Romans Chapter 2 was originally just the next part of the letter after the "worthy of death" comment, and it immediately tears into the arrogance of any sinful man who thinks that he is less worthy of death than other sinful men. The first "verse" of Paul that was later segregated over the prevailing chapter-divide is Romans 2:1, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things." Before Chapter 2 is concluded, the reader will have no doubt which men Paul primarily has in mind as trying to excuse their own inexcusability. In verses 17 to 23, he criticizes the Jews who speak and teach the Law but break it themselves. The Gentiles are mentioned in verse 24, but as part of a further criticism of the aforementioned Jews for misrepresenting God to them, phrased as causing them to "blaspheme" in order for him to mirror Isaiah 52:5 "as it is written." This feeds into how Paul's letter will project blame on the Jews for a next-to-complete failure of what was to be their responsibility to all humanity, and that was to lead as Christian people of God in the New-Covenant way since they were the corporeal people of God in the Old-Covenant way. The sequence is evident in verses 9 and 10, "to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile," and as the Romans knew then, as we much better know now, the Christian "glory, honour, and peace" has lopsidedly gone almost exclusively to the Gentiles since the Jews have almost uniformly rejected Christ. And for the few who have not? We know from Romans 10:12 more clearly that Paul did not expect them to receive any more rewards than Gentiles, as he there states "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him." However in the very next statement of Romans 2, verse 11, he states that same truth as it was said in the Acts of the Apostles, writing "For there is no respect of persons with God," per the KJV translation. The NIV has "For God does not show favoritism," and the ESV "For God shows no partiality." Then begins the why, in which Paul's epistles often surpass Acts and do so here in his letter to the future Christian-leading Romans. That is, Paul's artfully-composed letter explanation of the racial-equity doctrine in New Covenant Christianity surpasses in quality how Peter briefly expressed the same truth in the Acts historical narrative when he finally willfully conceded 'no respect of persons' after having it previously forced into his brain by God (Acts 10:34) if not also by Paul (Gal. 2).
The equity in Christianity is simply that all those who accept Jesus Christ will be saved and all those who do not will go to hell, with no racial considerations whatsoever for either fate. Jesus Christ stated it in fewer words in Mark 16:16 as he ascended to heaven. Paul's first verse of his "no respect to race" explanation is quickly seen to be in agreement, Romans 2:12: "For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law." This means that both Gentile sinners without the Law and Jewish sinners with the Law will all be part of the "day of wrath" where God will "render to every man according to his deeds" that he spoke of in verses 5 and 6. However the next verse introduces a complication that might confuse anyone who is reading Chapter 2 by itself, where he says in 2:13 "For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified." We will see detailed in Romans 3:19-31 that there are in practice none which keep the Law sufficiently enough to be on par with the "glory of God" but that all must be justified by faith in Jesus Christ. In Romans 2 verses 14 to 16 we see Paul however already include Gentiles as those who may possibly demonstrate the moral tenets of the Law more so than most other men. He wipes out going forward any racially-concerning implications of the earlier Gentile-leaning list of vices by writing, "For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus." Here he is referring to independent but still similar behavior to what is commanded in Mosaic Law, but since so many Gentiles had and have since found salvation through Chapter 3's sole-requisite faith, we may assume that Paul in Chapter 2 has practically only their quality of Christian life in mind instead of their right to Christian eternal life.
Then in the rest of Romans Chapter 2, Paul explicitly switches over to the Jews to begin showing that they are no better in terms of justification before God (Rm. 2:17-29). Here too he is merely speaking to quality of life and daily morality for now — bringing into question the individual Jew as to whether he or she genuinely tries to keep the Law more so than other men, or is more reminiscent of the "scribes and Pharisees" whom Jesus called hypocrites in Matthew 23. The implication is that most Jews are not moral enough by even the pure logic of the philosopher's ethical standard, and we will soon see the impact of their not being moral enough in terms of God's standard, which Paul is getting ready to declare that none of them are. In Romans 3 he will tell us that no Jew is a bit more self-worthy than any Gentile, and that only faith in Jesus can make any human being worthy. Some of the Gentiles in Rome might have had the false notion that Jews were to some degree more acceptable, or perhaps Paul feared that this would at some point be foisted upon them by Jews like those in Galatians 2 that "came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage" (Gal. 2:4). Recall from Acts 15 his famous struggle against internal-enemy Jews pretending to be Christians when he traveled from Antioch to defeat their circumcision-based legalism at the Council of Jerusalem. The letter to the Romans was intended to effect this dejudaization in his physical absence, or to preempt or prevent such judaizing before it there began.
It is therefore unsurprising that in this later composition of Paul, who had been the Gentiles' defense attorney at the Jerusalem trial, that it is at the circumcision issue again where things get snippy. Romans 2 verses 25 to 29: "For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law: but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. Therefore if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? And shall not uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost transgress the law? For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." He is thereby claiming that circumcision, the primary physical designation of Jews from Gentiles, is entirely worthless in itself but only has worth when it produces inner virtue (suppl. 1 Cor. 7:18-19, Gal. 5:6, Gal. 6:15). By logical extension — which is a must to apply any kind of philosophy including Paul's relatively brief treatise — if this primary Jewish ritual intrinsically brings no one closer to God, he is claiming that so too do none of the countless other Jewish rituals which the Jews themselves acknowledge as less important. Paul is already telling the Jews that their religion is full of misvalues and misdirected efforts. Just briefly wait for when Paul makes the top-level logical extension for us by bringing in the radical gospel idea that none of their physical characteristics make them children of Abraham or children of God, and that those are instead the many Gentiles and the few Jews who accept Jesus Christ.
