In an ear­lier post I argued that it was pos­si­ble that some Gen­tiles ful­filled the require­ments of the law of God sim­ply by their good nature. Tra­di­tional Chris­t­ian the­ol­ogy dis­counts such pos­si­bil­ity. Let me add a few more thoughts on the sub­ject — ver­i­fy­ing the con­text and the usage of terms will shed more lights on the mean­ing of the passage.

Rom. 2:14 When Gen­tiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to them­selves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that what the law requires is writ­ten on their hearts, while their con­science also bears wit­ness and their con­flict­ing thoughts accuse or per­haps excuse them…

I stated that this was not about Gen­tiles in the church, but about Gen­tiles in gen­eral. Let me say that it is pos­si­ble to inter­pret it the tra­di­tional way and see believ­ing Gen­tiles in the pas­sage. How­ever, there are some issues with it, and if one chooses to inter­pret it that way s/he has some pretty big prob­lems with the con­text and the usage of terms.

We need to read Ch. 1 before we read the above pas­sage. The con­text is not the church, but the depra­va­tion of humankind. Paul is deal­ing with the gen­eral con­di­tion of the world, and the pic­ture he paints is pretty bleak. Those in Ch. 1 are “with­out excuse” (1:20).

Now he turns to the reli­gious Jews who had the law, and there­fore, the light from God, yet, they did not obey it.

Rom. 2:1 There­fore you have no excuse…

You see, they are also with­out excuse, for God only jus­ti­fies the doers of the law, not the hear­ers. He con­cludes, that

Rom. 2:9 There will be tribu­la­tion and dis­tress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10 but glory and honor and peace for every one who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 11 For God shows no par­tial­ity. 12 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.

In 2:9 the con­trast is made between sin­ful Jews and Gen­tiles in gen­eral. So God is only inter­ested in deeds, not in head knowl­edge. The deeds will be judged, the­ol­ogy or the pos­ses­sion of the law counts not. You see, we don’t find the church in 2:10 either. This is not the way Paul would refer to believ­ing Jews and Gen­tiles. Now let us read further:

Rom. 2:14 When Gen­tiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to them­selves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that what the law requires is writ­ten on their hearts, while their con­science also bears wit­ness and their con­flict­ing thoughts accuse or per­haps excuse them…

The law of Moses was given only to the chil­dren of Israel, they were the recepi­ents of the promises God made to the fathers. Gen­tiles never had the law, it never applied to them. They only had the laws of Noah that they lost, and there­fore, they lived in darkness.

So how could they do what the law required? Who are these Gen­tiles? We have a num­ber of options here. They are either those in the church, or pros­elites to Judaism, or right­eous Gen­tiles who did not belong to either.

Those Gen­tiles who con­verted to the Jesus move­ment were not required to take on the obser­vence of the (Mosaic) law. (Actu­ally, I am aware that a case may be made that they were required full Torah obser­vance once they received proper train­ing, I have seen quite good argu­ments, but I did not find it all that con­vinc­ing. After­all you need to do your own home­work and make up your own mind on the issue.) This is why Paul is against cir­cum­cis­ing Gen­tiles. They were only taught the Noahide laws and those laws from Lev. 17–19 that were required for Jews and Gen­tiles to peace­fully coex­ist. These Gen­tiles kept these laws because of the Spirit that regen­er­ated their inner being. They did not do them “by nature”, but by the Spirit.

The term “by nature” is not a term Paul uses to refer to regen­er­ated nature. He uses the term by the Spirit for that. If he refers to believ­ing Gen­tiles, then why does he sin­gle them out only, why not refer to believ­ers in gen­eral, both Jew­ish and Gen­tile? Cor­rect me if I am wrong, but I don’t see a sin­gle clear — I mean CLEAR — ref­er­ence to the church in the whole chap­ter. Paul is deal­ing with the reli­gious Jew here, and what can be more hurt­ful to them than con­trast­ing their fail­ure with the obe­di­ence of the Gen­tiles they despised?

