. 17). This “unrighteousness” could serve as the heading for all of the characteristics and practices that follow.
“Evil, covetousness, malice” are self-explanatory. Midway through, the verse shifts grammatically, but what Paul describes is no less intense or unflattering. People are “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.” Then the grammar shifts again, reflected in the ESV with a new sentence: “They are gossips . . .”
Verses 30–31 continue in the same vein. The piling up of descriptors is numbing but realistic: the alert student of the human condition must concede that this doleful listing is true-to-fact too much of the time in too many places. In the original, deft word choice heightens the rhetorical effect: all four words in verse 31 begin with the same letter (a-), just as the four consecutive words beginning Paul’s description in verse 29 (“unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice”) all end with the same sound (-ia).
But literary impressiveness is not the point; human decadence is. When people turn their backs on God (v. 28) they are “filled” (v. 29; passive voice, likely reflecting God’s active role) with all manner of wickedness. Yet Paul will summarize with what hardly seems possible: an even harsher condemnation.
1:29–31 While Paul can be taken as describing the morals and practices of the Greco-Roman world he has been raised up to evangelize, these verses describe observable human behavior as judged by God’s standards in all places and times. Heinous qualities and deeds such as those Paul describes are not confined to certain eras, geographies, or demographics but are endemic to the fallen human condition.
It should be recalled that Paul is an apostle of the Lord Jesus, who stated similarly: “From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:21–23). Paul in this section of Romans is concurring with a view of the human heart that he has not invented.
Jesus spoke of what comes “from within.” Paul speaks in Romans 1:29 of people being “filled with” and “full of.” These respective descriptions amount to the same bleak portrait. Paul speaks first of “unrighteousness,” the opposite of God’s righteousness to which he has already referred (v. 17). This “unrighteousness” could serve as the heading for all of the characteristics and practices that follow.
“Evil, covetousness, malice” are self-explanatory. Midway through, the verse shifts grammatically, but what Paul describes is no less intense or unflattering. People are “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.” Then the grammar shifts again, reflected in the ESV with a new sentence: “They are gossips . . .”
Verses 30–31 continue in the same vein. The piling up of descriptors is numbing but realistic: the alert student of the human condition must concede that this doleful listing is true-to-fact too much of the time in too many places. In the original, deft word choice heightens the rhetorical effect: all four words in verse 31 begin with the same letter (a-), just as the four consecutive words beginning Paul’s description in verse 29 (“unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice”) all end with the same sound (-ia).
But literary impressiveness is not the point; human decadence is. When people turn their backs on God (v. 28) they are “filled” (v. 29; passive voice, likely reflecting God’s active role) with all manner of wickedness. Yet Paul will summarize with what hardly seems possible: an even harsher condemnation.
1:29–31 While Paul can be taken as describing the morals and practices of the Greco-Roman world he has been raised up to evangelize, these verses describe observable human behavior as judged by God’s standards in all places and times. Heinous qualities and deeds such as those Paul describes are not confined to certain eras, geographies, or demographics but are endemic to the fallen human condition.
It should be recalled that Paul is an apostle of the Lord Jesus, who stated similarly: “From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:21–23). Paul in this section of Romans is concurring with a view of the human heart that he has not invented.
Jesus spoke of what comes “from within.” Paul speaks in Romans 1:29 of people being “filled with” and “full of.” These respective descriptions amount to the same bleak portrait. Paul speaks first of “unrighteousness,” the opposite of God’s righteousness to which he has already referred (v. 17). This “unrighteousness” could serve as the heading for all of the characteristics and practices that follow.
“Evil, covetousness, malice” are self-explanatory. Midway through, the verse shifts grammatically, but what Paul describes is no less intense or unflattering. People are “full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.” Then the grammar shifts again, reflected in the ESV with a new sentence: “They are gossips . . .”
Verses 30–31 continue in the same vein. The piling up of descriptors is numbing but realistic: the alert student of the human condition must concede that this doleful listing is true-to-fact too much of the time in too many places. In the original, deft word choice heightens the rhetorical effect: all four words in verse 31 begin with the same letter (a-), just as the four consecutive words beginning Paul’s description in verse 29 (“unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice”) all end with the same sound (-ia).
But literary impressiveness is not the point; human decadence is. When people turn their backs on God (v. 28) they are “filled” (v. 29; passive voice, likely reflecting God’s active role) with all manner of wickedness. Yet Paul will summarize with what hardly seems possible: an even harsher condemnation.
1:32 People have an innate awareness that evil of the breadth and scale described in verses 28–31 deserves God’s punishment. This means not just a slap on the wrist but the full wages of sin (cf. 6:23)—banishment from God’s presence and the eternal punishment that accompanies it. Paul describes this explicitly elsewhere: “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thess. 1:9). The human condition as described here is perilous in the extreme.
But as bad as it is for “those who practice such things,” it is even worse for those who “give approval to those who practice them.” It is one thing to condemn oneself. But in a religion whose second great commandment is to love others, to give approval and thereby encouragement to others in their lawlessness is the ultimate in loveless treachery. Elsewhere Scripture teaches, “Whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20). Paul describes the opposite situation: sinners’ condoning others’ abominable, self-destructive behavior, thereby ginning up man’s rush into the “multitude of sins” that Romans 1:28–31 has surveyed.
Little wonder, then, that this section began with the warning that “the wrath of God is [being] revealed from heaven” (v. 18). God’s response is the inexorable consequence of human bad decisions and behavior.
2:1 The OT prophet Amos condemns the enemies surrounding God’s people Israel in the northern kingdom: Damascus and Gaza, Tyre and Edom, Ammon and Moab . . . and even Judah (Amos 1:3–2:5)! How pleased those in Israel must have been at this sevenfold outcry against the wicked people around them. But how chagrined they must have felt when Amos’s “Thus says the Lord” turned in their direction (Amos 2:6). Israel, in God’s eyes, was worst of all!
Romans 2:1 employs a similar device. The readers or hearers of the discourse in chapter 1 might be appalled at the decadence on display there. They might sense complacent relief that they are not as bad as the degenerate people Paul has just described. But yes they are! “Because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (v. 1). The panoramic description of 1:18–32 becomes personal, addressed to every individual.
To judge others (as we are all prone to do) is to implicate and condemn oneself.
2:2 With “we know” Paul asserts what he takes to be axiomatic for his readers: “The judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.” This could be why Jesus was so explicit: “Judge not, that you be not judged” (Matt. 7:1). To judge wrongly is to affirm God’s justice in judging us: “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged” (Matt. 7:2). In Romans 2:1 Paul applies that principle.
In verse 2 he affirms “we know” (Gk. oidamen) something as a result. Paul will use the same expression four other times in Romans. There are certain things of which those who follow Christ are or should be certain (table 1.2).
TABLE 1.2: Paul’s Uses of “We Know” in Romans
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Verse
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Fact or Truth That Christians Know
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2:2
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We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.
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3:19
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We know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
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7:14
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For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
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8:22
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For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
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8:28
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And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
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In the realm of religion, many today regard convictions as merely personal views. Religious convictions are personal; no one’s applies to anyone else’s. While Paul would agree that religious convictions are personal (14:22), he also affirms that many spiritual truths are universally valid. Romans 2:2 is one such truth: God justly condemns not only all who commit evil but all who judge them but are no better themselves.
