Original Meaning

IN THIS SHORT PARAGRAPH Paul both continues his argument from 2:1–11 and prepares the way for the subsequent discussion in 2:17–29. The issue of equitable judgment for both Jew and Gentile is carried on from 2:1–11. What is new in these verses is the introduction of the topic of the law. We can understand why the matter comes up here. For Paul has argued in 2:6–11 that Jews are in the same situation as Gentiles when it comes to God’s judgment. But what Paul seems blithely to ignore is that Jews are hardly in the same situation as Gentiles. They have many privileges and blessings from God that the Gentiles do not have. Preeminent among these, especially in the eyes of first-century Jews, was the law. Paul intends to show here that the Jews’ possession of the law does not give to them a decisive advantage over the Gentiles (2:12). He shows this by arguing that (1) it is doing, not possessing, the law that counts (2:13), and (2) even Gentiles have “law” in a certain sense (2:14–15).

The division in verse 12 between those “who sin apart from the law” and those “who sin under the law” corresponds to the key division in humankind that Paul deals with in the letter as a whole (1:16) and in the immediate context (2:9–10): Gentiles and Jews. “Law” (Gk. nomos) refers to the law of Moses—the requirements that God imposed on his people at Sinai through Moses. It was to Israel alone that this law was given, and they were made responsible for it. Therefore, when Jews sin, they sin “under” it or “in its sphere” (Gk. en). Gentiles, by contrast, sin “apart from” that law (Gk. anomos).

In either case, however, the result is the same: condemnation. The parallelism in the verse makes clear that “judge” (krino) in the second part of verse 12 means the same as “perish” (apollymi) in the first part. But why does sinning “under the law” bring condemnation? Why can the law not protect the Jews from God’s wrath? Paul explains in verse 13: “It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.” The teaching was not new with Paul; the rabbis made the same point: “Not the expounding [of the law] is the chief thing, but the doing [of it].”1

Verse 13 again raises the question whether Paul teaches that people can be put right with God by what they do. Noting James 2:24, many interpreters conclude that Paul indeed means that people will be declared right by God in the judgment on the basis of their works. This does not contradict Paul’s teaching elsewhere because Paul’s use of “declared righteous” language describes the initial acceptance of the sinner before God—an acceptance mediated by faith alone.2 But we think that, as in 2:8 and 10, Paul is simply asserting the standard of God’s assessment (see Contemporary Significance on 2:1–11). No person ever actually meets the standard of obeying the law required for right standing with God.

Verses 14–15 are a self-contained unit that describe the Gentiles’ relationship to “law.” Who are these Gentiles? Three possibilities, familiar to us by now from the similar situation in 2:8 and 10 (and, to some extent, 2:13), are to be considered: Gentiles who fulfill the law and are saved apart from the gospel, Gentiles who obey parts of the law but who are not saved, and Gentile Christians. If Paul were thinking of Gentile Christians, then verses 14–15 probably explain the last part of verse 13: Those who obey the law and are declared righteous are those Gentile Christians who “do by nature the things of the law.”3 But applying the language of verses 14–15 to Gentile Christians pays too little attention to the background of Paul’s teaching (see Bridging Contexts), and it also gives an unnatural interpretation to the key phrase “by nature.” Christians obey God’s law not by some innate ability, but by the power of the indwelling Spirit.

Thus, Paul is again apparently describing Gentiles generally. But that they might be saved by their obedience is an incorrect inference from verse 15, as we will see. If Paul is describing Gentiles generally in verses 14–15, then they are probably connected with the first part of verse 12, where Paul asserted that Gentiles sin “apart from the law.” He now wants to qualify that remark by noting that Gentiles do, in a certain sense, have access to law. To be sure, they do not have the law—that is, the law of Moses, the Torah. But their frequent conformity to many of the requirements of that law (e.g., they do not murder, steal, or commit adultery) shows that they have a knowledge of God’s basic moral requirements—God’s “law” in an extended sense.

Paul’s use of the word “conscience” (syneidesis) in verse 15 helps explain his point. God, Paul suggests, has built into all people a basic sense of right and wrong. Only the Jews have God’s law in its complete written form, but all people have “law” of God.

