First of all, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for what He has done for all of you; for the report of your faith is spreading through the whole world.

always in my prayers entreating that now, at length, if such be His will, the way may by some means be made clear for me to come to you.

For I am longing to see you, in order to convey to you some spiritual help, so that you may be strengthened;

so that for my part I am willing and eager to proclaim the Good News to you also who are in Rome.

For I am not ashamed of the Good News. It is God's power which is at work for the salvation of every one who believes--the Jew first, and then the Gentile.

For in the Good News a righteousness which comes from God is being revealed, depending on faith and tending to produce faith; as the Scripture has it, "The righteous man shall live by faith."

For God's anger is being revealed from Heaven against all impiety and against the iniquity of men who through iniquity suppress the truth. God is angry:

because what may be known about Him is plain to their inmost consciousness; for He Himself has made it plain to them.

For, from the very creation of the world, His invisible perfections--namely His eternal power and divine nature--have been rendered intelligible and clearly visible by His works, so that these men are without excuse.

For when they had come to know God, they did not give Him glory as God nor render Him thanks, but they became absorbed in useless discussions, and their senseless minds were darkened.

For this reason, in accordance with their own depraved cravings, God gave them up to uncleanness, allowing them to dishonour their bodies among themselves with impurity.

For they had bartered the reality of God for what is unreal, and had offered divine honours and religious service to created things, rather than to the Creator--He who is for ever blessed. Amen.

This then is the reason why God gave them up to vile passions. For not only did the women among them exchange the natural use of their bodies for one which is contrary to nature, but the men also,

in just the same way--neglecting that for which nature intends women--burned with passion towards one another, men practising shameful vice with men, and receiving in their own selves the reward which necessarily followed their misconduct.

And just as they had refused to continue to have a full knowledge of God, so it was to utterly worthless minds that God gave them up, for them to do things which should not be done.

You are therefore without excuse, O man, whoever you are who sit in judgement upon others. For when you pass judgement on your fellow man, you condemn yourself; for you who sit in judgement upon others are guilty of the same misdeeds;

to those on the one hand who, by lives of persistent right-doing, are striving for glory, honour and immortality, the Life of the Ages;

For God pays no attention to this world's distinctions.

For all who have sinned apart from the Law will also perish apart from the Law, and all who have sinned whilst living under the Law, will be judged by the Law.

For when Gentiles who have no Law obey by natural instinct the commands of the Law, they, without having a Law, are a Law to themselves;

and have persuaded yourself that, as for you, you are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness,

a schoolmaster for the dull and ignorant, a teacher of the young, because in the Law you possess an outline of real knowledge and an outline of the truth:

For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentile nations because of you, as Holy Writ declares.

Circumcision does indeed profit, if you obey the Law; but if you are a Law-breaker, the fact that you have been circumcised counts for nothing.

For the true Jew is not the man who is simply a Jew outwardly, and true circumcision is not that which is outward and bodily.

For what if some Jews have proved unfaithful? Shall their faithlessness render God's faithfulness worthless?

No indeed; for in that case how shall He judge all mankind?)

If, for instance, a falsehood of mine has made God's truthfulness more conspicuous, redounding to His glory, why am I judged all the same as a sinner?

And why should we not say--for so they wickedly misrepresent us, and so some charge us with arguing--"Let us do evil that good may come"? The condemnation of those who would so argue is just.

What then? Are we Jews more highly estimated than they? Not in the least; for we have already charged all Jews and Gentiles alike with being in thraldom to sin.

"There is no fear of God before their eyes."

For on the ground of obedience to Law no man living will be declared righteous before Him. Law simply brings a sure knowledge of sin.

for all alike have sinned, and all consciously come short of the glory of God,

gaining acquittal from guilt by His free unpurchased grace through the deliverance which is found in Christ Jesus.

Where then is there room for your boasting? It is for ever shut out. On what principle? On the ground of merit? No, but on the ground of faith.

For we maintain that it is as the result of faith that a man is held to be righteous, apart from actions done in obedience to Law.

For if he was held to be righteous on the ground of his actions, he has something to boast of; but not in the presence of God.

For what says the Scripture? "And Abraham believed God, and this was placed to his credit as righteousness."

whereas in the case of a man who pleads no actions of his own, but simply believes in Him who declares the ungodly free from guilt, his faith is placed to his credit as righteousness.

This declaration of blessedness, then, does it come simply to the circumcised, or to the uncircumcised as well? For Abraham's faith--so we affirm--was placed to his credit as righteousness.

For if it is the righteous through Law who are heirs, then faith is useless and the promise counts for nothing.

For the Law inflicts punishment; but where no Law exists, there can be no violation of Law.

All depends on faith, and for this reason--that acceptance with God might be an act of pure grace,

And, without growing weak in faith, he could contemplate his own vital powers which had now decayed--for he was nearly 100 years old--and Sarah's barrenness.

For this reason also his faith was placed to his credit as righteousness.

Nor was the fact of its being placed to his credit put on record for his sake only;

it was for our sakes too. Faith, before long, will be placed to the credit of us also who are believers in Him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead,

who was surrendered to death because of the offences we had committed, and was raised to life because of the acquittal secured for us.

and that this hope never disappoints, because God's love for us floods our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

For already, while we were still helpless, Christ at the right moment died for the ungodly.

Why, it is scarcely conceivable that any one would die for a simply just man, although for a good and lovable man perhaps some one, here and there, will have the courage even to lay down his life.

But God gives proof of His love to us in Christ's dying for us while we were still sinners.

If therefore we have now been pronounced free from guilt through His blood, much more shall we be delivered from God's anger through Him.

For if while we were hostile to God we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, it is still more certain that now that we are reconciled, we shall obtain salvation through Christ's life.

