Bible verses about "idolaters" | ISV

¹ Greetings from PaulFrom: Paul, a servant of Jesus the Messiah, called to be an apostle and set apart for God’s gospel, ² which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures ³ regarding his Son. He was a descendant of David with respect to his humanity ⁴ and was declared by the resurrection from the dead to be the powerful Son of God according to the spirit of holiness—Jesus the Messiah, our Lord. ⁵ Through him we received grace and a commission as an apostle to bring about faithful obedience among all the gentiles for the sake of his name. ⁶ You, too, are among those who have been called to belong to Jesus the Messiah.
⁷ To: Everyone in Rome, loved by God and called to be holy.
May grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, be yours!
⁸ Paul’s Prayer and Desire to Visit RomeFirst of all, I thank my God through Jesus the Messiah for all of you, because the news about your faith is being reported throughout the world. ⁹ For God, whom I serve with my spirit by preaching the gospel about his Son, is my witness how constantly I mention you ¹⁰ in my prayers at all times, asking that somehow by God’s will I may at last succeed in coming to you. ¹¹ For I am longing to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong, ¹² that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.
¹³ I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I often planned to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now), so that I might reap a harvest among you, just as I have among the rest of the gentiles. ¹⁴ Both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to foolish people, I am a debtor. ¹⁵ That is why I am so eager to proclaim the gospel to you who live in Rome, too.
¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for the salvation of everyone who believes, of the Jew first and of the Greek as well. ¹⁷ For in the gospel God’s righteousness is being revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, “The righteous will live by faith.”
¹⁸ God’s Wrath against Sinful HumanityFor God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and wickedness of those who in their wickedness suppress the truth. ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God himself has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been understood and observed by what he made, so that people are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. Instead, their thoughts turned to worthless things, and their senseless hearts were darkened. ²² Though claiming to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images that looked like mortal human beings, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.
²⁴ For this reason, God delivered them to sexual impurity as they followed the lusts of their hearts and dishonored their bodies with one another. ²⁵ They exchanged God’s truth for a lie and worshipped and served the creation rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
²⁶ For this reason, God delivered them to degrading passions as their females exchanged their natural sexual function for one that is unnatural. ²⁷ In the same way, their males also abandoned their natural sexual function toward females and burned with lust toward one another. Males committed indecent acts with males, and received within themselves the appropriate penalty for their perversion.
²⁸ Furthermore, because they did not think it worthwhile to keep knowing God fully, God delivered them to degraded minds to perform acts that should not be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, quarreling, deceit, and viciousness. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, haughty, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to their parents, ³¹ foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. ³² Although they know God’s just requirement—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do these things but even applaud others who practice them.

³ For it is God’s will that you be sanctified: You must abstain from sexual immorality. ⁴ Each of you must know how to control his own body in a holy and honorable manner, ⁵ not with passion and lust like the gentiles who do not know God.

¹⁴ Instead, each person is tempted by his own desire, being lured and trapped by it. ¹⁵ When that desire becomes pregnant, it gives birth to sin; and when that sin grows up, it gives birth to death.

¹⁵ Outside are dogs, sorcerers, immoral people, murderers, idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