2:3 Paul knows that verses 1–2 will make a reader or hearer squirm. So, continuing his use of a device called diatribe, he addresses the implied reader who (like all of us) condemns others but does those very things himself. “Do you suppose, O man . . . that you will escape the judgment of God?” “Suppose” translates a word that can mean to calculate or reckon. Paul knows that people add up the evidence and exonerate themselves. God, however, comes to a different conclusion, one that no one can escape. Reference to “judgment” reminds us that the theme of this section continues to be God’s wrath (1:18). It is an unpleasant subject for the guilty. Of course a reader will tend to evade such condemnation.
The person in 2:3 appears to “suppose” or calculate that he is not as bad as all that—not as bad as the people described in 1:18–32. Paul assures him that he is.
2:4 Another reaction to the threat of divine judgment is to “presume on” God. God is kind, forbearing, and patient. Paul speaks of the “riches” or wealth of God’s graciousness. People live lives that are sometimes quite corrupt. Yet they prosper. Hence Jeremiah’s question that echoes throughout history: “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (Jer. 12:1).
Paul urges the readers not to mistake God’s kindness for leniency or permissiveness. God is kind, but he is also severe (Rom. 11:22). When people sin and appear to get by with it, or benefit from their waywardness, they are falling into a self-constructed trap. When people sin and do not see immediate consequences, this does not mean God does not see, know, or care. It does not mean (as many assume today) that, because God is love, wrath and judgment are old-fashioned notions we can safely ignore. In Paul’s time many Jews believed they were exempt from God’s judgment because of their ethnicity.
No, insists Paul: “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.” The apostle states this as a question in order to express amazement that anyone could be so ignorant. “Not knowing” translates a word often connoting willful ignorance. This person knows but prefers wishful thinking.
2:5 “Because of” can be translated “according to.” Wrath is building in direct relation to the hardness and the unrepentant heart of Paul’s discussion partner, who represents the reader.
Whether a person denies his sinfulness (v. 3) or deludes himself into thinking that God’s kindness means he will not judge him (v. 4), he is “storing up wrath for” himself. It is personal, “yourself,” because God is personal to every individual (cf. v. 6). It is inescapable, for the “day of wrath” is coming: God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed” (Acts 17:31). “God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Rom. 2:5; see also 2 Thess. 1:5), whether or not people believe it and whether or not they are properly prepared. As an apostle of Jesus Christ, Paul is being as direct as possible here in order to nudge the reader out of complacency, delusion, or outright error. This reflects God’s own “kindness and forbearance and patience” (Rom. 2:4).
2:6 “He,” of course, refers to God. After that word the rest of the verse is an OT citation, drawing on Psalm 62:12 and echoing many other OT passages. This should not be surprising, for Paul has said from the start that the “gospel of God” was “promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures” (Rom. 1:1–2). God and his ways are as true and relevant to the church as they were to ancient Israel. He is a God who promises both to bless and to judge (Deuteronomy 28).
“Render” means to pay back or reward. Later Paul will confirm that God gives grace, which is not earned (Rom. 4:4–5). At the same time, we reap what we sow (Gal. 6:7). Jesus taught that God “will repay each person according to what he has done” (Matt. 16:27; see also 2 Cor. 11:15; 2 Tim. 4:14). Paul seeks to underscore that every person has incurred a debt of sin, and God is going to call us each to account.
2:7–8 Paul presents two scenarios, representing two types of people.
The first type (v. 7) will receive “eternal life.” This will be God’s gift to them as they prove to be those who “seek for glory and honor and immortality.” Those are not benefits people can construct or earn for themselves. People acquire them “by patience in well-doing.” This could also be translated “by persevering in good work.” What does that mean?
Paul frequently correlates “good work(s)” with a close walk with God. For example, he commends the Colossians because they “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10; see also 2 Cor. 9:8; Eph. 2:10; 2 Thess. 2:17; 1 Tim. 2:10; 5:10; 2 Tim. 2:21). In Romans 2:7 Paul is describing those who dwell in God’s blessing because they seek what he offers on his terms. They are not under judgment because they have come to God in full trusting response, despite the sin of which everyone is guilty. They are, in a word, recipients of God’s grace in Christ, even though Paul will not talk in detail about Christ and his saving work until the next section (3:20ff.).
Romans 2:8 describes the opposite. The word for “self-seeking” can also be translated “hostility” (2 Cor. 12:20), “rivalries” (Gal. 5:20), or “selfish ambition” (Phil. 1:17; 2:3; James 3:14, 16). This person is not seeking what God grants, unlike those in Romans 2:7, who sought “glory and honor and immortality” outside themselves. Rather, these people disobey “the truth.” Added to that, they devote themselves to “unrighteousness.” The grim result is what Paul has been warning of since 1:18: “there will be wrath and fury.”
2:7–8 Paul presents two scenarios, representing two types of people.
The first type (v. 7) will receive “eternal life.” This will be God’s gift to them as they prove to be those who “seek for glory and honor and immortality.” Those are not benefits people can construct or earn for themselves. People acquire them “by patience in well-doing.” This could also be translated “by persevering in good work.” What does that mean?
Paul frequently correlates “good work(s)” with a close walk with God. For example, he commends the Colossians because they “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10; see also 2 Cor. 9:8; Eph. 2:10; 2 Thess. 2:17; 1 Tim. 2:10; 5:10; 2 Tim. 2:21). In Romans 2:7 Paul is describing those who dwell in God’s blessing because they seek what he offers on his terms. They are not under judgment because they have come to God in full trusting response, despite the sin of which everyone is guilty. They are, in a word, recipients of God’s grace in Christ, even though Paul will not talk in detail about Christ and his saving work until the next section (3:20ff.).
Romans 2:8 describes the opposite. The word for “self-seeking” can also be translated “hostility” (2 Cor. 12:20), “rivalries” (Gal. 5:20), or “selfish ambition” (Phil. 1:17; 2:3; James 3:14, 16). This person is not seeking what God grants, unlike those in Romans 2:7, who sought “glory and honor and immortality” outside themselves. Rather, these people disobey “the truth.” Added to that, they devote themselves to “unrighteousness.” The grim result is what Paul has been warning of since 1:18: “there will be wrath and fury.”
2:9–10 In chiastic form verse 9 expands verse 8, while verse 10 says more about the fortunate people described in verse 7.
The self-seekers (v. 8) are in for “tribulation and distress.” They have spurned the truth and obeyed what is wrong or false. Jewish ethnicity furnishes no safe haven, and the “Greek[s]” (= all who are not Jews) likewise will find no cure for their estrangement from God and non-compliance with his will. Paul has already said that the gospel good news “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (1:16). Now he underscores the price of doing evil, whatever one’s category of human belonging or identity.
On the other hand, even in a world where all have sinned (3:23), there is “glory and honor and peace” (2:10) for those who do good like verse 7 described. “Glory and honor and peace” refer to eschatological reconciliation with God. Whatever this world’s limitations and glitches, whatever a person’s ethnicity or cultural location, the “tribulation and distress” (v. 9) that all deserve can be exchanged for the blessing God’s good news makes available.
Specifics of this good news, and in particular the role “faith” plays in appropriating it, will be explained later. Paul’s task at present is to show the justice in God’s judgment, as in the end people receive from God what they seek from him in the course of their lives (v. 6).
2:9–10 In chiastic form verse 9 expands verse 8, while verse 10 says more about the fortunate people described in verse 7.
The self-seekers (v. 8) are in for “tribulation and distress.” They have spurned the truth and obeyed what is wrong or false. Jewish ethnicity furnishes no safe haven, and the “Greek[s]” (= all who are not Jews) likewise will find no cure for their estrangement from God and non-compliance with his will. Paul has already said that the gospel good news “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (1:16). Now he underscores the price of doing evil, whatever one’s category of human belonging or identity.
