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,

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,

Brothers, I would like you to understand that I have often purposed to come to you (though up till now I have been prevented) so as to have some results among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.

To Greeks and to barbarians, to wise and to foolish alike, I owe a duty.

Hence my eagerness to preach the gospel to you in Rome as well.

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 claimed to be wise, but they have become fools;

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,

and in the same way the males have abandoned the natural use of women and flamed out in lust for one another, men perpetrating shameless acts with their own sex and getting in their own persons the due recompense of their perversity.

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,

Therefore you are inexcusable, whoever you are, if you pose as a judge, for in judging another you condemn yourself; you, the judge, do the very same things yourself.

Or are you slighting all his wealth of kindness, forbearance, and patience? Do you not know his kindness is meant to make you repent?

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.

but anger and wrath to those who are wilful, who disobey the Truth and obey wickedness ??9 anguish and calamity for every human soul that perpetrates evil, for the Jew first and for the Greek as well,

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,

they exhibit the effect of the Law written on their hearts, their conscience bears them witness, as their moral convictions accuse or it may be defend them.)

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

understanding his will, and with a sense of what is vital in religion; if you are instructed by the Law

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

Circumcision is certainly of use, provided you keep the Law; but if you are a breaker of the Law, then your circumcision is turned into uncircumcision.

He is no Jew who is merely a Jew outwardly, nor is circumcision something outward in the flesh;

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?

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.

Well now, are we Jews in a better position? Not at all. I have already charged all, Jews as well as Greeks, with being under sin ??10 as it is written, None is righteous, no, not one;

Their throat is an open grave, they are treacherous with their tongues, the venom of an asp lies under their lips.

Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness,

there is no reverence for God before their eyes.

for no person will be acquitted in his sight on the score of obedience to law. What the Law imparts is the consciousness of sin.

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.

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.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It is ruled out absolutely. On what principle? On the principle of doing deeds? No, on the principle of faith.

We hold a man is justified by faith apart from deeds of the Law altogether.

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.

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

Now a worker has his wage counted to him as a due, not as a favour;

but a man who instead of 'working' believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, has his faith counted 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!

Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not count to him.

Now is that description of bliss meant for the circumcised, or for the uncircumcised as well? Abraham's faith, I repeat, was counted to him as righteousness.

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,

as well as a father of those circumcised persons who not only share circumcision but walk in the steps of the faith which our father Abraham had as an uncircumcised man.

For if it is adherents of the Law who are heirs, then faith is empty of all meaning and the promise is void.

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

That is why all turns upon faith; it is to make the promise a matter of favour, to make it secure for all the offspring, not simply for those who are adherents of the Law but also for those who share the faith of Abraham ??of Abraham who is the father of us all

(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.

For Abraham, when hope was gone, hoped on in faith, and thus became the father of many nations ??even as he was told, So numberless shall your offspring be.

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

Hence his faith was counted to him as righteousness.

but for our sakes as well; faith will be counted to us as we believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,

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

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.

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

Thus, then, sin came into the world by one man, and death came in by sin; and so death spread to all men, inasmuch as all men sinned.

Sin was indeed in the world before the Law, but sin is never counted in the absence of law.

Nevertheless, from Adam to Moses death reigned even over those whose sins were not like Adam's transgression. Adam prefigured Him who was to come,

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.

Nor is the free gift like the effect of the one man's sin; for while the sentence ensuing on a single sin resulted in doom, the free gift ensuing on many trespasses issues in acquittal.

Well then, as one man's trespass issued in doom for all, so one man's act of redress issues in acquittal and life for all.

Just as one man's disobedience made all the rest sinners, so one man's obedience will make all the rest righteous.

Surely you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death!

Our baptism in his death made us share his burial, so that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live and move in the new sphere of Life.

knowing as we do that our old self has been crucified with him in order to crush the sinful body and free us from any further slavery to sin

(for once dead, a man is absolved from the claims of sin).

We believe that as we have died with Christ we shall also live with him;

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

Sin is not to reign, then, over your mortal bodies and make you obey their passions;

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.

Do you not know you are the servants of the master you obey, of the master to whom you yield yourselves obedient, whether it is Sin, whose service ends in death, or Obedience, whose service ends in righteousness?

(I use this human analogy to bring the truth home to your weak nature.) As you once dedicated your members to the service of vice and lawlessness, so now dedicate them to the service of righteousness that means consecration.

Well, what did you gain then by it all? Nothing but what you are now ashamed of! The end of all that is death;

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.

Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is alive; but if the husband dies, she is done with the law of 'the husband.'

Accordingly, she will be termed an adulteress if she becomes another man's while her husband is alive; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law of 'the husband,' so that she is no adulteress if she becomes another man's.

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.

For when we were unspiritual, the sinful cravings excited by the Law were active in our members and made us fruitful to Death;

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.

What follows, then? That 'the Law is equivalent to sin'? Never! Why, had it not been for the Law, I would never have known what sin meant! Thus I would never have known what it is to covet, unless the Law had said, You must not covet.

The command gave an impulse to sin, and sin resulted for me in all manner of covetous desire ??for sin, apart from law, is lifeless.

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.

The Law is spiritual; we know that. But then I am a creature of the flesh, in the thraldom of sin.

I cannot understand my own actions; I do not act as I want to act; on the contrary, I do what I detest.

Now, when I act against my wishes, that means I agree that the Law is right.