Keep in mind that Gen­tiles in for­eign lands were often attracted to Jew­ish syn­a­gogues and learned the law of Moses.

Acts 15:21 For from early gen­er­a­tions Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every sab­bath in the synagogues.

These Gen­tiles learned the law, yet, they did not have the law. At least until they were con­verted to the Jew­ish reli­gion. At con­ver­sion they were cir­cum­cised and from then on they were required full Torah obser­vance. Before con­ver­sion they could observe the law even though they were not obliged to do it. So one pos­si­ble expla­na­tion is the proselites.

On the other hand the expres­sion that the require­ments of the law was writ­ten on their hearts may be a ref­er­ence to the Spirit, and thus to the new covenant, for the very essence of the new covenant is God putting his law into the heart of his peo­ple, how­ever, hav­ing the law of God in the heart is not con­fined to the new covenant alone, we see it in the old also. We may very well con­clude that hav­ing the law of God in the heart is what right­eous­ness is. It means one does the law by nature, not by com­pul­sion. He does it because he is just, not because he wants to become just by them. And the only way one can put the law of God into his heart is by faith(fully) learn­ing it, med­i­tat­ing on it day and night.

Let me draw you the covenant tree, so that you can see why it was pos­si­ble for Gen­tiles to be right­eous out­side of the Jew­ish religion:

 Now under a par­tic­u­lar covenant one is right­eous as long as s/he lives up to the right­eous stan­dard of the covenant. Covenants may be “upgraded”, but not down­graded. It means one can only go down the tree, not up, for every new covenant is an exten­sion of the old. If you under­stand the nature of covenants you have no dif­fi­culty accept­ing that cer­tain Gen­tiles were right­eous even out­side the Jew­ish reli­gion. We even see a prophet of God
(Baalam) who becomes cor­rupted. Or what about Melchizedek? How was he the priest of the Most High? Well there is no dif­fi­culty here, the above model explains it well.

We may also add that in a wider sense the law refers to the com­mands of God. There­fore, the law was given in the Gar­den of Eden, then extended to Noah, then to the Israelites, etc.

There­fore, Gen­tiles were under the laws on Noah, but because they lost it, they lived in spir­i­tual dark­ness, not know­ing right from wrong. So how could they have the require­ments of the law writ­ten in their hearts? Notice that Paul doesn’t say it is the law, but that what the law requires is writ­ten in their hearts.

Is there a dif­fer­ence between the law and the require­ments of the law being in the heart? Per­haps there is. I would say hav­ing the law in the heart means being con­scious of the com­mand­ments, while hav­ing the require­ments (or deeds) of the law in the heart means you love God and your fel­low being not because of you are aware of the com­mand­ments to do so, but because it is your nature, you just do it because you can’t help it. These ful­fill the law being unaware that they do it, being approved or dis­ap­proved only by their con­science and not by the writ­ten com­mand­ment. It appears, it is con­science that plays a big part in these Gen­tiles liv­ing right­eously. They don’t know the law because they don’t have the law. Their only guid­ance is their pure con­science, and I
sup­pose God also works through that.

Finally, let us ver­ify how the Greek term trans­lated “by nature” is used in the NT.

Gal. 2:15 We our­selves, who are Jews by nature and not Gen­tile sinners

Gal. 4:8 For­merly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods

Eph. 2:3 Among these we all once lived in the pas­sions of our flesh, fol­low­ing the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature chil­dren of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

There is one more quote from James that refers to tam­ing ani­mals being eas­ier than tam­ing the tongue, the Eng­lish trans­la­tion doesn’t reflect the usage of the term.

As it can be seen the term “by nature” never refers to the Spirit. It always refers to some­thing that is nat­u­rally in that con­di­tion, it never refers to what is super­nat­u­rally regen­er­ated. The term used for that is “Spirit”.