To all in Rome who are dear to God and have been called to become Christ's People, From Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, who has been called to become an Apostle, and has been set apart to tell God's Good News.

This Good News God promised long ago through his Prophets in the sacred Scriptures,

But, as to the spirit of holiness within him, was miraculously designated Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.

May God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ bless you and give you peace.

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

God, to whom I offer the worship of my soul as I tell the Goodness of his Son, is my witness how constantly I mention you when I pray,

And so, for my part, I am ready to tell the Good News to you also who are in Rome.

For I am not ashamed of the Good News; it is the power of God which brings Salvation to every one who believes in Christ, to the Jew first, but also to the Greek.

This is so, because what can be known about God is plain to them; for God himself has made it plain.

For ever since the creation of the universe God's invisible attributes-his everlasting power and divinity-are to be seen and studied in his works, so that men have no excuse;

Because, although they learned to know God, yet they did not offer him as God either praise or thanksgiving. Their speculations about him proved futile, and their undiscerning minds were darkened.

And they transformed the Glory of the immortal God into the likeness of mortal man, and of birds, and beasts, and reptiles.

Therefore God abandoned them to impurity, letting them follow the cravings of their hearts, till they dishonored their own bodies;

For they had substituted a lie for the truth about God, and had reverenced and worshiped created things more than the Creator, who is to be praised for ever. Amen.

That, I say, is why God abandoned them to degrading passions. Even the women among them perverted the natural use of their bodies to the unnatural;

Then, as they would not keep God before their minds, God abandoned them to depraved thoughts, so that they did all kinds of shameful things.

Well aware of God's decree, that those who do such things deserve to die, not only are they guilty of them themselves, but they even applaud those who do them.

And we know that God's judgment falls unerringly upon those who do them.

You who judge those that do such things and yet are yourself guilty of them-do you suppose that you of all men will escape God's judgment?

Hard-hearted and impenitent as you are, you are storing up for yourself Wrath on the 'Day of Wrath,' when God's justice as a judge will be revealed;

To those who, by perseverance in doing good, aim at glory, honor, and all that is imperishable, he will give Immortal Life;

Since God shows no partiality.

It is not those who hear the words of a Law that are righteous before God, but it is those who obey it that will be pronounced righteous.

On the day when God passes judgment on men's inmost lives, as the Good News that I tell declares that he will do through Christ Jesus.

But, perhaps, you bear the name of 'Jew,' and are relying upon Law, and boast of belonging to God, and understand his will,

Boasting, as you do, of your Law, do you dishonor God by breaking the Law?

For, as Scripture says-'The name of God is reviled among the Gentiles because of you'!

If, then, an uncircumcised man pays regard to the requirements of the Law, will not he, although not circumcised, be regarded by God as if he were?

And the real circumcision is the circumcision of the heart, a spiritual and not a literal thing. Such a man wins praise from God, though not from men.

What is the advantage, then, of being a Jew? or what is the good of circumcision?

Great in every way. First of all, because the Jews were entrusted with God's utterances.

What follows then? Some, no doubt, showed a want of faith; but will their want of faith make God break faith? Heaven forbid!

God must prove true, though every man prove a liar! As Scripture says of God-'That thou mayest be pronounced righteous in what thou sayest, and gain thy cause when men would judge thee.'

But what if our wrong-doing makes God's righteousness all the clearer? Will God be wrong in inflicting punishment? (I can but speak as a man.) Heaven forbid!

Otherwise how can God judge the world?

But, if my falsehood redounds to the glory of God, by making his truthfulness more apparent, why am I like others, still condemned as a sinner?

Why should we not say-as some people slanderously assert that we do say-'Let us do evil that good may come'? The condemnation of such men is indeed just!

Not one who understands, not one who is searching for God!

They have all gone astray; they have one and all become depraved; there is no one who is doing good-no, not one!'

'The fear of God is not before their eyes.'

Now we know that everything said in the Law is addressed to those who are under its authority, in order that every mouth may be closed, and the whole world become liable to the judgment of God.

For 'no human being will be pronounced righteous before God' as the result of obedience to Law; for it is Law that shows what sin is.

For all have sinned, and all fall short of God's glorious ideal,

For God set him before the world, to be, by the shedding of his blood, a means of reconciliation through faith. And this God did to prove his righteousness, and because, in his forbearance, he had passed over the sins that men had previously committed;

Or can it be that God is the God only of the Jews? Is not he also the God of the Gentiles?

Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is only one God, and he will pronounce those who are circumcised righteous as the result of faith, and also those who are uncircumcised on their showing the same faith.

If he was pronounced righteous as the result of obedience, then he has something to boast of. Yes, but not before God.

For what are the words of Scripture? 'Abraham had faith in God, and his faith was regarded by God as righteousness.'

While, as for the man who does not rely upon his obedience, but has faith in him who can pronounce the godless righteous, his faith is regarded by God as righteousness.

In precisely the same way David speaks of the blessing pronounced upon the man who is regarded by God as righteous apart from actions--

Is this blessing, then, pronounced upon the circumcised only or upon the uncircumcised as well? We say that-'Abraham's faith was regarded by God as righteousness.'

