Romans 2:14-15

For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these … are a law unto themselves.

Man without the Bible

“Law” means God’s special revelation through the Bible. This contains the moral code of Moses, exhibited in prophetic teaching, inculcated in the instructions, illustrated in the life and death of Christ: It is here suggested that man without the Bible--

I. Has Bible morality written on his spiritual nature.

1. “The law written in their hearts.” The great cardinal principles of morality are in every man’s soul, and the ethics of the Bible are but a transcript of them. Christ, who was the living exemplar of the moral code of the universe, reduced it to supreme love for the great Father of all and unselfish love for all His children; and in every heart these two elements are found--moral reasoning and conduct. “Socrates speaks of the unwritten laws which were held in every country, and mentions as samples honour to parents and the prohibition of incest. He says that since these laws are universally held, and are evidently not the result of human legislation, they must have been made by the gods.” Sophocles speaks of “the unwritted and indelible laws of the gods in the hearts of man,” and Plutarch of “a law which is not outwardly written in books, but implanted in the heart of man.” The moral Governor of the universe, then, has written in the constitution of all the subjects of His empire the eternal laws that should govern them.

II. Can put into practice in his daily life the Bible morality that is written on his nature. “For when the Gentiles,” etc., “are a law unto themselves.” “Do by nature,” i.e., by the outworking of those moral elements within them”--not by written directions, but by moral intuitions. The bee that constructs her cells and lays up honey proves thereby the existence within her of architectural principles. She works out the laws which her Maker imprinted upon her constitution. Thus, heathens who have no Bible can work out the moral principles of their nature, and often do to an extent that may well out to blush the conduct of those who possess a written revelation. In estimating their responsibility it is well to remember both I and

II. They are rather the objects, therefore, of honest denunciation than of sentimental pity if they pursue an immoral or ungodly life.

III. Will be inwardly happy or miserable as he puts in practice or otherwise the Bible morality written on his nature. “Their conscience also bearing witness,” etc.

1. Psychologists supply different and conflicting definitions of conscience. Is it a distinct faculty of the soul, or its substratum--that in which all the faculties inhere? Whatever it is, it is that within us which concerns itself, not with the truth or falsehood of propositions or the expediency or inexpediency of actions, but with the right and wrong of conduct. If a heathen acts up to his ideas of right, it blesses him with peace; if he does not, it scourges him with anguish.

2. The “accusing” power of conscience was seen in the Pharisees who brought to Jesus the woman taken in adultery (John 8:9); in Felix, when he trembled before Paul the prisoner; in Pilate, when he called for a basin of water to wash his hands.

3. Conscience can “excuse,” i.e., make righteous allowances; she vindicates as well as condemns. “Who can tell the sacred calm which fills the soul when Conscience, sitting on her great white throne, pronounces the sentence of approval of any one single act or thought, and assures the misunderstood, or misrepresented, or calumniated, or even self-doubting servant of God, ‘Herein you are free from blame’?”

Conclusion: Several things may be deduced from this subject.

1. The identity in authorship of human souls and Divine revelation. The grand rudimental subjects of the Bible are love, retribution, God; and these are written in ineffaceable characters on the tables of the human heart everywhere.

2. The impossibility of atheism ever being established in the world. The human soul is essentially theistic and religious.

3. The responsibility of man wherever he is found.

4. The duty of missionaries in propagating the gospel. Let those who go forth to the heathen not ignore the good in the human heart on all shores and under all suns, but let them--

(1) Recognise it;

(2) honour it;

(3) appeal to it; and

(4) develop it. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Gentile obedience to the law

They do (literally) “the things which are of the law,” i.e., which are agreeable to its prescriptions. They do not observe the precept as such, for they have it not, but they fulfil its contents; e.g., Neoptolimus in Philoctetes, when he refuses to save Greece at the expense of a lie; or Antigone, when she does not hesitate to violate the temporary law of the city to fulfil the law of fraternal love; or Socrates, when he refuses to save his life by escaping from prison, in order to remain subject to the magistrates. Sophocles speaks of these “eternal laws,” and contrasts this internal and Divine legislation with the ever-changing laws of man. (Prof. Godet.)

