Romans 2:13-16

CRITICAL NOTES

Romans 2:13. Not the hearers of the law.—Jewish writers held that no circumcised person goes to hell. St. Paul confutes all vain opinions. The literal meaning of δικαιοῦν is to make righteous. In this epistle it is used to mean acquittal.

Romans 2:14.—φύσει, by nature, as distinct from θέσει or written law.

Romans 2:15.—The evidence that what the law of God requires is inscribed on the minds of the heathen is the testimony of their conscience to such moral precepts. συνείδησις, the conscience, from the word meaning to know with or within oneself. In this passage understanding rather than affection is the predominant thought. Reasonings of a man’s mind upon his own actions, habits, and motives.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 2:13

The Gentile conscience.—The law as well as the existence of the Creator is written on the heart of man, and he cannot get away from that law. He may make mistakes, but he can get to know the general tenor of that law. He may not have skill to frame a correct ethical system, but he can mark the great broad outlines, and so frame his moral course. The Gentile heart is not a mere blank page—it shows divine handwriting. In its deepest degradation there are obscured traces and marks of moral glory.

I. The Gentiles show the work of the law written in their hearts by their superiority to their gods.—The God of the Bible is the one perfect God—perfect in His natural and moral attributes. He is a conception of divinity which declares it is not an unaided conception of humanity. We cannot read of any god fashioned after the same perfect moral order as the God of the Bible. Whether we look at the God of the Old Testament or of the New, we must feel that this is a divinity which the highest human reason has not attained. Not withstanding all that may be said against the biblical God, we affirm that there never has been and is not any other deity unto whom we may liken Him. In the wide world’s Parthenon, in the long muster-roll of deities, there is none to be compared with the Christian’s God. The highest ideals are but human conceptions and imperfect: the best of them are but one-sided personifications, and represent one cardinal grace or virtue; the worst of them are personifications of some degrading lust. And this gives us a striking view of the divinity working in heathendom, that the worshipper is often superior to the deity adored. Conscience asserts its power, and the devotee rises above the deity before whom he prostrates in devotion. The written law has stronger force than the personified lust or passion. The gods of the heathen worked towards moral destruction; and the legal writing on human hearts was that saving force which interrupted the process and prevented complete moral ruin.

II. The Gentiles show the works of the law written in their hearts by the strivings of the many.—Moral darkness has covered the earth; but through that darkness we catch gleams of moral light, and those gleams are the strivings of many of our race after nobler things. If there had not been such strivings, we should have beheld the race sinking deeper and deeper into moral corruption, and bringing upon our planet a catastrophe which the waters of a deluge would not have repaired. We may suppose that the world’s lowest moral state was at the time of the Deluge; but even then a Noah appeared who was not only found striving after righteousness, but had attained to righteousness and was a preacher of the same all his days. Our planet has presented no such miserable moral spectacle, either before or since the period of the Deluge. Men, in spite of lust, passion, pride, and ambition, are found in all countries reaching up above their surroundings towards the pure realm of infinite moralities. The feverish restlessness of humanity speaks to us of a written law in the heart and the workings of a divine conscience. There is an infinite discontent and dissatisfaction in the soul of man which is full of moral significance. It points both inward and upward—inward to the divinely constituted nature of man, and upward to the divine Being whose claims must be met and in whose Son must be realised spiritual repose. Men hear within themselves the voice of conscience, but do not give sufficient attention so as carefully to catch the words that are spoken.

III. The Gentiles show the work of the law in their hearts by the attainments of the few.—It could not be argued from the achievements of a Shakespeare that all men might become great poets and dramatists, from the mathematical grasp of a Newton that all might become mathematicians; but surely it is legitimate to infer from the lofty achievements of one master-mind the large possibilities of other minds. The wide expansion of one mind tells of the possibility of development of others. In the heathen world, as also in the Christian world, the men have been comparatively few who have given practical expression to the belief that in the world there is nothing great but man, in man there is nothing great but mind, and in mind there is nothing great but the moral. Still, there have been such men. It will not do for us to lay the flattering unction to our souls that there is no goodness outside the Christian religion. While we believe that Christianity has raised the morality of the world to a higher tone and given the highest example of spiritual perfection in the person of its Founder, we must not lose sight of the noble names of Socrates, Solon, Plato, and Aristotle. Defective, no doubt, they were in many aspects of their characters and their conduct; but they were in advance of their times, and speak of a divine law written in human hearts. It is indeed wonderful how glimpses of moral truth are given by heathen writers; and we can only account for them on the supposition that the divine hand has been writing and that conscience has been working. The Orphic mysteries seem to have contained the assertion of two deep ideas—the immortality of the soul, and impurity of sin, which required expiation. Historical evidence goes to show that the broad distinctions between crime and virtue have always been marked. Homer is not without morality, though it is uninfluenced by a future life. It is noteworthy that Hesiod contains the same figure to represent virtue and vice which was afterwards consecrated in the mouth of Christ: “The road to vice may easily be travelled by crowds, for it is smooth, and she dwells close at hand. But the path of virtue is steep and difficult, and the gods have ordained that only by toil can she be reached.” It is the steep and difficult pathway of virtue which repels the many from the effort to gain the glorious summit.

