Charles Ellicott Commentary Romans 2:12

"For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without the law: and as many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by the law;" — Romans 2:12 (ASV)

Jew and Gentile alike will be judged, each by the method proper to his case: the Jew by the written Law against which he has sinned, the Gentile by the unwritten law of conscience against which he too has sinned. The mere hearing of the Law will bring no exemption to the Jew. Conversely, the Gentile, who, at the dictates of conscience, acts as if he were subject to law, will have the full benefit that law can give him.

Indeed, his conscience is to him a law. He undergoes precisely the same conflict of self-condemnation and self-acquittal as one who has a written law to refer to. All this will be done, this strict measure of justice will be applied, at the last great day of judgment.

In the law.—Rather, in law. Here, as in the phrases that follow, “by law,” “the hearers of law,” “the doers of law,” “the Gentiles which have not law,” etc., the article is wrongly inserted by the Authorized Version. Its absence shows that the Apostle had in mind, not the particular Mosaic law, but the abstraction of law. “Behind the concrete representation—the Mosaic law itself—St. Paul sees an imperious principle, an overwhelming presence, antagonistic to grace, to liberty, to spirit, and (in some aspects) even to life—abstract law, which, though the Mosaic ordinances are its most signal and complete embodiment, nevertheless is not exhausted in them, but exerts its crushing power over the conscience in diverse manifestations. The one, the concrete and special, is ὁ νόμος; the other, the abstract and universal, is νόμος” (Lightfoot).