Who Are Paul’s Law-Abiding Gentiles? | Jarvis Williams on Romans 2:14–15

When Paul says that gentiles “do what the law requires” (Rom 2:14) and have “the work of the law written on their hearts” (Rom 2:15), is he describing morally conscious pagans who have God’s natural law or believing gentiles who experience the inward transformation of the new covenant? And how does this inform our reading of Paul’s teachings on judgment according to works just prior (Rom 2:6–11)? On this episode of What in the Word?, Kirk E. Miller sits down with Dr. Jarvis Williams to work through the interpretive issues.

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Episode guest: Jarvis Williams

Dr. Jarvis J. Williams serves as Professor of New Testament interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, having taught at Southern Seminary since 2013. His primary research interests focus on Pauline theology, Pauline soteriology, Romans, Galatians, and soteriology in Second Temple Judaism. He is the author of numerous books on Paul’s letters, Pauline theology, and a biblical theology of the people of God, including:

• Paul’s Gospel in Romans: Vertical, Horizontal, and Cosmic Dimensions
• Galatians (New Covenant Commentary Series)
• The Spirit, Ethics, and Eternal Life: Paul’s Vision for the Christian Life in Galatians
• Christ Redeemed ‘Us’ from the Curse of the Law: A Jewish Martyrological Reading of Galatians 3:13 (Library of New Testament Studies)
• Christ Died for Our Sins: Representation and Substitution in Romans and Their Jewish Martyrological Background
• Redemptive Kingdom Diversity: A Biblical Theology of the People of God
• One New Man: The Cross and Racial Reconciliation in Pauline Theology
• Colossians & Philemon, New Word Biblical Themes (Forthcoming)

Episode synopsis:

Setting the stage: Romans 1:18–3:20

In Romans 1:18–3:20, Paul presents a unified argument with a unified aim: to establish that both Jews and gentiles stand guilty before God.

Paul opens by emphasizing gentile transgression, cataloguing the kinds of vices that Jewish readers of his day would readily condemn (Rom 1:18–32). But Paul will soon extend that indictment beyond the gentiles. Already, Paul’s reference to “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of humanity” suggests Jews are included. By the time we reach Romans 2, this implication becomes explicit.

God is impartial, Paul insists (Rom 2:11), judging on the basis of obedience, not ethnic identity or covenant privilege. Whereas the gospel is God’s power to save believers, “the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16), God’s standard of judgment is the same, “to the Jew first and also the Greek” (Rom 2:9). Merely possessing the law is of no advantage if one does not obey it (Rom 2:25). It is the doers, not the hearers, of the law who will be justified in God’s eschatological judgment (Rom 2:12–13).

Jewish privileges are real, no doubt, including being entrusted with the oracles of God (Rom 3:1–2). But they do not thereby have an automatic advantage in God’s final judgment (Rom 3:9). All—Jews and gentiles alike—are under the power and condemnation of sin (Rom 3:9–18). Thus, no one—Jew or gentile—will be justified by means of works of the law (Rom 3:19–20).

It’s within this broader argument that we encounter Romans 2:14–15 where Paul speaks of gentiles who do obey the law.

What makes Romans 2 so difficult?

At the heart of the debate over Romans 2:14–15 is the question, Who are these gentiles who obey the law from the heart? Paul speaks of gentiles—those who do not possess the Mosaic law—nonetheless doing what the law requires. Is Paul talking about non-Christian pagans merely operating out of a common, God-given sense of morality? Or is Paul describing gentile believers who partake of the new covenant’s inward transformation?

Beyond this question, Dr. Jarvis Williams enumerates six additional difficulties of Romans 2:

1. Who is Paul’s target in Romans 2 specifically: Jews, gentiles, or both?
2. How can Paul say doers of the law will be justified in Romans 2:13, when in Romans 3:20 he insists that no one is justified by works of the law?
3. Who are the “doers of the law” in Romans 2:13? Are they faithful Jews, morally serious pagans, non-Christians who respond savingly to general revelation, mere hypothetical perfect law-keepers, or Spirit-empowered believers whose hearts are circumcised?
4. Is Paul writing primarily to gentiles or to a mixed Jewish–gentile congregation? If the former, is Romans 2 only relevant to gentiles?
5. Is Paul presenting his own views in Romans 1:18–3:20 or is he presenting the views of another, which he intends to critique?
6. In Romans 2:17, when Paul addresses someone “who calls himself a Jew,” is he addressing an idealized Jewish teacher or a gentile proselyte who wants to be identified as Jewish?

