NOTES for Rom 2:14-29

According to the Apostle Paul, the voice of conscience resounds in every person—it is the natural moral law written in his heart, proceeding from God who created humankind. Of course, the Law given to Israel through Moses speaks more loudly, but what matters is that no one is far from the word of God. The problem is not that we do not know what is right, but that we do not follow the right path! Why? Because we are always seeking our own will rather than God’s; hence the deceitfulness and hardness of heart of which the Savior speaks.

How should we understand Paul's words about God's name being blasphemed among the Gentiles because of the unworthy behavior of those who consider themselves believers? The simplest and clearest answer is known to everyone and needs no comment. It is clear that, looking at the behavior of believers and comparing it with the declarations of those same believers, people around them draw the corresponding conclusions. Of course, intelligent people in such a case usually understand that in every religious community there can be very different people, and one should judge by the best examples, not by the worst.

But every bad example still becomes a kind of anti-advertisement for the religion and community to which the one showing it belongs. And if Christianity were simply one more new religion, there would perhaps be nothing more to say on this subject. But Christianity is not a new religion; it is a new life.

It requires change from a person. A change in the quality of life. And the question of sacred names acquires a new meaning in this context. In fact, even in pre-Christian times a special prayer practice was connected with sacred names, the practice of continuous inner invocation of God. Praying in this way, a person actualized in himself that inner divine presence without which full communion with God is impossible. He sought closer and deeper relationships with God. But such relationships placed a certain responsibility on the seeker.

First of all in what concerns observance of the commandments. And with the coming of Christ the situation became still more tense. Now the life of the Kingdom has been opened to a person, and he can share in it through Christ. Now the breath of the Kingdom can abide in the heart of a Christian. This is far more than what a person could receive from God in pre-Christian times. But the responsibility also proves more serious. The question now concerns the purity of the Kingdom.

It is no accident that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount insists on the unconditional obligation not only of outward observance of the commandments, but also of guarding the heart from those thoughts and intentions that can lead to their violation. Thoughts and intentions now become as important as the deeds flowing from them. Otherwise, while remaining a Christian, a person can bring into the life of the Kingdom something that cannot and must not be there, and in this way lose both the Kingdom and himself.

At first Paul's reflections on true and false circumcision appear to be a polemic with the Jews who did not accept Christ and opposed the preaching of the gospel. Indeed, Christ's coming and the division between those who accepted Him and those who rejected Him sharpened the question of whom one should consider a true Jew: the one who formally acknowledges the commandments of the Law, or those who fulfill it. This question became still more acute after the Christian communities were filled out by former pagans who had not gone through joining the Jewish people. But after this the question arises in another way: do the apostle's reflections not also apply to us? Do we not, like the Jews denounced by Paul, turn our baptism into a ritual formality? Do we not become, we who know the commandments of the New Covenant but do not live by them, the same as the venerators of the Old Testament laws of whom this passage speaks?

But just as even the departure of such Jews from the essence of the Law does not deprive them of their great advantage in every respect, consisting in the fact that the Word of God was proclaimed to them, so formal Christians cannot cancel the truth of the Gospel.

Paul also mentions the teaching attributed to Christians that one must do evil so that good may come. A frivolous interpretation of the saying "whatever God does is for the best" is still current today. Yes, everything He does is indeed for the best, but we have no right to pass off our own deeds as His works. Nor do we have the right irresponsibly to do evil in the hope that the Lord will correct its consequences. He will correct them, but He will also call us to account for the evil. The Lord's mercy is boundless, but we have no right to abuse it.

Perhaps the whole of a Christian's life consists in recognizing that we cannot be compared with God — in wisdom, justice or mercy — and in thanking God for being different from us and for all that He has done for our sake… And what is interesting is that God does not gloss over these differences. He does not pat us on the head, saying, ‘Oh, My poor dears! There, there, you are good all the same…’ No, our God is not like that. He does not hide from us that we are ill — in fact, mortally ill. He tells us outright that we are ‘evil’ (see Matt. 7:11). As the Apostle Paul would later say, echoing David, the king and psalmist: ‘No one seeks God; all have turned aside, every one has become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one’ (Rom. 3:11–12; see Ps. 14, 53). And Paul clearly recognizes that he is exactly the same (see Rom. 3:9, 1 Tim. 1:15). The Lord, however, sees us far better than we see ourselves. That is precisely why He can speak of what is good in us, despite the overall sad picture (see Matt. 7:11). And only He — who knows even what we can become — invites us to turn to Him all the same, asking above all for Him Himself and for His Kingdom. And He will not fail to answer our request: He will come and make each of us a new person (see Rom. 6:10–11).

The apostle speaks to us about the difference between the Law as a properly spiritual reality and the religion it gives rise to. Judaism as a religion is indeed unthinkable without the Torah. But the Torah itself is greater than Judaism.

Moreover, observing the religious prescriptions of Judaism does not yet guarantee what that same Jewish tradition calls "keeping the Torah": one can be a religious person and at the same time a violator of the Torah, and then religiosity in itself loses every meaning. And one can be not religious at all, like the pagans, but follow the "natural" Torah, and those who follow such a "natural" Torah may prove closer to God than Jews confident in their religious piety.

Of course, when Paul speaks of pagans, he does not mean worshipers of some pagan cults, but rather those whom today we would call secular people: for most of those called pagans in Paul's time were religiously indifferent. There were, of course, real religious pagans as well, but they would hardly have been among the apostle's listeners and certainly would not have become Christians.

What matters to Paul above all is following the inner Torah, not the external forms of the Jewish religion. He understands perfectly well, of course, that precisely the attempt to follow the inner Torah will reveal human sinfulness sooner than anything else, and this very process becomes judgment for a person. But it does not follow from this either that the Torah itself is bad or that one must sin deliberately in order to reveal one's sinfulness to the end.

