Love due to God given to Christ; Christ judges as God

The law through Moses was saying and making commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” So when we bring to Christ himself that love most fitting for God — with all strength, and highest, even to soul and blood — who dares in vain to say he would not be God? The holy ones’ aim has not missed what is fitting in any way.

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If nothing at all can separate us from God’s love, and that love is practiced by us in Christ Jesus, how is Christ not clearly God? When we love him, we love the God of all. And if I say “Christ,” I mean the Word from God who has become human.

“For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ,” he says. We shall stand before Christ; for he will sit “on the throne of his glory,” judging “the world in righteousness” — and yet David says, “God is judge.” Therefore Christ is God.

“But I have written to you more boldly in part, as reminding you again, because of the grace given me by God that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus to the nations, priestly serving the gospel of God, so that the offering of the nations may become acceptable, sanctified in the Holy Spirit.” Those entrusted with the priestly work minister to God alone; for priests stand by