Paul here turns to what John Stott labels the "critical moralizers, whether Jew or Gentiles" who "pass judgment on others and think they are better than them when they do the same thing.
Whereas he speaks of the pagans with the impersonal 'they,' here Paul gets personal, changing to the person 'you.' Using a rhetorical device called a diatribe Paul enters into a debate with such person he imagines listening to his letter being read and responding with glee to Paul's condemnation of the pagans. It is easy to skip to the conclusion that, since Paul speaks of the 'law' (v12) that Paul has the Jews in mind here. That is certainly possible, but Paul also makes it clear that though Gentiles do not have the law as the Jews have them, when "Gentiles . . . do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law" (v14). So these "critical moralizers" would have included anyone who do not live as the pagans described in the previous section do.
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