The inner Torah reveals it sufficiently as it is, while to sin consciously means only to increase the measure of sinfulness in one's life. One must only not renounce the path that presupposes following the inner Torah, even if such a path becomes judgment for a person. And in this sense the Jews, as the people of God, have an advantage over every other people: precisely to the Jews as the people of God the Torah was given for understanding, awareness, and conscious following.

If there were no Jewish people, there would be not only no Judaism as a religion, but also no path of the Torah without which full knowledge of God is impossible. And if not all Jews follow this path, the path of the Torah is a matter of a person's personal, voluntary choice. One can force a person to fulfill religious norms and prescriptions, but one cannot compel him to a spiritual path, to the spiritual work without which this path does not exist. And even if many of Paul's fellow believers turn out to be merely religious formalists, their formalism in no way devalues either the Torah or the spiritual path it presupposes.

From following the Torah Paul moves to another theme connected with the Torah: religion and religiosity. The apostle, as we can see, understands the difference between the Torah as a properly spiritual reality and the religion it gives rise to. Judaism as a religion is indeed unthinkable without the Torah. But the Torah itself is greater than Judaism.

Moreover, observance of the religious prescriptions of Judaism does not yet guarantee what the same Jewish tradition calls "keeping the Torah": one can be a religious person and at the same time a violator of the Torah, and then religiosity in itself loses all meaning. Or one can be not religious at all, like the Gentiles, but follow the "natural" Torah, and those who follow such a "natural" Torah may turn out to be closer to God than Jews who are confident in their religious piety.

Of course, when speaking of Gentiles, Paul has in mind not worshipers of some pagan cults, but rather those whom we today would call secular people, since most of those who were called pagans in Paul's time were religiously indifferent. There were, of course, real religious pagans too, but they would hardly have been among the apostle's listeners, and certainly would not have become Christians.

What matters to Paul above all is following the inner Torah, not the external forms of the Jewish religion. He understands perfectly well, of course, that precisely the attempt to follow the inner Torah will reveal human sinfulness faster than anything else, and this process itself becomes judgment for the person. But it does not follow from this either that the Torah itself is bad, or that one needs to sin deliberately in order to reveal one's own sinfulness to the end.

The inner Torah reveals it sufficiently as it is, and to sin consciously only means increasing the measure of sinfulness in one's life. One must simply not refuse the path that presupposes following the inner Torah, even if such a path becomes judgment for the person. And in this sense Jews as the people of God have an advantage over every other people: it was precisely to the Jews as God's people that the Torah was given for reflection, understanding, and conscious following.

Without the Jewish people, there would have been not only no Judaism as a religion, but also no way of the Torah, without which full knowledge of God is impossible. And if not all Jews walk this way, the way of the Torah is a matter of a person's personal, voluntary choice. A person can be forced to fulfill religious norms and prescriptions, but he cannot be compelled to take a spiritual path, to do the spiritual work without which that path does not exist. And even if many of Paul's fellow believers turn out to be merely religious formalists, their formalism in no way devalues either the Torah or the spiritual path that it presupposes.

Developing his thought about the "natural Torah," Paul contrasts Jews and Gentiles not by a religious criterion, but only on the basis of the attitude of both toward the Torah. Of course, when speaking of the Torah, the apostle considers it not only as legislation, but also as a way that presupposes following the commandments and the laws based on them. For him the Torah is an objective reality; its laws are in force whether people know about them or not. But these are still spiritual laws, and their effect on a person, unlike the laws of nature, depends to a known degree on the relationship between the person and God. A Gentile may know nothing about the Torah, yet he still senses it through its effect on his soul and his heart. In this case Paul uses the expression "the work of the Torah" (v. 15), in fact placing before God Gentiles who fulfill the Torah written in their hearts on the same level as Jews to whom it is known in all its fullness (v. 14).

The "natural Torah" is in no way worse than the written one if it allows a Gentile to find the road into the Kingdom. And the apostle considers the proof that it exists and is perceived by many Gentiles as an undeniable reality of their lives to be the moral struggle that Gentiles know no less well than Jews who sincerely strive to follow the Torah (v. 15). The differences between Jews and Gentiles become relevant not in the Kingdom, and not even on the way to it, but when the issue is violation of the Torah.

Objectively, sin remains sin in every case, and therefore Gentiles who sin without knowing the Torah are threatened with destruction, while Jews who violate the Torah face judgment (v. 12). The difference, as we can see, lies in the fact that God judges those who have consciously accepted the Torah according to what they have accepted, while the rest are judged according to what they could and should have known about sin and righteousness. The Torah is not a guarantee of salvation and not a privilege. It is only an instrument that helps on the way to the Kingdom. And the one to whom it was given bears responsibility for what he received into his hands, especially since this gift is always accepted voluntarily.

It is not the existence of the law or formal adherence to it that justifies, but its fulfillment; the deeds of those under the authority of the law will be judged by that same law. But why must those who sinned without having the law perish without the law? Is the legal principle “ignorance of the law is no excuse” consistent with the highest mercy?

Paul also answers this question and another one that is constantly asked: what will happen to those who did good deeds without knowing the commandments? They did not know them intellectually, indeed, but the law of conscience lived in their hearts, intelligible to everyone who has not stifled it within themselves. In practice, such people may fulfill the unwritten law more fully than some experts in the written law. It is not said of such people that they do not come into judgment; it is those who have believed who do not come into judgment (Jn 3:18). But at the judgment they will be able to present the good deeds they performed at the prompting of conscience. We do not know what the verdict will be in each individual case, but we believe that the verdict of the One who shows no partiality cannot fail to be just.