The natural feeling of right and wrong: its analysis

These verses reveal that feeling in three states or stages.

1. The unconscious stage, in which the Gentiles not having the law show its real though latent existence in their own hearts, of which--

2. They have a faint though instinctive perception in the witness of conscience, which--

3. Grows by reflection into distinct approval or disapproval of their own acts and those of others. (Prof. Jowett.)

Natural morality

1. It is a common impression that we are dependent for all our knowledge of moral duty upon the Bible, or at least that there are no motives to moral goodness worth speaking of apart from it: But just think what the latter means. It means that unless a man has faith in God, reverence for His authority, dread of His anger and desire of His approval, there is no strong motive to prevent him from being a liar and a villain. The former lands us in still more startling results, viz., that a man who has not, or disbelieves in, the Bible cannot see that lying, etc., are bad things, and that truthfulness, etc., are good things, i.e., that he can see no difference between vice and virtue. But you know that among your own acquaintances there are nonreligious men who abhor lying, etc., as much as you do, and in the old heathen world there were illustrious examples of lofty virtue.

2. Christ has ennobled our conception of morality and brought new motives and aids to right-doing, but He always assumed that man had a knowledge of duty and recognised its authority. The gospel itself assumes this, for it is a declaration that God is willing to forgive sin; but it could have no meaning for men who did not know that they had done wrong. If the natural conscience were murdered, and men lost the distinction between right and wrong, the gospel would have nothing to take hold of.

3. Some say that religions faith is the foundation of morals: it would be nearer the truth to speak of morals as the foundation of religion; for the grounds of our trust in God are not His infinite power, which, if not governed by justice and goodness, would fill us with terror, nor His infinite knowledge, which might fill us with wonder but could not command affection and confidence--we trust and reverence Him because of His righteousness, truth, and love--his moral perfections, which we see are admirable in themselves. We cannot trust God until we know that He is trustworthy.

4. St. Paul believed that heathens not only knew many of their duties, but discharged them. The subject is not a speculative one merely. One great defeat of the Evangelical revival was that it failed to afford its converts a lofty ideal of practical righteousness and a vigorous moral training, with the result that Evangelical Christians have the poorest conceptions of moral duty and the weakest moral strength. To remedy this defect we must think more about Christian ethics, which we cannot do to any good purpose unless we begin with St. Paul by recognising the power which belongs to man to distinguish between right and wrong.

5. This power is one of the noblest of our prerogatives, but it is forgotten that, like every other faculty, it needs training. Many suffer from colour blindness, but experiments have proved that this arises, not from any disease or malformation of the eye, but from want of education; and it has been cured by teaching the colour alphabet. Skeins of wool of different colours have been displayed and their differences slowly learnt. Most of us learn this without systematic instruction, but drapers and milliners, who have to notice the finer gradations of tints, obtain the power of discriminating the difference between shades of blue and scarlet which seem to ordinary eyes alike. Their eyes are not better than ours, but they have been better taught. And so most of us, if we have lived among good people, learn without regular teaching to distinguish in a rough way between right and wrong. But if the conscience is to have a keen vision, and if its discrimination between right and wrong is to be unaffected by the cross lights of interest and passion, it must be more perfectly trained, and surely it is worth it; and if you are careful to train your child’s memory and voice, why not its conscience, which is infinitely more deserving of your care?

6. There is a bad way of teaching morals as there is of teaching arithmetic. In a bad school the rule is given and the child works his sum blindly, accepting the rule on the authority of the teacher. If his mind is sharp, he may puzzle out its reason; if not, he is left to mark it in the dark. So some people teach morality. They give the child God’s rules of conduct, and happily the conscience may discover for itself their nobleness; but if it does, no thanks to the teacher. Having been told the rule, the child is warned that God will punish disobedience; but if from this motive only the rule is obeyed, it is not obedience, but servile superstition. The appeal to God’s authority should only be occasional, or the moral sense will be disabled or checked in its growth by so tremendous a conception. When we follow a guide who never leaves us we are likely to take no notice of the path, and our knowledge of it will be no greater at the end than at the beginning.