IV. The Gentiles show the work of the law written in their hearts by their reception of the divine interpretation and exposition.—When the preacher of the divine law goes to the heathen, he finds in their nature a response to his message, and this response may act in different directions. Some of the heathen accept the message because it is the interpretation of the law written in their hearts; or others reject the message, not because the revealed law does not harmonise with the law written in the heart, but because a lower nature asserts an ascendency, and then, either to justify rejection or to fortify in a wrong course, they persecute the messenger and seek to obliterate traces of the revealed law The very wrath of the adherents of false doctrine, when the truth is proclaimed, declares in most cases that the true doctrine is that which correctly interprets the symbolic writing on their hearts. If we hold the truth and are confident that we have the truth, why should rage possess our natures when a messenger comes to upset our beliefs? Our confidence in the truth may cause us to look complacently at the efforts of those who come to change our beliefs.

V. The Gentiles show the work of the law written in their hearts by the witness of conscience.—A man differs from a machine in this: that the one has a law in itself—is moved, as Aristotle would say, κατὰ λόγον; the other is moved μετὰ λόγον, has a law both in and for himself. Now conscience, which is more than mere consciousness, testifies to the presence of that law, interprets, and gives it force. Conscience bears witness to the right, gives emphasis to the ought, and leaves without excuse. Conscience existed before philosophies of right and wrong, taught moral lessons, and led to some strivings after propriety of conduct. The pre-existence of conscience is supposed by the post-existence of moral philosophies. Instinctive acts of nobleness arise from the instinctive promptings of conscience. Plato’s sentence cannot be upheld, that “without philosophy there is no morality.” The presence and practice of morality declare a philosophic spirit and temperament; but Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, who were highly moral, would not be classed as belonging to any philosophical school. They would not be referred to as authorities on the questions which disturb the schools—as to the nature of the concrete and the abstract, as to nature or the non-existent, as to whether there can be either not-being or being. Morality arises, not from the scholastic philosophies, but from the deeper philosophy of conscience bearing witness to the work of the law written in the heart. Conscience bears witness to the divine writing in human nature. If the Gentiles had no witnessing conscience, then apostles and missionaries have no ground of appeal.

VI. The Gentiles show the work of the law written in their hearts by their moral reasonings.—These reasonings are not exemplifications of any logical method. Their thoughts, their moral reflections, are at one time accusing and at another time excusing. Shall we suppose them engaged in the intricate process of distinguishing between right and wrong? Shall we not rather picture the Gentile nature as a court where moral questions are being discussed? The conscience is both witness and judge. The thoughts are as so many advocates, some pleading for and others pleading against, either accusing or excusing. Shall we not still rather consider that the thoughts of the Gentiles accuse when wrong has been done, and excuse when right has been either attempted or performed? There is such a process going on in human nature. In some the process is carried on with clearness, and in others with a certain vagueness. How sad that accusing voices should have reason most constantly to be heard! Yet sadder still if self-righteousness prevents the accusing voices from being properly heard, and excusing voices, in the sense perhaps not meant by the apostle, only are allowed to make themselves heard!

1. Let us beware lest the heathen rise up in judgment against us. How little was their light! How great is ours!

2. Let us not tamper with conscience, for God knows, and will judge the secrets of men.

3. Let the upbraidings of conscience drive us by repentance and faith unto Jesus Christ.

4. The doers of the law are justified before God. We cannot be justified by the law of the carnal commandment; let us find refuge in the higher law of love.

5. If we fear the approach of the day when God shall judge, let us seek for that perfect love in and by Christ which casteth out all fear.

6. The voice of the law speaks trouble to the conscience. The voice of “my gospel,” of “the gospel of God,” speaks peace by Jesus Christ to every believing soul; therefore let us cleave above all things to the gospel.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 2:13

Law written on the heart.—The Greek poet Sophocles speaks of “the unwritten and indelible laws of the gods” in the hearts of men; and the Platonic philosopher Plutarch speaks of “a law which is not outwardly written in books, but implanted in the heart of man.”

