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

proved to be God's Son in power by the resurrection from the dead -- I mean, Jesus Christ, our Lord,

through whom we have received God's favor and a commission as an apostle in His name to urge upon all the heathen obedience inspired by faith,

to all those in Rome who are God's loved ones, called to be His people: spiritual blessing and peace be yours from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

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

Indeed, my witness is God, whom I serve in my spirit by telling the good news about His Son, that I never fail to mention you every time I pray,

always entreating God that somehow by His will I may some day at last succeed in getting to see you.

So, as far as I can, I am eager to preach the good news to you at Rome, too.

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

For in the good news God's Way of man's right standing with Him is uncovered, the Way of faith that leads to greater faith, just as the Scripture says, "The upright man must live by faith."

For God's anger from heaven is being uncovered against all the impiety and wickedness of the men who in their wickedness are suppressing the truth;

because what can be known of God is clear to their inner moral sense; for in this way God Himself has shown it to them.

because, although they once knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give Him thanks, but became silly in their senseless speculations, and so their insensible hearts have been shrouded in darkness.

and have transformed the splendor of the immortal God into images in the form of mortal man, birds, beasts, and reptiles.

So God has given them up to sexual impurity, in the evil trend of their heart's desires, so that they degrade their own bodies with one another,

for they had utterly transformed the reality of God into what was unreal, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

This is why God has given them up to degrading passions. For their females have exchanged their natural function for one that is unnatural,

And so, as they did not approve of fully recognizing God any longer, God gave them up to minds that He did not approve, to practices that were improper;

they are secret backbiters, open slanderers, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful; inventors of new forms of evil, undutiful to parents,

Although they know full well God's sentence that those who practice such things deserve to die, yet they not only practice them but even applaud others who do them.

Now we know that God's judgment justly falls on those who practice such sins as these.

And you, who pose as a judge of those who practice such sins and yet continue doing the same yourself, do you for once suppose that you are going to escape the judgment of God?

Do you think so little of the riches of God's kindness, forbearance, and patience, not conscious that His kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

But in your stubbornness and impenitence of heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when the justice of God's judgments will be uncovered.

eternal life to those who patiently continue doing good and striving for glory, honor, and immortality,

But glory, honor, and peace will come to everyone who practices doing good, the Jew first and then the Greek;

for there is no partiality in God's dealings.

For merely hearing the law read does not make men upright with God, but men who practice the law will be recognized as upright.

on the day when God through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the good news I preach, will judge the secrets people have kept.

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

You who boast about the law, do you by breaking it dishonor God?

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

The real Jew is the man who is a Jew on the inside, and real circumcision is heart-circumcision, a spiritual, not a literal, affair. This man's praise originates, not with men, but with God.

They are great from every point of view. In the first place, the Jews are entrusted with the utterances of God.

What then, if some of them have proved unfaithful? Can their unfaithfulness make null and void God's faithfulness?

Not at all. Let God prove true, though every man be false! As the Scripture says, "That you may prove yourself upright in words you speak, and win your case when you go into court."

But if our wrongdoing brings to light the uprightness of God, what shall we infer? Is it wrong (I am using everyday human terms) for God to inflict punishment?

But, as you say, if the truthfulness of God has redounded to His glory because of my falsehood, why am I still condemned as a sinner?

Why should we not say, as people abusively say of us, and charge us with actually saying, "Let us do evil that good may come from it"? Their condemnation is just.

No one understands, no one is searching for God;

They all have turned aside, all have become corrupt; No one does good, not even one!

There is no reverence for God before their eyes."

Now we know that everything the law says is spoken to those who are under its authority, that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world be held responsible to God.

Because no human creature can be brought into right standing with God by observing the law. For all the law can do is to make men conscious of sin.

But now God's way of giving men right standing with Himself has come to light; a way without connection with the law, and yet a way to which the law and the prophets testify.

God's own way of giving men right standing with Himself is through faith in Jesus Christ. It is for everybody who has faith, for no distinction at all is made.

For everybody has sinned and everybody continues to come short of God's glory,

but anybody may have right standing with God as a free gift of His undeserved favor, through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus.

For God once publicly offered Him in His death as a sacrifice of reconciliation through faith, to demonstrate His own justice (for in His forbearance God had passed over men's former sins);

For we hold that a man is brought into right standing with God by faith, that observance of the law has no connection with it.

Or is He the God of Jews alone? Is He not the God of heathen peoples too? Of course, He is the God of heathen peoples too,

since there is but one God, who will consider the Jews in right standing with Himself, only on condition of their faith, and the heathen peoples on the same condition.

For if he was considered in right standing with God on the condition of what he did, he has something to boast of, but not before God.

For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham put his faith in God, and it was credited to him as right standing with God."

