Or, God’s Witness in Every Conscience Romans 2:12-16 November 21, 2021 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins

Introduction

C. S. Lewis referred to it as the Tao in The Abolition of Man. Augustine and Aquinas called it “natural law,” and it ought to be seen as a complement to the presuppositional apologetic as taught by men such as Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen. You don’t need to read any of those men, you can read these five verses to the Romans. Whatever label we give it, or how many more pages can be written about it, the point is this: God’s moral law for all men is inside every man. No Bible is required to know what’s right or to judge men for not doing what’s right.

Paul has really been sticking his authorial finger into the sores of unrighteousness for a while. The opening of Romans started on such a positive, even buoyant, tone exalting the power of God to salvation for Jews first and also Gentiles who believe the gospel. In the gospel God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith (Romans 1:16-17). Then Paul turned onto Judgment Juncture, Condemnation Corner, Wrath Road.

It’s more of a superhighway of sin, lots of lanes and packed with traffic. The apostle starts putting up huge billboards by the side of the road pointing out where men are and where they’re headed. Blinking lights: “Bridge Out Ahead”

Men know that God is and that God doesn’t approve of their lusts. In what can only be appreciated as ironic, God lets them have so much of their “freedom” from Him that they’re enslaved by it. Yet even then there is some individual and cultural sense of right and wrong, and this continues to reinforce that men will have to give an answer for that.

In the previous paragraph (2:5-11) Paul showed that everyone will be judged by his works, endurance of work of good as well as obedience to unrighteousness, no matter one’s religious background, Jew or Greek, for God shows no partiality.

This paragraph (Romans 2:12-16) drills down further and reveals that every man has a built-in, factory model moral GPS system that keeps repeating to him every time he misses a turn, which is a lot of the time. How often do we hear a man try to excuse himself by saying he had “no idea,” so he shouldn’t be held accountable? But everyone has listened to the little voice coming from his internal dashboard, at least enough to prove his final culpability.

God Is Impartial (verses 12-14)

Verses 12-14 extend the explanation for why God’s judgment is just, in three steps.

Why can we trust that God is impartial? How do we know that His judgment is giving every man a fair shake?

1. Because everyone is judged according to what they know is right, not according to what they don’t know.

In particular, all men are judged accurately and fairly regardless of their access to God’s Word.

No one in Paul’s audience had a New Testament. It is very unlikely that anyone in Rome had his own copy of part of the Old Testament, let alone a complete copy. Most of the Roman population wouldn’t have been curious about Moses, even if they had wanted to download the Torah app onto their tablet just to check it out.

The Jews—and there were some in Rome—were a people specially gifted with what we call special revelation. All had general, creational revelation (as described in Romans 1:19-20, similarly in Psalm 19:1-6), but to Israel God gave prophets and parchments, and two stone tablets (Psalm 19:7-9).

He declares his word to Jacob,his statutes and rules to Israel.He has not dealt thus with any other nation;they do not know his rules.Praise the LORD!(Psalm 147:19–20)

Israel had a covenant with the LORD, Yahweh, and His law provided the instructions for the covenant. Paul doesn’t refer to the Mosaic Law by name, or even to its summary in the Ten Commandments. “Law” can refer to a number of things, but in verse 12 it distinguishes between the Haves and the[...]