Romans 2:4-22

⁴Or do you think lightly of his abundant kindness, patience, and forbearance, not realising that his kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

⁵Hard-hearted and impenitent as you are, you are storing up for yourself wrath on the day of wrath, when God's justice as a judge will be revealed;

⁶for he will give to everyone what their actions deserve.

⁷To those who, by perseverance in doing good, aim at glory, honour, and all that is imperishable, he will give immortal life;

⁸while as to those who are factious, and disobedient to truth but obedient to evil, wrath and anger, distress and despair,

⁹will fall on every human being who persists in wrong-doing — on the Jew first, but also on the Greek.

¹⁰But there will be glory, honour, and peace for everyone who does right — for the Jew first, but also for the Greek,

¹¹since God shows no partiality.

¹²All who, when they sin, are without Law will also perish without Law; while all who, when they sin, are under Law, will be judged as being under Law.

¹³It is not those who hear the words of a Law that are righteous before God, but it is those who obey it that will be pronounced righteous.

¹⁴When Gentiles, who have no Law, do instinctively what the Law requires, they, though they have no Law, are a Law to themselves;

¹⁵for they show the demands of the Law written on their hearts; their consciences corroborating it, while in their thoughts they argue either in self-accusation or, it may be, in self-defence —

¹⁶on the day when God passes judgement on people's inmost lives, as the good news that I tell declares that he will do through Christ Jesus.

¹⁷But, perhaps, you bear the name of ‘Jew,’ and are relying on Law, and boast of belonging to God, and understand his will,

¹⁸and, having been carefully instructed from the Law, have learnt to appreciate the finer moral distinctions.

¹⁹Perhaps you are confident that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in the dark, an instructor of the unintelligent,

²⁰and a teacher of the childish, because in the Law you possess the outline of all knowledge and truth.

²¹Why, then, you teacher of others, don't you teach yourself? Do you preach against stealing, and yet steal?

²²Do you forbid adultery, and yet commit adultery? Do you loathe idols, and yet plunder temples?