through whom I have received the favour of my commission to promote obedience to the faith for his sake among all the Gentiles,

to all in Rome who are beloved by God, called to be saints, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

First of all, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because the report of your faith is over all the world.

asking if I may at last be sped upon my way to you by God's will.

Brothers, I would like you to understand that I have often purposed to come to you (though up till now I have been prevented) so as to have some results among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.

Hence my eagerness to preach the gospel to you in Rome as well.

For I am proud of the gospel; it is God's saving power for everyone who has faith, for the Jew first and for the Greek as well.

But God's anger is revealed from heaven against all the impiety and wickedness of those who hinder the Truth by their wickedness.

till they are filled with all manner of wickedness, depravity, lust, and viciousness, filled to the brim with envy, murder, quarrels, intrigues, and malignity ??slanderers,

Very well; and do you imagine you will escape God's doom, O man, you who judge those who practise such vices and do the same yourself?

Or are you slighting all his wealth of kindness, forbearance, and patience? Do you not know his kindness is meant to make you repent?

For he will render to everyone according to what he has done,

but anger and wrath to those who are wilful, who disobey the Truth and obey wickedness ??9 anguish and calamity for every human soul that perpetrates evil, for the Jew first and for the Greek as well,

but glory, honour, and peace for everyone who does good, for the Jew first and for the Greek as well.

All who sin outside the Law will perish outside the Law, and all who sin under the Law will be condemned by the Law.

For it is not the hearers of the Law who are just in the eyes of God, it is those who obey the Law who will be acquitted,

understanding his will, and with a sense of what is vital in religion; if you are instructed by the Law

a tutor for the foolish, a teacher of the simple, because in the Law you have the embodiment of knowledge and truth ??21 well then, do you ever teach yourself, you teacher of other people? You preach against stealing; do you steal?

And shall not those who are physically uncircumcised and who fulfil the Law, judge you who are a breaker of the Law for all your written code and circumcision?)

Well now, are we Jews in a better position? Not at all. I have already charged all, Jews as well as Greeks, with being under sin ??10 as it is written, None is righteous, no, not one;

All have swerved, one and all have gone wrong, no one does good, not a single one.

Whatever the Law says, we know, it says to those who are inside the Law, that every mouth may be shut and all the world made answerable to God;

for no person will be acquitted in his sight on the score of obedience to law. What the Law imparts is the consciousness of sin.

but it is a righteousness of God which comes by believing in Jesus Christ. And it is meant for all who have faith. No distinctions are drawn.

All have sinned, all come short of the glory of God,

Or is God only the God of Jews? Is he not the God of the Gentiles as well? Surely he is.

Well then, there is one God, a God who will justify the circumcised as they believe and the uncircumcised on the score of faith.

Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not count to him.

Now is that description of bliss meant for the circumcised, or for the uncircumcised as well? Abraham's faith, I repeat, was counted to him as righteousness.

He only got circumcision as a sign or seal of the righteousness which belonged to his faith as an uncircumcised man. The object of this was to make him the father of all who believe as uncircumcised persons and thus have righteousness counted to them,

as well as a father of those circumcised persons who not only share circumcision but walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had as an uncircumcised man.

For if it is adherents of the Law who are heirs, then faith is empty of all meaning and the promise is void.

That is why all turns upon faith; it is to make the promise a matter of favour, to make it secure for all the offspring, not simply for those who are adherents of the Law but also for those who share the faith of Abraham ??of Abraham who is the father of us all

but for our sakes as well; faith will be counted to us as we believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,

Why, a man will hardly die for the just ??though one might bring oneself to die, if need be, for a good man.

Thus, then, sin came into the world by one man, and death came in by sin; and so death spread to all men, inasmuch as all men sinned.

but the gift is very different from the trespass. For while the rest of men died by the trespass of one man, the grace of God and the free gift which comes by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed far more richly upon the rest of men.

Nor is the free gift like the effect of the one man's sin; for while the sentence ensuing on a single sin resulted in doom, the free gift ensuing on many trespasses issues in acquittal.

Well then, as one man's trespass issued in doom for all, so one man's act of redress issues in acquittal and life for all.

Just as one man's disobedience made all the rest sinners, so one man's obedience will make all the rest righteous.

so that, while sin had reigned the reign of death, grace might also reign with a righteousness that ends in life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now what are we to infer from this? That we are to 'remain on in sin, so that there may be all the more grace'?

Surely you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death!

the death he died was for sin, once for all, but the life he lives is for God.

Thank God, though you did serve sin, you have rendered whole-hearted obedience to what you were taught under the rule of faith;

Well, what did you gain then by it all? Nothing but what you are now ashamed of! The end of all that is death;

Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is alive; but if the husband dies, she is done with the law of 'the husband.'

Accordingly, she will be termed an adulteress if she becomes another man's while her husband is alive; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law of 'the husband,' so that she is no adulteress if she becomes another man's.