These questions don’t stand in isolation. Your answer to one affects your answer to the others. This episode, though, focuses specifically on the identity of those mentioned in Romans 2:14–15.

View 1: Moral pagans with consciences

One traditional view takes Paul to refer to moral pagan (non-Christian) gentiles. According to this interpretation, Paul observes how even people who never received Sinai’s revelation nonetheless, by nature of their God-given conscience, exhibit a degree of instinctive alignment with the law’s moral norms and requirements. In this view, Paul’s description here fits what has been traditionally called natural law.

Jarvis outlines five arguments for this perspective:

1. “By nature” (Rom 2:14) is taken to modify doing what the law requires. So most translations: “gentiles … do by nature” (KJV; NIV; NET; see also ESV; NRSVue); “gentiles … instinctively perform” (NASB2020; see also NLT). Gentiles do the things of the law by nature, meaning through moral intuition rather than divine revelation, and will be judged accordingly.
2. Paul refers to “the work of the law written on the heart” (Rom 2:15; emphasis added) rather than the new covenant’s promise of the law of God written on the heart (Jer 31:33). This, along with the phrase, “the things of the law” (Rom 2:14), are taken to refer to norms of the law that gentiles carry out according to their innate moral intuitions.
3. Paul says these gentiles are “a law to themselves” (Rom 2:14). This is taken to mean that gentiles have a natural witness to God’s moral norms within themselves (i.e., the conscience).
4. This view holds that the reference to “consciences” in Romans 2:15 explains the immediately preceding reference to “the work of the law written on the heart.” The latter does not refer to the promise of the new covenant, but the conscience.
5. The presence of both accusing and excusing thoughts in Romans 2:15 suggests Paul is describing someone with an afflicted conscience, not the believer.

View 2: Regenerate gentile believers

An alternative view, which Jarvis favors, maintains that Romans 2:14–15 describes regenerate gentiles who have experienced the promised transformation of the new covenant. Jarvis offers five arguments in support:

1. The connecting word “for” at the beginning of Romans 2:14–15 connects it to Romans 2:13, meaning Paul is explaining the “doers of the law who will be justified” (believers), not introducing a different, tangential subject.
2. The “work of the law written on the heart” is a clear allusion to the new covenant (Jer 31:33). So too the Old Testament anticipated a circumcision of the heart (see Deut 10:16; 30:6, Jer 4:4; contrast with Jer 9:25–26) and God’s Spirit causing obedience (Ezek 36:25–27). Paul refers to both these things in Romans 2:25–29, increasing the likelihood that Romans 2:14–15 is in fact an allusion to the new covenant.
3. Paul never clearly invokes the idea of “natural law,” which he presumably could have done if that was his intended meaning.
4. The phrase “by nature” should be connected to having the law, not doing it. According to this translation, gentiles did not receive the law by birth (as Jews did), and yet they now genuinely do the things it requires. This matches the use of “nature” in Romans 2:27, where Paul speaks of Jews who are “naturally” circumcised. He uses “nature” in both cases to matters that are tied to Jewishness, not “natural law.”
5. Jarvis takes Romans 2:15 to describe two groups, not one. In the final judgment (see Rom 2:16), there will be those whose thoughts condemn them and others whose consciences clear them. In other words, here Paul identifies two eschatological outcomes rather than one experience of ambivalence.

Paul’s argument in Romans 2:25–29 is particularly important, functioning as an interpretive lens for what he’s already said in Romans 2:14–15. Paul says the uncircumcised gentile who keeps the law’s righteous requirements will have their uncircumcision reckoned as circumcision in the eschatological judgment (Rom 2:26)—this despite the fact that uncircumcision itself is a failure to keep the Mosaic law! In contrast, Jews who do not observe the law will have their circumcision regarded as uncircumcision (Rom 2:25), i.e., they will be considered part of God’s people. Notice how this overlaps with Romans 2:12–16, where Paul says that the law’s doers—not its mere hearers—will be justified on “that day” (i.e., the day of the LORD) (Rom 2:12–16).

