Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called as an apostle, set apart to declare God's good news,

and decisively declared Son of God in his holiness of spirit, by being raised from the dead??esus Christ our Lord,

through whom we have received God's favor and been commissioned in his name to urge obedience and faith upon all the heathen,

including you who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ??7 to all those in Rome whom God loves, who are called to be his people; 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 news of your faith is spreading all over the world.

As God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in spreading the good news of his Son, I never fail to mention you when I pray,

and to ask that somehow by God's will I may some day at last succeed in reaching you.

So, for my part, I am eager to preach the good news to you at Rome also.

For I am not ashamed of the good news, for it is God's power for the salvation of everyone who has faith, of the Jew first and then of the Greek.

In it God's way of uprightness is disclosed through faith and for faith, just as the Scripture says, "The upright will have life because of his faith."

For God's anger is breaking forth from heaven against all the impiety and wickedness of the men who in their wickedness are suppressing the truth.

For all that can be known of God is clearly before them; God has shown it to them.

for, though they knew God, they have not honored him as God or given thanks to him, but they have indulged in futile speculations, until their stupid minds have become dark.

and for the splendor of the immortal God they have substituted images in the form of mortal man, birds, animals, and reptiles.

So God abandoned them, with their heart's cravings, to impurity, and let them degrade their own bodies.

For they had exchanged the truth of God for what was false, and worshiped and served what he had created, instead of the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen!

That is why God has abandoned them to degrading passions. Their women have exchanged their natural function for one that is unnatural,

And just as they refused to recognize God any longer, God has abandoned them to unworthy impulses and indecent conduct.

They are gossips, slanderers, abhorrent to God, insolent, overbearing, boastful, ingenious in evil, undutiful,

They know God's decree that those who act in this way deserve to die, yet they not only do it, but applaud any who do.

We know that God's judgment rightfully falls upon those who do such things as these.

And do you suppose, when you sit in judgment upon those who do such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God?

Do you think so lightly of his wealth of kindness, forbearance, and patience, and fail to see that God's kindness ought to induce you to repent?

But in your obstinacy and impenitence you are storing up wrath for yourself on the Day of Wrath, when the justice of God will burst forth.

for God shows no partiality.

For merely hearing the Law read does not make a man upright in the sight of God; men must obey the Law to be made upright.

on that Day when, as the good news I preach teaches, God through Christ Jesus judges what men have kept secret,

Suppose you call yourself a Jew, and rely on law, and boast about God,

Will you boast of the Law and yet dishonor God by breaking it?

For, as the Scripture says, the very name of God is abused among the heathen, because of you!

The real Jew is the man who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, a spiritual, not a literal, thing. Such a man receives his praise not from men, but from God.

A great deal, from every point of view. In the first place, the Jews were intrusted with the utterances of God.

What if some of them have shown a lack of faith? Can their lack of it nullify the faithfulness of God?

By no means! God must prove true, though every man be false; as the Scripture says, "That you may be shown to be upright in what you say, And win your case when you go into court."

But if our wrongdoing brings out the uprightness of God, what are we to say? Is it wrong in God (I am putting it in ordinary human terms) to inflict punishment?

But, you say, if a falsehood of mine has brought great honor to God by bringing out his truthfulness, why am I tried for being a sinner?

And why not say, as people abuse us for saying and charge us with saying, "Let us do evil that good may come out of it"? Such people will be condemned as they deserve!

No one understands, no one searches for God.

There is no reverence for God before their eyes!"

Now we know that everything the Law says is addressed to those under its authority, so that every mouth may be shut, and the whole world be made accountable to God.

For no human being can be made upright in the sight of God by observing the Law. All that the Law can do is to make man conscious of sin.

But now God's way of uprightness has been disclosed without any reference to law, though the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it.

It is God's way of uprightness and comes through having faith in Jesus Christ, and it is for all who have faith, without distinction.

For all men sin and come short of the glory of God,

For God showed him publicly dying as a sacrifice of reconciliation to be taken advantage of through faith. This was to vindicate his own justice (for in his forbearance, God passed over men's former sins)??26 to vindicate his justice at the present time, and show that he is upright himself, and that he makes those who have faith in Jesus upright also.

Does God belong to the Jews alone? Does he not belong to the heathen too? Of course he belongs to the heathen too;

there is but one God, and he will make the circumcised upright on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised upright because of theirs."

For if he was made upright by what he did, it is something to be proud of. But not to be proud of before God,

for what does the Scripture say? "Abraham had faith in God, and it was credited to him as uprightness."

So David himself says of the happiness of those to whom God credits uprightness without any reference to their actions,

and he was afterward given the mark of circumcision as the stamp of God's acknowledgment of the uprightness based on faith that was his before he was circumcised, so that he should be the forefather of all who, without being circumcised, have faith and so are credited with uprightness,

For the Law only brings down God's wrath; where there is no law, there is no violation of it.

