Romans 2:16

The day meant here is the same as that in Romans 2:5. Westcott and Hort only put a comma after ἀπολογουμένων, but a longer pause is necessary, unless we are to suppose that only the day of judgment wakes the conscience and the thoughts of man into the moral activity described in Romans 2:15. This supposition may have some truth in it, but it is not what the Apostle's argument requires. The proof he gives that Gentiles are “a law to themselves” must be capable of verification now, not only at the last day. Hence Romans 2:16 is really to be taken with the main verbs of the whole paragraph, ἀπολοῦνται, κριθήσονται, δικαιωθήσονται : the great principle of Romans 2:6 ἀποδώσει ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ will be exhibited in action on the day on which God judges the secret things of men through Christ Jesus. A final judgment belonged to Jewish theology, and perhaps, though this is open to question, one in which the Messiah acted as God's representative; but what Paul teaches here does not rest merely on the transference of a Jewish Messianic function to Jesus. If there is anything certain in the N.T. it is that this representation of Jesus as judge of the world rests on the words of our Lord Himself (Matthew 7:22 f., Matthew 25:31 ff.). To assert it was an essential part of the Gospel as preached by Paul: cf. Acts 17:31. (Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu,. 85 f., thinks that in the circles of Jewish Pietism, in the century before Christ, the Messiah was already spoken of as the Divine judge, and as sharing the titles and attributes of Jehovah.)

In Romans 2:17-24 the Apostle brings to a point the argument for which he has been clearing the way in Romans 2:1-16. The Jew makes much of the possession of the law, but when we pass from possession to practice, he is not a whit better than the “lawless” Gentile. The construction is not quite regular, but the meaning is clear. The natural order would be: If thou bearest the name of Jew, and restest upon the law, and yet in thy conduct settest the law at nought, art not thou equally under condemnation with sinners of the Gentiles? But the construction is interrupted at the end of Romans 2:20, and what ought in logic to be part of the protasis if in thy conduct thou settest the law at nought is made a sort of apodosis, at least grammatically and rhetorically: dost thou, in spite of all these privileges, nevertheless set the law at nought? The real conclusion, which Paul needs for his argument, Art not thou then in the same condemnation with the Gentiles? is left for conscience to supply.