So in Romans 2:25–29, Paul identifies the “doers of the law” from Romans 2:12–16 as “inward Jews”: those who possess the Holy Spirit and whose heart has been circumcised. Further supporting this is Romans 8:1–9, where Paul also talks of the work of the Spirit fulfilling the law’s requirements among believers (Rom 8:4).

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Judgment according to works (Rom 2:6–11)?

How does this reading of Romans 2:12–16 inform our understanding of Romans 2:6–11, where Paul speaks of a final judgment according to works? Here Paul says that those who do good will receive eternal life, while those who do evil will meet God’s wrath.

Some interpret Paul as presenting a hypothetical based on a genuine principle of justice. According to this view, Paul describes what would happen for anyone who perfectly kept the law, knowing full well that no one does. Paul discloses God’s standard of judgment (i.e., obedience to the law) only to show us that it leaves us all condemned. So Paul concludes in Romans 3:20, “by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

A second view, held by Jarvis, maintains that Romans 2:6–11 describes a genuine eschatological reality. The obedience Paul describes here is that which results from the Spirit-wrought heart circumcision of Romans 2:25–29. These are the “doers of the law who will be justified” in Romans 2:13. These include those gentiles who have “the work of the law … written on their hearts,” so causing them to obey the law (Rom 2:14–25).

Jarvis emphatically insists, we are justified by faith alone apart from our works. He is not arguing that this obedience earns justification. Nonetheless, in the eschatological judgment, believers will display evidence that the verdict of “not guilty” is true. The Spirit fulfills the righteous requirement of the law within them (Rom 8:4). They fulfill the law by loving God and loving neighbor (Rom 13:8–10). This transformation is entirely owing to God’s grace in Christ.

The rhetorical and practical function of Romans 2

Romans 2 contributes to Paul’s overall argument in Romans 1:18–3:20, establishing that Jew and gentile alike stand condemned before God and in need of salvation. This “bad news” must be heard and felt before the good news can land with its proper weight.

Mere possession of the law, or ancestral membership in God’s covenant people, provides no shelter from God’s judgment. God demands real obedience, and the only path to real obedience runs through the heart-transforming work of the Spirit, available in Christ alone. So we must yield our lives to Christ by faith alone in light of this coming judgment.

Mere possession of the law, or ancestral membership in God’s covenant people, provides no shelter from God’s judgment.

Paul’s epistle also seems intended to resolve tensions in the Roman community between “weak” and “strong” Christians (see Rom 14:1–15:13). If Jewish–gentile differences in some measure stand behind these conflicts, Paul’s argument in Romans 2 prepares for his forthcoming exhortation: Since God himself judges and saves without partiality, we too must receive one another across ethnic and cultural lines.

Advice for preaching and teaching

For those preparing to preach or teach Romans 2:14–15, consider the following practical advice:

1. Be honest about the difficulty. Good, careful scholars differ on this text. Be humble. Acknowledge the debate, yet don’t let it paralyze your exposition.
2. Don’t isolate Romans 2:14–15 from its larger argument. This passage only makes sense when read as part of the sustained argument that runs through Romans 2:1–29. Jumping straight to Paul’s mention of the conscience, for instance, without tracing his appeal to the new covenant will produce a tunnel-visioned interpretation.
3. Keep the eschatological stakes in view. Paul is consistently focused on the eschatological day of judgment in this section: Who will be condemned, who will be exonerated, and on what basis? The whole argument is oriented toward that horizon.
4. Preach the transformative nature of the gospel. What is impossible for dead hearts, i.e., striving to keep external commands, God fulfills in us through Christ. The age of the Messiah has arrived, the Spirit has been poured out, and the obedience that the law always demanded is now a living reality for those who belong to Jesus, Jew and gentile alike.

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Logos values thoughtful and engaging discussions on important biblical topics. However, the views and interpretations presented in this episode are those of the individuals speaking and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Logos. We recognize that Christians may hold different perspectives on this passage, and we welcome diverse engagement and respectful dialogue.

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Jarvis Williams’ suggested resources on Romans

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