Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.

I, the LORD, search the minds and test the hearts of people. I treat each of them according to the way they live, according to what they do."

For from your heart come the evil ideas which lead you to kill, commit adultery, and do other immoral things; to rob, lie, and slander others.

For from the inside, from your heart, come the evil ideas which lead you to do immoral things, to rob, kill,

commit adultery, be greedy, and do all sorts of evil things; deceit, indecency, jealousy, slander, pride, and folly---

But by means of that commandment sin found its chance to stir up all kinds of selfish desires in me. Apart from law, sin is a dead thing.

I myself was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life,

Don't think that there is no truth in the scripture that says, "The spirit that God placed in us is filled with fierce desires."

Even the most refined man of noble birth will become so desperate during the siege that he will eat some of his own children because he has no other food. He will not even give any to his brother or to the wife he loves or to any of his children who are left.

Even the most refined woman of noble birth, so rich that she has never had to walk anywhere, will behave in the same way. When the enemy besieges her town, she will become so desperate for food that she will secretly eat her newborn child and the afterbirth as well. She will not share them with the husband she loves or with any of her children.

Don't eat at the table of a stingy person or be greedy for the fine food he serves.

Any scheme a fool thinks up is sinful. People hate a person who has nothing but scorn for others.

Selfish people are in such a hurry to get rich that they do not know when poverty is about to strike.

Don't I have the right to do as I wish with my own money? Or are you jealous because I am generous?' "

Do not complain against one another, my friends, so that God will not judge you. The Judge is near, ready to appear.

Open your homes to each other without complaining.

Each day before sunset pay them for that day's work; they need the money and have counted on getting it. If you do not pay them, they will cry out against you to the LORD, and you will be guilty of sin.

Then the LORD said, "I have seen how cruelly my people are being treated in Egypt; I have heard them cry out to be rescued from their slave drivers. I know all about their sufferings,

If you do, I, the LORD, will answer them when they cry out to me for help,

They forced the poor to cry out to God, and he heard their calls for help.

God remembers those who suffer; he does not forget their cry, and he punishes those who wrong them.

If you refuse to listen to the cry of the poor, your own cry for help will not be heard.

You have not paid any wages to those who work in your fields. Listen to their complaints! The cries of those who gather in your crops have reached the ears of God, the Lord Almighty.

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Away from me, you that are under God's curse! Away to the eternal fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels!

I was a stranger but you would not welcome me in your homes, naked but you would not clothe me; I was sick and in prison but you would not take care of me.'

The King will reply, 'I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.'

So then, if we do not do the good we know we should do, we are guilty of sin.

Those who hate others are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life in them.

If we are rich and see others in need, yet close our hearts against them, how can we claim that we love God?