Read or listen the Epistle to the Romans chapter 2 online (ESV, Bible Gateway)

When writing the second chapter of Romans, Paul must have especially thought of the Jewish Christians who were among the recipients, but of course the chapter has a lot to offer us Gentile Christians as well.

Paul ended the first chapter of Romans with a description of the sinfulness of the Gentiles: they have exchanged God's truth for a lie, and God gave them over to their shameful lusts. But Paul knew that among the Jews – including the Jewish Christians – there were those who emphasized the Jews’ special standing before God. Therefore, Paul wants to deal with the question of the relationship between the Jews and God next. Are the Jews better off before God than the Gentiles?

The tracks are scary

The people of the New Covenant – the Christians – are often called the new Israel. Thus, it is good to learn from the mistakes made by the "old Israel". Christians can therefore consider Israel as an example of the Christian church, both in good and bad. In brief, we could say that one of the main teachings of the Old Testament is the following: avoid those sins, the apostasy from God, that caused God's wrath and judgment to fall upon Israel.

God's righteous judgment – Rom. 2:1-11

First, Paul states the sin of the Jews: they think that they will be privileged at God's judgment. They considered the Gentiles to be people under God's wrath, whereas they themselves were under God's grace. But Paul says that God's judgment is just, impartial; nobody will be privileged or discriminated, but everyone will share the same status. When judging others, we usually judge ourselves at the same time (verse 1, compare 2 Sam. 12:1-7, David and Nathan).

We disdain mercy, consider it cheap, if we consciously commit a sin while at the same time we are appealing to God's mercy. Grace is not given for sinning, but so that a person would be saved and move from Satan's kingdom to God's kingdom (Matthew 18:15-18).

According to the main rule of rabbinic literature, those (Jews) who have more observances of the commandments of the law than transgressions will enter heaven. According to the school of thought that was led by Rabbi Hillel and that had a gentle approach, those whose scales are even will also get to heaven, because their scale pan of good works will get one merit from God.

Paul does not accept such "mathematics of grace" – which, moreover, takes away all assurance of salvation – but he says the same as James:

“For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” (James 2:10)

As a way to salvation, the law is like a chain. It is as weak as its weakest link. If one link is missing, the whole chain is broken.

So the Jews have no reason to boast before God: there is only one who has fulfilled all the requirements of the law, Jesus Christ.

What would a Jew have answered Paul? It is likely that he would have said that keeping the law is entirely possible. In Judaism, there were so-called Tau Jews i.e. Jews who had kept the law from beginning to end, from Aleph to Tau (from the first letter of the alphabet to the last).

Mere hearing is not enough – Rom. 2:12-16

The Jews had boasted of their law, but had it come to pass that the Gentiles who lived without the law will be more righteous at the final judgment than the Jews who knew the law? (Compare Luke 18:9-14, the pharisee and publican praying in the temple.) Even as Christians, we should remember that hearing does not mean obedience!

Paul wants to underline the outcome: what the judgment will be like. Who gets to heaven is a more important question than whether he knew the law through Moses or through his conscience. Furthermore, Paul wants to emphasize that the Gentiles and Jews are equal before God; neither group can plead ignorance, both have had knowledge of God's will.

But isn't Paul advocating here righteousness through works: man is saved depending on whether he has done good or bad?

First, it must be stated that Paul's teaching elsewhere is unequivocal: man is saved by grace alone (compare, for example, 2 Cor. 5:19-21).

Second, it should be noted that there is a certain storyline in the Epistle to the Romans; Paul develops things all through the letter. Now, he is specifically discussing the Jews and the works of the law as a way of salvation. The question of salvation and its basis will come up only later.

In general, we should avoid using brief passages from the Bible, as each verse is part of a larger whole, and only from that whole can the message of the verse be properly understood.

The word "that" in verse 16 refers to verse 13.

The Sword of the Gospel

Paul ends the segment in a strange way: the judgment will come according to the gospel – i.e. not according to the law. Since Paul's gospel is the gospel of God (Rom. 1:1), he can say, "According to my gospel.”