On the other hand, even in a world where all have sinned (3:23), there is “glory and honor and peace” (2:10) for those who do good like verse 7 described. “Glory and honor and peace” refer to eschatological reconciliation with God. Whatever this world’s limitations and glitches, whatever a person’s ethnicity or cultural location, the “tribulation and distress” (v. 9) that all deserve can be exchanged for the blessing God’s good news makes available.
Specifics of this good news, and in particular the role “faith” plays in appropriating it, will be explained later. Paul’s task at present is to show the justice in God’s judgment, as in the end people receive from God what they seek from him in the course of their lives (v. 6).
2:11 This verse looks backward—the first word “For” denotes an inference from what proceeds. God renders judgment with perfect justice, as each person deserves (v. 6). In that sense, verse 11 summarizes verses 6–10: however someone lives, and whatever the outcome, God will have been fair in his assessment of that person and his activities on the day of judgment, because he “shows no partiality.”
At the same time, this verse looks forward—as a summary statement it also becomes the basis for an inference (“For”; v. 12). God’s perfect justice has multiple implications. The focus in verse 11 is on God’s impartiality. Paul stresses this elsewhere (Eph. 6:9; Col. 3:25). James uses the same word in reasoning from God’s impartiality to the need for people to treat others without malicious favoritism (James 2:1). Because God does not show partiality, his people should not either.
In the next few verses Paul shows how God’s impartiality works out in terms of the condemnation or exoneration of people under his moral authority and oversight—“the law.” God’s wrath is being revealed (Rom. 1:18). But it is not capricious or unfair.
2:12 This verse shows how “God shows no partiality” (v. 11). Those “who have sinned without the law” could refer to lawless people—they have disregarded God’s moral code. Or, more likely (cf. v. 14), it could refer to Gentiles, who unlike Jews did not receive God’s written Torah (the five books of Moses), or “law.” Not having it, they sinned without it. Either way, the destiny of these people is to “perish.” Paul speaks of “those who are perishing” in other passages (1 Cor. 1:18; 2 Cor. 2:15; 4:3; 2 Thess. 2:10), and it is an appropriate expression in a section dealing with God’s wrath.
The second half of the verse likely has Paul’s fellow Jews in mind. God’s Torah was designed to inform and steer God’s people in all aspects and every situation of their lives. Yet no one follows it perfectly. As a result, it is inevitable that even people privileged to have God’s law (Rom. 3:2) “will be judged by” it.
2:13 Hearing the law is a good thing, as the foundational statement of Jewish belief, the Shema, proclaims: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4). But hearing without doing falls short of God’s standards; it is insufficient to make one able to “be justified.” Moreover, to be justified by doing the law would require perfect compliance. In Romans 3:19–20 Paul will conclude that no one achieves such perfection. For that reason, neither those who hear the law (but do not do it), nor those who seek to be justified by doing it, will be so justified.
In another sense, “doers of the law . . . will be justified” if they discern in the law the call to trust in God and his promise and not in their own self-righteousness. This would describe many prior to and during Jesus’ ministry who found saving grace through the forgiveness and new life received via Abrahamic faith (see ch. 4). This is what Paul may have in mind in the second half of 2:13.
2:14 This verse is best taken as explaining “all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law” (v. 12). Paul observes that many Gentiles “by nature do what the law requires,” even though they lack the Torah in their lives and religion. Nevertheless, many Gentiles refrain from behavior that the Torah calls sin: murder, stealing, lying, sexual immorality, and more. Not having the law proper, they become “a law to themselves,” reflecting the moral imprint of the God in whose image mankind is made.
2:15 Paul takes the observation of verse 14 a step further. By “work of the law” Paul probably refers to the acts of obedience the law prescribes. What the law requires is “written on their hearts” even though they do not have the law before their eyes. Here “conscience” is key. It is why those who have rejected God “are without excuse” (1:20). They “knew God” (1:21) but defied him anyway. They went against the witness of their own conscience, as 2:15 now also affirms: “their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.” Either way, they bear guilt based on the lawlike innate knowledge of God’s righteous standards that is common to humanity.
2:16 Going back to verse 6, and even to 1:18, Paul has in mind God’s climactic cosmic revelation of his righteousness, which will take the form of wrath for those outside of Christ—since it will be “by Christ Jesus” that God will judge “the secrets of men” (2:16). Some of the most painful “secrets” will be how flagrantly people broke God’s law and deserve his judgment despite their denials, concealments, and rationalizations of that fact.
Verse 16 serves to sum up the argument that Jew and Gentile alike, with or without the law, are “storing up wrath for . . . the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (v. 5). Paul describes this “day” in more detail elsewhere (2 Thess. 1:7–10). The promise of such a day of destruction is not new or unique to Paul; it is prominent in the very OT Scriptures that make up “the law” so visible in this portion of Romans. “Behold, the Lord will come in fire, and his chariots like the whirlwind, to render his anger in fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire” (Isa. 66:15).
Romans 2:16 relates this judgment specifically to Paul’s gospel and to the judgment “by Christ Jesus” it includes. Paul has set forth a compelling case, but he wants to make sure that Jewish readers, or Roman readers with ties to Jews who may seek to reach out to them with the gospel message, understand their doubly precarious position. So in the next section his diatribe partner becomes the observant Jew in particular.
2:17 Paul moves from a critique of human sinfulness that encompasses all people (vv. 1–16) to a focus on people like himself: ethnically and religiously Jewish. This is reminiscent of Jesus, who although he was a Jew pronounced woes on Jewish religious leaders whose priorities were out of balance (Matt. 23:23). Jesus could be painfully accusatory: “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (Matt. 23:33). By comparison, Paul is being diplomatic here. Neither Paul nor Jesus should be accused of anti-Semitism—they were Semites themselves. They loved and gave their lives in service to the God and people of Israel.
But Paul desires to continue to press the point that God’s wrath is being revealed (Rom. 1:18). Romans 2:17 underscores that ethnicity (“if you call yourself a Jew”), obedience to God’s laws (“rely on the law”), or religious self-confidence (“boast in God”) are in themselves no protection against the coming judgment.
2:18 This verse makes clear that Paul is not talking about a casual or nonobservant Jewish person. Rather, he envisions Jews who know God’s will. This is better than most Gentiles, for they are generally polytheists who do not have Moses and the prophets to guide them. Paul also envisions Jews who “approve what is excellent.” Elsewhere he speaks glowingly of those who “approve what is excellent, and so [will] be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Phil. 1:10). This is not a bad thing but a good thing. But being “instructed from the law” in itself, Paul knows, will not enable the Jew addressed in Romans 2:18 to arrive at a knowledge of God’s will and affirmation of “what is excellent” sufficient to satisfy God’s righteousness and so assuage his wrath.
2:19 “Are sure” points to a high level of self-assurance, as does the emphatic “you yourself.” Paul uses the same word translated “are sure” to describe his own assurance elsewhere in Romans (8:38; 14:14; 15:15). But his confidence is not in his own righteousness attained by obeying God’s law (Phil. 3:9). It is not assurance that is the problem, but false assurance.
He addresses the Jew who, being “instructed from the law” (Rom. 2:18), views himself as “a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness.” In a word, this person feels superior to those around him. This is specifically decried in the OT, as God condemns those who say, “Keep to yourself, do not come near me, for I am too holy for you” (Isa. 65:5). Jesus was critical of those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9). Paul was not the first to identify the syndrome that Romans 2:19 describes. People should indeed be a light to others (Matt. 5:14, 16; Phil. 2:15). But the light of the world is neither the law nor those who are confident that they are living up to it and so presume to guide their pitiable inferiors.
2:20 Paul’s increasingly lurid description of the Jew with misplaced confidence continues. Such a person views himself as an “instructor”—a word often carrying the idea of correcting and disciplining like a parent might a child. He stands above the “foolish.” “Teacher of children” might be another way of saying the same thing. Or the term might stress the superior understanding that elevates a savvy adult over clueless youth.
The attitude Paul seeks to question is observable when Jesus heals a man born with blindness. Jewish authorities cannot accept the legitimacy of this act. The healed man ascribes praise to God, but the authorities respond, “‘You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out” (John 9:34). The authorities despise even their fellow Jews who do not know the law as well as they do; the common people are “accursed” in their eyes (John 7:49).
Paul would not disagree with the teacher’s assumption that in OT Scripture we have the “embodiment of knowledge and truth” (Rom. 2:20). The Torah was presented as a revelation that would make non-Jews marvel (Deut. 4:6). Moses invited the Hebrew people to ask in worshipful wonder, “What great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?” (Deut. 4:8). Paul teaches that “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12).
But in the following verses what Paul is driving at becomes clear.
2:21–22 Over a dozen times in the Gospels Jesus calls out “hypocrites.” Without using that word Paul calls out that attitude and behavior. He uses four rhetorical questions, each in singular form. He is not issuing a group address but is collaring the hypothetical individual.
In Greek the form of the first question assumes a particular answer, which is an implied exclamation: “Yes, of course you do!” But the person Paul addresses fails to live up to his own self-instruction.
Jesus describes this problem in addressing the teaching authorities of his time, who seek to convert people to their own ranks. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:15). It will be recalled that Paul had been a Pharisee (Phil. 3:5). He had been one of these misguided teachers.
Next Paul alleges theft. He envisions a Jew who proclaims Exodus 20:15: “You shall not steal.” Jesus affirms this commandment (Matt. 19:18), and so does Paul (Rom. 13:9; Eph. 4:28). But the Jew seeking righteousness in the law and his keeping of it is robbing God of the glory that belongs to him alone.
Next is adultery. This is easy to denounce. But Jesus reminds us of the lustful eye and mind that bedevils us (Matt. 5:28). Knowing what the law says and even keeping the law in this important matter is no guarantee of the clean heart and right spirit that God calls for and provides (Ps. 51:10). Paul desires to point the Jew to a gospel, to Christ, to enable a man to regard “older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity” (1 Tim. 5:2). Recurring news reports about immorality by priests and pastors—who know very well the Bible’s teaching—bring home the timeliness of Paul’s powerful rhetorical question. It is not only “the Jew” Paul is addressing who needs to own this problem.
The last question points to a universal (and well-grounded; see Ex. 20:4–5) Jewish contempt for idols and idolatry. Commentators are divided on what Paul means. He could mean those who teach against idols but then idolize the law. He could be referring to Jews who (unlawfully) did not send their yearly temple tax to Jerusalem. That would be robbing the Jerusalem temple. Perhaps he knows of reports (now lost) of Jews who had plundered pagan temples (there were thousands of them across the Roman Empire) and profited from it, or were using metals made from melted pagan idols in their own precious metal trade.
2:21–22 Over a dozen times in the Gospels Jesus calls out “hypocrites.” Without using that word Paul calls out that attitude and behavior. He uses four rhetorical questions, each in singular form. He is not issuing a group address but is collaring the hypothetical individual.
In Greek the form of the first question assumes a particular answer, which is an implied exclamation: “Yes, of course you do!” But the person Paul addresses fails to live up to his own self-instruction.
Jesus describes this problem in addressing the teaching authorities of his time, who seek to convert people to their own ranks. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves” (Matt. 23:15). It will be recalled that Paul had been a Pharisee (Phil. 3:5). He had been one of these misguided teachers.
Next Paul alleges theft. He envisions a Jew who proclaims Exodus 20:15: “You shall not steal.” Jesus affirms this commandment (Matt. 19:18), and so does Paul (Rom. 13:9; Eph. 4:28). But the Jew seeking righteousness in the law and his keeping of it is robbing God of the glory that belongs to him alone.
Next is adultery. This is easy to denounce. But Jesus reminds us of the lustful eye and mind that bedevils us (Matt. 5:28). Knowing what the law says and even keeping the law in this important matter is no guarantee of the clean heart and right spirit that God calls for and provides (Ps. 51:10). Paul desires to point the Jew to a gospel, to Christ, to enable a man to regard “older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity” (1 Tim. 5:2). Recurring news reports about immorality by priests and pastors—who know very well the Bible’s teaching—bring home the timeliness of Paul’s powerful rhetorical question. It is not only “the Jew” Paul is addressing who needs to own this problem.
The last question points to a universal (and well-grounded; see Ex. 20:4–5) Jewish contempt for idols and idolatry. Commentators are divided on what Paul means. He could mean those who teach against idols but then idolize the law. He could be referring to Jews who (unlawfully) did not send their yearly temple tax to Jerusalem. That would be robbing the Jerusalem temple. Perhaps he knows of reports (now lost) of Jews who had plundered pagan temples (there were thousands of them across the Roman Empire) and profited from it, or were using metals made from melted pagan idols in their own precious metal trade.
2:23 The main point of the preceding four questions is clear: Paul’s dialogue partner brags about the law and revels in how it elevates him above other people. He is correct that the law condemns them. But it condemns him too.
And this is no petty offense; this person has dishonored God. There is a very close connection between the honor/dishonor of God and the honor/dishonor of his written Word, as these side-by-side rhetorical questions posed by Moses to Israel confirm:
Accordingly the psalmist confesses:
Paul affirms this implicit connection with the gravity of his charge.
2:24 The apostle draws on Scripture to clinch his argument. The “you” of verse 23 was singular. The “you” of verse 24 is plural. This confirms that Paul is using the singular discussion partner of verses 17–23 to highlight a failing not just of one such person but of the group to which he belongs. What is true of one is true of the collective due to universal individual guilt.
Paul cites the language of Isaiah 52:5 LXX. Israel was called to be a light to the Gentiles or nations (Isa. 42:6; 49:6; 51:4; 60:3). Their failure to receive the Torah as God intended brought God’s own name into disrepute. Later Paul will describe their failure in detail: “Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law” (Rom. 9:31). They thought they could establish their righteousness by keeping the law. Paul is arguing that the righteousness of God is found elsewhere and that to mistake this fact is to invite his wrath.
2:25 Paul brings up circumcision because it is a Jewish social and religious identity marker going all the way back to Abraham (Gen. 17:9–14). More than that, it is a God-ordained sign and seal of the covenant God made with him and his descendants (Rom. 4:11). In the NT, “the circumcision” or “the circumcision party” is shorthand for Jewish people (Acts 11:2; Gal. 2:12; Eph. 2:11; Col. 4:11; Titus 1:10).
The ritual of circumcision itself was seen as so important that, not many years before Paul wrote Romans, there were some in the Jerusalem church “who belonged to the party of the Pharisees [who] rose up and said, ‘It is necessary to circumcise [Gentiles who want to follow Jesus] and to order them to keep the law of Moses’” (Acts 15:5).
In Romans 2:25 Paul concedes circumcision’s value in principle. But its blessing is contingent on keeping the law. Otherwise, one’s circumcision places that person in the same status as the Gentiles, who do not practice circumcision, since their forefather was not Abraham. Circumcision, or being Jewish, is therefore not an automatic sign of being right with God, despite its being so highly prized among the Jews.
2:26 Paul is angling toward the insight that true circumcision is spiritual and enacted by God (v. 29), not merely physical and the automatic property of an ethnic heritage. To make that point he needs to establish that anyone who keeps the law, circumcised or not, is keeping the “precepts of the law,” even if that person is uncircumcised. The implied answer to the question this verse raises is “Yes, of course!” In the flow of Paul’s argument this means that the revelation of God’s righteousness and wrath (1:17–18) is not simply a matter of ethnic or religious affiliation. Being a Jew will not necessarily save, and being a Gentile does not necessarily condemn.
2:27 Paul makes an implication of verse 26 explicit. The uncircumcised person who receives the law as God intended shows that something is wrong with the Jew who “[has] the written code and circumcision but [breaks] the law.” The Gentiles’ honoring of the law (without the ritual advantages celebrated in circumcision and other Jewish observances) shows the bankruptcy of the lawbreaking Jewish person.
2:28 A key word in this verse is “merely.” In fact, Jewishness is an outward matter. Circumcision is “outward and physical.” But it is not merely these things. God looks on the heart, and always has (1 Sam. 16:7). “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:6) on a true and ultimate basis, not just on a basis that people have come to value or what a religious heritage affirms.
2:29 Paul wraps up his challenge to the prideful “Jew” with whom he has been interacting since verse 17. The overarching issue going back to 1:18 is God’s wrath. Who will avoid it? Who is savingly aligned with the “righteousness of God” (1:17)?
One potential answer is the Jews. They have the law (“the letter”; 2:29) and preserve the rituals—like circumcision—that mark the Jews as God’s people.
Not so, Paul concludes. “Jew” in the highest sense is an inward matter. Circumcision is “of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.”
Most of all, rather than boasting in his circumcision and in keeping God’s laws (which no person can fulfill flawlessly), the true Jew receives God’s endorsement and not merely human acclaim.As Jesus says to Jews in his setting, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15; see also John 5:44).
Paul’s “inward Jew” has dodged the certain bullet of God’s wrath for failing to keep God’s law. Rather, without technical compliance with the law (e.g., by not being circumcised), this person—even a Gentile—can receive God’s approval and evade his displeasure. It is not (even Abrahamic) ethnicity that assures survival on the day of judgment “when, according to [Paul’s] gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 2:16).
3:1 The previous verses could be understood as minimizing the blessing of Abrahamic descent. After all, the OT calls Israel the apple of God’s eye (Deut. 32:10; Zech. 2:8). So Paul raises two questions, which can really be understood as one: given the critique of the “Jew” in Romans 2:17–29, is Paul saying that no special blessing or status attaches to Jewish heritage? Is the privilege associated with circumcision a thing of the past? Or perhaps Paul is raising this question: if having the law and circumcision raises the bar of acceptance by God so high, is it perhaps a net disadvantage to be born Jewish?
3:2 Paul’s reply is immediate and definitive: in every way one could look at it, blessing attaches to Jewish ethnicity. The foremost proof for Paul is that God “entrusted [them] with the oracles of God.” “Oracles” (Gk. logia) are not merely sayings in the sense of human statements. In the LXX this word “is almost always applied to God’s ‘word.’” Its four uses in the NT always refer to God’s very words (see also Acts 7:38; Heb. 5:12; 1 Pet. 4:11). Deuteronomy 4:7–8 (quoted in the comment on Rom. 2:23) shows the intertwining of (1) God’s personal presence and (2) his commands and teachings. In the NT there is likewise an intimate connection between receiving (or rejecting) Jesus and his words.
To have God’s “oracles” is to possess a transcript of God’s truth that surpasses every holy book ever composed in any other cultural or religious setting. From the apostolic viewpoint, “oracles” does not describe the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, the Talmud, the writings of Confucius, the Book of Mormon, or any other religious or philosophical writings in the world. “Oracles” does describe the writings given by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to his people. Paul’s high view of OT Scripture as “oracles” quickly attached to the Gospels (in 1 Tim. 5:18 Paul quotes Luke 10:7 as Scripture) and to his own writings (2 Pet. 3:15–16; see also 1 Thess. 2:13) in the early church.
To call Israel’s Scriptures “oracles” is to confirm that Paul is in no way devaluing the Jews insofar as they received and are charged to uphold those Scriptures—something Jesus did perfectly.
3:3 The pair of questions in this verse seems to extend the hypothetical skepticism implied in verse 1. In particular, the question of God’s faithfulness is now raised. Paul will take this issue up in extended detail later (chs. 9–11). “Does their faithlessness nullify” translates an underlying future-tense verb (“Will their faithlessness nullify . . .”). This may indicate that Paul has in mind the future eschatological time of judgment associated with the final revelation of the “wrath of God” (1:18) and its consequences (see also 2:5, 9, 16). Even if he does, this is also a question for the present time.
3:4 Paul’s answer to the question of verse 3 is an emphatic “No!” Human speech may well be toxic, treacherous, and untrue (vv. 13–14). But God “never lies” (Titus 1:2). Paul quotes from Psalm 50:6 LXX to make his point, illustrating his belief that the OT is God’s very words (Rom. 3:2). Whatever God says, he is “justified,” or on good grounds, with his words. Whatever God’s decision or decree, he will “prevail” even if “judged,” presumably by humans who disagree with him. Another translation of the quoted text yields “that you may be . . . victorious when you go to law” (NETS). If this is correct, God is not being judged but judging. Either way, Paul insists, God’s utterances are completely and perfectly true, valid, and binding. They trump any human objection.
3:5 Paul’s argument stretching back to 1:18 is that the wrath of God, caused by human unrighteousness, “serves to show the righteousness of God” (cf. 1:17). “Serves to show” translates a word that can mean “establish, commend.” Someone could perversely posit a friendly connection between human unrighteousness and God’s righteousness: his good is parasitic on our evil. So Paul raises a devil’s advocate question: does God need human sin in order to be the righteous God who expresses wrath?
But this would seem arbitrary and cruel—to create human beings just to damn them. And then God could be made out to be “unrighteous to inflict wrath on us.” The very suggestion that there might be shiftiness or conniving instability in God is abhorrent (cf. James 1:17). Paul indicates this truth by emphasizing that he is using human analogies to make a point that is unsavory even to entertain. Likely he has been confronted with this charge (and worse) in his two decades of missionary teaching and evangelizing leading up to writing Romans.
3:6 Paul emphatically rejects the objection that God is unrighteous for inflicting wrath. If God were unrighteous, “how could [he] judge the world?” Paul asks. The implied answer: he could not. But God’s status as supreme and unerring judge is axiomatic in God’s OT “oracles” (v. 2). Abraham asks, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen. 18:25; see also Judg. 11:27; 1 Sam. 2:10; 1 Chron. 16:33).
But along with God’s justice in the OT is his displeasure with the unrighteousness he observes: “God is a righteous judge, and a God who feels indignation every day” (Ps. 7:11). And this is a good thing: if God does not take offense at evil, bring it to justice, and heal the damage, who ever will or could? In the end, God’s righteous judgment is a cause not for calling God in question but for rejoicing:
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide the nations upon earth. (Ps. 67:4)
This call for joyous and total celebration of God’s guiding and governing judgment lies behind Paul’s incredulous rejection of the notion that God might be unjust.
