Romans 2:1

¹ Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. [Paul unmasks those who agree with his statement of divine wrath on the Gentile world (1:18-32) but assume they are immune. Often we tend to be critical of others but lenient toward ourselves. We are the “O man.”] For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. [Paul’s teaching agrees with Jesus. See Matthew 7:1-5.]

Having declared the depraved Gentile world as guilty in the eyes of God, now Paul passes the same judgment on a person he addresses in verse 1 as “you.” The style Paul uses is what the ancients called diatribe. It is a composition in which questions or objections are put into the mouth of an imagined person (O man) in order to be answered or demolished. At the beginning of this chapter the man may be a pagan, but as we move into verse 17 the man is Jewish. Paul attempts to convict the Jews, like he has the Gentiles in chapter 1, of their moral bankruptcy. Paul sets forth in verses 1-16 three principles that govern God’s judgment. God judges according to truth, according to deeds, and according to the light (moral understanding) a person has.

Before we move on, F.F. Bruce has something to add since not all Gentiles preferred moral darkness to light:

We know that there was another side to the pagan world of the first century than that which Paul has portrayed in [chapter 1]. What about a man like Paul’s illustrious contemporary Seneca, the Stoic moralist, the tutor of Nero? Seneca might have listened to Paul’s indictment [in chapter 1] and said, “Yes, that is perfectly true of great masses of mankind, and I concur in the judgment which you pass on them—but there are others, of course, like myself, who deplore these tendencies as much as you do. . . . Not only did [Seneca] exalt the great moral virtues; he exposed hypocrisy, he preached the equality of all human beings, he acknowledged the pervasive character of evil . . . he practiced and inculcated daily self-examination, he ridiculed vulgar idolatry, he assumed the role of a more guide.

It seems probable, therefore, that Paul is speaking to Gentiles such as Seneca in verses 1-16 while he is also thinking of the Jews, which he makes explicit in verse 17. He confronts every human being who is a moralizer, who presumes to pass moral judgments on others. If we are honest, we all stand guilty of moralizing! The underlying theme of this section is the judgment of God upon self-appointed moralizing judges.