¹⁰ For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.

⁹ If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

¹² But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. ¹³ They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

¹⁹ And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. ²⁰ All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. ²¹ But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.^[a]”

¹⁵ All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God.

²² let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.

¹² Be careful then, dear brothers and sisters.^[a] Make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God.

⁹ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ.^[a] For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.

¹⁶ Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”^[a]

¹⁵ And the seeds that fell on the good soil represent honest, good-hearted people who hear God’s word, cling to it, and patiently produce a huge harvest.