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

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.

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

God is my witness, the God whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, how unceasingly I always mention you in my prayers,

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

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.

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.

Though they knew God, they have not glorified him as God nor given thanks to him; they have turned to futile speculations till their ignorant minds grew dark.

they have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the semblance of the likeness of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds, and of reptiles.

So God has given them up, in their heart's lust, to sexual vice, to the dishonouring of their own bodies, ??25 since they have exchanged the truth of God for an untruth, worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed for ever: Amen.

That is why God has given them up to vile passions; their women have exchanged the natural function of sex for what is unnatural,

Yes, as they disdained to acknowledge God any longer, God has given them up to a reprobate instinct, for the perpetration of what is improper,

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

though they know God's decree that people who practise such vice deserve death, they not only do it themselves but applaud those who practise it.

'We know the doom of God falls justly upon those who practise such vices.'

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?

In your stubbornness and impenitence of heart you are simply storing up anger for yourself on the Day of anger, when the just doom of God is revealed.

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

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

There is no partiality about God.

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,

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

If you bear the name of 'Jew,' relying on the Law, priding yourself on God,

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

Why, it is owing to you that the name of God is maligned among the Gentiles, as scripture says!

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?)

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.

Then what is the Jew's superiority? What is the good of circumcision?

Much in every way. This to begin with ??Jews were entrusted with the scriptures of God.

Even supposing some of them have proved untrustworthy, is their faithlessness to cancel the faithfulness of God?

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.

But if our iniquity thus serves to bring out the justice of God, what are we to infer? That it is unfair of God to inflict his anger on us? (I speak in a merely human way.)

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?

Why should we not do evil that good may come out of it?" (which is the calumny attributed to me ??the very thing some people declare I say). Such arguments are rightly condemned.

no one understands, no one seeks for God.

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

there is no reverence for God before their eyes.

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;

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.

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

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;

it was to demonstrate his justice at the present epoch, showing that God is just himself and that he justifies man on the score of faith in Jesus.

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.

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.

For what does scripture say? Abraham believed God and this was counted to him as righteousness.

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!

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,

(What the Law produces is the Wrath, not the promise of God; where there is no law, there is no transgression either.)

(as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations). Such a faith implies the presence of the God in whom he believed, a God who makes the dead live and calls into being what does not exist.

no unbelief made him waver about God's promise; his faith won strength as he gave glory to God

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

Through him we have got access to this grace where we have our standing, and triumph in the hope of God's glory.

endurance produces character, and character produces hope ??5 a hope which never disappoints us, since God's love floods our hearts through the holy Spirit which has been given to us.

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.

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.

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.

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

So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

you must not let sin have your members for the service of vice, you must dedicate yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, dedicating your members to God for the service of righteousness.

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

but now that you are set free from sin, now that you have passed into the service of God, your gain is consecration, and the end of that is life eternal.

Sin's wage is death, but God's gift is life eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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.

but now we are done with the Law, we have died to what once held us, so that we can serve in a new way, not under the written code as of old but in the Spirit.

So the Law at any rate is holy, the command is holy, just, and for our good.

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.

For in me (that is, in my flesh) no good dwells, I know; the wish is there, but not the power of doing what is right.

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

I cordially agree with God's law, so far as my inner self is concerned,

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,

For the interests of the flesh are hostile to God; they do not yield to the law of God (indeed they cannot).

Those who are in the flesh cannot satisfy God.

But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells within you. Anyone who does not possess the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.

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

it is this Spirit testifying along with our own spirit that we are children of God;

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

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

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.

and He who searches the human heart knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, since the Spirit pleads before God for the saints.

We know also that those who love God, those who have been called in terms of his purpose, have his aid and interest in everything.

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 is to accuse the elect of God? When God acquits,

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!

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.)

It is not, of course, as if God's word had failed! Far from it! 'Israel' does not mean everyone who belongs to Israel;

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.

and though the children were still unborn and had done nothing either good or bad (to confirm the divine purpose in election which depends upon the call of God, not on anything man does),

Then are we to infer that there is injustice in God? Never!

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.