Meet David Green

Paul spent the last half of Romans 1 describing how "they" aren't right with God. Then he lowers the boom on his self-righteous audience in Romans 2:1-5 to show that "you" are hypocrites because "you, the judge, practice the very same things" (Romans 2:1). Paul has skillfully stripped away the arrogant superiority that characterized his mostly Jewish audience. The playing field has been leveled, and there is nobody left to whom they can favorably compare themselves by claiming privileged status as God's chosen people. "There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, . . . but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good . . . ." (Romans 2:9-10) God's justice is administered without discrimination or preference.

But Paul knows that self-righteousness won't die easily. In verses 12-16, he cleverly anticipates and disarms their excuses of "I didn't know" and "I'm not that bad."

First, nobody can claim ignorance—neither the Jew who has the Law, which was written on stone tablets at Mt. Sinai, nor all others who have the law written on their heart.

And second, "it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified" (verse 13, emphasis added). In the Book of James, James clarifies just how much of the law must be kept to be right with God: "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it." (James 2:10) And Paul shows that "all of it" also includes "the secrets of men" (Romans 2:16). Jesus got even more specific in the Sermon on the Mount when He said that inward thoughts of lust and hatred violate the law just as much as the outward acts of adultery and murder (see Matthew 5).

So you stand before God alone, guilty, and pitifully inadequate to defend yourself against the wrath and fury of an unimaginably powerful God against whom you've willingly and knowingly rebelled. Me, too. Now I begin to understand just how bad the bad news really is.