Old/New Testament

14 Then some of the elders of Israel visited me to ask me for a message from the Lord, ² and this is the message that came to me to give to them:

³ “Son of dust, these men worship idols in their hearts—should I let them ask me anything? ⁴ Tell them, ‘The Lord God says: I, the Lord, will personally deal with anyone in Israel who worships idols and then comes to ask my help. ⁵ For I will punish the minds and hearts of those who turn from me to idols.’

^6-7 “Therefore, warn them that the Lord God says: ‘Repent and destroy your idols, and stop worshiping them in your hearts. I the Lord will personally punish everyone, whether people of Israel or the foreigners living among you, who rejects me for idols and then comes to a prophet to ask for my help and advice. ⁸ I will turn upon him and make a terrible example of him, destroying him; and you shall know I am the Lord. ⁹ And if one of the false prophets gives him a message anyway, it is a lie. His prophecy will not come true, and I will stand against that “prophet” and destroy him from among my people Israel. ¹⁰ False prophets and hypocrites—evil people who say they want my words—all will be punished for their sins, ¹¹ so that the people of Israel will learn not to desert me and not to be polluted any longer with sin. They will be my people and I their God.’ So says the Lord.”

¹² Then this message of the Lord came to me:

¹³ “Son of dust, if the people of a land sin against me, then I will crush them with my fist, break off their food supply, and send famine to destroy both man and beast. ¹⁴ Even if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, they alone would be saved by their righteousness, and I would destroy the remainder of Israel,” says the Lord God.

¹⁵ “If I send an invasion of dangerous wild animals into the land to devastate the land, ¹⁶ even if these three men were there, the Lord God swears that it would do no good—it would not save the people from their doom. Those three only would be saved, but the land would be devastated.

¹⁷ “Or if I bring war against that land and tell the armies of the enemy to come and destroy everything, ¹⁸ even if these three men were in the land, the Lord God declares that they alone would be saved.

¹⁹ “And if I pour out my fury by sending an epidemic of disease into the land, and the plague kills man and beast alike, ²⁰ though Noah, Daniel, and Job were living there, the Lord God says that only they would be saved because of their righteousness.”

²¹ And the Lord says: “Four great punishments await Jerusalem to destroy all life: war, famine, ferocious beasts, plague. ²² If there are survivors and they come here to join you as exiles in Babylon, you will see with your own eyes how wicked they are, and you will know it was right for me to destroy Jerusalem. ²³ You will agree, when you meet them, that it is not without cause that all these things are being done to Israel.”

15 Then this message came to me from the Lord:

² “Son of dust, what good are vines from the forest? Are they as useful as trees? Are they even as valuable as a single branch? ³ No, for vines can’t be used even for making pegs to hang up pots and pans! ⁴ All they are good for is fuel—and even so, they burn but poorly! ^5-6 So they are useless both before and after being put in the fire!

“This is what I mean,” the Lord God says: “The people of Jerusalem are like the vines of the forest—useless before being burned and certainly useless afterwards! ⁷ And I will set myself against them to see to it that if they escape from one fire, they will fall into another; and then you shall know I am the Lord. ⁸ And I will make the land desolate because they worship idols,” says the Lord God.

2 Dear brothers, how can you claim that you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, if you show favoritism to rich people and look down on poor people?

² If a man comes into your church dressed in expensive clothes and with valuable gold rings on his fingers, and at the same moment another man comes in who is poor and dressed in threadbare clothes, ³ and you make a lot of fuss over the rich man and give him the best seat in the house and say to the poor man, “You can stand over there if you like or else sit on the floor”—well, ⁴ judging a man by his wealth shows that you are guided by wrong motives.

⁵ Listen to me, dear brothers: God has chosen poor people to be rich in faith, and the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs, for that is the gift God has promised to all those who love him. ⁶ And yet, of the two strangers, you have despised the poor man. Don’t you realize that it is usually the rich men who pick on you and drag you into court? ⁷ And all too often they are the ones who laugh at Jesus Christ, whose noble name you bear.

⁸ Yes indeed, it is good when you truly obey our Lord’s command, “You must love and help your neighbors just as much as you love and take care of yourself.” ⁹ But you are breaking this law of our Lord’s when you favor the rich and fawn over them; it is sin.

¹⁰ And the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is. ¹¹ For the God who said you must not marry a woman who already has a husband also said you must not murder, so even though you have not broken the marriage laws by committing adultery, but have murdered someone, you have entirely broken God’s laws and stand utterly guilty before him.

¹² You will be judged on whether or not you are doing what Christ wants you to. So watch what you do and what you think; ¹³ for there will be no mercy to those who have shown no mercy. But if you have been merciful, then God’s mercy toward you will win out over his judgment against you.

¹⁴ Dear brothers, what’s the use of saying that you have faith and are Christians if you aren’t proving it by helping others? Will that kind of faith save anyone? ¹⁵ If you have a friend who is in need of food and clothing, ¹⁶ and you say to him, “Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat hearty,” and then don’t give him clothes or food, what good does that do?

¹⁷ So you see, it isn’t enough just to have faith. You must also do good to prove that you have it. Faith that doesn’t show itself by good works is no faith at all—it is dead and useless.

¹⁸ But someone may well argue, “You say the way to God is by faith alone, plus nothing; well, I say that good works are important too, for without good works you can’t prove whether you have faith or not; but anyone can see that I have faith by the way I act.”

¹⁹ Are there still some among you who hold that “only believing” is enough? Believing in one God? Well, remember that the demons believe this too—so strongly that they tremble in terror! ²⁰ Fool! When will you ever learn that “believing” is useless without doing what God wants you to? Faith that does not result in good deeds is not real faith.

²¹ Don’t you remember that even our father Abraham was declared good because of what he did when he was willing to obey God, even if it meant offering his son Isaac to die on the altar? ²² You see, he was trusting God so much that he was willing to do whatever God told him to; his faith was made complete by what he did—by his actions, his good deeds. ²³ And so it happened just as the Scriptures say, that Abraham trusted God, and the Lord declared him good in God’s sight, and he was even called “the friend of God.” ²⁴ So you see, a man is saved by what he does, as well as by what he believes.

²⁵ Rahab, the prostitute, is another example of this. She was saved because of what she did when she hid those messengers and sent them safely away by a different road. ²⁶ Just as the body is dead when there is no spirit in it, so faith is dead if it is not the kind that results in good deeds.