Book of Common Prayer

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.

Humility and danger

18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus.

“So, then,” they said, “who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

² Jesus called a child and stood her in the middle of them.

³ “I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “Unless you turn inside out and become like children, you will never, ever, get into the kingdom of heaven. ⁴ So if any of you make yourselves humble like this child, you will be great in the kingdom of heaven. ⁵ And if anyone welcomes one such child in my name, they welcome me.

⁶ “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to trip up,” he went on, “it would be better for them to have a huge millstone hung around their neck and be drowned far out in the deep sea. ⁷ It’s a terrible thing for the world that people will be made to stumble. Obstacles are bound to appear and trip people up, but it will be terrible for the person who makes them come.”

More about the “little ones”

⁸ “But if your hand or your foot causes you to trip up,” Jesus continued, “cut it off and throw it away. It’s better to enter into life crippled or lame than to go into eternal fire with both hands and both feet! ⁹ And if your eye causes you to trip up, pull it out and throw it away. Going into life with one eye is better than going into hell with two!