A Study by Scott Sperling   Romans 2:6-16 -  God’s Judgment   6  God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” 7  To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8  But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9  There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10  but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11  For God does not show favoritism. 12  All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13  For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14  (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15  They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16  This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. Towards the end of the chapter 1, Paul spoke of the condemnation of non-Jews and non-Christians, those who did not have direct exposure to the Law of God. In the first five verses of chapter 2, Paul spoke of the condemnation of those who do know the law of God, and who are so quick to condemn others for their disobedience to the Law. In these verses, starting in verse 6, Paul teaches that, with regard to judgment, God will be fair and just to everyone, whether they explicitly know God’s law from the Bible, or only know the law of God which is written on their hearts. Note that, in the discourse that began in Rom. 1:18 and continues here, Paul is not yet speaking of the grace and salvation that comes through Christ. Paul is speaking of Jews (under the Law) and Gentiles (apart from the Law), both of whom do not have the revelation of salvation by faith through Christ (Paul will teach on the gospel of Christ a bit later in this Epistle). So, Paul is here teaching us how those without Christ will be judged, whether Jew or Gentile, whether living now without knowledge of Christ, or in the past, before the revelation of salvation through Christ was introduced to the world. “The apostle is not here teaching the method of justification, but is laying down those general principles of justice, according to which, irrespective of the gospel, all men are to be judged. He is expounding the law, not the gospel. And as the law not only says that death is the wages of sin, but also that those who keep its precepts shall live by them, so the apostle says, that God will punish the wicked and reward the righteous” [Hodge, 50]. “The Apostle is here speaking generally, of the general system of God in governing the world,—the judging according to each man’s works—punishing the evil, and rewarding the righteous. No question at present  arises, how this righteousness in God’s sight is to be obtained—but the truth is only stated broadly at present, to be further specified by-and-by, when it is clearly shown that by works no flesh can be justified before God” [Alford, 329]. Paul summarizes judgment according to the Law by citing Old Testament scripture from Psalm 62:13 and/or Prov. 34:12 (both verses are very similar): “God ‘will repay each person according to what they have done’” (vs. 6). It’s important to emphasize here that “each person” will face judgment. “To each person  makes this personal; recompense is an individual matter, not a collective punishment” [Morris, 147]. “The judgment will be particular to every individual; everyone will have to answer for himself” [Haldane, 81]. The Jews of the time, Paul’s primary audience in this section, thought essentially that they were exempt from judgment by virtue of being a Jew. They also thought that Gentiles were condemned to judgment by virtue of not having the revelation of God’s law. Paul refutes both of these ideas. “He will judge men neither according to their professions nor their relations, but according to their works. The question at his bar will be, not whether a man is a Jew or a Gentile, whether he belongs to the chosen people or to the heathen world, but whether he has obeyed the law” [Hodge, 49]. “The object of the apostle here is to show that national, ecclesiastical, or hereditary relations will save no man; that the wicked will surely be lost, because they are wicked; and that the righteous will be saved, because they are righteous. And no man can prove that he is righteous but by holy living. The meritorious ground of a sinner’s salvation is the righteousness of Christ” [Plumer, 91]. Paul expands on the basis of God’s judgment: “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism” (vss. 7-11).  Put simply, Paul teaches that on the day of God’s judgment, there are two outcomes: “eternal life”, or “wrath and anger”. These outcomes are based on whether the person being judged has done “good”, or has done “evil”. There is one judgment day, and on that day, everyone will be judged by the same standard. There is not a separate judgment day, or a separate standard, for Jews versus Gentiles; nor is there a separate judgment day, or a separate standard, for Christians versus non-Christians; nor is there a separate judgment day, or a separate standard, for those who lived in the 21 st  century versus those who lived in the 4 th  century B.C. There is one judgment day, and one standard for judgment: “good” versus “evil”. A Christian might say, “But surely, I believe in Christ, I don’t have to face a judgment day!” But the Bible testifies, even in the New Testament, that every human being, yes, even you as a Christian, must stand in judgment on the day of God’s judgment. Paul teaches elsewhere, speaking to Christians in Corinth: “For we  must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10). And our Lord Jesus Himself said: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned” (John 5:26-29). (See also, Matt. 7:21-24; Matt. 12:26; Rom. 14:10; Heb. 9:27). The Christian will then ask: “But what about John 3:16, where I am promised eternal life through faith in Christ? What about the promise of the forgiveness of my sins?” The answer to this is, yes, in Christ your sins are forgiven, through His sin offering, but you still must face the judgment day, and face the appearance of God’s anger for your sins, even though, through Christ, and clothed in Christ’s righteousness, you will not have to bear the punishment for your sins. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Paul will speak of the grace of God, and the forgiveness available through Christ later. Paul here is focusing on the judgment, as it relates to the non-Christian Gentile, and non-Christian Jew. “But it is pertinent to remark, that the Apostle is not here teaching the method of justification, but is laying down those general principles of justice, according to which, irrespective of the gospel, all men are to be judged. He is expounding the law, not the gospel. And as the law not only says that death is the wages of sin, but also that, those who keep its precepts shall live by them, so the Apostle says, that God will punish the wicked and reward the righteous. This is perfectly consistent with what he afterwards teaches, that there are none righteous: that there are none who so obey the law as to be entitled to the life which it promises; and that for such the gospel provides a plan of justification without works, a plan for saving those whom the law condemns” [Hodge, in Lange’s, 97]. And so, let us here, return to Paul’s context, and view these verses as they relate to the non-Christian: “To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger”  (vss. 7-8). This is the summary of the end-of-times judgment. There will be those who were “persistent in doing good”, that is, persistently, and against all obstacles, sought to do the will of their Creator. For them, there is “eternal life”. One might ask, “Isn’t eternal life only to be had through Christ?” The answer is, an unqualified “Yes!”. Jesus taught: “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). And so, we can infer that those who are “persistent in doing good” will accept Christ when presented with the Gospel. You might ask, “What if they are never presented with the Gospel?” Nowhere in the Bible is anyone condemned for knowledge that they do not have, and frankly, such condemnation would contradict Biblical teaching about God’s righteous nature and perfect justice. If someone is not presented with the Gospel message while living on earth, there are teachings in the Bible that imply that they will be presented with the Gospel after their life on earth. We are taught by Peter that the Gospel will be preached to those who are dead (presumably, those who were not adequately exposed to the Gospel when they were alive), in order that all might be judged by the same standard. Specifically, Peter taught: “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit” (1 Peter 4:6). God honors those who seek him, no matter their human situation. He promised through Christ, “Seek and you will find” (Matt. 7:7). In the book of Hebrews, we are told that God is a “rewarder of those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6). Peter realized this when the Roman centurion Cornelius came to faith in Christ: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right” (Acts 10:34-35). And so, this “persistence in doing good by seeking glory, honor and immortality” is, in effect, “the acceptance of the Gospel by anticipation” [Godet, 198]. “What can the apostle mean by his breathtaking assertion about attaining eternal life? At the very least, it is safe to say that he is not contradicting what he says later about the impossibility of having salvation by means of the works of the law (see Rom. 3:20)… Paul is simply portraying the motivation and the tenor of the life that will culminate in eternal fellowship with God. As applied to the ‘seeker’ (cf. Acts 17:27), the principle commits God to honor the moral aim and provide the means for making a decision, as we see in the case of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8) and Cornelius (Acts 10). Both were seekers making use of the light they had” [Harrison]. I believe it’s a misrepresentation of God’s righteousness to declare that anyone who has not heard the Gospel message will be blindly condemned to hell. There are good people in the world, outside the realm of Christendom. They will be judged justly, and, I believe, will have the opportunity to respond to the Gospel message, if not in this life, then in the next. God is gracious and merciful. His grace and mercy are not confined to those who, say, live in Western Europe or the United States. Certainly his grace and mercy are bountiful enough to extend to all of his creatures, no matter where they live, or how they were raised. Let God be God, and man be man. Let the Christian man be the Christian man and focus on declaring the gospel, and making disciples of all nations, of bringing those in the darkness into the light. Now, “persistence in doing good” implies a patient continuance, that is in “opposition to the