Two things are presented here with respect to God; His judgment against
evil-the evil-doer shall not escape (the real difference of right and wrong
would be maintained by judgment); and His mercy, patience, and
long-suffering with regard to the evil-doer-His goodness inviting him to
repentance. He who continued in evil deceived himself by trying to forget
the sure judgment of God and by despising His goodness. The consequences,
both of a life opposed to God and to His truth on the one hand, and of the
search after that which is pleasing to Him, and thereby for eternal life on
the other, were sure-tribulation and anguish in the one case, in the other
glory and honour; and that without more respect to the Jews than to the
Gentiles.
God judged things according to their true moral character, and according to
the advantages which the guilty one had enjoyed. [see note #9]
Those who had sinned without law should perish without law, and those who
had sinned under the law should be judged according to the law, in the day
when God should judge the secrets of the heart according to the gospel
which Paul preached. This character of the judgment is very important. It
is not the government of the world by an earthly and outward judgment, as
the Jew understood it, but that of the individual according to God's
knowledge of the heart.
Also God would have realities. The Gentile who fulfilled the law was better
than a Jew who broke it. If he called himself a Jew and acted ill (chap. 2:
17), he only dishonoured God, and caused His name to be blasphemed among
the Gentiles whilst boasting in his privileges. He then enlarges on the
point that God requires moral reality, and that a Gentile who did that
which the law demanded was better worth than a Jew who disobeyed it, and
that the real Jew was he who had the law in his heart, being circumcised
also in the spirit, and not he who had only outward circumcision. This was
a condition which God could praise, and not man only.
