Romans 2:1

“ Wherefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. ”

Whom is the apostle addressing? Gentile magistrates, say the old Greek commentators. But a magistrate is appointed to judge crimes; he could not be reproached for filling his office. The best of the Gentiles, say the Reformers, and Hofmann in our own day. But what purpose would be served, in this vast survey of the general state of mankind, by such a slight moral warning given to the best and wisest of the Gentiles not to set themselves to judge others? Besides, this precept could not be more than a parenthesis, while it is easy to see that Romans 2:1 is exactly like Romans 1:18, the theme of all the development which immediately follows chap. 2. Evidently the person apostrophized in these terms: O man..., forms an exception among those men (ἄνθρωποι, Romans 1:18) who hurtfully and wickedly reject the truth. He does not repress, on the contrary he proclaims it; but he contents himself with applying it to others. The true name of this collective personage, whose portrait Paul proceeds to draw without yet naming him, will be pronounced in Romans 2:17: “Now if thou Jew. ” The apostle knows how delicate the task is which he is approaching, that of proving to the elect people that divine wrath, now displayed against the Gentiles, is likewise suspended over them. He is about to drag to God's tribunal the nation which thinks itself at liberty to cite all others to its bar. It is a bold enterprise. The apostle proceeds cautiously. He first expresses his thought abstractly: thou who judgest, whosoever thou art, to unveil it fully afterward. Chap. 2 is thus the parallel of the passage Romans 1:18-32; it is the trial of the Jewish after that of the Gentile world. And the first two verses are its theme.

The course followed by the apostle is this:

In the first part, Romans 2:1-16, he lays down the principle of God's true (impartial) judgment. In the second, Romans 2:17-29, he applies it directly to the Jew.

The first part contains the development of three ideas. 1. Favors received, far from forming a ground for exemption from judgment, aggravate the responsibility of the receiver, Romans 2:1 to Romans 5:2. The divine sentence rests on the works, Romans 2:6 to Romans 12:3. Not on knowledge, Romans 2:13-16.

The διό, wherefore, which connects this passage with the preceding, presents a certain difficulty which Hofmann and Ritschl have used to justify their far from natural explanations of the preceding. Meyer takes this connecting particle as referring to the whole preceding description from Romans 2:18. For if a man is guilty, if he commits such things without judging them, it follows that he is still more guilty if he commit them while judging them. Romans 2:1 might, however, be connected more particularly with Romans 1:32. In point of fact, if sinning while applauding the sin of others is criminal, would not men be more inexcusable still if they condemned the sin of others while joining in it? In the former case there is at least agreement between thought and action the man does what he expressly approves while in the second there is an internal contradiction and a flagrant hypocrisy. In the act of judging, the judge condemns his own doing.

The word inexcusable, here applied to the Jews, is the counterpart of the same epithet already applied to the Gentiles, Romans 1:20.

Whosoever thou art (πᾶς): whatever name thou bearest, were it even the glorious name of Jew. Paul does not say this, but it is his meaning.

It is enough that thou judgest, that I may condemn thee in this character of judge; for thy judgment recoils on thyself. The Jews, as we know, liked to call the Gentiles ἁμαρτωλοί, sinners, Galatians 2:15. ᾿Εν ᾦ, wherein, signifies: “Thou doest two things at once; thou condemnest thy neighbor, and by condemning him for things which thou doest, thou takest away all excuse for thyself.” This meaning is much more pungent than Meyer's: in the same things which that is to say, in the things which thou doest, and which at the same time thou condemnest. There was undoubtedly a difference between the moral state of the Jews and that of other nations, but the passage Romans 2:17-24 will show that this difference was only relative. The repetition of the words: thou who judgest, at the end of the sentence, brings out strongly the exceptional character in virtue of which this personage is brought en the scene. The apostle confronts the falsehood under which the man shelters himself with a simple luminous truth to which no conscience can refuse its assent.