That is why it all turns upon faith; it is to make it a matter of God's favor, so that the promise may hold good for all Abraham's descendants, not only those who are adherents of the Law, but also those who share the faith of Abraham. For he is the father of all of us;

as the Scripture says, "I have made you the father of many nations." The promise is guaranteed in the very sight of God in whom he had faith, who can bring the dead to life and call into being what does not exist.

He did not incredulously question God's promise, but his faith gave him power and he praised God

in the full assurance that God was able to do what he had promised.

So as we have been made upright by faith, let us live in peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

by whom we have been introduced through faith to the favor of God that we now enjoy, and let us glory in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

and hope will not disappoint us. For, through the holy Spirit that has been given us, God's love has flooded our hearts.

Why, a man will hardly give his life for an upright person, though perhaps for a really good man some may be brave enough to die.

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

So if we have already been made upright by his death, it is far more certain that through him we shall be saved from God's anger!

If, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, it is far more certain that now that we are reconciled we shall be saved through sharing in his life!

More than that, we actually glory in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom we owe our reconciliation.

But there is no comparison between God's gift and that offense. For if one man's offense made the mass of mankind die, God's mercy and his gift given through the favor of the one man Jesus Christ have far more powerfully affected mankind.

Nor is there any comparison between the gift and the effects of that one man's sin. That sentence arose from the act of one man, and was for condemnation; but God's gift arose out of many offenses and results in acquittal.

For if that one man's offense made death reign through that one man, all the more will those who receive God's overflowing mercy and his gift of uprightness live and reign through the one individual Jesus Christ.

Then law slipped in, and multiplied the offense. But greatly as sin multiplied, God's mercy has far surpassed it,

For when he died, he became once for all dead to sin; the life he now lives is a life in relation to God.

So you also must think of yourselves as dead to sin but alive to God, through union with Christ Jesus.

and you must not offer the parts of your bodies to sin as the instruments of wrong, but offer yourselves to God as men brought back from death to life, and offer the parts of your bodies to him as instruments of uprightness.

But, thank God! though you were once slaves of sin, you have become obedient from your hearts to the standard of teaching that you received,

What good did you get from doing the things you are now ashamed of? Why, they result in death!

But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you get is consecration, and the final result is eternal life.

For the wages sin pays is death, but the gift God gives is eternal life through union with Christ Jesus our Lord.

So you, in turn, my brothers, in the body of Christ have become dead as far as the Law is concerned, so that you may belong to another husband, who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God.

So the Law itself is holy, and each command is holy, just, and good.

Did what was good, then, prove the death of me? Certainly not! It was sin that did so, so that it might be recognized as sin, because even through something that was good it effected my death, so that through the command it might appear how immeasurably sinful sin was.

For I know that nothing good resides in me, that is, in my physical self; I can will, but I cannot do what is right.

I do not do the good things that I want to do; I do the wrong things that I do not want to do.

Thank God! it is done through Jesus Christ our Lord! So mentally I am a slave to God's law, but physically to the law of sin.

For though it was impossible for the Law to do it, hampered as it was by our physical limitations, God, by sending his own Son in our sinful physical form, as a sin-offering, put his condemnation upon sin through his physical nature,

For to be physically minded means hostility to God, for it refuses to obey God's law, indeed it cannot obey it.

Those who are physical cannot please God.

But you are not physical but spiritual, if God's Spirit has really taken possession of you; for unless a man has Christ's spirit, he does not belong to Christ.

For all who are guided by God's Spirit are God's sons.

The Spirit itself testifies with our spirits that we are God's children,

and if children, heirs also; heirs of God, and fellow-heirs with Christ, if we really share his sufferings in order to share his glory too.

For creation is waiting with eager longing for the sons of God to be disclosed.

that creation itself would be set free from its bondage to decay, and have the glorious freedom of the children of God.

More than that, we ourselves, though we have in the Spirit a foretaste of the future, groan to ourselves as we wait to be declared God's sons, through the redemption of our bodies.

and he who searches our hearts knows what the Spirit means, for it pleads for God's people in accordance with his will.

We know that in everything God works with those who love him, whom he has called in accordance with his purpose, to bring about what is good.

Then what shall we conclude from this? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Who can bring any accusation against those whom God has chosen? God pronounces them upright;

who can condemn them? Christ Jesus who died, or rather who was raised from the dead, is at God's right hand, and actually pleads for us.

nor any supernatural forces either of height or depth will be able to separate us from the love God has shown in Christ Jesus our Lord!

for I could wish myself accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my natural kindred.

For they are Israelites, and to them belong the rights of sonship, God's glorious presence, the divine agreements and legislation, the Temple service, the promises,

Not that God's message has failed. For not everybody who is descended from Israel really belongs to Israel,