Ver. 16. The day meant here is the same as that in ver. 5. Westcott and Hort only put a comma after ἀπολογου- µένων, but a longer pause is necessary, unless we are to suppose that only the day of judgment wakes the conscience and the thoughts of man into the moral activity described in νετ. 15. This sup- position may have some truth in it, but it is not what the Apostle’s argument re- quires. The proof he gives that Gentiles are ‘‘a law to themselves”? must be capable of verification now, not only at the last day. Hence ver. 16 is really to be taken with the main verbs of the whole paragraph, ἀπολοῦνται, κριθήσονται, δικαιωθήσονται: the great principle of νετ. 6- ἀποδώσει ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα avrov—will be exhibited in action on the day on which God judges the secret things of men through Christ Jesus. A final judgment belonged to Jewish theo- logy, and perhaps, though this is open to question, one in which the Messiah acted as God’s representative ; but what Paul teaches here does not rest merely on the transference of a Jewish Messianic function to Jesus. If there is anything certain in the N.T. it is that this repre- sentation of Jesus as judge of the world rests on the words of our Lord Himself (Mt. vii. 22 Ε., xxv. 31 ff.). To assert it was an essential part of the Gospel as preached by Paul: cf. Acts xvii. 31. (Baldensperger, Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, S. 85 f., thinks that in the circles of Jewish Pietism, in the century before Christ, the Messiah was already spoken of as the Divine judge, and as sharing the titles and attributes of Jehovah.)
In vers. 17-24 the Apostle brings to a point the argument for which he has been clearing the way in vers. {-16.
16—-20,