‘Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?
“Truly I know that it is so: But how can a man be in the right before God?
How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of woman be pure?
Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.
And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”
But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”
By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, “That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.” But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed.
And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
Righteous are you, O Lord, when I complain to you; yet I would plead my case before you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?
The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.
Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?
But none says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night,
“Do you think this to be just? Do you say, ‘It is my right before God,’
What is man, that he can be pure? Or he who is born of a woman, that he can be righteous?
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? There is not one.
If I wash myself with snow and cleanse my hands with lye, yet you will plunge me into a pit, and my own clothes will abhor me.
Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?
Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”
Unless otherwise indicated, all content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Contact me: openbibleinfo (at) gmail.com.