God’s righteous, impartial judgement
- Therefore, you O man are inexcusable, every man of you who’s judging. For by what you judge the other man, you condemn yourself; for you man who’s judging practice the same things.
- Yet we *know that the judgement of God is based on truth upon the men practicing such things.
- And consider this O man; you man judging the men practicing such things (even while doing them yourself), do you think that you will escape the judgement of God?
- Or do you scorn the richness of His benevolence, and forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the benevolence of God leads you to repentance.
- And according to your hardness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgement of God,
- who will repay to each according to his deeds.
- To the men who by endurance in good work are seeking glory, and honor, and incorruptibility: the life of ages
- But to the men of selfish ambition and men disobeying the truth (also being persuaded of unrighteousness): anger and wrath.
- Tribulation and anguish will come upon the soul of every man practicing wickedness, both the Jew first and then the Greek.
- But glory, and honor, and peace to every man practicing good; both to the Jew first and also to the Greek,
- for there’s no partiality with God.
Obedience matters, not circumcision
- For as many as sinned without the law will also perish without the law. And as many as sinned with the law will be judged by the law.
- For the hearers of the law aren’t righteous with God, but the doers of the law will be proved righteous –
- (For when the gentiles not having the law do the things of the law by nature, these men not having the law are a law to themselves,
- who clearly demonstrate the work of the law written in their hearts, witnessing together with their conscience, and between one another, their thoughts accusing or even defending them.
- – on that day when God judges the hidden things of men through Jesus the Anointed according to my gospel.
- But if you bear the name of ‘Jew’, and rely on the law, and boast in God,
- and you know His will, and you examine the things to prove what is excellent, being taught from the law,
- and you are *confident in yourself to be both a guide of blind men and a light of men in darkness;
- a strict schoolmaster of foolish men, a teacher of immature men, having the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth in the law;
- therefore, you man teaching another, don’t you teach yourself? You man preaching not to steal, do you steal?
- You man saying not to have sex with another man’s wife, do you have sex with another man’s wife? You man detesting idols, do you rob temples?
- You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God through a deliberate violation of the law?
- For: “God’s name is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you“ just as it is *written.
- For circumcision indeed benefits you if you practice the law. But if you are a deliberate violator of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.
- Therefore, if the uncircumcised man keeps the ordinances of the law, won’t his uncircumcision be considered as circumcision?
- And the uncircumcised man by birth who’s fulfilling the law will judge you to be a deliberate violator of the law through the letter of the law and circumcision.
- For the one with the outward appearance of a Jew isn’t a Jew, nor the one with the outward circumcision in the flesh,
- but the man who’s a Jew internally is a Jew; who also has circumcision of the heart in spirit, not in the letter, whose approval isn’t from men, but from God.