3:7–8 The two rhetorical questions in these verses have this in common: Paul does not give them a direct answer in detail. All he does is dismiss people who would accuse him with these charges: “Their condemnation is just” (v. 8).
When Paul finally does get to Rome, perhaps three years after writing this letter, he meets with “local leaders of the Jews” (Acts 28:17). A prisoner at that point, Paul tells them that it is “because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain” (Acts 28:20). The leaders reply that they want to hear Paul’s views because “with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:22). Perhaps the ill rumors of gospel beliefs are already in the air as Paul writes Romans. He knows they need to be dispelled.
Romans 3:7 essentially personalizes the two questions in verse 5 and reframes them as if Paul were guilty of asking them. “My lie” is the charge in the second question of verse 5 that “God is unrighteous.” “Being condemned as a sinner” echoes how human unrighteousness serves to “show the righteousness of God,” as per the first question in verse 5. By reframing the questions from verse 5 in verse 7, Paul extends the diatribe and sets up the more pertinent question (since he has already replied to v. 5) of verse 8. “Some people slanderously charge” Paul with this twisted conviction.
Paul does not reply in full to the charge here. There are two likely reasons. (1) To answer would take him too far afield from his present task of explaining how and why the wrath of God is being revealed (1:18). (2) He knows he will deal with this question later—from two angles, in fact. In 6:1–14 he will answer the question “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Starting with 6:15 he will reply to “Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?” Both questions are pertinent if someone were to say, on Christian (or any other) grounds, “Why not do evil that good may come?”
So Paul’s curt conclusion in 3:8 is likely because he intends to address these misrepresentations of gospel teaching later. And he is eager to complete his argument begun in 1:18 regarding human unrighteousness in light of God’s impending revealed wrath.
On another reading, the line that concludes 3:8, “Their condemnation is just,” is Paul’s reply to the hypothetical charges he quotes. The question “Why am I still being condemned . . . ?” raises the issue of human responsibility since God is sovereign. And then the question “Why not do evil . . . ?” suggests that the logical conclusion is that more good comes when humans do more sin. Paul rejects both of these possibilities by asserting the aptness and justice of the condemnation of those who think this way. But the fact is that people are responsible, making their condemnation just; those who think more good will come from their doing more sin will also be justly condemned.
3:7–8 The two rhetorical questions in these verses have this in common: Paul does not give them a direct answer in detail. All he does is dismiss people who would accuse him with these charges: “Their condemnation is just” (v. 8).
When Paul finally does get to Rome, perhaps three years after writing this letter, he meets with “local leaders of the Jews” (Acts 28:17). A prisoner at that point, Paul tells them that it is “because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain” (Acts 28:20). The leaders reply that they want to hear Paul’s views because “with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:22). Perhaps the ill rumors of gospel beliefs are already in the air as Paul writes Romans. He knows they need to be dispelled.
Romans 3:7 essentially personalizes the two questions in verse 5 and reframes them as if Paul were guilty of asking them. “My lie” is the charge in the second question of verse 5 that “God is unrighteous.” “Being condemned as a sinner” echoes how human unrighteousness serves to “show the righteousness of God,” as per the first question in verse 5. By reframing the questions from verse 5 in verse 7, Paul extends the diatribe and sets up the more pertinent question (since he has already replied to v. 5) of verse 8. “Some people slanderously charge” Paul with this twisted conviction.
Paul does not reply in full to the charge here. There are two likely reasons. (1) To answer would take him too far afield from his present task of explaining how and why the wrath of God is being revealed (1:18). (2) He knows he will deal with this question later—from two angles, in fact. In 6:1–14 he will answer the question “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Starting with 6:15 he will reply to “Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?” Both questions are pertinent if someone were to say, on Christian (or any other) grounds, “Why not do evil that good may come?”
So Paul’s curt conclusion in 3:8 is likely because he intends to address these misrepresentations of gospel teaching later. And he is eager to complete his argument begun in 1:18 regarding human unrighteousness in light of God’s impending revealed wrath.
On another reading, the line that concludes 3:8, “Their condemnation is just,” is Paul’s reply to the hypothetical charges he quotes. The question “Why am I still being condemned . . . ?” raises the issue of human responsibility since God is sovereign. And then the question “Why not do evil . . . ?” suggests that the logical conclusion is that more good comes when humans do more sin. Paul rejects both of these possibilities by asserting the aptness and justice of the condemnation of those who think this way. But the fact is that people are responsible, making their condemnation just; those who think more good will come from their doing more sin will also be justly condemned.
3:9 In verse 1, Paul raised the question of Jewish advantage. He affirmed that God has indeed gifted them with their holy writings, the “oracles of God” (v. 2). In 9:4–5 he will list some nine particular blessings that accrue to the Abrahamic heritage as recorded in those oracles. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Jew falls short of God’s righteousness (2:17–29). And God is righteous in his judgment and wrath, no matter what human objections might be raised (3:3–8).
This brings Paul to the question of verse 9: “Are we Jews any better off?” Does the advantage of which Paul spoke in verses 1–2 offset the unrighteousness he alleged in 2:17–29, which (along with 1:18–2:16) renders the Jews as unrighteous as the Gentiles?
No, 3:9 replies. “We have already charged” could refer to “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” of 1:18. “All” covers both Gentile and Jew. Or it could be a summary of his argument in 1:18–2:29. Certainly the net effect of that extended section is precisely what 3:9 affirms: “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.” Not only have they committed sins; they are “under” it in the sense of being subject to its condemnation and enslaved to its demands (cf. 6:16).
3:10 This verse begins a series of OT citations (vv. 10–18). They may seem redundant to modern readers and perhaps somewhat anticlimactic. However, Paul views them as the “oracles of God” (v. 2). Observations of human sinfulness (1:18–32) and discourse on God’s righteousness versus the opposite on the part of man (2:1–3:8) have their place. But in the end what matters is God’s verdict—“as it is written” (Gk. gegraptai; 3:10). This same expression has already occurred repeatedly (1:17; 2:24; 3:4). It will show up a dozen more times in the remainder of Romans, a clue to the importance Paul attaches to God’s written Word as the basis for his message, arguments, and convictions regarding Jesus and the saving gospel message.
Verse 10 begins a quotation that extends through verse 12. Quoted is a passage from the Psalter that occurs twice, with cosmetic differences in Hebrew: Psalm 14:1–3 and Psalm 53:1–3. The fact that Paul draws on the Psalms is a reminder that, for Paul as for Jesus, the “oracles of God,” or the OT Scripture, extended across the whole of “the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms,” in Jesus’ words (Luke 24:44). This means the entirety of the OT canon.
The verdict of those oracles, that canon, on human unrighteousness, Gentile and Jewish, begins here: “None is righteous, no, not one.” This head verse of two psalms that condemn both God’s covenant people and humans in general may be taken as the theme of the next eight verses. This does not mean there is no such thing as true and perfect righteousness. There is—but it is not to be found in the race of fallen man. Paul will now proceed to prove this point from God’s own oracles.
3:11–12 When it comes to God and his righteousness, no one gets it. “Understands” here carries the connotation of grasping something “that challenges one’s thinking or practice” (BDAG, s.v. συνίημι). God and his righteousness are a challenge to human thought and behavior. God’s Word and his ways go right over our heads: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord” (Isa. 55:8). Paul’s claim is not unique to him and the psalmists he quotes. Wisdom cries out to man (Prov. 1:20; 8:1), but he stonewalls it.
Man in general does not even seek God. “Seek the Lord” occurs over two dozen times in the OT, but overall there is more straying from God recorded there than shining examples of generations given over to astute spirituality and sterling compliance with God’s will. With notable (though no perfect) exceptions, OT Israel was a “stiff-necked people,” a verdict Stephen extended to the Jerusalem leaders of his day (Acts 7:51).
Romans 3:10–11 characterizes the godless individual. Verse 12 begins with a twofold collective condemnation. “All have turned aside” from the way God prescribes. The “way of the Lord” is mentioned nearly a dozen times in the OT; in four of those passages Israel charges God with wrongdoing. “The way of the Lord is not just,” they complain, according to Ezekiel (18:25, 29; 33:17, 20). “Worthless” in Romans 3:12 means to become a “liability to society because of moral depravity” (BDAG, s.v. ἀχρειόω). Paul describes the moral collapse of people as a whole.
Yet a people is composed of individuals; the status of a collective is the aggregate of its members. Verse 12 closes by returning to the problem not of society but of each one. “No one does good” can be understood as failure to treat others uprightly or charitably. God calls for his people “to do justice, and to love kindness” (Mic. 6:8); the charge of the psalms Paul quotes is that people do neither.
“Not even one” may sound harsh and hyperbolic. We may doubt that we, at least, are quite that bad. Paul could agree: as he will now assert, we are in fact even worse.
3:11–12 When it comes to God and his righteousness, no one gets it. “Understands” here carries the connotation of grasping something “that challenges one’s thinking or practice” (BDAG, s.v. συνίημι). God and his righteousness are a challenge to human thought and behavior. God’s Word and his ways go right over our heads: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord” (Isa. 55:8). Paul’s claim is not unique to him and the psalmists he quotes. Wisdom cries out to man (Prov. 1:20; 8:1), but he stonewalls it.
Man in general does not even seek God. “Seek the Lord” occurs over two dozen times in the OT, but overall there is more straying from God recorded there than shining examples of generations given over to astute spirituality and sterling compliance with God’s will. With notable (though no perfect) exceptions, OT Israel was a “stiff-necked people,” a verdict Stephen extended to the Jerusalem leaders of his day (Acts 7:51).
Romans 3:10–11 characterizes the godless individual. Verse 12 begins with a twofold collective condemnation. “All have turned aside” from the way God prescribes. The “way of the Lord” is mentioned nearly a dozen times in the OT; in four of those passages Israel charges God with wrongdoing. “The way of the Lord is not just,” they complain, according to Ezekiel (18:25, 29; 33:17, 20). “Worthless” in Romans 3:12 means to become a “liability to society because of moral depravity” (BDAG, s.v. ἀχρειόω). Paul describes the moral collapse of people as a whole.
Yet a people is composed of individuals; the status of a collective is the aggregate of its members. Verse 12 closes by returning to the problem not of society but of each one. “No one does good” can be understood as failure to treat others uprightly or charitably. God calls for his people “to do justice, and to love kindness” (Mic. 6:8); the charge of the psalms Paul quotes is that people do neither.
“Not even one” may sound harsh and hyperbolic. We may doubt that we, at least, are quite that bad. Paul could agree: as he will now assert, we are in fact even worse.
3:13–14 Paul turns to other OT verses to confirm the sinfulness of all, Jew and Gentile alike. His teaching in this section contrasts with most rabbinic teaching of his time (which Paul learned under Gamaliel; Acts 22:3), which held that man was not in bondage to sin in the way Paul is describing; rather, man has “freedom to choose between the good and the bad impulses.” Paul reflects Jesus’ insight in Romans 3:13–14: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34). Due to a corrupt heart, man lacks the ability to save himself by his own right choices. Human will is in bondage to something from which only God can liberate.
Romans 3:13 quotes the second part (italicized) of Psalm 5:9: “For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.” This verse from Psalm 5 is a verdict not only on speech but on its human source: “their inmost self is destruction.” This comports with Jesus’ statement concerning the “abundance of the heart.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips” is a quote from Psalm 140:3. There too the problem is not just speech but people with rot at their core: they “plan evil things in their heart” (Ps. 140:2). Toxic language springs from a malignant heart.
Romans 3:14 draws on Psalm 10:7. In that psalm a mouth “full of curses and bitterness” is the expression of the wicked person who “says in his heart” that God will not take note or punish (Ps. 10:6, 11, 13). This psalm foreshadows Paul’s sweeping conclusion (Rom. 3:18) that “there is no fear of God before their eyes.” Verse 14 does not just flag bad and bitter words; Paul reasons from sick speech to a corrupt inner person and internal condition.
3:13–14 Paul turns to other OT verses to confirm the sinfulness of all, Jew and Gentile alike. His teaching in this section contrasts with most rabbinic teaching of his time (which Paul learned under Gamaliel; Acts 22:3), which held that man was not in bondage to sin in the way Paul is describing; rather, man has “freedom to choose between the good and the bad impulses.” Paul reflects Jesus’ insight in Romans 3:13–14: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt. 12:34). Due to a corrupt heart, man lacks the ability to save himself by his own right choices. Human will is in bondage to something from which only God can liberate.
Romans 3:13 quotes the second part (italicized) of Psalm 5:9: “For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.” This verse from Psalm 5 is a verdict not only on speech but on its human source: “their inmost self is destruction.” This comports with Jesus’ statement concerning the “abundance of the heart.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips” is a quote from Psalm 140:3. There too the problem is not just speech but people with rot at their core: they “plan evil things in their heart” (Ps. 140:2). Toxic language springs from a malignant heart.
Romans 3:14 draws on Psalm 10:7. In that psalm a mouth “full of curses and bitterness” is the expression of the wicked person who “says in his heart” that God will not take note or punish (Ps. 10:6, 11, 13). This psalm foreshadows Paul’s sweeping conclusion (Rom. 3:18) that “there is no fear of God before their eyes.” Verse 14 does not just flag bad and bitter words; Paul reasons from sick speech to a corrupt inner person and internal condition.
3:15–17 Whereas verses 10–12 stressed the corruption of all persons and verses 13–14 pointed to destructive speech (fueled by the sick soul), these verses point to evil deeds. It is characteristic of people not merely to say evil things but to do them. As evidence Paul turns here to Isaiah 59:7–8 and quotes much of it.
“Their feet are swift to shed blood” (Rom. 3:15) describes mankind’s propensity for violence. Jesus (Matt. 5:21–22) drew a connection between murder (which most people do not commit) and anger (which everyone indulges in, even if we learn to stifle it). Today classes are taught on anger management because the problem is so widespread. Skepticism about these classes is common, in part because of the belief that anger is necessary to get things off one’s chest. To suppress anger, runs common belief, is actually harmful. Paul’s fellow church leader James writes, “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). This is a fundamental point at which man and God do not see eye to eye. Man revels in rage.
“Feet are swift to shed blood,” words from Isaiah in the eighth century BC and from Paul in the first century AD, are even more true in the twenty-first century in a world of widespread wars, bombings, and the death of over 30,000 babies daily worldwide by abortion. In any given year of late, tens of millions of refugees seek safer lives. Truly, man’s “paths are ruin and misery” (Rom. 3:16). Isaiah’s and Paul’s words turn out to be not merely doctrinal but prophetic of our own times.
