Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Romans 2:12–16
“When Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts” (vv. 14–15).
Fallen human beings are in a desperate state indeed. Thoroughly corrupted by sin, we are incapable of pleasing God until His saving grace gives us new hearts in regeneration and we are conformed to Christ in our sanctification (Rom. 3:9–20; 6:1–8:17). Does this mean, though, that apart from saving grace, men and women are utterly incapable of doing anything that might be considered good or righteous in at least some sense?
Today’s passage gives us the answer to this question. We read in Romans 2:12–16 that those who do not have the law of God sometimes do what the law requires because the work of the law of God is written on their hearts. Paul is referring to those whom the Jews would have considered unbelievers and outside the covenant of salvation given by God to Israel. Although such people do not have the benefit of knowing the Lord, they nevertheless sometimes do what the law commands. John Calvin comments that those who are outside the Christian faith “have then a law, though they are without law: for though they have not a written law, they are yet by no means wholly destitute of the knowledge of what is right and just; as they could not otherwise distinguish between vice and virtue; the first of which they restrain by punishment, and the latter they commend, and manifest their approbation of it by honoring it with rewards.”
Sinners who have not been transformed by God’s saving grace still know the difference between right and wrong, and they tend to reward what is right and punish what is wrong. We see this especially in governments that have not become completely corrupt, for normally functioning civil magistrates punish crime and reward good deeds (Rom. 13:1–4; 1 Peter 2:13–14). On an individual level, most of us know unbelievers who are “good people,” in at least some sense. You do not have to be a Christian to remain faithful to your spouse, take care of your children, serve your community, and so on. These are all good things, and they constitute what has been called civic righteousness.
Civic righteousness, however, will save no one. God’s common grace keeps sinners in check so that human society continues, but a deed will please God only if it is done with the right motives. The Lord looks on the heart (1 Sam. 16:7), and unbelievers do not love God from the heart.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Our doctrine of total depravity does not mean that non-Christians never do anything that could be called good at all. It means that any good they do is good only in an external sense. It is not motivated by love for God and neighbor, so it is not good in an internal sense. Even those of us who know Christ have difficulty doing things that are good in both an external and internal sense. May we endeavor to develop the right motives so that we can please God.
For further study
- Genesis 20
- 1 Kings 10:1–13
- Mark 12:28–34
- 1 Corinthians 5:1
The bible in a year
- Job 18–20
- Acts 9:32–43