7. For the education of the conscience we need teaching that is really moral, and not religious, that trains the mind to recognise for itself the obligation to do right because it is right. The vessel of human nature, when exposed to storms of temptation, needs more than one strong cable. Religious faith is the great security; but all the anchors are sometimes wanted, and we have no right to refuse the aid of such guarantees of safety as a genuine love of righteousness for its own sake, a deep hatred of wrong, a dread of moral shame. It is, however, alleged that apart from the Divine authority it is impossible to enforce the obligations of virtue. The objection is put in this form: “You say to a boy that he ought to tell the truth; suppose he asks, ‘Why?’ what can you answer except that God commands it?” But suppose the boy asks, “Why should I do what God commands?” will you say that because if he does not he will be punished?--a very mean and sandy foundation for morals, for it is no man’s duty to do anything simply because he will suffer for not doing it. A rule must be right in itself, or else it is a crime to punish men for disobeying it, If a child asks, “Why ought I to obey God or to tell the truth?” you must answer, “Because you ought.” But neither question will be asked if we have done our duty by our children. If they have learnt from us who God is, if they have heard us speak of Him with reverence and trust and love, they will know that they ought to obey Him; and if we are truthful at the impulse of a hearty love and admiration for truth, and put in their way stories about heroic truthfulness, they will know for themselves that lying is wrong and shameful.

8. I have pleaded for the education of the conscience in the interest of morality; I also plead for it in the interest of religion. Why should I trust, obey, and worship God? Because I ought. And wherever that answer is not given by the human soul, no appeal to hope or fear or gratitude will be effective. Mere terror is not without its uses. It may break the strong cords of immoral habits and paralyse for a time the baser passions, and may so give the conscience which has been trampled under the brutal hoofs of insolent vice the chance of asserting its authority. But I believe that as a general rule the nobler power has been in alliance with the terror from the very first. However this may be, I do not believe that religious faith can have any secure hold of man except it is confederate with conscience; and a man who has learned to revere his minister is most likely to revere God Himself. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)

The moral constitution of man

The question which the apostle was obliged to argue was largely the condition of the heathen world. He argues both sides of it; and in chap. 1 that they were to be condemned on substantially moral grounds, and that yet they must be condemned in much less measure than the Jews--a peculiarly offensive turn to the argument, because the Jew held that he had a right to superiority before God, no matter how he lived. The fact that men were now Jews, though they might be virtuous and devout, was enough. The apostle, therefore, is obliged to go against this stupid bigotry: “It is not they that hear the law that are the safest, but they that do it.” “Ah! but the Gentiles never had it, and of course they did not do it.” “But,” says Paul, “nevertheless, if they do those things under the light of nature which the law commands, that shall suffice. If you, with the law, sin, and they sin without it, they will stand, for that very reason, higher than you do.” This question, historically considered, was local, but the apostle settles it upon a ground which makes it universal; for he here takes ground with the moral constitution of man--that man has in himself, not as a full revelation, but in a rudimentary form, an interpreting nature, by which he knows what is right and wrong, by which he accuses or excuses his conduct. He declares that men receive a revelation, not for the sake of creating a moral sense, but for the sake of guiding a moral sense already created; that religion is not a thing superinduced upon the moral constitution of man, but the right unfolding of that constitution. Let us follow this line out.

1. The essential truths of religion are natural, constitutional, organic. They were not first created when declared by inspired men. Mental philosophy does not create mind, and the law of conscience did not create conscience. All those great Bible truths which involve the nature of right and wrong, of inferiority and superiority, of submission, of obligation--all that goes to constitute what we call moral sense--has a foundation in the nature of things; and if man only had the wisdom to know what he was and how to unfold his moral constitution, every man would work from his own moral consciousness to substantially the same ground which is open to him in Scripture. So that, when I preach the gospel, particularly in its relations to duty and obligation, I feel strong, not only because I believe the Word of God, but because, tracing the Word back, I find it written again in you. Studying man as I do, and studying the Word of God, I find the two are respectively witnesses of each other, and both together are stronger than either alone; and all the way through the Word of God appeals to this consciousness of men to bear witness to its essential truth.

