⁸ If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,”^[a](A) you are doing right. ⁹ But if you show favoritism,^(B) you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.^{(C) 10} For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles^(D) at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.^{(E) 11} For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,”^[b](F) also said, “You shall not murder.”^[c](G) If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.

¹² Speak and act as those who are going to be judged^(H) by the law that gives freedom,^{(I) 13} because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.^(J) Mercy triumphs over judgment.

¹⁴ Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. ¹⁵ Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” ^[16] [a]

¹⁷ After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him^(A) about this parable. ¹⁸ “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? ¹⁹ For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods^(B) clean.)^(C)

²⁰ He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. ²¹ For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, ²² adultery, greed,^(D) malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. ²³ All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”