¹ Sodom’s DepravityThe two angels entered Sodom at sunset while Lot was sitting in the gate area of the city. When Lot saw them, he got up, greeted them, bowed low with his face to the ground, ² and said, “Look, my lords! Please come inside your servant’s house, wash your feet, and spend the night. Then you can get up early and be on your way.”
But they responded, “No, we would rather spend the night in the town square.”
³ But Lot kept urging them strongly, so they turned aside and entered his house. He prepared a festival and baked unleavened flat bread for them, and they ate.
⁴ Before they could lie down, all the men of Sodom and its outskirts, both young and old, surrounded the house. ⁵ They called out to Lot and asked, “Where are the men who came to visit you tonight? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!”
⁶ Lot went outside to them, shut the door behind him, ⁷ and said, “I urge you, my brothers, don’t do such a wicked thing. ⁸ Look here, I have two daughters who are virgins. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them whatever you wish, only don’t do anything to these men, because they’re here under my protection.”
⁹ But they replied, “Get out of the way! This man came here as a foreigner, and now he’s acting like a judge! So we’re going to deal more harshly with you than with them.” Then they pushed hard against the man (that is, against Lot), intending to break down the door.
¹⁰ But the angels inside reached out, dragged Lot back into the house with them, shut the door, ¹¹ and blinded the men who were at the entrance of the house, from the least important to the greatest, so they were unable to find the doorway.
¹² Lot Negotiates with the Angels“Do you have anyone else here in the city?” the angels asked Lot. “A son-in-law? Sons? Daughters? Get them out of this place, ¹³ because we’re going to destroy it. The LORD knows how their behavior stinks, so he sent us here to destroy it!”
¹⁴ Lot then went out and told his sons-in-law (they had married his daughters), “Get out of here! The LORD is going to destroy this city!” But his sons-in-law thought he was joking.
¹⁵ As dawn was breaking, the angels pressured Lot. “Get going!” they told him. “Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be engulfed by the devastation that’s coming to this city.”
¹⁶ But Lot kept lingering in the city, so the men grabbed his hand and the hands of his wife and two daughters (because of the LORD’s compassion for him!), brought them out of the city, and left them outside. ¹⁷ Then one of them said, “Flee for your lives! Don’t look back or stop anywhere on the plain. Escape to the hills, or you’ll be swept away!”
¹⁸ “No! Please, my lords!” Lot pleaded with them. ¹⁹ “Your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me your gracious love in how you have dealt with me by keeping me alive. I cannot escape to the hills, because I’m afraid the disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. ²⁰ Look, there is a town nearby where I can flee, and it’s a small one. Let me escape there! It’s a small one, isn’t it? That way I’ll stay alive!”
²¹ “All right,” the angel replied to Lot, “I’ll agree with your request! I won’t overthrow the town that you mentioned. ²² Hurry up and flee there, because I cannot do anything until you get to that town.” Therefore the name of the town was called Zoar.
²³ Lot’s Wife Becomes a Pillar of SaltThe sun had risen over the land about the time Lot reached Zoar. ²⁴ Then the LORD rained sulfur and fire out of the sky from the LORD on Sodom and Gomorrah, ²⁵ overthrowing those cities, all of the plain, and everyone who lived in the cities. He also destroyed the plants that grew out of the ground. ²⁶ But Lot’s wife looked back as she lingered behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
²⁷ Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the LORD earlier. ²⁸ He looked off toward Sodom, Gomorrah, and the entire plain, and he saw smoke rising from the land like smoke from a furnace. ²⁹ And so it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham and brought Lot out from the midst of the destruction when he overthrew the cities where Lot had lived.
³⁰ The Origin of Moab and AmmonLater on, Lot and his two daughters abandoned Zoar and settled in the hills because Lot was afraid to live in Zoar. He lived there in a cave, along with his two daughters. ³¹ One day the firstborn told the younger one, “Our father is old, and there’s no man in the land to have sex with us, as everybody else throughout all the earth does. ³² Come on! Let’s make our father drink wine, and then we’ll have sex with him so we can preserve our father’s lineage.”
³³ So they had their father drink wine that night, and the older one had sexual relations with her father, but he was not aware when she lay down or when she got up. ³⁴ The next day the firstborn told the younger one, “Look! I had sex with my father last night. Let’s make him drink wine tonight again as well. Then you have sex with him, too. That way we’ll preserve our father’s lineage.” ³⁵ So they made their father drink wine that night as well, so he was not aware when she lay down or when she got up.
³⁶ That’s how both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. ³⁷ The firstborn gave birth to a son and named him Moab, and he is the ancestor of the Moabites to this day. ³⁸ The younger daughter also gave birth to a son and named him Ben-ammi, and he is the ancestor of the Ammonites to this day.

²² You are not to have sexual relations with a male as you would with a woman. It’s detestable.”

¹⁹ Now the actions of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, promiscuity, ²⁰ idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, rivalry, jealously, outbursts of anger, quarrels, conflicts, factions, ²¹ envy, murder, drunkenness, wild partying, and things like that. I am telling you now, as I have told you in the past, that people who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

⁵ So put to death your worldly impulses: sexual sin, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).

⁷ Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities near them, which like them committed sexual sins and pursued homosexual activities, serve as an example of the punishment of eternal fire.

⁸ But people who are cowardly, unfaithful, detestable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars will find themselves in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. This is the second death.”

¹³ “If a man has sexual relations with another male as he would with a woman, both have committed a repulsive act. They are certainly to be put to death.

²⁶ For this reason, God delivered them to degrading passions as their females exchanged their natural sexual function for one that is unnatural. ²⁷ In the same way, their males also abandoned their natural sexual function toward females and burned with lust toward one another. Males committed indecent acts with males, and received within themselves the appropriate penalty for their perversion.

⁹ You know that wicked people will not inherit the kingdom of God, don’t you? Stop deceiving yourselves! Sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexuals, ¹⁰ thieves, greedy people, drunks, slanderers, and robbers will not inherit the kingdom of God.