Romans 2:6 → Psalm 62:12

Paul grounds his warning that God "will repay each one according to his deeds" (Romans 2:6) in the settled OT confession of divine justice: "You reward each one according to his deeds" (Psalm 62:12), echoed at Proverbs 24:12 ("Will He not repay a man according to his deeds?") and Jeremiah's own courtroom language, "I, the LORD, search the heart and test the mind, to give to a man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds" (Jeremiah 17:10). This is not a legalistic principle foreign to grace but the OT's steady insistence that the covenant God is not a respecter of persons — the same conviction Peter voices when he learns "God does not show favoritism" (Acts 10:34) and Paul reaffirms two verses later: "There is no favoritism with God" (Romans 2:11). Paul deploys the principle precisely to strip Jew and Gentile alike of any claim to exemption — neither Torah possession nor Gentile ignorance excuses anyone from the impartial court of the God who "will repay each one according to his deeds," so that both stand equally condemned apart from grace (Romans 3:9, 19-20) and equally in need of the righteousness that comes by faith. The telos is not a colder doctrine of works but the clearing of every self-justifying refuge, Jewish or Gentile, so that all alike are driven to the one Judge who, in the gospel, becomes also the Justifier of those who trust him (Romans 3:26) — the impartial verdict against sin being satisfied not by our deeds but by the deeds of the Judge himself, who bore in His own body what our deeds deserved, so that beholding Him who was judged in our place, we are freed to love the God whose justice we once feared.