Paul has shown that God’s power to save and the righteousness of God are both revealed in the gospel of Christ. These are available to all men, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. He further showed that the gospel was desperately needed by the Gentile world: they had sinned against God. His next logical step was to show that the Gentiles were not alone. The Jews needed that same gospel as badly as did the Gentile.
To show that need he dealt with God’s equity and righteousness. He showed first that “thou art without excuse, O man, whosoever thou art that judeth: for wherein thou judgeth another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgeth dost practice the same things” (Romans 2:1). He does not at first identify that it is the Jew of whom he wrote (he would do that later, 2:17). But even though he had not written the word “Jew,” there is no doubt that Paul was writing about him. In this first verse he made clear that the Jew was as much a sinner as the Gentile. Was there something about the Jew which negated his sins? Follow the apostles’ reasoning through the next few verses to see that the answer is “No”. There is nothing about the Jew that spares him from the consequences of his sins.
First, the apostle said, “Reckonest thou this, O man, who judges them that practice such things, and doest the same that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?” (Romans 2:3). Upon what basis might the Jew hope to escape God’s judgment — because he was a Jew, a descendant of Abraham? If that was his hope, it was a false one. Read of the wilderness wanderings and recognize that God severely punished the nation’s sins, yet all these were “descendants of Abraham.” The nation’s refusal to enter the promised land consigned them to 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and dashed their hopes of inheritance. The sins of individuals were equally punished, including Moses, their lawgiver (he was denied the privilege of entering the land he had led his people toward), and David, a “man after God’s own heart,” whose life after his terrible sin with Bathsheba was filled with sorrow and anguish.
To those Jews who despised God’s forbearance and goodness, the apostle told them that through their harden and impenitent heart they were storing “up for themselves wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:4-5). Paul assured them that God “will render to every man (thus, Gentile and Jew) according to his works;” “to them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption (Jew or Greek), eternal life.” On the other hand, to those “that are factious and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, shall be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; but glory and honor and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek; for there is no respect of persons with God” (Romans 2:6-11). And, if that statement was not clear enough, the apostle added, “For as many as have sinned without the law shall also perish without the law; and as many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by the law” (Romans 2:16).
God is equitable and righteous. Because “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), God, in His love for all men, sent His Son to provide a path to forgiveness for sins, whether they were Jew or Greek. That path is the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jim McDonald