Romans 2:1

Wherefore thou art without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest dost practise the same thing. [The apostle, it will be remembered, is proving the universal insufficiency of human righteousness, that he may show the universal need of a revealed righteousness. Having made good his case against one part of the human race--the Gentiles, he now proceeds to a like proof against the other part--the Jews. He does not name them as Jews at the start, for this would put them on the defensive, and made his task harder. He speaks to them first as individuals, without any reference to race, for the Jew idolized his race, and would readily admit a defect in himself which he would have denied in his race. But Paul, by thus convicting each of sin in his own conscience, makes them all unwittingly concede sin in all, even though Jews. It was the well-known characteristic of the Jews to indulge in pharisaical judgment and condemnation of others (Matthew 7:1; Luke 18:14), especially the Gentiles (Acts 11:3; Galatians 2:15). The apostle knew, therefore, that his Jewish readers would be listening with gloating elation to this his castigation of the Gentiles, and so, even in this their moment of supreme self-complacency, he turns his lash upon them, boldly accusing them of having committed some of the things which they condemned, and, hence, of being in the same general state of unrighteousness, though, perhaps, on a somewhat less degraded plane. To condemn another for his sin is to admit that the sin in question leads to and justifies condemnation as to all who commit it, even including self. The thought of this verse is, as indicated by its opening "Wherefore," closely connected with the preceding chapter, and seems to form a climax, thus: The simple sinner is bad, the encourager of sin in others is worse, but the one who condemns sins in others, yet commits them himself, is absolutely defenseless and without excuse. Whitby has collected from Josephus the passages which show that Paul's arraignment of the Jews is amply justifiable.]