NOTES for Rom 2:1
The words of Paul that a person who judges another has nothing with which to defend himself, which is exactly how one can literally translate the Greek word rendered in the Synodal translation as "without excuse", recall the words of the Savior about the judgment by which each person will be judged in the same way as he judges his neighbor. But the apostle singles out here one concrete aspect of the problem, connected with the fact that the moral right to judge others belongs only to the one who himself does not do what he accuses the defendant of doing.
At first glance, there is nothing here that would prevent judgment and condemnation. Indeed, not all people on earth are thieves, murderers, libertines, or blasphemers. But Paul, as can be seen, holds another, Christian view of righteousness, which requires of a person who lays claim to the Kingdom, and every Christian by definition lays claim to it, complete freedom from sin. Of course, as applied to the untransformed world, such a demand loses all meaning. In practice it would simply result in impunity justified by the principle put by Dostoevsky into the mouth of one of his characters, who said that "each is guilty before each in everything." It sounds beautiful, but in practice "each before each in everything" usually means "no one before anyone in anything".
The untransformed world permits an evaluation not of the person, but only of his concrete act, and it requires precisely such an evaluation, the evaluation of a concrete sin or crime committed by a person. But the Torah still presupposes that such an evaluation is given by a righteous person. For Paul, righteousness is precisely freedom from sin, because he speaks about the Kingdom and not about the untransformed world. And none of those seeking the Kingdom can boast of such freedom, for fallen people seek it.
And if one evaluates a person and his deeds from the point of view of the Kingdom, from the point of view of who is ready to enter it and to what degree, there will simply remain no worthy ones. Except, of course, Christ Himself, who, however, came not to judge but to save. That is why the apostle says that one who himself does the same thing as the sinner he condemns should not judge another. In the Kingdom only the one without sin can judge. The rest should be more modest. And think not about the sins of others, but about their own salvation.