Does Romans 2:7 teach works salvation?

Choosing to follow his own hardness and impenitent heart rather than trust the goodness of God, man is deliberately laying up a treasure of wrath against himself. Living only and fully for this present world he surely is, but he is multiplying eternal results. He may be most complacent that in this world he is reaping nothing of the wilfulness he sows; but it will only mean the greater reaping of wrath “in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” God needs not to be hasty in settling His accounts, but not one will be left unsettled. He will render to every man according to his deeds. Deeds manifest the man. Subjection to a faithful Creator is displayed by patient continuance in welldoing — an attitude of expectant desire for eternal glory, honor, and incorruptibility. It is of course not a matter of absolute holiness or perfection here; but the heart distinctly shows itself. Does the heart set itself upon that which is good?Does it patiently continue to follow what it pure and true?Does it bear the unmistakable impress of eternity — the consideration of everlasting realities? Is it seeking “glory, honor and incorruptibility”? The end of such a path is entrance into eternal life — the full joy and blessedness of the presence of God for eternity. (It may be remarked that Paul here looks at eternal life more in its future aspect, that is, when separated from the very presence of sin, and in its own proper sphere — Heaven itself. But this does not deny, nor is it inconsistent with the truth found in John's writings, that “he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life” (John 3:36). It is not a matter of hope, simply, but of fact: every believer is a possessor of eternal life at present, but that life is out of its own essential home, in the midst of foreign elements, the world character being altogether contrary to it, so that its full display must await the pure circumstances of Heaven's glory.)

Here eternal life is set before us as the end of a life lived to God in this present world. But even so, it is not secured by the devotedness of the life here. It is the gift of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Sin pays wages: but God gives gifts. Thus the grace of God that gives the blessing is maintained; encouragement is given to live the life well pleasing to God, while the legal thought of obtaining eternal life as a reward for service is excluded.

Thus there is evident distinction in the use of these words in Scripture; and when it is said (Rom. 2:7) that God will render "to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption, eternal life," it is not at all the same as seeking for immortality, but the blessed, incorruptible state in which resurrection or the "change" will put the saints at the coming of Christ. And it applies only to the saints, as the whole description in 1 Cor. 15:42-50 does. The wicked are not those of whom it is said, "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power." Such words are applicable alone to the bloom and beauty of the "resurrection of life."

But the principles upon which God will judge all who come into judgment are those of righteousness and truth, for whether in grace or judgment He never departs from these principles. We are told in Romans 2 that He will render eternal life to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for “glory, honour, and incorruptibility,” but without the gospel men never heard of these things. The law set men to seek by the fulfilment of his obligations life upon earth. It is the gospel that sets these great objects before the soul (Rom. 5:2; 2 Tim. 1:10). Therefore apart from hearing and believing the gospel the conditions upon which eternal life is said to be granted cannot be fulfilled.

337 A few accessory passages may be added. Titus 1:2, "the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began." There is another aspect in which eternal life is viewed, namely, its full accomplishment in glory, according to the full purpose of God. In this view we are, of course, not said to have it, but to follow after it. Thus Romans 6: "Ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." So Paul to Timothy: "Lay hold on eternal life." That is present energy, but is the earnest faith of the saint, not simply the gift of God. So of the rich giving freely, that they may lay hold on eternal life. So Romans 5: "Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." So "they that lose their life shall keep it unto life eternal." This is put as a great general principle in Romans 2. "To them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory and honour and incorruptibility, eternal life." This does not throw any obscurity on this great truth; it is simply — what is universal in the New Testament — the energy of faith in the wilderness journey through grace which goes onwards to the full result for which God has redeemed us. We have to go the road in order to arrive, but have sure grace and the keeping of God to go it.

Where then is there room for the distinction here thought of great importance? Where the intimation that any possessed of eternal life miss the prize of our high calling? Rom. 11:6 does not contradict Rom. 2. God will render to each according to his works: to those who, in patient continuance of good works, seek for glory and honour and incorruption, life eternal (that is, in God's kingdom as well as for all eternity too in God's grace: so little is the distinction found in scripture); but to those that are contentious and are disobedient to the truth, wrath and indignation [shall be], etc. But why set this against "grace"? For grace alone gave a new nature through faith of Christ, and works meanwhile in obedience and good fruit, so as to inherit life eternal for the body in the day of glory. Error dislocates the truth, puts one scripture into collision with another, and thus unwittingly makes a chaos.

The important point is, then, not the order of events, but the great fact that Christ is coming, and that when He does come, He "will render to every man according to his deeds." (Rom. 2:6.) This is the invariable principle of God's righteous dealings, and is in no respect weakened by grace. Grace, it is true, lays our sins on another as our substitute, and credits us with the good deeds wrought in us by God's own power; but this confirms the principle instead of contradicting it. If an upright man winds up his affairs, he collects what is due to him, and pays what he owes. Nor is the justice of this course affected by the fact that certain debts have been remitted, or certain obligations incurred, out of kindness. So God's righteous judgment according to works is in no way impaired by the fact that the believer's sins have been put away, and the believer's righteousnesses have been wrought, by his own grace.

It is always so. Religious privilege, when misused and abandoned, leaves those who enjoy it worse than before, worse than those who have never enjoyed it. Messiah therefore shall say to them, "I tell you, I do not know you whence ye are; depart from me, all [ye] workers of iniquity."363 God could not have mere forms: there must be what suits His nature. This is invariably proved true, when the light of God shines. The Gospel does not mean that God now sanctions what is contrary to Himself. Even in remitting sin through faith He meets what is opposed to Himself, but produces what is according to Himself by His own grace. But He always holds to His own principle, that it is those who "by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory, and honour, and incorruptibility," that have eternal life, and none others. (Rom. 2:7.) Those "who by patient continuance in well-doing" please Him are to be with Him, and none but they. How this patient continuance in well-doing is produced is another matter, and how souls are awakened to seek after it. Certainly it is not from themselves, but from God. Conversion essentially consists in distrust of self and turning to God. This the Jews had not, and, in spite of all their high pretensions to religion, they were only workers of iniquity. (Cf. Matt. 8:11f.) "There" — not among the heathen — "shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves cast out." But this is not all — the picture would not be complete if they did not see others brought in too. It is not only the Jews shut out from their fathers when the time of glory comes; but others "shall come from east and west, and from north and south" — that is, the widest ingathering of the Gentiles — "and shall lie down at table in the kingdom of God."364 Thus it was manifest that "there are last which shall be first." Such were the Gentiles; they were called by grace to be first. And "there are first which shall be last." Such were the Jews. They had held the earliest and chief place in the calling of God; but they renounced it for self-righteousness and rejected their Messiah accordingly. The Gentiles would now hear, when the natural children, we may say, of the Kingdom should be thrust out. Grace would conquer where flesh and law had utterly failed, reaping woe to themselves as much as dishonouring God.

Mark then, in the first place, it is "the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ" (ver. 16). The principle, too, of the judgment is clearly stated. God "will render to every man according to his deeds; to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality (incorruption) eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God."

In Romans 2 we read of those who seek incorruptibility, to whom will be rendered eternal life in all its rich blessedness, in contrast to those who are contentious, disobedient to the truth, obeying unrighteousness and working evil, to whom will be rendered wrath, indignation, tribulation and distress. The path and the end of those who seek that which is Divine and glorious is vastly different, as we read, “In patient continuance of good works [they] seek for glory and honour and incorruptibility,” and God will render to them “life eternal” (Rom. 2:7) in its fullness. This will of course embrace immortality as well as incorruptibility, when our body of humiliation shall be transformed into conformity to Christ’s body of glory (Phil. 3:21), for His is both immortal and incorruptible.