2. On the other hand, a right-minded man, if he had no revelation, but had power to keep his mind clear and sensitive and his conduct in harmony with his higher nature, would go up on to the plane of the gospel. Hence, the gospel is not a super addition to nature. It is the opening of nature, the blossom of that which belongs to the race; nature being understood to mean, for the most part, that condition which God first intended.

3. From this fundamental view, it will appear right and wrong in human conduct, in the main, are not conventional, not things of mere custom. There are a thousand things in life which may be changed, and which are different in different nations. But the great fundamental principles of right and wrong--truth, justice, purity, and love--these are the same in every age and everywhere. It makes no difference how much men may philosophise about them. A man may have any theory he pleases of digestion, but digestion does what it pleases. A man may believe that there is a brain in his head, or that there is nothing in it; but his belief makes no difference with the facts. And so with moral theories: they touch not moral facts in the least degree.

4. Men are not released from obligations to virtue and religion simply by keeping away from the church, etc. There are many who think that if they shut out disturbing truths they will have rest. No. The Word of God comes as your friend to help you, by giving you the state of facts; but if you throw the facts away, you simply throw the help away. A man lies sick, and sends for his physician. The physician prescribes such and such remedies, and forbids the use of such and such articles of food, etc., etc. But after the physician has gone the man says to his attendant, “Go, tell him not to come again--to keep his advice and his medicines away.” And then he says, “There! I have dismissed my doctor.” If you could only dismiss your disease as easily as you can your doctor, it would be all very well; but to dismiss your doctor and keep your disease is not wise. The fever is a fact, and does not depend on quarrelling schools of medicine. A man says, “The Churches are all by the ears, and I am going to take my own way. I will manage my case myself.” You may in that way get rid of Churches and of a thousand disagreeable circumstances; but will any men get rid of that nature in which the law is written, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” etc., “and thy neighbour as thyself”? Go out, now, into the world to get gain, to be happy. Wind yourself up with the key of selfishness. Try to make your own powers serve you faithfully in harmony with each other. They are at a jangle with themselves. And you are not any better off because you have put the Church away from you; for the obligations rest not on the Church, but on you. Not they alone who have made a profession of religion are bound by its duties: they are binding upon every man. A man does not see any better for being in an oculist’s establishment. The necessity or the desirableness of his seeing does not arise from the fact that he is there, but from the nature of things. And if a man has ophthalmia the necessities of his eye and the laws of sight are just the same as though he were under medical treatment and care. And yet there are people who seem to think that of course a man ought to do certain things because he is a member of the Church. No, the obligations came long before the Church could have imposed them upon him. You say, “I am not a member of the Church, and you ought not to expect that of me.” But are you not born? Have you not that law of God written in you? I preach right, purity, holiness to you, because you are men. If you had never seen a Bible, these obligations would have rested on you by the very primal conditions of your creation.

5. There is an impression among many that freedom is gained by going out of the sphere of religious teaching into infidelity; and they laugh and say, “I used to feel guilty if I broke the Sabbath, but I do not now; I used to think that I ought to pray, but prayer is a superstition.” And so men go on setting aside point after point of fundamental religious belief; and they think they are becoming more and more free, and they ridicule Christians, whom they think to be bound hand and foot. Now, I do not say that the Churches have the perfect view of religion; but I do affirm that the faith which is held by all Christians is in the main a guide and a light. You and another man are walking in a troublous path. There are precipices on the right and left, and deep morasses below. Your companion is walking with a little lantern, containing only a tallow candle, and, taking one step at a time, manages to pick his way, though with some difficulty. You, who are so bold as to venture without any light, say to him, “Your tallow candle makes a miserable pretence of giving light; of all absurd things, the greatest is the attempt to make one’s way through the world with such a light as that”; and you knock it into the mud. It may be that the lantern could have been improved; but is it improved by darkness? Now the man has nothing to guide himself with. The light he had was feeble, but it was enough to guide him safely; and now he makes a misstep, and plunges headlong down the precipice and perishes. Suppose all is true that you say of Churches: after all, are they not better than nothing? Do not they attempt to take hold of those fundamental instincts which belong to men, and which must be cared for and satisfied? And do not they go a certain way toward satisfying them? And does not infidelity bring men into bondage and darkness instead of into liberty and light?

