Study Desk

For this reason, in accordance with their own depraved cravings, God gave them up to uncleanness, allowing them to dishonour their bodies among themselves with impurity.

For they had bartered the reality of God for what is unreal, and had offered divine honours and religious service to created things, rather than to the Creator--He who is for ever blessed. Amen.

This then is the reason why God gave them up to vile passions. For not only did the women among them exchange the natural use of their bodies for one which is contrary to nature, but the men also,

in just the same way--neglecting that for which nature intends women--burned with passion towards one another, men practising shameful vice with men, and receiving in their own selves the reward which necessarily followed their misconduct.

And just as they had refused to continue to have a full knowledge of God, so it was to utterly worthless minds that God gave them up, for them to do things which should not be done.

You are therefore without excuse, O man, whoever you are who sit in judgement upon others. For when you pass judgement on your fellow man, you condemn yourself; for you who sit in judgement upon others are guilty of the same misdeeds;

to those on the one hand who, by lives of persistent right-doing, are striving for glory, honour and immortality, the Life of the Ages;

For God pays no attention to this world's distinctions.

For all who have sinned apart from the Law will also perish apart from the Law, and all who have sinned whilst living under the Law, will be judged by the Law.

For when Gentiles who have no Law obey by natural instinct the commands of the Law, they, without having a Law, are a Law to themselves;

and have persuaded yourself that, as for you, you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness,

a schoolmaster for the dull and ignorant, a teacher of the young, because in the Law you possess an outline of real knowledge and an outline of the truth:

For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentile nations because of you, as Holy Writ declares.

Circumcision does indeed profit, if you obey the Law; but if you are a Law-breaker, the fact that you have been circumcised counts for nothing.

For the true Jew is not the man who is simply a Jew outwardly, and true circumcision is not that which is outward and bodily.

For what if some Jews have proved unfaithful? Shall their faithlessness render God's faithfulness worthless?

No indeed; for in that case how shall He judge all mankind?)

If, for instance, a falsehood of mine has made God's truthfulness more conspicuous, redounding to His glory, why am I judged all the same as a sinner?

And why should we not say--for so they wickedly misrepresent us, and so some charge us with arguing--"Let us do evil that good may come"? The condemnation of those who would so argue is just.

What then? Are we Jews more highly estimated than they? Not in the least; for we have already charged all Jews and Gentiles alike with being in thraldom to sin.