Letters to the Churches

This is why God has given them up to degrading passions; so that their women exchange natural sexual relations for unnatural;

and likewise the men, giving up natural relations with the opposite sex, burn with passion for one another, men committing shameful acts with other men and receiving in their own persons the penalty appropriate to their perversion.

In other words, since they have not considered God worth knowing, God has given them up to worthless ways of thinking; so that they do improper things.

They are filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and vice; stuffed with jealousy, murder, quarrelling, dishonesty and ill-will; they are gossips,

slanderers, haters of God; they are insolent, arrogant and boastful; they plan evil schemes; they disobey their parents;

they are brainless, faithless, heartless and ruthless.

They know well enough God’s righteous decree that people who do such things deserve to die; yet not only do they keep doing them, but they applaud others who do the same.

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, passing judgment; for when you judge someone else, you are passing judgment against yourself; since you who are judging do the same things he does.

We know that God’s judgment lands impartially on those who do such things;

do you think that you, a mere man passing judgment on others who do such things, yet doing them yourself, will escape the judgment of God?

Or perhaps you despise the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience; because you don’t realize that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to turn from your sins.

But by your stubbornness, by your unrepentant heart, you are storing up anger for yourself on the Day of Anger, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed;

for he will pay back each one according to his deeds.

To those who seek glory, honor and immortality by perseverance in doing good, he will pay back eternal life.

But to those who are self-seeking, who disobey the truth and obey evil, he will pay back wrath and anger.

Yes, he will pay back misery and anguish to every human being who does evil, to the Jew first, then to the Gentile;

but glory and honor and shalom to everyone who keeps doing what is good, to the Jew first, then to the Gentile.

For God does not show favoritism.

All who have sinned outside the framework of Torah will die outside the framework of Torah; and all who have sinned within the framework of Torah will be judged by Torah.

For it is not merely the hearers of Torah whom God considers righteous; rather, it is the doers of what Torah says who will be made righteous in God’s sight.

For whenever Gentiles, who have no Torah, do naturally what the Torah requires, then these, even though they don’t have Torah, for themselves are Torah!

For their lives show that the conduct the Torah dictates is written in their hearts. Their consciences also bear witness to this, for their conflicting thoughts sometimes accuse them and sometimes defend them

on a day when God passes judgment on people’s inmost secrets. (According to the Good News as I proclaim it, he does this through the Messiah Yeshua.)

But if you call yourself a Jew and rest on Torah and boast about God

and know his will and give your approval to what is right, because you have been instructed from the Torah;