Not after, but before. And it was as a sign of this that he received the rite of circumcision-to attest the righteousness due to the faith of an uncircumcised man-in order that he might be the father of all who have faith in God even when uncircumcised, that they also may be regarded by God as righteous;

That is why all is made to depend upon faith, that all may be God's gift, and in order that the fulfillment of the promise may be made certain for all Abraham's descendants-not only for those who take their stand on the Law, but also for those who take their stand on the faith of Abraham. (He is the Father of us all;

As Scripture says-'I have made thee the Father of many nations.') And this they do in the sight of that God in whom Abraham had faith, and who gives life to the dead, and speaks of what does not yet exist as if it did.

With no ground for hope, Abraham, sustained by hope, put faith in God; in order that, in fulfillment of the words-'So many shall thy descendants be,' he might become 'the Father of many nations.'

He was not led by want of faith to doubt God's promise.

On the contrary, his faith gave him strength; and he praised God, in the firm conviction that what God has promised he is also able to carry out.

But also with reference to us. Our faith, too, will be regarded by God in the same light, if we have faith in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead;

Therefore, having been pronounced righteous as the result of faith, let us enjoy peace with God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

It is through him that, by reason of our faith, we have obtained admission to that place in God's favor in which we not stand. So let us exult in our hope of attaining God's glorious ideal.

And that 'hope never disappoints.' For the love of God has filled our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given us;

Seeing that, while we were still powerless, Christ, in God's good time, died on behalf of the godless.

Even for an upright man scarcely any one will die. For a really good man perhaps some one might even dare to die.

But God puts his love for us beyond all doubt by the fact that Christ died on our behalf while we were still sinners.

Much more, then, now that we have been pronounced righteous by virtue of the shedding of his blood, shall we be saved through him from the Wrath of God.

For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, much more, now that we have become reconciled, shall we be saved by virtue of Christ's Life.

And not only that, but we exult in God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have now obtained this reconciliation.

But there is a contrast between Adam's Offence and God's gracious Gift. For, if by reason of the offence of the one man the whole race died, far more were the loving-kindness of God, and the gift given in the loving-kindness of the one man, Jesus Christ, lavished upon the whole race.

There is a contrast, too, between the gift and the results of the one man's sin. The judgment, which followed upon the one man's sin, resulted in condemnation, but God's gracious Gift, which followed upon many offences, resulted in a decree of righteousness.

For if, by reason of the offence of the one man, Death reigned through that one man, far more will those, upon whom God's loving- kindness and his gift of righteousness are lavished, find Life, and reign through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Law was introduced in order that offences might be multiplied. But, where sins were multiplied, the loving-kindness of God was lavished the more,

What are we to say, then? Are we to continue to sin, in order that God's loving-kindness may be multiplied?

For the death that he died was a death to sin, once and for all. But the Life that he now lives, he lives for God.

So let it be with you-regard yourselves as dead to sin, but as living for God, through union with Christ Jesus.

Do not offer any part of your bodies to Sin, in the cause of unrighteousness, but once for all offer yourselves to God (as those who, though once dead, now have Life), and devote every part of your bodies to the cause of righteousness.

God be thanked that, though you were once servants of Sin, yet you learned to give hearty obedience to that form of doctrine under which you were placed.

But now that you have been set free from the control of Sin, and have become servants to God, the fruit that you reap is an ever-increasing holiness, and the end Immortal Life.

The wages of Sin are Death, but the gift of God is Immortal Life, through union with Christ Jesus, our Lord.

And so with you, my Brothers; as far as the Law was concerned, you underwent death in the crucified body of the Christ, so that you might be united to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that our lives might bear fruit for God.

And so the Law is holy, and each Commandment is also holy, and just, and good.

Did, then, a thing, which in itself was good, involve Death in my case? Heaven forbid! It was sin that involved Death; so that, by its use of what I regarded as good to bring about my Death, its true nature might appear; and in this way the Commandment showed how intensely sinful sin is.

I know that there is nothing good in me-I mean in my earthly nature. For, although it is easy for me to want to do right, to act rightly is not easy.

I fail to do the good thing that I want to do, but the bad thing that I want not to do-that I habitually do.

At heart I delight in the Law of God;

Thank God, there is deliverance through Jesus Christ, our Lord! Well then, for myself, with my reason I serve the Law of God, but with my earthly nature the Law of Sin.

What Law could not do, in so far as our earthly nature weakened its action, God did, by sending his own Son, with a nature resembling our sinful nature, to atone for sin. He condemned sin in that earthly nature,

Because to be earthly-minded is to be an enemy to God, for such a mind does not submit to the Law of God, nor indeed can it do so.

They who are earthly cannot please God.

You, however, are not earthly but spiritual, since the Spirit of God lives within you. Unless a man has the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ;

All who are guided by the Spirit of God are Sons of God.

The Spirit himself unites with our spirits in bearing witness to our being God's children,

And if children, then heirs-heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, since we share Christ's sufferings in order that we may also share his Glory.

All Nature awaits with eager expectation the appearing of the Sons of God.

Yet not without the hope that some day Nature, also, will be set free from enslavement to decay, and will attain to the freedom which will mark the Glory of the Children of God.

But we do know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him-those who have received the Call in accordance with his purpose.

For those whom God chose from the first he also destined from the first to be transformed into likeness to his Son, so that his Son might be the eldest among many Brothers.

And those whom God destined for this he also called; and those whom he called he also pronounced righteous; and those whom he pronounced righteous he also brought to Glory.

What are we to say, then, in the light of all this? If God is on our side, who can there be against us?

God did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up on behalf of us all; will he not, then, with him, freely give us all things?

Who will bring a charge against any of God's People? He who pronounces them righteous is God!