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.

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.

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

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,

(If then the uncircumcised observe the requirements of the Law, shall not their uncircumcision be reckoned equivalent to circumcision?

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.

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;

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

Or is God only the God of Jews? Is he not the God of the Gentiles as well? Surely he is.

Then 'by this faith' we 'cancel the Law'? Not for one moment! We uphold the Law.

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.

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

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

In what way? When he was a circumcised man or an uncircumcised man? Not when he was circumcised, but when he was uncircumcised.

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.

The promise made to Abraham and his offspring that he should inherit the world, did not reach him through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.

(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.

And these words counted to him have not been written for him alone

Not only so, but we triumph even in our troubles, knowing that trouble produces endurance,

Why, a man will hardly die for the just ??though one might bring oneself to die, if need be, for a good man.

Not only so, but we triumph in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we now enjoy our reconciliation.

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,

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.

Sin must have no hold over you, for you live under grace, not under law.

What follows, then? Are we 'to sin, because we live under grace, not under law'? Never!

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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,

in order to secure the fulfilment of the Law's requirements in our lives, as we live and move not by the flesh but by the Spirit.

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

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.

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

For creation was not rendered futile by its own choice, but by the will of Him who thus made it subject,

and not only so, but even we ourselves, who have the Spirit as a foretaste of the future, even we sigh to ourselves as we wait for the redemption of the body that means our full sonship.

We were saved with this hope in view. Now when an object of hope is seen, there is no further need to hope. Who ever hopes for what he sees already?

But if we hope for something that we do not see, we wait for it patiently.

So too the Spirit assists us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray aright, but the Spirit pleads for us with sighs that are beyond words,

The God who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, surely He will give us everything besides!

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.

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),

You see, it is not a question of human will or effort but of the divine mercy.

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;

Indeed, as Isaiah foretold, Had not the Lord of hosts left us with some descendants, we would have fared like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorra.

And why? Simply because Israel has relied not on faith but on what they could do. They have stumbled over the stone that makes men stumble ??33 as it is written, Here I lay a stone in Sion that will make men stumble, even a rock to trip them up; but he who believes in Him will never be disappointed.

I can vouch for their zeal for God; only, it is not zeal with knowledge.

They would not surrender to the righteousness of God, because they were ignorant of his righteousness and therefore essayed to set up a righteousness of their own.

But here is what faith-righteousness says: ??Say not in your heart, 'Who will go up to heaven?' (that is, to bring Christ down).

But how are they to invoke One in whom they do not believe? And how are they to believe in One of whom they have never heard? And how are they ever to hear, without a preacher?

But they have not all given in to the gospel of glad news? No, Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what they heard from us?

Then, I ask, "Did Israel not understand?" Why, first of all Moses declares, I will make you jealous of a nation that is no nation, I will provoke you to anger over a nation devoid of understanding.

God has not repudiated his People, his predestined People! Surely you know what scripture says in the passage called 'Elijah'? You know how he pleads with God against Israel:

Yet what is the divine answer? I have left myself seven thousand men who have not knelt to Baal.

Selected by grace, and therefore not for anything they have done; otherwise grace would cease to be grace.

Now what are we to infer from this? That Israel has failed to secure the object of its quest; the elect have secured it, and the rest have been rendered insensible to it ??8 as it is written, God has given them a spirit of torpor, eyes that see not, ears that hear not ??down to this very day.

do not pride yourself at the expense of these branches. Remember, in your pride, the stem supports you, not you the stem.

For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

And even the others will be grafted in, if they do not adhere to their unbelief; God can graft them in again.

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.

In our one body we have a number of members, and the members have not all the same function;

Do not let evil get the better of you; get the better of evil by doing good.

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.

You must be obedient, therefore, not only to avoid the divine vengeance but as a matter of conscience,

You must not commit adultery, you must not kill, you must not steal, you must not covet ??these and any other command are summed up in a single word, You must love your neighbour as yourself.

It is far on in the night, the day is almost here; so let us drop the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of the light;

Welcome a man of weak faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his scruples.

The eater must not look down upon the non-eater, and the non-eater must not criticize the eater, for God has welcomed him.

If your brother is being injured because you eat a certain food, then you are no longer living by the rule of love. Do not let that food of yours ruin the man for whom Christ died.

Your rights must not get a bad name.

The Reign of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, it means righteousness, peace, and joy in the holy Spirit;

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;

But if anyone has doubts about eating and then eats, that condemns him at once; it was not faith that induced him to eat, and any action that is not based on faith is a sin.

We who are strong ought to bear the burdens that the weak make for themselves and us. We are not to please ourselves.

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.

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,

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

Salute Andronicus and Junias, fellow-countrymen and fellow-prisoners of mine; they are men of note among the apostles, and they have been in Christ longer than I have.

Such creatures are no servants of Christ our Lord, they are slaves of their own base desires; with their plausible and pious talk they beguile the hearts of unsuspecting people. But surely not of you!