Conversion does not impart new faculties.—Bishop Sanderson says that Paul teaches in this verse that “every man, however unholy, has a conscience, though depraved; and that at the fall of man conscience itself was not lost, but its rectitude and integrity were impaired; and that, when we are born again in baptism, we do not receive the infusion of another conscience, but our conscience, which was before unclean, is washed by the blood of Christ, and is cleansed by faith and is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, in order that it may please God.” In regeneration the man does not receive the infusion of any new qualities. After conversion men possess the same characteristics as they did before the spiritual change had taken place. They obtain new affections, likes, and desires; but they do not receive a power of loving, liking, and desiring which they did not before possess. After conversion they both will and perform the thing which is good: but before conversion the power of volition was present, and also in a degree the power of performance; but it was weak—so weak that it could not overcome the counteracting forces. If a man had by some spiritual process to be remade before he could become a Christian, then how could it be possible, in justice, for him to be accounted a responsible agent? The unconverted heathen have a written law and a witnessing conscience and moral reasonings, and they must act up to their light, and by these must they be judged. And what will be their condition in the future it is not for us to determine. The great question is, not what will become of the heathen, but what will become of us—are we acting according to our increased light and enlarged opportunities? The Gentiles “show the work of the law written in their hearts.” This expression may be taken from the fact that the law of the ten commandments was written on tables of stone. It is a proper expression to represent the impression made by the Creator upon the moral nature of the creature. A thing written is impressed. The hand of God writes upon the heart of man as He writes upon the material creation. The writing is symbolical, but its meaning is plain enough for all practical purposes.

An accusing conscience.—An accusing conscience tells us for what we were designed, that we were made morally in the image and likeness of God, from what we have fallen, and to what depths of depravity we have sunk. Thus it declares our littleness, as we consider our noble resolves, our lofty purposes, our high-born ambitions; and yet our weak performances—our miserable failures to reach the goal to which our virtuous longings point. How sadly often when we would do good evil is present with us! We fall to the doing of iniquity with fatal propensity. Thus conscience indicates our greatness as we contemplate the strife between good and evil which is being waged in the arena of a man’s soul. We are very far from believing the doctrine that the greatest battles are unseen, the mightiest conquests unbloody, and that moral victors are the greatest heroes. Historians make no account of the battle-fields where moral conflicts are waged; but long after the historian’s busy pen has ceased its wizardry, his powerful brain is blended with the common dust, his thrilling pages have perished as the shrivelled parchment scroll, and his Marathons, Thermopylæ, and other scenes of warlike glory have been swept into oblivion, the victories achieved by moral heroes will endure. Soul conflicts are the mightiest, as often they are the severest. Spiritual warfare is the most wonderful, as it is the most mysterious. What a world is that unseen realm where good and evil are engaged in fierce encounter! An accusing conscience is the inward trumpeter that summons the nobler powers to the battle. Alas that ofttimes the trumpet blast falls as it were upon the ears of dead men, and the forces in the town of Mansoul do not muster to the defence! How blessed is it when the trumpet voice is heard and obeyed! Sometimes the believer is depressed as he feels within himself the agony caused by the strife between the good and the evil. He may ask, How is it that there is all this strife, agony, and conflict if my citizenship is in heaven? But strife speaks of life. Dead men do not fight. Dead powers in the soul do not engage in battle. It is as the powers of the soul are awake to the love of the beautiful and the good, and are desirous of being clothed with virtuous qualities, that they contend for the mastery over evil. The more spiritual life there is in the soul, the more feeling will there be in the conscience. The prickings of conscience are painful, but they tell of a living soul. A condemning heart sends agony through the frame, but it declares vitality. A man may even take courage when conscience accuses. All sin brings its punishment in its measure. The wages of sin is death, but not death to the conscience. Sometimes it seems as if the greater the death of the spiritual nature, the greater the life of conscience. Oh, how it darts its awful pangs! How wonderful its constitution! We speak of burying the past; but conscience will not allow the past to be buried. It seems to have lain dormant for years, and then it speaks, and we cannot account for the utterance. No outward circumstances, no laws of association, appear to account for the fact that conscience has spoken to our condemnation. A guilty conscience who can endure? “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?” The Good Physician alone has balm with which to heal the wounded spirit.

“O conscience! into what abyss of fears
And horrors hast thou driven me; out of which
I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged!”

Milton.

Darwin himself admits that, of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important.

Self-conscious personality of man.—The bearing of this upon conscience is clear. The Scripture doctrine of man first of all affirms that view of his physical and ethical nature which we have been endeavouring to show is the only one borne out by facts. The self-conscious and self-determining personality of man is an essential part of the divine nature in man. As Dr. Pope says, this element is “essential and indestructible,” while there is a sense in which the image of God in its moral lineaments was “accidental and a missible,” lost in the Fall, and not utterly lost only because redemption intervened. Such a being, however, it is clear, possesses moral capacity, being raised above the circle of nature, and moving in the region of self-consciousness and self-government, and he is prepared by the very constitution of his nature to “know good and evil,” not only after the tempter’s way, through disobedience and yielding to evil, but after God’s way, through free choice of the good. In this brief but significant description of man’s original nature lies the germ of the whole Scripture doctrine of conscience.—W. T. Davidson.