The command gave an impulse to sin, and sin resulted for me in all manner of covetous desire ??for sin, apart from law, is lifeless.

Well, if I act against my wishes, it is not I who do the deed but sin that dwells within me.

So this is my experience of the Law: I want to do what is right, but wrong is all I can manage;

Miserable wretch that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

God will! Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord! [Move second part of this vers to follow vs 23] (Thus, left to myself, I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.)

And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives.

Well then, my brothers, we owe a duty ??but it is not to the flesh! It is not to live by the flesh!

If you live by the flesh, you are on the road to death; but if by the Spirit you put the actions of the body to death, you will live.

and if children, heirs as well, heirs of God, heirs along with Christ ??for we share his sufferings in order to share his glory.

For creation was not rendered futile by its own choice, but by the will of Him who thus made it subject,

the hope being that creation as well as man would one day be freed from its thraldom to decay and gain the glorious freedom of the children of God.

Now what follows from all this? If God is for us, who can be against us?

The God who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, surely He will give us everything besides!

who shall condemn? Will Christ? ??the Christ who died, yes and rose from the dead! the Christ who is at God's right hand, who actually pleads for us!

(Because, as it is written, For thy sake we are being killed all the day long, we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.)

No, in all this we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

no powers of the Height or of the Depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to part us from God's love in Christ Jesus our Lord.

the patriarchs are theirs, and theirs too (so far as natural descent goes) is the Christ. (Blessed for evermore be the God who is over all! Amen.)

they are not all children of Abraham because they are descended from Abraham. No, it is through Isaac that your offspring shall be reckoned ??8 meaning that instead of God's children being the children born to him by natural descent, it is the children of the Promise who are reckoned as his true offspring.

For when God said, I will come about this time and Sara shall have a son, that was a word of promise.

she was told that the elder will serve the younger.

God says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I choose to have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I choose to have compassion.

You see, it is not a question of human will or effort but of the divine mercy.

Why, scripture says to Pharaoh, It was for this that I raised you up, to display my power in you, and to spread news of my name over all the earth.

"Then," you will retort, "why does he go on finding fault? Who can oppose his will?"

What if he means to show the wealth that lies in his glory for the objects of his mercy, whom he has made ready beforehand to receive glory ??24 that is, for us whom he has called from among the Gentiles as well as the Jews?

As indeed he says in Hosea, Those who were no people of mine, I will call 'my People,' and her 'beloved' who was not beloved;

for the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with rigour and despatch.

And why? Simply because Israel has relied not on faith but on what they could do. They have stumbled over the stone that makes men stumble ??33 as it is written, Here I lay a stone in Sion that will make men stumble, even a rock to trip them up; but he who believes in Him will never be disappointed.

But here is what faith-righteousness says: ??Say not in your heart, 'Who will go up to heaven?' (that is, to bring Christ down).

Or, 'who will go down to the abyss?' (that is, to bring Christ from the dead).

Confess with your mouth that 'Jesus is Lord,' believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved;

No one who believes in him, the scripture says, will ever be disappointed. No one ??12 for there is no distinction of Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of them all, with ample for all who invoke him.

But they have not all given in to the gospel of glad news? No, Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what they heard from us?

But, I ask, "Have they never heard?" Indeed they have. Their voice carried over all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

Then, I ask, "Did Israel not understand?" Why, first of all Moses declares, I will make you jealous of a nation that is no nation, I will provoke you to anger over a nation devoid of understanding.

He also says of Israel, All the day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.

Well, at the present day there is also a remnant, selected by grace.

Well, if their lapse has enriched the world, if their defection is the gain of the Gentiles, what will it mean when they all come in?

For if their exclusion means that the world is reconciled to God, what will their admission mean? Why, it will be life from the dead!

Supposing some of the branches have been broken off, while you have been grafted in like a shoot of wild olive to share the rich growth of the olive-stem,

You will say, "But branches were broken off to let me be grafted in!"

For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

Consider both the kindness and the severity of God; those who fall come under his severity, but you come under the divine kindness, provided you adhere to that kindness. Otherwise, you will be cut away too.

And even the others will be grafted in, if they do not adhere to their unbelief; God can graft them in again.

For if you have been cut from an olive which is naturally wild, and grafted, contrary to nature, upon a garden olive, how much more will the natural branches be grafted into their proper olive?

This done, all Israel will be saved ??as it is written, The deliverer will come from Sion, he will banish all godlessness from Jacob:

For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.

All comes from him, all lives by him, all ends in him. Glory to him for ever, Amen!

Well then, my brothers, I appeal to you by all the mercy of God to dedicate your bodies as a living sacrifice, consecrated and acceptable to God; that is your cult, a spiritual rite.

Instead of being moulded to this world, have your mind renewed, and so be transformed in nature, able to make out what the will of God is, namely, what is good and acceptable to him and perfect.

In our one body we have a number of members, and the members have not all the same function;