Book of Common Prayer

How God’s impartial judgment will work

¹² Everyone who sinned outside the law, you see, will perish outside the law—and those who sinned from within the law will be judged by means of the law. ¹³ After all, it isn’t those who hear the law who are in the right before God. It’s those who do the law who will be declared to be in the right!

¹⁴ This is how it works out. Gentiles don’t possess the law as their birthright; but whenever they do what the law says, they are a law for themselves, despite not possessing the law. ¹⁵ They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. Their conscience bears witness as well, and their thoughts will run this way and that, sometimes accusing them and sometimes excusing them, ¹⁶ on the day when (according to the gospel I proclaim) God judges all human secrets through Messiah Jesus.

The claim of the Jew—and its problems

¹⁷ But supposing you call yourself a “Jew.” Supposing you rest your hope in the law. Supposing you celebrate the fact that God is your God, ¹⁸ and that you know what he wants, and that by the law’s instruction you can make appropriate moral distinctions. ¹⁹ Supposing you believe yourself to be a guide to the blind, a light to people in darkness, ²⁰ a teacher of the foolish, an instructor for children—all because, in the law, you possess the outline of knowledge and truth.

²¹ Well then: if you’re going to teach someone else, aren’t you going to teach yourself? If you say people shouldn’t steal, do you steal? ²² If you say people shouldn’t commit adultery, do you commit adultery? If you loathe idols, do you rob temples? ²³ If you boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? ²⁴ This is what the Bible says: “Because of you, God’s name is blasphemed among the nations!”

¹⁰ “Take care not to despise one of these little ones. I tell you this: in heaven, their angels are always gazing on the face of my father who lives there.

¹² “How does it seem to you? If someone has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders off and goes missing, what will he do? He’ll leave the ninety-nine on the hillside and go off after the one that’s missing, won’t he? ¹³ And when, eventually, he finds it, I’ll tell you the truth: he will celebrate over that one more than over the ninety-nine who didn’t go missing! ¹⁴ It’s the same with your father in heaven. The last thing he wants is for a single one of these little ones to be lost.”

Reconciliation and prayer in the community

¹⁵ “If another disciple sins against you,” Jesus continued, “go and have it out, just between the two of you alone. If they listen to you, you’ve won back a brother or sister. ¹⁶ But if they won’t listen, you should take with you one or two others, so that ‘everything may be established from the mouth of two or three witnesses.’ ¹⁷ If they won’t listen to them, tell it to the assembly. And if they won’t listen to the assembly, you should treat such a person like you would a Gentile or a tax-collector. ¹⁸ I’m telling you the truth: whatever you tie up on earth will have been tied up in heaven; and whatever you untie on earth will have been untied in heaven.

¹⁹ “Again, let me tell you the truth: if two of you come to an agreement on earth about any matter that you want to ask, it will be done for you by my father in heaven. ²⁰ Yes: where two or three come together in my name, I’ll be there amongst them.”