Romans 1:18-2:29
For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth,since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them.For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse.For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened.Claiming to be wise, they became foolsand exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions. For even their females exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.The males in the same way also left natural relations with females and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a worthless mind to do what is morally wrong.They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips,slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.Although they know full well God’s just sentence— that those who practice such things deserve to die— they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.Therefore, any one of you who judges is without excuse. For when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things.We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth.Do you really think— anyone of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same— that you will escape God’s judgment?Or do you despise the riches of His kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?But because of your hardness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed.He will repay each one according to his works:eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality;but wrath and indignation to those who are self-seeking and disobey the truth but are obeying unrighteousness;affliction and distress for every human being who does evil, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek;but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does what is good, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek.There is no favoritism with God.All those who sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all those who sinned under the law will be judged by the law.For the hearers of the law are not righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be declared righteous.So, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, instinctively do what the law demands, 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. Their consciences confirm this. Their competing thoughts will either accuse or excuse themon the day when God judges what people have kept secret, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.Now if you call yourself a Jew, and rest in the law, boast in God,know His will, and approve the things that are superior, being instructed from the law,and if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light to those in darkness,an instructor of the ignorant, a teacher of the immature, having the full expression of knowledge and truth in the law—you then, who teach another, don’t you teach yourself? You who preach,“ You must not steal”— do you steal?You who say,“ You must not commit adultery”— do you commit adultery? You who detest idols, do you rob their temples?You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?For, as it is written: The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.For circumcision benefits you if you observe the law, but if you are a lawbreaker, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.Therefore if an uncircumcised man keeps the law’s requirements, will his uncircumcision not be counted as circumcision?A man who is physically uncircumcised, but who fulfills the law, will judge you who are a lawbreaker in spite of having the letter of the law and circumcision.For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, and true circumcision is not something visible in the flesh.On the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart— by the Spirit, not the letter. That man’s praise is not from men but from God.
