However, the one who looks intently at the perfect law of freedom and perseveres—not forgetting what he has heard but putting it into practice—will be blessed in everything he does.
Therefore, you have no excuse, whoever you may be, when you pass judgment on others. For in judging others you condemn yourself, since you are doing the same things.
My soul longs for you throughout the night, and my spirit within me seeks your presence. For when your judgments are revealed to the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn to practice justice.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you previously, that no one who does such things will inherit the kingdom of God.
Therefore, brethren, be diligent in providing a firm foundation for your call and election. If you do this, you will never stumble, and you will receive a glorious welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Are you not aware that wrongdoers will never inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, extortioners, drunkards, slanderers, swindlers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.
Everyone who sins comes from the devil, for the devil has been a sinner from the very beginning. The Son of God appeared for this very purpose: to destroy the work of the devil.
Do not lie to one another, since you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self that is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
Recognizing that laws are not designed for the upright. They are for the lawless and insubordinate, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and irreligious; they are for those who slay their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for those who are fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which has been entrusted to me.
Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render fair judgments, and show kindness and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor. Do not plot evil in your heart against one another.
However, if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you are upright in your dealings with your neighbor; if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow; if you do not shed innocent blood in this place; and if you do not follow other gods and thereby cause your own destruction, then I will allow you to live in this place, in the land that I gave as a permanent gift to your fathers long ago.
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and offered worship and service to the creature rather than to the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural practices. Likewise, men gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameful acts with men and received in their own persons the fitting penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since these people did not see fit to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their depraved way of thinking and to all types of vile behavior.
And as we gaze upon the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, all of us are being transformed into that same image from glory to glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
And God is able to enrich you with an abundance of every grace, so that, with all of your needs provided for, you may be able to produce a surplus of good works.