Romans 2:13

It is right for them to be punished { God to punish them} because it is not those who merely know God’s laws whom he considers to be righteous. On the contrary, it is only those who continually have obeyed all ◄of God’s laws/of the laws that God gave to Moses► ◄whom God will consider righteous/whose record of sins God will erase►.

Translation for Translators

In The King James Version

(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.

In Context

12Although non-Jews do not have the laws that God gave to Moses, all non-Jews who sin will be eternally separated from God. He will not consider whether or not they knew the laws that he gave to Moses. And all the Jews who have sinned in spite of knowing the laws that God gave to Moses will also be punished { God will also punish them}. They will be punished for disobeying God’s laws.

14Whenever the non-Jews, who do not have the laws God gave to Moses, naturally obey those laws, they prove that they have a law within their own minds, even though they do not have the laws God gave to Moses.

Read all of Romans 2

Cross References

Deuteronomy 5:1Moses/I summoned all the people of Israel and said to them, “You Israeli people, listen to all the rules and regulations that I am giving to you today. Learn them and be sure to obey them.

Deuteronomy 30:12They are not in heaven, with the result that you need to say, ‘◄Who will need to go up to heaven for us to bring them down here to us in order that we can hear them and obey them?/Someone will need to go up to heaven for us to bring them down here to us in order that we can hear them and obey them.►’ [RHQ]

Ezekiel 20:11I gave them all my laws and decrees [DOU], in order that they would obey them, and as a result they would live for a long time.

Matthew 7:21“ Even though many people habitually call me ‘Lord’, pretending that they have my authority, some of them will not go to heaven where God rules, because they do not do what he desires. Only those people who do what my Father, who is in heaven, desires will go there.

Luke 10:25One day as Jesus was teaching people, a man was there who had studied carefully the laws that God gave Moses. He wanted to ask Jesus a difficult question. So he stood up and asked, “Teacher, what shall I do in order to live with God forever?”

Matthew Henry on Romans 2:2-17

Equity of the Divine Government. ( a. d. 58.) 1 Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. 2 But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. 3 And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? 4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and… Read the whole commentary →

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