“The way of peace they have not known” (v. 17) are words defined in Isaiah 59:7–8 by surrounding clauses such as “desolation and destruction are in their highways,” “there is no justice in their paths,” and “they have made their roads crooked.” “Way” in Romans 3:17 means one’s way of life, the path people follow day in and day out. God calls to a road of righteousness, honesty, goodness, and therefore care for others grounded in fellowship with him. This would be a “way of peace.” What God sees as he surveys the world (Isa. 59:15) is the opposite. People are strangers to the worshipful and redemptive life God intends. We are our own worst enemy.
3:15–17 Whereas verses 10–12 stressed the corruption of all persons and verses 13–14 pointed to destructive speech (fueled by the sick soul), these verses point to evil deeds. It is characteristic of people not merely to say evil things but to do them. As evidence Paul turns here to Isaiah 59:7–8 and quotes much of it.
“Their feet are swift to shed blood” (Rom. 3:15) describes mankind’s propensity for violence. Jesus (Matt. 5:21–22) drew a connection between murder (which most people do not commit) and anger (which everyone indulges in, even if we learn to stifle it). Today classes are taught on anger management because the problem is so widespread. Skepticism about these classes is common, in part because of the belief that anger is necessary to get things off one’s chest. To suppress anger, runs common belief, is actually harmful. Paul’s fellow church leader James writes, “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). This is a fundamental point at which man and God do not see eye to eye. Man revels in rage.
“Feet are swift to shed blood,” words from Isaiah in the eighth century BC and from Paul in the first century AD, are even more true in the twenty-first century in a world of widespread wars, bombings, and the death of over 30,000 babies daily worldwide by abortion. In any given year of late, tens of millions of refugees seek safer lives. Truly, man’s “paths are ruin and misery” (Rom. 3:16). Isaiah’s and Paul’s words turn out to be not merely doctrinal but prophetic of our own times.
“The way of peace they have not known” (v. 17) are words defined in Isaiah 59:7–8 by surrounding clauses such as “desolation and destruction are in their highways,” “there is no justice in their paths,” and “they have made their roads crooked.” “Way” in Romans 3:17 means one’s way of life, the path people follow day in and day out. God calls to a road of righteousness, honesty, goodness, and therefore care for others grounded in fellowship with him. This would be a “way of peace.” What God sees as he surveys the world (Isa. 59:15) is the opposite. People are strangers to the worshipful and redemptive life God intends. We are our own worst enemy.
3:15–17 Whereas verses 10–12 stressed the corruption of all persons and verses 13–14 pointed to destructive speech (fueled by the sick soul), these verses point to evil deeds. It is characteristic of people not merely to say evil things but to do them. As evidence Paul turns here to Isaiah 59:7–8 and quotes much of it.
“Their feet are swift to shed blood” (Rom. 3:15) describes mankind’s propensity for violence. Jesus (Matt. 5:21–22) drew a connection between murder (which most people do not commit) and anger (which everyone indulges in, even if we learn to stifle it). Today classes are taught on anger management because the problem is so widespread. Skepticism about these classes is common, in part because of the belief that anger is necessary to get things off one’s chest. To suppress anger, runs common belief, is actually harmful. Paul’s fellow church leader James writes, “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). This is a fundamental point at which man and God do not see eye to eye. Man revels in rage.
“Feet are swift to shed blood,” words from Isaiah in the eighth century BC and from Paul in the first century AD, are even more true in the twenty-first century in a world of widespread wars, bombings, and the death of over 30,000 babies daily worldwide by abortion. In any given year of late, tens of millions of refugees seek safer lives. Truly, man’s “paths are ruin and misery” (Rom. 3:16). Isaiah’s and Paul’s words turn out to be not merely doctrinal but prophetic of our own times.
“The way of peace they have not known” (v. 17) are words defined in Isaiah 59:7–8 by surrounding clauses such as “desolation and destruction are in their highways,” “there is no justice in their paths,” and “they have made their roads crooked.” “Way” in Romans 3:17 means one’s way of life, the path people follow day in and day out. God calls to a road of righteousness, honesty, goodness, and therefore care for others grounded in fellowship with him. This would be a “way of peace.” What God sees as he surveys the world (Isa. 59:15) is the opposite. People are strangers to the worshipful and redemptive life God intends. We are our own worst enemy.
3:18 This verse serves as a summary of verses 10–17. The root of the verdict that “all . . . are under sin” (v. 9) is theological: their view of God is deficient. God should be held in veneration and awe so that all of life is lived for his honor and glory; he deserves our utmost and comprehensive reverence, or “fear.” Too few regard God with the fear due him. None fear him rightly and perfectly
As a result, violence and ruin and misery (vv. 15–17) are issues worldwide and throughout history. Sins of the tongue are rampant (vv. 13–14) and always have been. No one is righteous (vv. 10–11), nor does anyone truly understand and seek that status. “Jews and Greeks” (v. 9) are united in their moral imperfection, spiritual darkness, and distance from God.
That is the verdict of a range of OT passages Paul has now cited. It is “what the law says” (cf. v. 19) about the human condition. The next two verses survey the results.
3:19 On Paul’s “we know,” see table 1.2. By “law” here Paul means the whole OT, including the portions of it he has just cited. In verse 19 Paul confirms (1) whom the law addresses and (2) why it says what it says.
(1) The OT “speaks to those who are under the law.” This means all people, everywhere. There is only one God. He created all things and peoples. He does not have different religions, Scriptures, and plans of salvation for different groups. What God’s law describes and prescribes applies to the whole race of Adam and Eve.
(2) “Every mouth may be stopped” recognizes that we make excuses. We rationalize our sinfulness. We deny that we are as bad as verses 10–18 claim. In all these senses, as God addresses us with the word of our waywardness we reply with evasions or rebuttals. It is important for people to fall silent so they can hear God’s words of conviction and offer of healing. The law is God’s means of grace for people to own up to their guilt and hear God’s message instead of their own self-justifying whining and protest.
The law also makes “the whole world . . . accountable to God.” It does not merely render people silent; it declares them liable to punishment. The “wrath of God” that is the heading of this extended section (1:18–3:20) is justified because the law renders God’s just verdict on all the earth’s inhabitants.
3:20 “For” signals that verse 20 explains verse 19. The law’s verdict is so sweeping and severe (v. 19) because “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight.” The key words in that phrase are “by works of the law.” What does this mean? Discussion among scholars has been voluminous. The best explanation is that Paul refers simply to the works that the law (the whole OT) commands. No one is or will be justified by doing them because no one can observe them as God’s holiness deserves.
This is not a criticism either of the law or of doing what the law says (though portions of it are no longer directly relevant since some parts applied primarily to ancient Israel and various forms and stages of old covenant observance). Jesus and Paul both uphold the two summary great commandments of the law: love for God and for one’s neighbor. They repeat and affirm dozens of specific OT teachings and commands. The OT’s promise and story of redemption are inseparable from their NT fulfillment and continuation down to the present time.
This is rather a criticism of what Paul knew to be true in Judaism: some considered themselves righteous (as Paul formerly did; Phil. 3:6) because they kept at least certain OT commandments. Paul has also spoken of Gentiles who know enough of what the law teaches about God, through creation (Rom. 1:19–23) and through their conscience (2:12–16), to be condemned by it.
What the law furnishes, therefore, as far as man’s self-perceived righteousness is concerned is “knowledge of sin,” which is not in itself a plan of salvation any more than a medical diagnosis is a cure. In coming sections Paul will say more about both that knowledge and God’s moves to respond to it. For now, Paul has set forth his extended case (1:18–3:20) that pervasive human failure and transgression deserves God’s wrath. No human, unaided, possesses the righteousness God requires to be justified in his sight.