I speak an human thing, because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as you have yielded your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity, unto iniquity; so now yield your members to serve justice, unto sanctification.20 For when you were the servants of sin, you were free men to justice.21 What fruit therefore had you then in those things, of which you are now ashamed? For the end of them is death.22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end life everlasting.23 For the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting, in Christ Jesus our Lord.†
But again, those who assert that He was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph, remaining in the bondage of the old disobedience, are in a state of death having been not as yet joined to the Word of God the Father, nor receiving liberty through the Son, as He does Himself declare: "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." But, being ignorant of Him who from the Virgin is Emmanuel, they are deprived of His gift, which is eternal life; and not receiving the incorruptible Word, they remain in mortal flesh, and are debtors to death, not obtaining the antidote of life. To whom the Word says, mentioning His own gift of grace: "I said, Ye are all the sons of the Highest, and gods; but ye shall die like men." He speaks undoubtedly these words to those who have not received the gift of adoption, but who despise the incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of God, defraud human nature of promotion into God, and prove themselves ungrateful to the Word of God, who became flesh for them. For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility and immortality, unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruptibility, and the mortal by immortality, that might receive the adoption of sons?
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.†16 By their fruits you shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, and the evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit.†18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can an evil tree bring forth good fruit.19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down, and shall be cast into the fire.20 Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.21 Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.
They even assure themselves of glory for their prophesying in teaching, for their casting out dæmons, for their mighty works; and hence promise themselves the kingdom of heaven, saying, Have we not prophesied in thy name?
About CSB. A personal translation of the New Testament, rendered directly from the public-domain Greek in a literary style — not a scholarly critical edition, and not for liturgical or doctrinal authority. It is one reader's work, offered for enjoyment; where it matters, weigh it against an established translation. (Placeholder text — final wording to come.)