Romans 1:28-2:11

New Testament for Everyone

Darkened mind, darkened behavior

²⁸ Moreover, just as they did not see fit to hold on to knowledge of God, God gave them up to an unfit mind, so that they would behave inappropriately. ²⁹ They were filled with all kinds of injustice, wickedness, greed and evil; they were full of envy, murder, enmity, deceit and cunning. They became gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, self-important, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, ³¹ unwise, unfaithful, unfeeling, uncaring. ³² They know that God has rightly decreed that people who do things like that deserve death. But not only do they do them; they give their approval to people who practice them.

God’s coming judgment will be impartial, the same for all

2 So you have no excuse—anyone, whoever you are, who sits in judgment! When you judge someone else, you condemn yourself, because you, who are behaving as a judge, are doing the same things. ² We know that God’s judgment falls, in accordance with the truth, on those who do such things. ³ But if you judge those who do them and yet do them yourself, do you really suppose that you will escape God’s judgment?

⁴ Or do you despise the riches of God’s kindness, forbearance and patience? Don’t you know that God’s kindness is meant to bring you to repentance? ⁵ But by your hard, unrepentant heart you are building up a store of anger for yourself on the day of anger, the day when God’s just judgment will be unveiled— ⁶ the God who will “repay everyone according to their works.”

⁷ When people patiently do what is good, and so pursue the quest for glory and honor and immortality, God will give them the life of the age to come. ⁸ But when people act out of selfish desire, and do not obey the truth, but instead obey injustice, there will be anger and fury. ⁹ There will be trouble and distress for every single person who does what is wicked, the Jew first and also, equally, the Greek— ¹⁰ and there will be glory, honor and peace for everyone who does what is good, the Jew first and also, equally, the Greek. ¹¹ God, you see, shows no partiality.