But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous in taking vengeance? (I am speaking in human terms.)
I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for just as you have yielded your members as slaves to impurity and iniquity leading to more iniquity, even so now yield your members as slaves to righteousness unto holiness.
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! But I did not know sin, except through the law. I would not have known coveting if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
But because of your hardness and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself on the day of wrath when the righteous judgment of God will be revealed,
The Lord is a jealous and avenging God; the Lord avenges and is furious. The Lord takes vengeance on His enemies, and He reserves it for His adversaries;
They sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying: “Great and marvelous are Your works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are Your ways, O King of saints!
If, in the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantage is it to me if the dead do not rise? “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and all the world may become accountable to God.
Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be treated like the wicked; far be it from You. Should not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
For observe this very thing, which you became sorrowful in a godly way: What carefulness it produced in you, what vindication of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what intense desire, what zeal, what avenging of wrong! In all things you have proven yourselves to be innocent in this matter.