The language of “written on their hearts” in verse 15 could again suggest that Paul is thinking of Gentile Christians, who, by virtue of the new covenant (Jer. 31:31–34) have the law written on the heart. But it is significant that Paul does not say that the law is written on the heart but that the “requirements of the law” (lit., “the work of the law”) are. The Gentiles’ innate knowledge of God’s law leads them often to do what is right. When this happens, their consciences, along with their thoughts, “defend” them, convincing them that they are doing what God requires.

But they will not always obey, and when they do not, the conscience has the opposite effect: It “accuses” them. A few interpreters think that Paul is describing two classes of people: the majority who do not do the law God has given them and are condemned, and a minority who respond positively to God’s law and are saved because of it. But Paul’s language is much more naturally taken to refer to the same individuals. All Gentiles sometimes do the law and sometimes do not, and their consciences therefore both accuse and defend them.

Paul’s reference to God’s judgment in Christ in verse 16 is not easy to integrate into his argument. The NIV takes verses 14–15 as a parenthesis, suggesting that verse 16 goes with verses 12–13: “will be judged by the law [v. 12b] … when God will judge men’s secrets.” But it is better to take verse 16 with the final verbs in verse 15. The constant self-criticism of the Gentiles finds its ultimate meaning in the judgment of God at the end of history. That judgment, Paul affirms, takes place “through Jesus Christ,” whom God has appointed as the arbiter (see, e.g., “the judgment seat of Christ” in 2 Cor. 5:10). This Christologically oriented judgment is fully in accord with the gospel Paul preaches.

Bridging Contexts

IN KEEPING WITH our purpose in each of these sections, we will look at two words from 2:12–16 that contemporary readers may “hear” differently than did the original audience of Romans: law and nature.

Law. We use the term law in a bewildering variety of ways, to describe everything from the formal stipulations that government imposes on us (e.g., “federal law”) to the observed normal tendencies of the material world (“the laws of physics”). Few of us would bring these kinds of definitions of “law” to our reading of Romans, for we are obviously dealing with religious material far removed from a state code or a scientific textbook. But many of us bring to Romans a concept of God’s law derived from systematic theology: the sum total of God’s requirements for holy living. Luther was especially influential in using the word in this way, and it has become customary among Lutherans to divide all Scripture into the two categories: law (what God requires of us) and gospel (what God gives us).

But Paul’s use of nomos (law) comes directly from the Old Testament and the world of Judaism in which he grew up. Nomos was specifically Torah—the law God gave Israel through Moses. Paul can thus claim that the law came into the world 430 years after Abraham (Gal. 3:17; see Rom. 5:13–14, 20). Moreover, as Paul’s repeated references to doing (e.g., Rom. 10:5), obeying (e.g., 2:27) or observing (e.g., 2:25) the law indicate, he uses law to refer to the commands of the law of Moses. As he puts it in Galatians 3:12, “the law is not based on faith.”

To understand Paul’s argument in Romans, where he uses nomos over seventy times, we must realize that he is almost always referring to this specific law. The first occurrences already reveal this focus: Gentiles are those who sin “apart from the law” (2:12), for they “do not have the law” (2:14); Jews, on the other hand, are those who live “under the law” (2:12).

But Paul occasionally uses nomos in an extended, or broader, sense. In 2:14, for instance, he claims that Gentiles who do not have the law (Torah) nevertheless can become “a law for themselves.” Here nomos has the more general sense of the divine demand without regard to its specific form. A passage that reveals this sense especially clearly is 1 Corinthians 9:19–21:

Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law.

Here, as in Romans 2:12, “those under the law” are the Jews and “those not having the law” are Gentiles. Paul himself claims he is “not under the law” in this sense of the word. He no longer feels bound to follow the specific law of Moses, the Torah. But, he quickly adds, this does not mean that he is “free from God’s law.” Clearly this last use of “law” must encompass God’s moral demand generally.

