The Jews also must fear judgment
1 Therefore, you have no ex cuse, who ever you are, if you are able to judge others. For in judging your neighbor, you condemn yourself, for you practice what you are judging.
2 We know that the condemnation of God will justly reach those who commit these things,
3 and do you think that by condemning others you will escape from the judgment of God, you who are doing the same?
4 This would be taking advantage of God and his infinite goodness, patience and understand ing, and not to realize that his goodness is in order to lead you to conversion.
5 If your heart becomes hard and you refuse to change, then you are storing for yourself a great punishment on the day of judgment, when God will appear as just judge.
6 He will give each one his due, according to his actions.
7 He will give everlasting life to those who seek glory, honor and immortality and persevere in doing good.
8 But anger and vengeance will be the lot of those who do not serve truth but injustice.
9 There will be suffering and anguish for everyone committing evil, first the Jew, then the Greek.
10 But God will give glory, honor and peace to whoever does good, first the Jew then the Greek,
11 because one is not different from the other before God.
Everyone is judged by his conscience
12 Those who, without knowing the Law, committed sin, will perish without the Law, and whoever com mitted sin knowing the Law, will be judged by that Law.
13 What makes us righteous before God is not hearing the Law, but obeying it.
14 When the non-Jews, who do not have law, practice naturally what the Law commands, they are giving themselves a law,
15 showing that the commandments of the Law are engraved in their minds. Their conscience, speaking within them also shows it, when they condemn or approve their actions.
16 The same is to happen on the day when God, according to my gos pel, will judge people’s secret actions in the person of Jesus Christ.
17 But suppose you call yourself a Jew: you have the Law as foundation and feel proud of your God.
18 You know the will of God and the Law teaches you to distinguish what is better,
19 and so you believe you are the guide for the blind, light in darkness,
20 a corrector of the foolish and instructor of the ignorant, because you possess in the Law the formulation of true knowledge.
21 Well, then, you who teach others, why don’t you teach yourself? If you say that one must not steal, why do you steal?
22 You say one must not commit adultery, yet you commit it! You say you hate idols, but you steal in their temples!
23 You feel proud of the Law, yet you do not obey it, and you dishonor your God.
24 In fact, as the Scripture says, the other nations despise the name of God because of you.
25 Circumcision is of value to you if you obey the Law; but if you do not obey, it is as if you were not circumcised.
26 On the contrary, if those who are uncir cum cised obey the commandments of the Law, do you not think that, in spite of being pagans, they make themselves like the circumcised?
27 The one who obeys the Law without being marked in his body with circumcision, will judge you who have been marked with circumcision and who have the Law which you do not obey.
28 For external things do not make a true Jew nor is real circumcision that which is marked on the body.
29 A Jew must be so interiorly; the heart’s circumcision belongs to spirit and not to a written law; he who lives in this way will be praised, not by people, but by God.
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Comments Letter to the Romans, Chapter 2
• 2.1 You have no excuse, who ever you are… Paul addresses the Jews, who wait for God’s judgment on the world and are convinced that they will not be condemned, since they have the true religion. Paul reminds them of something we ourselves know: the greater our religious knowledge, the more arguments we have to justify our faults.
God will give glory… (v. 10). Paul has just condemned the injustice and wrongdoing of the pagan world. Now he recognizes that many who have not received a religious education do indeed live justly. In the next paragraph Paul affirms that:
– God will judge each one according to his own lights; our conscience will fully agree with this judgment of God on us;
– God also has sons and daughters among those who do not believe: he will judge them as he does for us, according to the path on which he has placed them.
On different occasions Paul opposes letter and spirit (vv. 27-29).
Letter denotes the written commandments that Jews observe but which remain exterior to them; the aim of these commandments was to lead them to conversion of heart: this is the spirit God wants. Two sets of words are in contrast in Paul’s letters: flesh, old covenant, commandments, Law, letter… and Spirit, spirit, new covenant, promise…