idea of intermittent moral efforts” [Godet, 197]. Giving large gifts to charity, while living ungodly in one’s day-to- day life, is not a “persistence in doing good.” This “persistence” is not satisfied by occasionally doing good works. It is a frame of mind that one lives every second, not just occasionally, to please God. “The reward of eternal life, then, is promised to those who do not regard their good works as an end in themselves, but see them as marks not of human achievement but of hope in God. Their trust is not in their good works, but in God, the only source of glory, honour, and incorruption” [Barrett, in Morris, 148]. “The goodness which the Scriptures approve consists, in a great degree, in the pursuit of heavenly things: it is a seeking after glory, honour and immortality, by a persevering continuance in well-doing. It is the pursuit of the true end of our being, by the proper means” [Hodge, 58]. This is contrasted with those who are “self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil” (vs. 8). They seek self, reject truth, and follow evil. They live a self- centered life, rather than a God-centered life. “Unrighteousness, which he contrasts with truth (exactly as Jesus does in John 7:18), denotes the selfish passions, vain ambitions, and unrighteous prejudices, which lead a man to close his eyes to the light when it presents itself, and thus produce unbelief. Unrighteousness leads to this result as certainly as moral integrity leads to faith” [Godet, 199]. For self-seekers there will be “wrath and anger” (vs. 8). “No terms can adequately set forth the terribleness of the final doom of the wicked. Here we have indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish (see vss. 8, 9). But who knows the torment of a future world, where remorse, despair, and all the evil passions furnish elements on which the fierceness of the wrath of God kindles forever?” [Plumer, 93]. “There are two treasures, which Paul opposes to each other,—that of goodness, of forbearance, and long- suffering,—and that of wrath; and the one may be compared to the other. The one provides and amasses blessings for the creature, the other punishments; the one invites to heaven, the other precipitates to hell; the one looks on sin to pardon it on repentance, the other regards obstinate continuance to punish it, and avenge favours that are despised. God alone prepares the first, but man himself the second; and on this account the Apostle says, ‘Thou treasurest up unto thyself wrath’  (vs. 5)” [Haldane, 80]. Next, Paul, in order to emphasize what he has just written, recapitulates: “There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism” (vss. 9-11). Paul gives special prominence to the universality of the principles of God’s judgment [Meyer, 112], by saying “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” “You, therefore, who are first in privileges, will be first in punishment” [Wordsworth, 212]. The Jews had the great advantage of being given God’s written revelation of the law, so that they knew exactly how to please God, the judgment for disobeying that law falls pre-eminently on them. “The Jews, as the people of God, in possession of the revelation with its promises and threatenings, are therefore necessarily also those upon whom the retribution of judgment—not the reward merely, but also the punishment—has to find in the first instance its execution. In both aspects they have the priority based on their position in the history of salvation as the  theocratic people” [Meyer, 112-113]. Many  Jews thought that they had the special privilege of being exempt from the judgment that unbelieving Gentiles would face. In this, they were wrong. “The Gentile, so most Jews maintained, could experience God’s favor only by taking on ‘the yoke of the law.’ [They believe that,] outside Israel, the sphere of the law, there is no salvation” [Moo, 146]. Paul sums up the principle of a universal standard of justice: “For God does not show favoritism” (vs. 11). “There are many exhortations to just judgment in the Old Testament; for example, ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly’ (Lev. 19:15). It is this kind of even-handed justice that Paul ascribes to God. He will not weight things in favor of the rich or the poor. Nor will he favor any one nation, be that nation Jew or Greek. In the end we can rely on the fact that justice will be done” [Morris, 152].  “To have respect to the appearance of persons, or to accept of persons, is the vice of an iniquitous judge, who in some way violates justice; but the Divine judgment cannot commit such a fault” [Haldane, 87]. Paul expands on this: “All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous” (vss. 12-13). Even those who do not have God’s written law, those who “sin apart from the law”, will be judged fairly. “In the preceding verse it was stated that God is just and impartial in all his judgments. This is confirmed not only by the previous assertion, that he will judge every man according to his works, but also by the exhibition of that important principle contained in this verse. Men are to be judged by the light they have severally enjoyed. The ground of judgment is their works; the rule of judgment is their knowledge” [Hodge, 53]. “People will be condemned, not because they have the law or do not have the law, but because they have sinned” [Morris, 154]. “Their perdition, if it ensues, will