6. By throwing off religious faith and the restraint of the Church men do not escape conviction of sin, nor a sense of guilt, nor unhappiness (Romans 1:20). If there were not a Church, nor a Bible, nor a teacher; if there were nothing but the sun and the stars and the rolling seasons; and if there were but a single man living, he would be without excuse; for God has made the heavens and the glimmering light of nature, and these are enough to hold a man responsible for his character and conduct. And then in the text he says, “When the Gentiles which have not the law,” etc. There is no man of any degree of reflectiveness or sensibility who is not made unhappy in himself by the way in which he is living. In the excitement of a career of business, in the intoxication of pleasure, men drown their unhappiness; but the moment there comes a leisure moment there comes a time for thought. A man’s reason looks over his life, and he says, “I have toiled fifty years, and I have built my house and furnished it, and I have a place among men; but, after all, what am I profited? If I might live again, would I live over the same life? Have I satisfied my early aspirations, realised my own ideal?” Or, if he looks more closely at himself, he says, “Am I selfish, or am I not? I have learned to wield the pen; I know how to paint; I can carve; I am able to build a house; I can handle the sword; I have power to manage anything in this world almost; but myself I cannot manage. My conscience jangles with my feelings; I am often carried away by temptation. Everything is wrong. There is nothing that I make such poor business in dealing with as myself.” A man reads this, not out of the Bible, but out of his own soul. And if a man’s faculties do not live in harmony, then his own thoughts accuse him, and his judgment judges him, and his moral sense brings him under condemnation. It is in such cases that the gospel way is shown to men; and though they may set aside the revelation of mercy, they cannot set aside this judgment that is perpetually going on in their consciences.

7. The gradation in condemnation is a matter for thought. Those who have been taught the truth, and who then sin, are condemned in the greatest measure. But let no man say, “I was born of ignorant parents, remote from instruction, and I cannot be condemned.” According to your measure you will be condemned; but the lowest grade of condemnation will be more than you can bear. No one can afford to be sick. All the contrivances of nature have never made anybody attempt to be sick. You can make the body love odious things, you can modify the digestive powers, but no sort of treatment ever made sickness an agreeable thing. And by no means can a soul that is out of order be happy. There is a condemnation that rests upon it just so long as it is in that state. And now comes the declaration of the gospel, “Except a man be born again,” etc. It rests not alone upon those that have been instructed, but upon everybody.

8. This moral constitution is not a mere thing of time. It is not an arrangement for a special occasion, not for a transitory scene. The testimony of the Saviour and the New Testament all through is that right and wrong are eternal; that the moral constitution which divided men in this world divides them in the other. As on the one hand he that in this world loves, seeks, and so far as in him lies does the right, goes on forever with increasing blessedness, so, on the other hand, he who in this world perverts his body and soul grows worse and worse; and the evil effects of his misspent life do not drop off from him when he dies, but go on with him. You are not sinful, then, because you have been preached to or because the Bible says so and so, but on account of the perversion of that nature which God gave you. But when an offer is made to you of pardon for the past, and God in His infinite mercy through Jesus Christ gives you a remedy for your sins thus far if you will forsake that which is evil, if you turn away from Him you are destroyed. Men are very much like lunatics in hospitals. All their wants are provided for, and yet they set fire to the institution and burn it up. They are not made well by this deed. It is simply a part of their insanity to do it. (H. W. Beecher.)