John Calvin Commentary Romans 2:3

"And reckonest thou this, O man, who judgest them that practise such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?" — Romans 2:3 (ASV)

And do you think, O man, and so on. As rhetoricians teach us that we should not proceed to give strong reproof before the crime is proved, Paul may seem to some to have acted unwisely here for having passed so severe a censure when he had not yet proved the accusation which he had brought forward.

But the fact is otherwise; for he did not present his accusation before men, but appealed to the judgment of conscience; and thus he considered proven what he had in view—that they could not deny their iniquity if they examined themselves and submitted to the scrutiny of God’s tribunal.

And it was not without urgent necessity that he rebuked their fictitious sanctity with such sharpness and severity. For men of this class will trust in themselves with astonishing security, unless their vain confidence is forcibly shaken from them. Let us then remember that this is the best way of dealing with hypocrisy to awaken it from its stupor, that is, to draw it out into the light of God’s judgment.

That you shall escape, and so on. This argument is drawn from the lesser; for since our sins are subject to the judgment of men, much more are they to that of God, who is the only true Judge of all. Men are indeed led by a divine instinct to condemn evil deeds, but this is only an obscure and faint resemblance of the divine judgment. They are then extremely deluded who think that they can escape the judgment of God, though they do not allow others to escape their own judgment. It is not without an emphatic meaning that he repeats the word man; it is for the purpose of presenting a comparison between man and God.