Romans 2:1. The representation of the moral state of the heathen world, in the foregoing chapter, is a proof of the necessity of the Gospel, or of a further dispensation of grace or favour, for the salvation of mankind: and how rich the favour wherewith God visited the world! To have destroyed the race of the apostate rebels who had abused their understandings and every gift ofa bountiful Creator, would have been justice; to have spared them, lenity and mercy: but to send his only-begotten Son from heaven to redeem us from all this iniquity and ungodliness by his own blood, is the most wonderful and exuberant favour. Rightly is the doctrine which teaches it called Gospel, or glad tidings: according to its true nature it should have filled the whole world with transports of joy: however, one would think it could not possibly have met with opposition from any part of mankind. But the Jew opposed it: he abhorred the Gentile, and contradicted the grace which honoured and saved him. The Apostle pleads and defends our cause: his business is, to confound the Jew, and to prove that we have as good right as he to all the blessings of the Messiah's kingdom; and by the description of the vicious state of the Gentiles in the former chapter, he has delicately availed himself of the prejudices of the Jew. He endeavours, from the beginning of the epistle, to court his attention; but nothing would please him more than a discourse, in which the Gentiles were reduced to such a vile and abject state. Thus the Apostle rouses his contempt of the Gentiles, and gives him occasion to condemn them:—but it is, that he may the more effectually humble him in this chapter; in which he proves, that the Jews, having in an aggravated manner despised the goodness and broken the law of God, were as obnoxious to his wrath as the Gentiles. How could they,with any conscience or modesty, arrogate all the divine mercy to themselves; or pretend that other men were unworthy of it, when they had done as much, or more, to forfeit it than others? Must they not exclude themselves from being the people of God under the Gospel, by the same reason that they would have the Gentiles excluded? This, however, was an argument highly ungrateful to the Jew: and it would be very difficult to fix any conviction upon his mind: therefore the Apostle first addresses him in a covert general way, thou art therefore inexcusable, O man! &c. not giving out expressly that he meant the Jew, that the Jew might more calmly attend to his reasoning, while he was not apprehensive that he was the man. Secondly, Most judiciously, and with irresistible force of reasoning, he turns his thoughts from his present superior advantages to the awful day of judgment (Romans 2:5-16.), when God, in the most impartial equity, will render to all mankind without exception according to their works. Thusthe Apostle grounds his following argument very methodically and solidly on God's equal regards to men in all nations, who fear him and uprightly practise truth and goodness; and his disapproving, and at last condemning all men in any nation, however privileged, who live wickedly. This is striking at the root of the matter, and demolishing, in the most true and effectual manner, the Jew's prejudices in favour of his own nation, and the unkind thoughts that he had entertained of the Gentiles. For if a Jew could be convinced, that a sober virtuous heathen, fearing God and working righteousness, might, through the infinite merit of the Messiah and the secret influences of the Holy Spirit, be blessed with eternal salvation, he must be persuaded that it was no such shocking or absurd matter, that believing Gentiles should be pardoned and taken into the visible church. Thus the Apostle advances with great skill and with the justest steps in his argument; insinuating himselfby degrees into the Jew's conscience. This passage is also well adapted to encourage the Gentile, humbled by the dismal representationin the foregoing chapter; for he would here see, that he was not utterly abandoned of God; but might, upon good grounds, hope for his mercy and kindness. We may just observe farther, that what St. Paul says of the Jews, in the present chapter, answers to what he had charged on the Gentiles in the first. Forthere is a secret comparison of them one with another, running through these two Chapter s; which, as soon as it comes to be considered, gives such a light and lustre to St. Paul's discourse, that one cannot but admire the skilful turn of it, and look on it as the most soft, the most beautiful, and most pressing argumentation; leaving the Jews to say for themselves, why they should have the privilege continued to them under the Gospel, of being alone in a national sense the people of God. See Locke, and on Romans 2:29.
That judged— 'Ο κρινων, the judger, is here very emphatical; and the more so, as it is repeated in the latter part of the verse. It denotes more than simply judging: it implies assuming the character, place, and authority of a judge; which would be seen more clearly, if the verse were rendered thus; Therefore, thou art inexcusable, O man! whosoever art a judger; for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou, the judger, doest the same things. There will need no remark, to those who read this epistle with the least attention, to prove that the judging which St. Paul here speaks of, refers to that aversion which the Jews generally had to the Gentiles: insomuch that the unconverted Jews could not bear the thought of a Messiah who admitted the heathen equally with them into his kingdom; nor could the converted Jews be easily brought, for a considerable time, to admit them into their communion, as the people of God, now equally with themselves; so that they generally, both one and the other, at that time judged them unworthy the favour of God and incapable of becoming his people any other way than by circumcision and an observance of the ritual parts of the law;—the inexcusableness and absurdity whereof St. Paul shews in this chapter. Dr. Doddridge observes, that there is a greater delicacy in the Apostle's transition here, than most commentators have imagined. From what he had before said, to prove the wicked and abandoned among the heathens inexcusable in their wickedness, he justly infers, that the crimes of those who had such knowledgeof the truth as to condemn the vices of others, were proportionably yet more inexcusable. This was eminently the case with the Jews. But he does not directly speak of them till the 9th verse; drawing the inference at first in such general terms, as might also comprehend Gentiles, philosophers, and all others who contradicted the moral instructions which they themselves gave. Though the black detail of vices enumerated in the preceding chapter is such as cannot fail to shock the thinking mind; yet whoever will take the trouble to search into the state of religion and virtue among the Jews at the same period will confess, that the Apostle is rather tender than rigid in his accusations. See Joseph. Jewish War, b. 5. 100. 13 b. 7. 100. 8 and Whitby.