Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

God’s determined faithfulness

3 What advantage, then, does the Jew possess? What, indeed, is the point of circumcision? ² A great deal, in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with God’s oracles. ³ What follows from that? If some of them were unfaithful to their commission, does their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? ⁴ Certainly not! Let God be true, and every human being false! As the Bible says,

⁵ But if our being in the wrong proves that God is in the right, what are we going to say? That God is unjust to inflict anger on people? (I’m reducing things to a human scale!) ⁶ Certainly not! How then could God judge the world? ⁷ But if God’s truthfulness grows all the greater and brings him glory in and through my falsehood, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? ⁸ And why not “do evil so that good may come”—as some people blasphemously say about us, and as some allege that we say? People like that, at least, deserve the judgment they get!