not be due to transgression of a code they had not, but to sin against such light as they had” [Pulpit, 53]. Paul expands on this by speaking of the law obeyed by those that don’t have God’s written law: “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them” (vss. 14-15). Given that God has made sure that all of us have a law “written on our hearts”, it follows that none will have an excuse for violating that law. “‘Not all human beings are crooks, blackguards, thieves, adulterers, and murderers. On the contrary, some honor their parents, recognize the sanctity of human life, are loyal to their spouses, practice honesty, speak the truth and cultivate contentment, just as the last six of the ten commandments require’ (Stott). In this sense the Gentiles become a law for themselves, that is, they possess a God-given form of the divine law, a form that is in keeping with the Mosaic law” [Osbourne]. “Men generally, not some men, but all men, show by their acts that they have a knowledge of right and wrong” [Hodge, 54-55]. “The great principles of this law were communicated to man in his creation, and much of it remains with him in his fallen state. This natural light of the understanding is called the law written in the heart, because it is imprinted on the mind by the Author of creation, and is God’s work as much as the writing on the tables of stone” [Haldane, 91]. “Despite the great differences in laws and customs among peoples around the world, what unites them in a common humanity is the recognition that some things are right and others are wrong” [Harrison]. The fact that this law is “written” on our hearts, implies a permanency: this law is always known to us. Our “consciences bear witness” to this law, at times “accusing” us, and at times even “defending” us. “This supposes a standard of reference,—a knowledge of right and wrong. No man could accuse and condemn another, if there were not some standard of right and wrong; and no man could defend an action without a similar standard” [Haldane, 91]. “So it can be maintained that the function of conscience in the Gentile is parallel to the function of the law for the Jew. The way conscience operates is described as a process of accusation or defense by the thoughts of a man, the inner life being pictured as a kind of debating forum, so that at times he finds himself exonerated at the bar of conscience, at other times convicted of wrong” [Harrison]. “Paul is simply pointing out that those who have no law nevertheless have convictions about what they do. Their thoughts about their actions sometimes take the form of severe accusation and sometimes of acquittal. The Gentile, though he lacks the divinely given law that was so important for the Jew, is not without guidance” [Morris, 159]. The work of the conscience in accusing/defending our conduct looks forward to the final judgment day, when all our acts will be examined: “This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares” (vs. 16). “The excusing and accusing testimony of the thoughts within each person’s conscience portends the verdict of the one who will bring every thought to light” [Moo, 153]. “Paul describes the moral process which takes place in the heart of man after a good or bad act; the conscience sits in judgment, and pronounces the sentence in God’s name according to the law; the thoughts are the several moral reflections and reasonings which appear as witnesses testifying and pleading in this court of conscience, and are often conflicting, since the sinful inclinations and passions interfere and bribe the witnesses; the object of the accusing, or excusing, is the moral action which is brought before the tribunal of the conscience… This judicial process, which takes place here in every man’s heart, is a forerunner of the great judgment at the end of the world” [Lange’s, 102]. On the judgment day, our own consciences will be a witness for and against us. “Conscience, which exercises a judicial office in the present life, will exercise it in a special and solemn manner at the Great Day. It will be the accuser of the evil, the acquitter of the good” [Wordsworth, 214]. “What now takes place inwardly, will then be manifested openly” [Tholuck, 73]. Paul teaches elsewhere that, on that day, God “will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart” (I Cor. 4:5). Note well, it is not only the external actions that will be judged, but also the “secrets” of the heart. “Note, with what exactness the judgment will proceed, since it takes account of things the most secret and the most concealed. It will not resemble the judgment of men, which cannot fathom the hearts and thoughts. God will not only take cognizance of external, but also of internal actions, and will discover even the inmost thoughts of men… If men can conceal their evil deeds, they are safe from human judgment. Not so with respect to the Judge at the great day. The most secret sins will then be manifested and punished” [Haldane, 93]. The judgment will take place “through Jesus Christ”, as declared by the “gospel”. Judgment is every part of the gospel as salvation. There is no “good news” of the gospel, without the specter of judgment due to rejection the gospel message. “The gospel Paul preached includes the prospect of judgment and that it will be conducted through the mediation of Christ” [Harrison]. Click here to see Bibliography and Suggested Reading