Romans

¹Therefore, you are without excuse if you are judging! For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself, because you pass judgment and yet practice the same things. ²We know that the judgment of God is according to truth and against those who practice such things. ³Do you think that you will escape the judgment of God if you judge those who practice such things and yet act the same? ⁴Or do you despise the riches of God’s¹⁵⁷³ goodness, tolerance, and patience, not knowing that his goodness leads you to repentance? ⁵But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. ⁶He “will pay back to everyone according to their works;”^{1574 7}[which is] eternal life to those who by perseverance in good works seek glory, honor, and incorruptibility. ⁸However, to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but unrighteousness, there will be retribution and intense wrath, ⁹oppression and anguish. Trouble and distress will come to everyone who does evil, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

¹⁰On the other hand, glory, honor, and peace [are] for everyone who does good; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek, ¹¹because there is no partiality¹⁵⁷⁵ with God. ¹²Hence, all those who have sinned apart from the law will also perish without the law, [and] as many as have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. ¹³For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be declared righteous.^{1576 14}(Indeed, when Gentiles who do not have the law do by nature the things of the law, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law, ¹⁵by showing that the practical expression¹⁵⁷⁷ of the law is written in their hearts. Their conscience bears witness, and their thoughts alternately accuse or defend¹⁵⁷⁸ them). ¹⁶This is for the day when, according to my [proclamation of the] gospel,¹⁵⁷⁹ God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.

¹⁷Indeed, you [who] bear the name of Jew, you rely on the law and glory in God. ¹⁸You know his will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law. ¹⁹You are confident that you yourself are a guide of the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, ²⁰a corrector of the foolish and a teacher of infants, having in the law the form of knowledge and of the truth. ²¹You therefore who teach another, [why] do you not teach yourself? You who preach that one should not steal, [why] do you steal? ²²You who say that a man should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? ²³You who glory in the law by your disobedience of the law, [why] do you dishonor God? ²⁴For “the Name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,”¹⁵⁸⁰ just as it is written.

About circumcision

²⁵Indeed, circumcision gains something if you are a doer of the law, but if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. ²⁶And so, if an uncircumcised man keeps the ordinances of the law, will not his uncircumcision be accounted as circumcision? ²⁷Will not the uncircumcision which is by nature, if it fulfills the law, judge you, who with the letter and circumcision are a transgressor of the law? ²⁸For one is not a Jew by being so outwardly, neither is that circumcision [true circumcision] which is outward in the flesh. ²⁹Instead, someone is a Jew by being one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter. Truly, their praise is not from human beings but from God.

Objections and answers—The domination of sin

1573. Greek “his”
1574. Psalm 62:12/61 LXX; Proverbs 24:12
1575. Or “prejudice/unfair judgment”
1576. Or “justified”
1577. Or “work, requirement, effect” (Greek to. e;rgon tou/ no,mou grapto.n evn tai/j kardi,aij auvtw/n)
1578. Greek avpologoume,nwn from which the English “apologize” is derived
1579. Or “Good News”
1580. Isaias 52:5 (NT agrees with LXX against MT); Ezekiel 36:22