So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on those who practice these things and then do them yourself, do you think you will escape God's judgment?

For no person will be justified [freed of guilt and declared righteous] in His sight by [trying to do] the works of the Law. For through the Law we become conscious of sin [and the recognition of sin directs us toward repentance, but provides no remedy for sin].

For when we were living mere physical lives the sinful passions, awakened by the Law, operated through the organs of our bodies to make us bear fruit for death.

Present suffering, I hold, is a mere nothing compared to the glory that we are to have revealed.

But who [do you think] you are, [you mere] man, to [attempt a] reply to God? Will the object formed [i.e., a clay pot] say to the one who molded it "Why did you make me this way?"

For if you were cut out of that which is by nature a mere wild olive tree, and have been grafted, contrary to nature, into a fruitful olive tree, how much more shall these, the natural branches, be regrafted into their own olive tree?

I now pass to another subject. Receive as a friend a man whose faith is weak, but not for the purpose of deciding mere matters of opinion.

You must not break down God's work for the mere sake of food! Everything may be clean, but it is wrong for a man to prove a stumbling-block by what he eats;