Romans 1:32

who knowing The Gr. relative is same word as Romans 1:25, where see note. Thus what is here stated of the world of sinners is, as it were, the conditionfor the special vices just enumerated: men are such becausethey resist conscience.

knowing The Gr. is strong, well knowing. The witness of conscience is here intended, enforced by traditions of primeval truth and by the majesty of creation.

the judgment of God Rather, His ordinance, His statute of retribution. It is not necessary to understand that they explicitly know that the statute is "ordained of God." God, as a definite Object of thought, may be to them as if He were not; but a voice not their own bears witness to the eternal difference of right and wrong, however broken that witness may be. They are aware, however imperfectly, of a "statute" whereby impurity and cruelty are evil and condemnable.

death The extreme penalty of the Divine "judgment." It is in fact "the death that cannot die;" whether the transgressor estimates it so or not.

have pleasure in Rather, feel with them and abet them. This is certainly a greater depth of transgression even than personal, and thus perhaps solitary, wrong-doing. It indicates completevictory over conscience, and completecallousness to the moral ruin of others. On the whole of this terrible passage, see as a Scripture parallel Titus 3:3. On that verse Adolphe Monod (Adieux1) remarks: "For a long while I found it impossible to admit this declaration; even now" (on his death-bed) "I cannot understand it in its fulness. But I have come, by God's grace very slowly indeed to see this doctrine more clearly, and sure I am that, when this veil of flesh shall fall, I shall find in it the perfectly faithful likeness of my natural heart."