(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
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.1quotation/allusion to Psalm 62:12
- To the men who by endurance in good work are seeking glory, and honor, and incorruptibility: the life of ages2“life of ages” is literal, and captures the duration as well as the quality of the life, which the traditional interpretation of “eternal life” doesn’t. The word translated “ages” (αἰώνιον) is the adjective form of the Greek word “αἰών” (aion), which is used – for example – in Matthew 24:3 “what are the signs of your coming and the end of the age?”
- 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,3“have sex with another man’s wife” is one word in the Greek, typically translated “commit adultery”. However, the Greek word (and Hebrew too) is more limited in scope than our English word adultery. In English, “adultery” means illicit sex between a married person – man or woman – and someone who isn’t their spouse. In Greek (and Hebrew also), it meant “a man having sex with another man’s wife”. A married man having sex with an unmarried woman was called fornication. 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“4quotation/allusion to Ezekiel 36:20 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.
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