For the civil authorities are God's servants to do you good. But if you practice doing wrong, you should dread them, for they do not wield the sword for nothing. Indeed, they are God's servants to inflict punishment upon people who do wrong.

For civil authorities are not a terror to the man who does right, but they are to the man who does wrong. Do you want to have no dread of the civil authorities? Then practice doing right and you will be commended for it.

for if you live by such a standard, you are going to die, but if by the Spirit you put a stop to the doings of your lower nature, you will live.

but wrath and fury, crushing suffering and awful anguish, to the self-willed who are always resisting the right and yielding to the wrong,

But if our wrongdoing brings to light the uprightness of God, what shall we infer? Is it wrong (I am using everyday human terms) for God to inflict punishment?

So I find this law: When I want to do right, the wrong is always in my way.

Your love must be true. You must always turn in horror from what is wrong, but keep on holding to what is right.

Love never does a wrong to one's neighbor; so love is the perfect satisfaction of the law.

Stop undoing the work of God just for the sake of food. Everything is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything when it makes another stumble.