Our Goal, Our Works and Our End
To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. Romans 2:7,8
Verses 7-10 enlarge on the principle that the basis of God’s righteous judgement will be what we have done. The alternatives follow in two carefully constructed parallel sentences which present our goal (what we seek), our works (what we do) and our end (where we are going). The two final destinies are ‘eternal life’ (the life of the age to come) or ‘wrath and anger’ (the final outpouring of God’s judgement). ‘To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger’ (2:7,8). The basis on which the separation is made is a combination of what we seek (our ultimate goal in life) and what we do (our actions in the service of others or ourselves). As the contrast between these two verses makes clear, there are two and only two fates in store for everyone at the time of God’s ‘righteous judgement’ (2:5).
What we seek, our ultimate goal in life, should be ‘glory’ (the manifestation of God Himself in our life), ‘honour’ (God’s approval), and ‘immortality’ (His eternal, unchanging presence). What we do, or how we find these God-centred blessings, is ‘by persistence in doing good’ (2:7). Persistence is the mark of genuine believers (Hebrews 3:14) and obedience is the best indicator of one’s spiritual state (1:5; 2:25-27; 6:15-23).
Mirroring the believer in an equal but opposite way are those who are ‘self-seeking’ ([2:8] what they seek) and who ‘reject the truth and follow evil’ ([2:8] what they do). The word translated ‘self-seeking’ was used in Greek literature of ‘a self-seeking pursuit of political office by unfair means’ and so here probably means selfishness or selfish ambition. Being engrossed in self-centred goals easily opens the door to a-moral or immoral behaviour to see those goals come to pass. The word was derived from the common word for a ‘hireling’ and carried the sense of one who caused strife or who was contentious.
So Paul describes this group from the standpoint of their basic motivation – selfishness – and from the standpoint of their allegiance: they give themselves to evil rather than to the truth. They will not subject themselves to the truth and prefer ‘unrighteousness’ (1:18)
To sum up, those who seek God and persevere in goodness will receive eternal life while those who are self-seeking and follow evil will experience God’s wrath.
These two and only two alternatives are black and white. We are ‘those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality’ (2:7). This is God’s desire, our goal and how we will fulfil it.