In the Gentile heart a real judgment hall.—How can one help admiring here, on the one hand, the subtle analysis whereby the apostle discloses in the Gentile heart a real judgment hall where witnesses are heard for and against, then the sentence of the judge; and, on the other hand, that largeness of heart with which, alter drawing so revolting a picture of the moral deformities of Gentile life, he brings into view in as striking a way the indestructible moral elements, the evidences of which are sometimes irresistibly presented here by this so deeply sunken life!—Godet.

Two principles of justification.—Here we are assured that the “doers of the law shall be justified”; and yet, in the subsequent part of the epistle, it is proved in the most convincing manner that “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified.” It is obvious that these different passages must refer to different things, otherwise the one would be contradictory of the other. And that they refer to two different principles of justification—the one held by the Jews and heathen, the other laid down in the gospel—cannot be doubted by any person who considers the argument. In the passage before us the apostle speaks of men being justified on the Christian principle, not by a perfect obedience, entitling them to it as matter of justice, but by the righteousness of faith, which God will of His own free mercy accept, and in virtue of the atoning death of Christ follow with everlasting life. When he says that by the deeds of the law “there shall no flesh be justified,” he speaks of the principle of justification implied in the law of nature and relied on by all who rejected the gospel—a justification depending entirely on men’s own actions, requiring an unvarying obedience to the whole law without the least failure, and thus entitling a man to be justified as a matter of right, the conditions being fulfilled on which the attainment of it was originally made to depend. It is this species of justification which he tells us no flesh living can attain—a truth which no person who considers the matter can doubt. These passages, therefore, are entirely compatible with one another; but they relate to different things, and each of them states with perfect correctness the truth in relation to the subject to which it applies. This passage teaches us, first, that in the great day of the Lord our most secret thoughts and actions will be judged by Him who is appointed Judge of the quick and dead. And if we should be afraid or ashamed to have some passages of our life laid open, let this incite us to watch with more circumspection over our dispositions and conduct. It teaches us further that they are not the hearers but the doers of the law who shall be justified. Now we enjoy the knowledge of the divine law in as perfect a degree as it can be enjoyed by man. Does our conduct correspond with our knowledge? This is the important and trying question which it becomes all of us to investigate with the most rigid impartiality. And if we find, as unquestionably will be the case, that our conduct has been in many respects unsuitable to our knowledge, let the discovery incite us to redouble our diligence in the work of the Lord, that so being justified by faith we may have peace with God and the hope of obtaining eternal life.—Ritchie.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2

Romans 2:13. Caracci, the famous artist.—Caracci, the famous artist, while discoursing on the splendours of the ancient sculptures, and especially of the Laocoon, reproached his brother because he did not appear to be paying the slightest attention. When he had finished his description, his brother took a piece of charcoal and drew the statue as if it had been before him. Caracci in astonishment confessed that his brother had taken the most effectual way to show the beauties of the famous sculpture. “Poets paint with words, and the painter with works,” was the reply. The Christian must be a doer as well as hearer of the word.

Romans 2:13. Ariosto and his house.—Ariosto built himself a small house, and on being asked by a friend how he, who had described palaces in Orlando, could be content with so humble a dwelling, replied, “Words are cheaper than stones.” God does not want fictitious words, but living stones, holy deeds.

Romans 2:13. The conscience ring.—How beautifully was the office of conscience set forth in the ring which, according to an Eastern tale, a great magician presented to his prince! The gift was of inestimable value, not for the diamonds and rubies and pearls that gemmed it, but for a rare and mystic property in the metal. It sat easily enough in ordinary circumstances, but so soon as its wearer formed a bad thought or wish, designed or concocted a bad action, the ring became a monitor. Suddenly contracting, it pressed painfully on the finger, warning him of sin. The ring of that fable is just that conscience which is the voice of God within us, which is His law written on the fleshly tablets of the heart. We all know that the word “conscience” comes from con and scie; but what does that con intend? “Conscience” is not merely that which I know, but that which I know with some other; for this prefix cannot, as I think, be esteemed superfluous, or taken to imply merely that which I know with or to myself. That other knower whom the word implies is God.

Romans 2:14. Conscience the oracle of God.—Joseph Cook says that “conscience is the compass of the unknown.” Epigrams are apt to be misleading. Can it be said that conscience is the compass of God? Does He require a method of measurement? May it not rather be said that conscience is our compass, if it be enlightened by the Holy Spirit and the word of God. The Gentiles have a conscience, but it is not always a properly regulated instrument of measurement. It points out a wrong and a right, but does not always say correctly which is wrong and which is right. It is the voice of God, but requires tuning.

“Yet still there whispers the small voice within,
Heard through God’s silences, and o’er glory’s din:
Whatever creed be taught, or land be trod,
Man’s conscience is the oracle of God.”

Byron.