So, whoever you are, you people do not have any excuse for judging people [Note: At this point Paul begins addressing the Jews. See verse 17]. For in a matter where you judge someone else [to be wrong] you [actually] condemn yourselves, because you are practicing the same things [you condemn them for doing].

[Isa. 59:7ff says], "Their feet [take them where they] are quick to commit murder.

Where then is the [basis for] boasting [i.e., over being right with God]? There is not any. Is it by [obedience to] a law? Is it by doing certain deeds? Not at all, but by a law of faith.

For the law brings [God's] wrath [i.e., because of man's failure to obey it perfectly], but where there is no law, there is no [responsibility for] sin.

[Hosea 1:10 says], "And it will happen that in the very place where people were told, 'You people do not belong to me [i.e., God],' they will be called children of the living God."

God did not reject His people whom He knew previously. Or, do you not know what the Scriptures say in the passage where Elijah pleads with God against Israel?

Now it has been my ambition to preach the good news at places where Christ's name has never been heard, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation.