Romans 3

¹What, then, is the advantage of being a Jew, or what is the benefit of circumcision? ²It is great in every respect! To begin with, they were entrusted with the very utterances of God. ³What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness cancel out the faithfulness of God? ⁴May it never be! Let God be proven true, even if every human is a liar, just as it is written: “So that you may be proven just in your words and prevail when you are brought to judgment.”

⁵But if our injustice serves to confirm the justice of God, what shall we say? That God is unjust to inflict his wrath? (I am speaking in human terms here.) ⁶May it never be! Otherwise, how could God judge the world? ⁷But if by my lie the truth of God overflowed to his glory, why am I still being judged as a sinner? ⁸And why not say—as we are being slandered and as some claim we say—“Let us do evil so that good may come”? Their condemnation is exactly what they deserve.

⁹What follows then? Are we Jews better off? Not at all. For we have already made the charge that all—both Jews and Greeks—are under the power of sin, ¹⁰just as it is written: “There is no one who is just, not even one; ¹¹there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks out God. ¹²All have turned away, together they have become worthless; there is no one who practices kindness, there is not so much as one. ¹³Their throat is an opened grave; they practice deception with their tongues. The venom of vipers is under their lips. ¹⁴Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. ¹⁵Their feet are swift to shed blood; ¹⁶ruin and misery are in their paths, ¹⁷and the way of peace they have not known. ¹⁸There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

¹⁹Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those within the law, so that every mouth may be shut and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰Therefore, by works of the law, no human being will be made just in his sight; for through the law comes the recognition of sin.

²¹But now, apart from the law, the justice of God has been revealed—a justice attested to by the law and the prophets— ²²the justice of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction. ²³For all have sinned and lack the glory of God, ²⁴being made just as a gift by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. ²⁵God put him forward as the place of atonement, effective through faithfulness, by his blood. This was to demonstrate his justice, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed. ²⁶It was to demonstrate his justice in the present time, so that he himself might be just and the one who makes just the person who lives by the faithfulness of Jesus.

²⁷Where, then, is the boasting? It is excluded. Through what kind of law? A law of works? No, but through a law of faith. ²⁸For we conclude that a person is made just by faith apart from works of the law. ²⁹Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, ³⁰since God is one—and he will make the circumcised just by faith and the uncircumcised just through that same faith. ³¹Do we, then, abolish the law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we uphold the law.