The gospel is therefore like a sword that divides nations and people (compare Hebrews 4:12-13). The message about Christ divides people: either it is foolishness and to be rejected, or it is the truth of God and to be accepted. Since the gospel is the basis for entering heaven or going to damnation, it also a divider. That is why people fight against it; they do not want their religious peace to be disturbed! They would rather go to perdition ignorant of their sins than with a bad conscience about not having repented.

Where salvation comes into view, there also opens the abyss of damnation!

The name of God is blasphemed – Room. 2:17-24

The Jews had presented themselves as God's messengers – Jesus too criticized the fierce proselytizing they did (Matthew 23:15) – but Paul asks next if their lives had been in harmony with their preaching.

Jewish missionary work consisted of three parts:
1. Teaching
2. Sermon and
3. Explanation of Bible passages

In all of these, according to Paul, you can see the hypocrisy of the Jews: they are the blind leading the blind (Matthew 15:14).

For a Jew, "Jew" was a title of honour, but on the other hand, they knew very well that others used it as a derisive name. According to the Jews, it was an honorary title because only a Jew can:
1. Boast of being a member of the chosen people
2. Rely on the law and
3. Claim to be a servant of the only true God

The Jews saw themselves as the imperishable light of the world (Wisdom 18:4). For the Jews, failure to fulfill God's will was a particularly serious crime against God, because they thought that separation from other peoples would arouse their interest in God too. But now the Jews had not lived according to their teaching, and so the name of God had become an object of scorn in the mouth of the Gentiles. For example, the practice of free divorce among Jewish men had become a new form of polygamy (compare Matt. 5:32, 19:9), and the plundering of pagan temples was considered acceptable in some places because it restrained idolatry (compare Acts 19:37), etc. The words in the Book of Isaiah had been fulfilled again:

The Lord declares, “Continually all the day my name is despised.” (Isaiah 52:5)

At that time, the subject of mockery was the fact that Israel was forced into exile because of their sins, but now the mockery was because of the contradiction between their lives and their message. It caused the God they "represented" to be rejected.

It is good to remember that according to scholars, all great cultures have been destroyed from within; their internal decline opened the way for the enemies to be victorious externally.

Circumcision – Rom. 2:25-29

Circumcision was and is the gateway to Judaism (Genesis 17:1-14). Although in the Old Testament a distinction had already been made between a heart of stone and a heart of flesh (Eze. 11:19, 36:26) and Jer. 4:4 talks about circumcision of the heart, these passages had been neglected, as also Leviticus 18:5, “Keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them.”

Therefore, the teachings of Paul and Jesus (Matthew 12:41-42) about uncircumcised Gentiles condemning the Jews at the final judgment was completely revolutionary. In this passage, Paul actually denies the redemptive significance of circumcision.

In the next, 3rd chapter, Paul discusses what then is the true basis for salvation.

What about us?

Have we Christians fallen into the same pit as the Jews in their time; do we consider ourselves better than non-Christians?

It is often said that Christians are the Fifth Gospel, which is also the most read gospel. Does my life highlight what I am proclaiming, or does it disprove it; are my life and my proclamation in harmony, or in conflict?

Bishop Bo Giertz sees in the second chapter of Romans a warning about three kinds of false spiritual assurance:

1. A person who has moral principles and sees – often quite correctly – that his life is more in harmony with those principles than the lives of other people. This easily leads to self-righteousness.

2. There are also those who think that everything is fine if they are baptized and members of a church.

3. There are those who consider themselves sinful Christians but trust in automatic forgiveness.

False confidence before God can be fatal because it prevents us from seeing the relationship between God and ourselves in the right light.

Isaiah’s example

When Isaiah was called to be a prophet by God, he had a vision in which his own sinfulness became clear to him (Is 6:1-10). Isaiah saw his own doomed state and his own impossibility to act as God's messenger. But God cleansed him and sent him to preach repentance to his people.

We should always keep in mind that we will never reach such a level of holiness where we no longer need the forgiveness of sins. All people look the same from the top of a tower hundred meters high. In God's eyes, all people are lawbreakers, Gentiles and Jews alike.