God’s Righteous Judgment

Romans 2

Therefore you have no excuse, you humans who judge. For in judging another, you condemn yourself because you who judge practice the same things. For we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. But do you think, as a human who judges those who practice such things, but still does them, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you disdain the riches of ʜɪꜱ kindness, self-restraint, and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your callous and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who “will repay to each person according to their deeds:”+Psa 62:12 to those who by persistence in doing seek good for glory, honor, and immortality, eternal life. But to those who are self-seeking and are unpersuaded by the truth, but are persuaded by unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury, affliction and distress on every soul of human who does evil, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

But glory, honor, and peace go to every person who does good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For there is no favoritism with God. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be declared righteous. Indeed, when ethnic groups who don’t have the law do by nature the things of the law, they are a law to themselves, even though they don’t have the law. They show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience testifying with them, and their thoughts among themselves accusing or else excusing them on the day when God will judge the secrets of humans, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ.

The Jews and the Law

Indeed you call yourself a Jew, and rest on the law and boast in God, if know his will and approve the superior things, being instructed out of the law, and are convinced that you are a guide of the blind, a light to those in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, you therefore who teach another, don’t you teach yourself? You who preach that a person shouldn’t steal, do you steal? You who say a person shouldn’t commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who glory in the law, do you dishonor God by disobeying the law? For “the name of God is blasphemed among the ethnic groups because of y’all.” +Isa 52:15 just as it is written. Circumcision is of value if you practice the law, but if you are a violator of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So then, if the uncircumcised keep the requirements of the law, won’t their uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? Won’t those who are physically uncircumcised, but fulfill the law, judge you, who with the written law and circumcision are a transgressor of the law? For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is circumcision merely outward in the flesh; but a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter. Their praise is not from humans, but from God.