Faithful Steward Ministries and FSM Women's Outreach

Amplified Bible
They show that the essential requirements of the Law are written in their hearts, and their conscience [their sense of right and wrong, their moral choices] bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or perhaps defending them

Romans 2:15

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COMMENTS

Those who know me know I have a saying about cutting corners on construction projects: If it is illegal, immoral, or unethical, don’t even think about it. Trust me when I say that in the last 50 years of hammering away, I have encountered all types of these “money-saving” shortcuts that should get contractors jailed.

In our text today, Paul declares that even the Gentiles (biblically meaning non-Jews or unbelievers) who have no understanding of God’s Law demonstrate that the essentials of the law are written on their hearts. In other words, they know that illegal, immoral, or unethical acts are wrong.

I find it very sad that we see this almost daily in our modern world. Unfortunately, these acts are not limited to the “Gentiles.” We can see more and more terminating from pulpits. We see unbiblical acts and some that are sure to be construed as immoral, unethical, or illegal.

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STUDY

Ethics​ – A branch of philosophy concerned with moral principles and values that guide human behavior and decision-making. Ethics explores questions of right and wrong, good and bad, and the principles that govern human conduct.

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Morals​ – Principles of right and wrong behavior guiding ethical decisions and actions, often influenced by religious teachings.

Conscience​/Morals – A capacity or faculty of moral intuition, consciousness, or reflection. A person’s internal awareness or sense of abiding by or transgressing moral standards. An internal witness to moral obligation based on intuition or self-assessment.

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v.15 – Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, ‖their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts ‖the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)

By the work of the law, either understand the sum of the law, which is, To love God above all, and our neighbour as ourselves; or the office of the law, which consists in directing what to do, and what to leave undone; or the external actions which the law prescribes. Written in their hearts; this seems to be a covenant promise and privilege, Jer. 31:33; how then is it predicated of the Gentiles? Answ. Jeremiah speaks there of a special and supernatural inscription or writing in the heart by grace; and the apostle here, of that which is common and natural. Their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; interchangeably, now one way, anon another. Not as though the thoughts did, at the same time, strive together about the same fact; nor is it meant of divers men, as if good men were excused, and bad men accused, by their own thoughts; but in the same persons there were accusing or excusing thoughts and consciences, as their actions were evil or good.

Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1853), 485.

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Verses 14 and 15 – are more difficult: (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts … Some have wrongly interpreted this passage to mean that whereas the Jews had the law but did not keep it, the Gentiles, although not having the law, kept it. The idea is that non-religious people can live a good enough life to get them into the kingdom of God.
Paul chooses his words carefully here. He isn’t saying that the Gentiles, who do not have the law, in fact keep the law. He is saying that they do the things required by the law. That is quite different from saying they keep the law perfectly. Paul has already made it abundantly clear in the first chapter that all pagans are under the judgment of God and he will make it even more clear in the third chapter.
But pagans, who have never heard of the Old Testament, do display what is called ‘civil acts of virtue’ or civic righteousness. We find pagans with enough human morality to take care of their children and to refrain from stealing. They don’t obey the whole of the law, for they don’t love God with all their hearts and all their minds and all their souls. But this partial obedience reveals that there is a certain sense in which the law is written in their hearts.
Here we have the classical location in the New Testament for the apostolic teaching of some sort of natural law. Every human being has some moral sense, some light of nature, by which he is able to distinguish right and wrong. Even the secular philosopher, Immanuel Kant, went to great pains to prove this point, that there is a sense of rightness in the breast of every human being. Human behavioural patterns, no matter how primitive the culture, bear witness to the fact that man is born with some sense of moral awareness. We all have some built-in understanding of what is right and what is wrong. God gives us that innate or inward knowledge of morality.
Paul goes on, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. Paul is not saying that conscience is this built-in moral sense of what is right and what is wrong. Conscience is not the same thing as natural law. Rather, conscience is another dimension that bears witness to the presence of a built-in moral awareness.
The fact that we have conscience bears witness to the fact that we are aware of things being right or wrong. Even in pagan nations, that have never heard of the Bible, we see the manifestation and the practice of conscience.
Some have argued against the apostolic teaching here by saying, ‘We find in every society that we examine, some moral sense. Moral values may vary from culture to culture, but we’ve never found any primitive society that does not exhibit some moral sense in their culture. This indicates that morality is culturally derived, and their sense of right and wrong is imposed upon them by their culture.’
Similarly, we are told that our scruples about sexual morality are simply the result of the Victorian era’s influence, or the Puritanical ethic of New England. Now that we are becoming liberated we realise that all these moral persuasions are simply the result of societal or cultural taboos.
But that is a naive explanation for this universal sense of moral oneness. How did society ever universally get to the place where it had such sanctions to impose upon the consciences of its members, if it were not for the fact that the individuals concerned already had some sense of moral responsibility?
The apostle is saying here that it doesn’t matter whether or not you know the Old Testament law, you are not excusable. Whether or not you have read the ten commandments, you are exposed to the law of God in some sense. Therefore, the law of God will be the basis of our judgment. This does not deny what the Bible says elsewhere that God will judge all men according to the light that they have. The more light one has, the greater the responsibilities that go with it.

R. C. Sproul, The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 1994), 52–54.

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DEVOTION

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