NOTES for Rom 2:12-16

As long ago as two thousand years ago, both the Lord and the apostle Paul warned us: always and in every age, ever since the Fall, human beings have been at odds with themselves. Now the mind is at odds with the heart, now the soul with the body, now convictions with actions, now conscience with the way one lives… Most people are desperately lacking in wholeness of life — a wholeness in which everything within a person is in its proper place; in which, as does sometimes happen, you look at someone and realize that there is something within them for which it would be worth giving a very great deal (see Rom. 2:29). There is an inner core, not fleeting or transient, but a true foundation that nothing can shake (see Matt. 7:24–27). Not something that merely seems unshakeable, but something that will remain so even at the Last Judgment. It is precisely for a whole person that ‘yes’ means ‘yes’ and ‘no’ means ‘no’ (see Matt. 5:37). If such a person teaches at all, they teach what they themselves practise. Their actions do not dishonour their faith and convictions (see Rom. 2:21, 24). Of course, one might say that, realistically, this picture is ideal and practically unattainable. But the difficulty is precisely that this is not so. Its being an ideal cannot serve as our excuse before God, because God knows that this is not so. He was human, and He knows from within that wholeness is possible. And it is precisely because Christ has opened the way to such a life for us that He ‘will judge people's secret deeds through Jesus Christ’ — the measure of our holiness.

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.