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.

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.

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.

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.

Very well; and do you imagine you will escape God's doom, O man, you who judge those who practise such vices and do the same yourself?

Even supposing some of them have proved untrustworthy, is their faithlessness to cancel the faithfulness of God?

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.

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.

What! has the potter no right over the clay? Has he no right to make out of the same lump one vessel for a noble purpose and another for a menial?

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.

No one who believes in him, the scripture says, will ever be disappointed. No one ??12 for there is no distinction of Jew and Greek, the same Lord is Lord of them all, with ample for all who invoke him.

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

Supposing some of the branches have been broken off, while you have been grafted in like a shoot of wild olive to share the rich growth of the olive-stem,

Once you disobeyed God, and now you enjoy his mercy thanks to their disobedience; in the same way they at present are disobedient,

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

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

for the same reason as you pay taxes ??since magistrates are God's officers, bent upon the maintenance of order and authority.