Paul can also use nomos by synecdoche (a part standing for the whole) to refer to the Pentateuch (1 Cor. 9:8, 9; 14:21, 34; Gal. 4:21b) or even to the Old Testament as a whole (Rom. 3:19). And, though debated, we will argue that the evidence suggests he can also occasionally use the word broadly to mean rule or principle (see Rom. 3:28; 7:23; 8:2).

But such extended uses represent a small percentage (less than 10 percent) of Paul’s uses of nomos. Most of the time his reference is to the Torah, the body of commandments that God imposed on Israel through Moses at Sinai. We must be careful not to import into the word other meanings without explicit warrant from the context.

Nature. We argued in 2:14 that we indeed have clear contextual warrant for a broader sense of the term law. Only by positing such a reference can we make sense of Paul’s claim that Gentiles who “do not have the law” are “a law for themselves.” A second indicator that helps us to understand the context of Paul’s argument is his reference to “nature” (physis). For the Greeks, the “natural law” or “unwritten law” was an important idea, establishing the basis for universal moral norms and for the “positive” law enacted in the city-states. The Stoics, a school of philosophers influential in Paul’s day, rooted this law in nature. Jews familiar with this tradition then used physis in a similar way, to demonstrate the universal applicability of the moral standards found in the law of Moses. Paul clearly reflects this tradition in 2:14, and first-century readers would immediately have understood that he was endorsing this widespread tradition about the unwritten universal moral law.

Contemporary Significance

NATURAL LAW. Many of the points Paul touches on in this paragraph are important for our understanding of Christian truth: the reality of judgment (vv. 12, 16), the searching nature of that judgment (“men’s secrets,” v. 16), and the standard of judgment (obedience to the law, v. 13). But distinctive to this passage is Paul’s endorsement of the idea of “natural law”—knowledge of God’s basic moral demand available to all people. How people have access to this law Paul does not say. But his reference to the “conscience” and “thoughts” in verse 15 suggests the knowledge is innate, built into people through God’s creation.

As was true of natural revelation in chapter 1, natural law is the subject of a lot of debate in our day. Our pluralistic environment raises pointedly the question of the basis for those fundamental moral norms by which a society governs itself. “Positive” law—that is, specific law enacted by a lawgiver or lawmaker—must have a universal basis if it is to be universally applicable or avoid being arbitrary. On what basis, for instance, can a democratic society decide to require all its citizens to refrain from stealing from other people? Granted the incredible variety of ethnic, national, and religious traditions represented in, for instance, the United States, what underlying moral code can be discovered that justifies such a law?

Under the impetus of such issues, the tendency increasingly is to base positive law on the notion of “the common good.” But that idea is slippery and open to being imposed on the minority by the majority. For instance, the government of the Netherlands has recently decided that it is in the common good to allow people to put to death aged and sick relatives.

The idea of natural law that Paul endorses here helps us to establish a foundation for universal moral norms and therefore for positive law, which will not be undermined by the whims of society or the convenience of the majority. As I write, a debate that flares up periodically in the United States has again been in the public eye. A judge posted the Ten Commandments in her courtroom, and she has been ordered to take them down.

Christian theologians have long viewed the Ten Commandments as a reflection of the natural law and therefore applicable to all people. But it is increasingly difficult in our society to separate this natural law from its religious context. We are not arguing that the Ten Commandments should be adopted as natural law. But we think the debate focuses attention on the larger question of moral norms. The idea of natural law, widespread among the Greeks and Romans and taken over by both Jews and Christians, may help to bring some moral order out of the current chaos. It establishes a set of norms that is outside of and therefore “above” society.

The difficulty, of course, is to find those norms. The Ten Commandments are tied closely to the Judeo-Christian heritage, and one can then understand why people of other religious persuasions are not happy about their being posted in a classroom. Moreover, as we will suggest latter in this commentary, there is some question whether the Ten Commandments (and especially the Sabbath law) continue even to be a direct representation of Christian moral law. What we are facing in many cultures all over the world, then, is the challenge of finding some basis for natural law in a multicultural, multireligious environment. As long as a nation is not tied directly to a single religion (as some of the Islamic states continue to be), a natural law that all citizens can agree to will be hard to come by.