Romans 2:7

‘To those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honour and incorruption, eternal life,'

For God will in that day render to those who by patient endurance in well-doing seek for glory (from God) and honour (in God's eyes) and incorruption, eternal life. In view of the reference to incorruption, ‘glory' here may have in mind heavenly splendour. But his picture here is of the ideal man whose whole heart is set on well-doing in the expectation of glory and honour from God, and of final incorruption. Such a man lives only to please God. His whole heart is set on God. He never strays from his course for an instant. His only concern is what is good and true and will please God. Such a one will receive eternal life. We notice, of course, that he is a believer, for only a believer would think in these terms. But he is also a dream of what man ought to be. He is the pattern that destroys all our hopes. For there is only One Who has ever truly lived like this from the cradle to the grave, only One Who by doing so has deserved eternal life, and that is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Paul is therefore depicting a life which is outside the range of all but One. He is describing the ‘impossible'. The ones who come nearest to it are Christians who live in the Spirit, but they will be the first to say ‘ sinners, of whom I am chief' (1 Timothy 1:15).

‘Eternal life.' That is, the life of the age to come. It is not just speaking of living for ever but of having life more abundantly (John 10:10). In referring to this as a theoretical possibility Paul is following in the footsteps of His Master, for Jesus also, when asked how a man might receive eternal life, answered, ‘if you would enter into life, keep the commandments' and listed a number of them including ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself' (Matthew 19:16), before making the young man realise that it was a hopeless ideal by calling on him to put it into practise.

In considering all this we must recognise what Paul is doing. He is not outlining the way to eternal life which he expects anyone to strive to achieve, but is building up his case that all men are equally sinful in God's eyes. On the basis of this what he is describing is to be seen as in fact impossible. All these experienced legalists will immediately acknowledge that such men do not exist. The ones who will come nearest to the ideal are those who, abandoning any hopes in their own works, have received God's righteousness and salvation.