For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them 16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. (Romans 2:12-16)
Ever since Martin Luther, a number of Christians have sensed a conflict between Paul and James regarding the place of good works in the Christian life. Often pitting Romans and Galatians against James and vice versa Christians have divided into various camps over the issue of how to understand the relationship between grace, faith, and works. In this excerpt from Romans 2, however, I find a striking harmony between Paul and James. Paul says that it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God but the doers of the law. Traditionally, interpreters have taken this statement as little more than a set up for Paul’s argument that no one can keep the law and thus earn justification before God. Of course, this is true and Paul will go on to make this point later in Romans, but I do not think that this statement here is merely a set up for this latter point.
Here Paul is not so much painting a scenario of non-Christian Jews attempting to achieve justification by law-keeping as he is painting a scenario of Christian Gentiles successfully keeping the law by nature, not in order to be justified, but because they already are. For Paul says, “When Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts . . .” I do not think that Paul is speaking hypothetically here. Rather, I think that Paul is bearing witness to the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:31-33 that he has personally witnessed among his gentile converts. I also do not think, as interpreters have traditionally argued, that Paul is referring to non-Christian gentiles who somehow successfully manage to keep the “spirit of the law” by means of natural law. The fact that Paul alludes to Jer 31:33 (“They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts”) indicates to me that Paul can be thinking of nothing other than gentile Christians who are now empowered by the Spirit to do by nature what Israel was never able to do against her fallen nature via law.
This realization is simultaneously encouraging and sobering. It is encouraging in that the power to please God and abide by his will is universally available to all who will receive it by faith. It is sobering in that this necessarily leads to God’s judging the secrets of humanity by Christ Jesus. My secrets. My inmost thoughts, conflicts, and moral struggles. Yikes! Why can’t external righteousness be enough? Why must God go digging into the dirty laundry of my mind? Why can’t I just sweep the most stubborn of my sins under the rug and call it a day? Why? Because the gospel does not consist of half measures. It is not a partial cure, not a scalpel intended for mere plastic surgery – a nip here, a tuck there – giving the appearance of health while leaving the real me languishing in the disease of sin within my heart of hearts. The Great Physician is no plastic surgeon, he is an open-heart surgeon. With the gospel, God cuts deep into the interior of my being where I have hidden all of my greatest embarrassments and my most hideous shame. He removes them all. All of it must come out into the open, not to shame me, but to heal me. Not to shun me but to set me free to enjoy true intimacy and fellowship with God and with God’s people.
It is indeed a frightening prospect to have my secrets exposed, but for the opportunity to be free of them and to deny them any more power over me through the gospel, I think it is a risk well worth taking. What I really want, more than anything, is to share in God’s holiness, to participate in his purity and goodness that blesses others and directs their attention to God’s glory manifest in Christ and reflected by me in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Father,
Come and judge the secrets of my heart. Expose everything I have tried so desperately to hide from you and others and that, therefore, have exercised power, even dominion, over me. Thank you for the penetrating, purifying love you expressed for us in your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord Jesus, thank you for revealing the true nature of God’s righteousness, its true depth, its true concern for my inner most thoughts, the place where sin took root and the center from which it spread its toxic pollen. Holy Spirit, take the scalpel of the gospel and cut as deep as you must to lay bare all that is unhealthy, all that is offensive and displeasing to God, anything that would prevent my knowing full fellowship with you, with the Father, and with the Son.
AMEN