If from merely human motives I have fought with wild beasts in Ephesus, what profit is it to me? If the dead do not rise, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we are to die.
But if our unrighteousness sets God's righteousness in a clearer light, what shall we say? (Is God unrighteous –I speak in our everyday language– when He inflicts punishment?
your human infirmity leads me to employ these familiar figures–and just as you once surrendered your faculties into bondage to Impurity and ever-increasing disregard of Law, so you must now surrender them into bondage to Righteousness ever advancing towards perfect holiness.
Brethren, even a covenant made by a man –to borrow an illustration from daily life– when once formally sanctioned is not liable to be set aside or added to.
But these men, like brute beasts, created (with their natural instincts) only to be captured or destroyed, are abusive in matters of which they are ignorant, and in their corruption will perish,
Yet these men are abusive in matters of which they know nothing, and in things which, like the brutes, they understand instinctively–in all these they corrupt themselves.