131 Be a good citizen. All governments are under God. Insofar as there is peace and order, it's God's order. So live responsibly as a citizen. 2 If you're irresponsible to the state, then you're irresponsible with God, and God will hold you responsible. 3 Duly constituted authorities are only a threat if you're trying to get by with something. Decent citizens should have nothing to fear. 4 the government working to your advantage. But if you're breaking the rules right and left, watch out. The police aren't there just to be admired in their uniforms. God also has an interest in keeping order, and he uses them to do it. 5 That's why you must live responsibly - not just to avoid punishment but also because it's the right way to live. 6 That's also why you pay taxes - so that an orderly way of life can be maintained.

7 Fulfill your obligations as a citizen. Pay your taxes, pay your bills, respect your leaders. 8 Don't run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. 9 The law code - don't sleep with another person's spouse, don't take someone's life, don't take what isn't yours, don't always be wanting what you don't have, and any other "don't" you can think of - finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. 10 You can't go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.

11 But make sure that you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. 12 The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. 13 We can't afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. 14 Get out of bed and get dressed! Don't loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!

31 So what difference does it make who's a Jew and who isn't, who has been trained in God's ways and who hasn't? 2 As it turns out, it makes a lot of difference - but not the difference so many have assumed. 3 So, what if, in the course of doing that, some of those Jews abandoned their post? God didn't abandon them. Do you think their faithlessness cancels out his faithfulness? 4 Not on your life! Depend on it: God keeps his word even when the whole world is lying through its teeth. Scripture says the same: Your words stand fast and true; Rejection doesn't faze you. 5 But if our wrongdoing only underlines and confirms God's rightdoing, shouldn't we be commended for helping out? Since our bad words don't even make a dent in his good words, isn't it wrong of God to back us to the wall and hold us to our word? These questions come up. 6 The answer to such questions is no, a most emphatic No! How else would things ever get straightened out if God didn't do the straightening? 7 It's simply perverse to say, "If my lies serve to show off God's truth all the more gloriously, why blame me? I'm doing God a favor." 8 Some people are actually trying to put such words in our mouths, claiming that we go around saying, "The more evil we do, the more good God does, so let's just do it!" That's pure slander, as I'm sure you'll agree. We're All in the Same Sinking Boat

There Is None Righteous

9 So where does that put us? Do we Jews get a better break than the others? Not really. Basically, all of us, whether insiders or outsiders, start out in identical conditions, which is to say that we all start out as sinners. Scripture leaves no doubt about it: 10 There's nobody living right, not even one, 11 nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God. 12 They've all taken the wrong turn; they've all wandered down blind alleys. No one's living right; I can't find a single one. 13 Their throats are gaping graves, their tongues slick as mud slides. Every word they speak is tinged with poison. 14 They open their mouths and pollute the air. 15 They race for the honor of sinner-of-the-year, 16 litter the land with heartbreak and ruin, 17 Don't know the first thing about living with others. 18 They never give God the time of day.

19 This makes it clear, doesn't it, that whatever is written in these Scriptures is not what God says about others but to us to whom these Scriptures were addressed in the first place! And it's clear enough, isn't it, that we're sinners, every one of us, in the same sinking boat with everybody else? 20 Our involvement with God's revelation doesn't put us right with God. What it does is force us to face our complicity in everyone else's sin.

Righteousness through Faith

21 But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. 22 The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. 23 Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, 24 God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. 25 God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public - to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. 26 This is not only clear, but it's now - this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness. 27 So where does that leave our proud Jewish insider claims and counterclaims? Canceled? Yes, canceled. What we've learned is this: God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does. 28 We've finally figured it out. Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting him set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade. 29 And where does that leave our proud Jewish claim of having a corner on God? Also canceled. God is the God of outsider non-Jews as well as insider Jews. 30 How could it be otherwise since there is only one God? God sets right all who welcome his action and enter into it, both those who follow our religious system and those who have never heard of our religion. 31 But by shifting our focus from what we do to what God does, don't we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it.