For prior to the Law sin was already in the world; only it is not entered in the account against us when no Law exists.

But God's free gift immeasurably outweighs the transgression. For if through the transgression of the one individual the mass of mankind have died, infinitely greater is the generosity with which God's grace, and the gift given in His grace which found expression in the one man Jesus Christ, have been bestowed on the mass of mankind.

And it is not with the gift as it was with the results of one individual's sin; for the judgement which one individual provoked resulted in condemnation, whereas the free gift after a multitude of transgressions results in acquittal.

For if, through the transgression of the one individual, Death made use of the one individual to seize the sovereignty, all the more shall those who receive God's overflowing grace and gift of righteousness reign as kings in Life through the one individual, Jesus Christ.

For as through the disobedience of the one individual the mass of mankind were constituted sinners, so also through the obedience of the One the mass of mankind will be constituted righteous.

For since we have become one with Him by sharing in His death, we shall also be one with Him by sharing in His resurrection.

for he who has paid the penalty of death stands absolved from his sin.

Death has no longer any power over Him. For by the death which He died He became, once for all, dead in relation to sin; but by the life which He now lives He is alive in relation to God.

and no longer lend your faculties as unrighteous weapons for Sin to use. On the contrary surrender your very selves to God as living men who have risen from the dead, and surrender your several faculties to God, to be used as weapons to maintain the right.

For Sin shall not be lord over you, since you are subjects not of Law, but of grace.

You were set free from the tyranny of Sin, and became the bondservants of Righteousness--

For when you were the bondservants of sin, you were under no sort of subjection to Righteousness.

But now that you have been set free from the tyranny of Sin, and have become the bondservants of God, you have your reward in being made holy, and you have the Life of the Ages as the final result.

For the wages paid by Sin are death; but God's free gift is the Life of the Ages bestowed upon us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Brethren, do you not know--for I am writing to people acquainted with the Law--that it is during our lifetime that we are subject to the Law?

A wife, for instance, whose husband is living is bound to him by the Law; but if her husband dies the law that bound her to him has now no hold over her.

This accounts for the fact that if during her husband's life she lives with another man, she will be stigmatized as an adulteress; but that if her husband is dead she is no longer under the old prohibition, and even though she marries again, she is not an adulteress.

For whilst we were under the thraldom of our earthly natures, sinful passions-- made sinful by the Law--were always being aroused to action in our bodily faculties that they might yield fruit to death.

What follows? Is the Law itself a sinful thing? No, indeed; on the contrary, unless I had been taught by the Law, I should have known nothing of sin as sin. For instance, I should not have known what covetousness is, if the Law had not repeatedly said, "Thou shalt not covet."

Sin took advantage of this, and by means of the Commandment stirred up within me every kind of coveting; for apart from Law sin would be dead.

For sin seized the advantage, and by means of the Commandment it completely deceived me, and also put me to death.

For we know that the Law is a spiritual thing; but I am unspiritual--the slave, bought and sold, of sin.

For what I do, I do not recognize as my own action. What I desire to do is not what I do, but what I am averse to is what I do.

For I know that in me, that is, in my lower self, nothing good has its home; for while the will to do right is present with me, the power to carry it out is not.

For what I do is not the good thing that I desire to do; but the evil thing that I desire not to do, is what I constantly do.

I find therefore the law of my nature to be that when I desire to do what is right, evil is lying in ambush for me.

For in my inmost self all my sympathy is with the Law of God;

for the Spirit's Law-- telling of Life in Christ Jesus--has set me free from the Law that deals only with sin and death.

For what was impossible to the Law--powerless as it was because it acted through frail humanity--God effected. Sending His own Son in a body like that of sinful human nature and as a sacrifice for sin, He pronounced sentence upon sin in human nature;

in order that in our case the requirements of the Law might be fully met. For our lives are regulated not by our earthly, but by our spiritual natures.

For if men are controlled by their earthly natures, they give their minds to earthly things. If they are controlled by their spiritual natures, they give their minds to spiritual things.

Because for the mind to be given up to earthly things means death; but for it to be given up to spiritual things means Life and peace.

For if you so live, death is near; but if, through being under the sway of the spirit, you are putting your old bodily habits to death, you will live.

For those who are led by God's Spirit are, all of them, God's sons.

You have not for the second time acquired the consciousness of being--a consciousness which fills you with terror. But you have acquired a deep inward conviction of having been adopted as sons--a conviction which prompts us to cry aloud, "Abba! our Father!"

For all creation, gazing eagerly as if with outstretched neck, is waiting and longing to see the manifestation of the sons of God.

For the Creation fell into subjection to failure and unreality (not of its own choice, but by the will of Him who so subjected it)

Yet there was always the hope that at last the Creation itself would also be set free from the thraldom of decay so as to enjoy the liberty that will attend the glory of the children of God.

For we know that the whole of Creation is groaning together in the pains of childbirth until this hour.

And more than that, we ourselves, though we possess the Spirit as a foretaste and pledge of the glorious future, yet we ourselves inwardly sigh, as we wait and long for open recognition as sons through the deliverance of our bodies.

It is *in hope* that we have been saved. But an object of hope is such no longer when it is present to view; for when a man has a thing before his eyes, how can he be said to hope for it?

But if we hope for something which we do not see, then we eagerly and patiently wait for it.

In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness; for we do not know what prayers to offer nor in what way to offer them. But the Spirit Himself pleads for us in yearnings that can find no words,

and the Searcher of hearts knows what the Spirit's meaning is, because His intercessions for God's people are in harmony with God's will.

Now we know that for those who love God all things are working together for good--for those, I mean, whom with deliberate purpose He has called.

For those whom He has known beforehand He has also pre-destined to bear the likeness of His Son, that He might be the Eldest in a vast family of brothers;