Bible Verses About Boasting

the evil of those who rely on their wealth and boast how rich they are?

No one can ever redeem his brother or give God a ransom for him,

because the price for him is too high (leave the idea completely alone!)

to have him live on eternally and never see the pit.

Then what advantage has the Jew? What is the value of being circumcised?

Much in every way! In the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the very words of God.

If some of them were unfaithful, so what? Does their faithlessness cancel God’s faithfulness?

Heaven forbid! God would be true even if everyone were a liar! — as the Tanakh says, “so that you, God, may be proved right in your words and win the verdict when you are put on trial.”

Now if our unrighteousness highlights God’s righteousness, what should we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict his anger on us? (I am speaking here the way people commonly do.)

Heaven forbid! Else, how could God judge the world?

“But,” you say, “if, through my lie, God’s truth is enhanced and brings him greater glory, why am I still judged merely for being a sinner?”

Indeed! Why not say (as some people slander us by claiming we do say), “Let us do evil, so that good may come of it”? Against them the judgment is a just one!

So are we Jews better off? Not entirely; for I have already made the charge that all people, Jews and Gentiles alike, are controlled by sin.

As the Tanakh puts it, “There is no one righteous, not even one! No one understands,

no one seeks God,

all have turned away and at the same time become useless; there is no one who shows kindness, not a single one!

“Their throats are open graves, they use their tongues to deceive. Vipers’ venom is under their lips.

Their mouths are full of curses and bitterness.

“Their feet rush to shed blood,

in their ways are ruin and misery,

and the way of shalom they do not know.

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Moreover, we know that whatever the Torah says, it says to those living within the framework of the Torah, in order that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world be shown to deserve God’s adverse judgment.

For in his sight no one alive will be considered righteous on the ground of legalistic observance of Torah commands, because what Torah really does is show people how sinful they are.

But now, quite apart from Torah, God’s way of making people righteous in his sight has been made clear — although the Torah and the Prophets give their witness to it as well —