PAUL, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God

(which he promised of old by his prophets in the holy scriptures)

concerning his Son, who was born of David's offspring by natural descent

and installed as Son of God with power by the Spirit of holiness when he was raised from the dead ??concerning Jesus Christ our Lord,

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.

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

For I do yearn to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift for your strengthening ??12 or, in other words, that I may be encouraged by meeting you, I by your faith and you by mine.

God's righteousness is revealed in it by faith and for faith ??as it is written, Now by faith shall the righteous live.

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

For whatever is to be known of God is plain to them; God himself has made it plain ??20 for ever since the world was created, his invisible nature, his everlasting power and divine being, have been quite perceptible in what he has made. So they have no excuse.

They claimed to be wise, but they have become fools;

defamers, loathed by God, outrageous, haughty, boastful, inventive in evil, disobedient to parents,

eternal life to those who by patiently doing good aim at glory, honour, and immortality,

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,

they exhibit the effect of the Law written on their hearts, their conscience bears them witness, as their moral convictions accuse or it may be defend them.)

on the day when God judges the secret things of men, as my gospel holds, by Jesus Christ.

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

You pride yourself on the Law; do you dishonour God by your breaches of the Law?

(If then the uncircumcised observe the requirements of the Law, shall not their uncircumcision be reckoned equivalent to circumcision?

he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual not literal ??praised by God, not by man.

Never! Let God be true to his word, though every man be perfidious ??as it is written, That thou mayest be vindicated in thy pleadings, and triumph in thy trial.

You say, "If my perfidy serves to make the truthfulness of God redound to his glory, why am I to be judged as a sinner?

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 now we have a righteousness of God disclosed apart from law altogether; it is attested by the Law and the prophets,

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.

but they are justified for nothing by his grace through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus,

whom God put forward as the means of propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to demonstrate the justice of God in view of the fact that sins previously committed during the time of God's forbearance had been passed over;

We hold a man is justified by faith apart from deeds of the Law altogether.

Then 'by this faith' we 'cancel the Law'? Not for one moment! We uphold the Law.

But if so, what can we say about Abraham, our forefather by natural descent?

This, that if 'Abraham was justified on the score of what he did,' he has something to be proud of. But not to be proud of before God.

Just as David himself describes the bliss of the man who has righteousness counted to him by God apart from what he does ??7 Blessed are they whose breaches of the Law are forgiven, whose sins are covered!

For Abraham, when hope was gone, hoped on in faith, and thus became the father of many nations ??even as he was told, So numberless shall your offspring be.

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,

Jesus who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised that we might be justified.

As we are justified by faith, then, let us enjoy the peace we have with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

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

But God proves his love for us by this, that Christ died for us when we were still sinners.

Much more then, now that we are justified by his blood, shall we be saved by him from Wrath.

If we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son when we were enemies, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Not only so, but we triumph in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we now enjoy our reconciliation.

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.

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'?

Our baptism in his death made us share his burial, so that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live and move in the new sphere of Life.

For if we have grown into him by a death like his, we shall grow into him by a resurrection like his,

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.

It is the same in your case, my brothers. The crucified body of Christ made you dead to the Law, so that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead that we might be fruitful to God.

For when we were unspiritual, the sinful cravings excited by the Law were active in our members and made us fruitful to Death;

Then did what was meant for my good prove fatal to me? Never! It was sin; sin resulted in death for me by making use of this good thing. This was how sin was to be revealed in its true nature; it was to use the command to become sinful in the extreme.

I cannot be good as I want to be, and I do wrong against my wishes.

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.)

For God has done what the Law, weakened here by the flesh, could not do; by sending his own Son in the guise of sinful flesh, to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

in order to secure the fulfilment of the Law's requirements in our lives, as we live and move not by the flesh but by the Spirit.

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.

For the sons of God are those who are guided by the Spirit of God.

Even the creation waits with eager longing for the sons of God to be revealed.

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.

For he decreed of old that those whom he predestined should share the likeness of his Son ??that he might be the firstborn of a great brotherhood.

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

And further, when Rebecca became pregnant by our father Isaac, though one man was the father of both children,

What if God, though desirous to display his anger and show his might, has tolerated most patiently the objects of his anger, ripe and ready to be destroyed?

on the very spot where they were told, 'You are no people of mine,' there shall they be called 'sons of the living God.'

And Isaiah exclaims, with regard to Israel, Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them shall be saved;

What are we to conclude, then? That Gentiles who never aimed at righteousness have attained righteousness, that is, righteousness by faith;

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.

Moses writes of law-righteousness, Anyone who can perform it, shall live by it.

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.

Everyone who invokes the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And then Isaiah dares to say, I have been found by those who never sought me, I have shown myself to those who never inquired of me.

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

Selected by grace, and therefore not for anything they have done; otherwise grace would cease to be grace.

let their eyes be darkened, that they cannot see, bow down their backs for ever.

Now I ask, have they stumbled to their ruin? Never! The truth is, that by their lapse salvation has passed to the Gentiles, so as to make them jealous.

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!

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

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:

Who has first given to him and has to be repaid?

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.

the speaker his words of counsel; the contributor must be liberal, the superintendent must be in earnest, the sick visitor must be cheerful.

Let your love be a real thing, with a loathing for evil and a bent for what is good.

Put affection into your love for the brotherhood; be forward to honour one another;

let your hope be a joy to you; be stedfast in trouble, attend to prayer,