1IS there any advantage then in being a Jew? Does circumcision mean anything?
2Yes, of course, a great deal in every way. You have only to think of one thing to begin withit was the Jews to whom God's messages were entrusted.
3Some of them were undoubtedly faithless, but what then? Can you imagine that their faithlessness could disturb the faithfulness of God?
4Of course not! God must be true, even if every living man be proved a liar. Remember the scripture? That thou mightest be justified in thy words, And mightest prevail when thou comest into judgment.
5But if our wickedness advertises the goodness of God, do we feel that God is being unfair to punish us in return? (I'm using a human titfortat argument.)
6Not a bit of it! How then could God judge the world?
7It is like saying that if my lying throws into sharp relief the truth of God and increases his glory, then why should he still judge me a sinner?
8Why not do evil that good may come? As a matter of fact, I am reported as urging this very thing, by some slanderously and others quite seriously! But, of course, such an argument is quite properly condemned.
9Are we Jews then a march ahead of other men? By no means. For I have shown above that all men from Jews to Greeks are under the condemnation of sin.
10The scriptures endorse this fact plainly enough. There is none righteous, no, not one.
11There is none that understandeth, There is none that seeketh after God;
12They have all turned aside, they are together become unprofitable; There is none that doeth good, no, not so much as one:
13Their throat is an open sepulcher; With their tongues they have used deceit; The poison of asps is under their lips:
14Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
15Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16Destruction and misery are in their ways:
17And the way of peace have they not known;
18There is no fear of God before their eyes.
19We know what the message of the Law is, to those who live under itthat every excuse may die on the lips of him who makes it and no living man can be beyond the judgment of God.
20No man can justify himself before God by a perfect performance of the Law's demandsindeed it is the straightedge of the Law that shows us how crooked we are.
21But now we are seeing the righteousness of God declared quite apart from the Law (though amply testified to by both Law and Prophets)
22it is a right relationship given to, and operating in, all who have faith in Jesus Christ. For there is no distinction to be made anywhere:
23everyone has sinned, everyone falls short of the beauty of God's plan.
24A man who has faith is now freely acquitted in the eyes of God by his generous dealing in the redemptive act of Christ Jesus.
25God has appointed him as the means of propitiation, a propitiation accomplished by the shedding of his blood, to be received and made effective in ourselves by faith.
26God has done this to demonstrate his righteousness both by the wiping out of the sins of the past (the time when he withheld his hand), and by showing in the present time that he is a just God and that he justifies every man who has faith in Jesus.
27What happens now to human pride of achievement? There is no more room for it. Why, because failure to keep the Law has killed it? Not at all, but because the whole matter is now on a different planebelieving instead of achieving.
28We see now that a man is justified before God by the fact of his faith in God's appointed Saviour and not by what he has managed to achieve under the Law.
29Do you think that God is only God for the Jews and not for the gentiles? Certainly not! God is God of the gentiles as well.
30The one God is ready to justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised by faith also.
31Are we then undermining the Law by this insistence on faith? Not a bit of it! We put the Law in its proper place.
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