So David, too, describes the happiness of the man to whom God credits right standing with Himself, without the things he does having anything to do with it:

Afterward he received the mark of circumcision as God's seal of his right standing with Him on condition of faith which he had before he was circumcised, that he might be the forefather of all who have faith while still uncircumcised, that they might have their faith credited to them as right standing with God;

For the promise made to Abraham and his descendants, that he should own the world, was not conditioned on the law, but on the right standing he had with God through faith.

So it is conditioned on faith, that it might be in accordance with God's unmerited favor, so that the promise might be in force for all the descendants of Abraham, not only for those who belong to the law party but also for those who belong to the faith group of Abraham. He is the father of us all,

as the Scripture says, "I have made you the father of many nations." That is, the promise is in force in the sight of God in whom he put his faith, the God who can bring the dead to life and can call to Himself the things that do not exist as though they did.

and yet he never staggered in doubt at the promise of God but grew powerful in faith, because he gave the glory to God

Therefore, his faith was credited to him as right standing with God.

it was for our sakes too, for it is going to be credited to us who put our faith in God who raised from the dead our Lord Jesus,

who was given up to death because of our shortcomings and was raised again to give us right standing with God.

Since we have been given right standing with God through faith, then let us continue enjoying peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

by whom we have an introduction through faith into this state of God's favor, in which we safely stand; and let us continue exulting in the hope of enjoying the glorious presence of God.

and hope never disappoints us; for through the Holy Spirit that has been given us, God's love has flooded our hearts.

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

So if we have already been brought into right standing with God by Christ's death, it is much more certain that by Him we shall be saved from God's wrath.

For if while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, it is much more certain that since we have been reconciled we shall finally be saved through His new life.

And not only that, but this too: we shall continue exulting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained our reconciliation.

But God's free gift is not at all to be compared with the offense. For if by one man's offense the whole race of men have died, to a much greater degree God's favor and His gift imparted by His favor through the one man Jesus Christ, has overflowed for the whole race of men.

For just as by that man's disobedience the whole race of men were constituted sinners, so by this One's obedience the whole race of men may be brought into right standing with God.

Then law crept in to multiply the offense. Though sin has multiplied, yet God's favor has surpassed it and overflowed,

so that just as sin had reigned by death, so His favor too might reign in right standing with God which issues in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

For by the death He died He once for all ended His relation to sin, and by the life He now is living He lives in unbroken relation to God.

So you too must consider yourselves as having ended your relation to sin but living in unbroken relation to God.

and you must stop offering to sin the parts of your bodies as instruments for wrongdoing, but you must once for all offer yourselves to God as persons raised from the dead to live on perpetually, and once for all offer the parts of your bodies to God as instruments for right-doing.

For sin must not any longer exert its mastery over you, for now you are not living as slaves to law but as subjects to God's favor.

What are we to conclude? Are we to keep on sinning, because we are not living as slaves to law but as subjects to God's favor? Never!

But, thank God, that though you once were slaves of sin, you became obedient from your hearts to that form of teaching in which you have been instructed,

But now, since you have been freed from sin and have become the slaves of God, the immediate result is consecration, and the final destiny is eternal life.

For the wages paid by sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life through union with Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, my brothers, you too in the body of Christ have ended your relation to the law, so that you may be married to another husband, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

So the law itself is holy, and its specific commands are holy, right, and good.

Did that which is good, then, result in death to me? Of course not! It was sin that did it, so that it might show itself as sin, for by means of that good thing it brought about my death, so that through the command sin might appear surpassingly sinful.

For I know that nothing good has its home in me; that is, in my lower self; I have the will but not the power to do what is right.

Indeed, I do not do the good things that I want to do, but I do practice the evil things that I do not want to do.

For in accordance with my better inner nature I approve God's law,

Thank God! It has been done through Jesus Christ our Lord! So in my higher nature I am a slave to the law of God, but in my lower nature, to the law of sin.

For though the law could not do it, because it was made helpless through our lower nature, yet God, by sending His own Son in a body similar to that of our lower nature, and as a sacrifice for sin, passed sentence upon sin through His body,

Because one's thinking the things suggested by the lower nature means enmity to God, for it does not subject itself to God's law, nor indeed can it.

The people who live on the plane of the lower nature cannot please God.

But you are not living on the plane of the lower nature, but on the spiritual plane, if the Spirit of God has His home within you. Unless a man has the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

But if Christ lives in you, although your bodies must die because of sin, your spirits are now enjoying life because of right standing with God.

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

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirits that we are God's children;

and if children, then also heirs, heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ if in reality we share His sufferings, so that we may share His glory too.

For all nature is expectantly waiting for the unveiling of the sons of God.

that even nature itself might finally be set free from its bondage to decay, so as to share the glorious freedom of God's children.

Not only that but this too, we ourselves who enjoy the Spirit as a foretaste of the future, even we ourselves, keep up our inner groanings while we wait to enter upon our adoption as God's sons at the redemption of our bodies.