through whom I have received the favour of my commission to promote obedience to the faith for his sake among all the Gentiles,

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 do yearn to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift for your strengthening ??12 or, in other words, that I may be encouraged by meeting you, I by your faith and you by mine.

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

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.

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.

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;

Now what are we to infer from this? That we are to 'remain on in sin, so that there may be all the more grace'?

Surely you know, my brothers ??for I am speaking to men who know what law means ??that the law has hold over a person only during his lifetime!

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.

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.

I lived at one time without law myself, but when the command came home to me, sin sprang to life and I died;

the command that meant life proved death for me.

The command gave an impulse to sin, sin beguiled me and used the command to kill me.

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.

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.

That being so, it is not I who do the deed but sin that dwells within me.

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.

Well, if I act against my wishes, it is not I who do the deed but sin that dwells within me.

So this is my experience of the Law: I want to do what is right, but wrong is all I can manage;

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

but then I find quite another law in my members which conflicts with the law of my mind and makes me a prisoner to sin's law that resides in my members.

Miserable wretch that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

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.)

the law of the Spirit brings the life which is in Christ Jesus, and that law has set me free from the law of sin and death.

Well then, my brothers, we owe a duty ??but it is not to the flesh! It is not to live by the flesh!

I am telling the truth in Christ ??it is no lie, my conscience bears me out in the holy Spirit

I could have wished myself accursed and banished from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my natural kinsmen;

Why, scripture says to Pharaoh, It was for this that I raised you up, to display my power in you, and to spread news of my name over all the earth.

But who are you, my man, to speak back to God? Is something a man has moulded to ask him who has moulded it, "Why did you make me like this?"

As indeed he says in Hosea, Those who were no people of mine, I will call 'my People,' and her 'beloved' who was not beloved;

Oh for their salvation, brothers! That is my heart's desire and prayer to God!

And then Isaiah dares to say, I have been found by those who never sought me, I have shown myself to those who never inquired of me.

He also says of Israel, All the day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.

Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have demolished thine altars; I alone am left, and they seek my life.

I tell you this, you Gentiles, that as an apostle to the Gentiles I lay great stress on my office,

in the hope of being able to make my fellow-Jews jealous and of managing thus to save some of them.

You will say, "But branches were broken off to let me be grafted in!"

this is my covenant with them, when I take their sins away.

so that they in turn may enjoy the same mercy as yourselves.

For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.

Well then, my brothers, I appeal to you by all the mercy of God to dedicate your bodies as a living sacrifice, consecrated and acceptable to God; that is your cult, a spiritual rite.

In virtue of my office, I tell everyone of your number who is self-important, that he is not to think more of himself than he ought to think; he must take a sane view of himself, corresponding to the degree of faith which God has assigned to each.

the magistrate is God's servant for your benefit. But if you do wrong, you may well be alarmed; a magistrate does not wield the power of the sword for nothing, he is God's servant for the infliction of divine vengeance upon evil-doers.

So why do you criticize your brother? And you, why do you look down upon your brother? All of us have to stand before the tribunal of God ??11 for it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bend before me, every tongue shall offer praise to God.

You must not break down God's work for the mere sake of food! Everything may be clean, but it is wrong for a man to prove a stumbling-block by what he eats;

Christ certainly did not please himself, but, as it is written, The reproaches of those who denounced Thee have fallen upon me. ??4 All such words were written of old for our instruction, that by remaining stedfast and drawing encouragement from the scriptures we may cherish hope.

May the God who inspires stedfastness and encouragement grant you such harmony with one another, after Christ Jesus,

that you may unite in a chorus of praise and glory to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

May the God of your hope so fill you with all joy and peace in your faith, that you may be overflowing with hope by the power of the holy Spirit!

Personally I am quite certain, my brothers, that even as it is you have ample goodness of heart, you are filled with knowledge of every kind, and you are well able to give advice to one another.

Still, by way of refreshing your memory, I have written you with a certain freedom, in virtue of my divine commission

as a priest of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the service of God's gospel. My aim is to make the Gentiles an acceptable offering, consecrated by the holy Spirit.

Now in Christ Jesus I can be proud of my work for God.

I will not make free to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished by me in the way of securing the obedience of the Gentiles, by my words and by my deeds,

by the force of miracles and marvels, by the power of the Spirit of God. Thus from Jerusalem right round to Illyricum, I have been able to complete the preaching of the gospel of Christ ??20 my ambition always being to preach it only in places where there had been no mention of Christ's name, that I might not build on foundations laid by others,

whenever I went to Spain, I am hoping to see you on my way there, and to be sped forward by you after I have enjoyed your company for a while.

Brothers, I beg of you, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love that the Spirit inspires, rally round me by praying to God for me;

pray that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judaea, and also that my mission to Jerusalem may prove acceptable to the saints.

Let me introduce our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae;

receive her in the Lord as saints should receive one another, and give her any help she may require. She has been a help herself to many people, including myself.

Salute Prisca and Aquila, my fellow-workers in Christ Jesus,

who have risked their lives for me; I thank them, and not only I but all the Gentile churches as well.

Also, salute the church that meets in their house. Salute my beloved Epaenetus, the first in Asia to be reaped for Christ.

Salute Amplias, my beloved in the Lord.

Salute Urbanus, our fellow-worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachys.

Salute my fellow-countryman Herodion. Salute such members of the household of Narcissus as are in the Lord.

Salute that choice Christian, Rufus; also his mother, who has been a mother to me.

Everyone has heard of your loyalty to the gospel; it makes me rejoice over you. Still, I want you to be experts in good and innocents in evil.

Timotheus my fellow-worker salutes you; so do my fellow countrymen Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater.

Gaius, my host and the host of the church at large salutes you. Erastus the city-treasurer salutes you; so does brother Quartus.

[Now to Him who can strengthen you by my gospel, by the preaching of Jesus Christ, by revealing the secret purpose which after the silence of long ages