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!”

The coming judgment

¹⁹ So Jesus made this response to them.

“I’m telling you the solemn truth,” he said. “The son can do nothing by himself. He can only do what he sees the father doing. Whatever the father does, the son does too, and in the same way. ²⁰ The father loves the son, you see, and shows him all the things that he’s doing. Yes: he will show him even greater things than these, and that’ll amaze you! ²¹ For, just as the father raises the dead and gives them life, in the same way the son gives life to anyone he chooses.

²² “The father doesn’t judge anyone, you see; he has handed over all judgment to the son, ²³ so that everyone should honor the son just as they honor the father. Anyone who doesn’t honor the son doesn’t honor the father who sent him.

²⁴ “I’m telling you the solemn truth: anyone who hears my word, and believes in the one who sent me, has the life of God’s coming age. Such a person won’t come into judgment; they will have passed out of death into life. ²⁵ I’m telling you the solemn truth: the time is coming—in fact, it’s here already!—when the dead will hear the voice of God’s son, and those who hear it will live. ²⁶ You see, just as the father has life in himself, in the same way he has given the son the privilege of having life in himself. ²⁷ He has even given him authority to pass judgment, because he is the son of man.

²⁸ “Don’t be surprised at this. The time is coming, you see, when everyone in the tombs will hear his voice. ²⁹ They will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”