By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. | Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. |
Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. | Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. |
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Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. He ate nothing in those days. Afterward, when they were completed, he was hungry. | Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry. |
Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright in him, but the righteous will live by his faith. | Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked. But the righteous will live by their faithfulness to God. |
You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace. | For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace. |
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh. | So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. |
Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. | And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness. |
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by his good conduct that his deeds are done in gentleness of wisdom. | If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom. |
He humbled you, allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with manna, which you didn’t know, neither did your fathers know, that he might teach you that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of Yahweh’s mouth. | Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. |
For in it is revealed God’s righteousness from faith to faith. As it is written, “But the righteous shall live by faith.” | This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.” |
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that is given among men, by which we must be saved! | There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved. |
He is ‘the stone which was regarded as worthless by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner.’ | For Jesus is the one referred to in the Scriptures, where it says, ‘The stone that you builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.’ |
Therefore we don’t faint, but though our outward person is decaying, yet our inward person is renewed day by day. | That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. |
For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life. | For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. |
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. | God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. |
Surely he has borne our sickness and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted. | Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! |
For as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. As many as have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. | When the Gentiles sin, they will be destroyed, even though they never had God’s written law. And the Jews, who do have God’s law, will be judged by that law when they fail to obey it. |
But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. | But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. |
But the free gift isn’t like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. | But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ. |
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. You were healed by his wounds. | He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed. |
I will never forget your precepts, for with them, you have revived me. | I will never forget your commandments, for by them you give me life. |
By this we know that we remain in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. | And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. |
Of his own will he gave birth to us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. | He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession. |
His Son is the radiance of his glory, the very image of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, who, when he had by himself purified us of our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. | The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven. |
For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. | For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. |