PAUL, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God

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.

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.

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.

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.

they have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the semblance of the likeness of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds, and of reptiles.

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.

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.

For he will render to everyone according to what he has done,

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.

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,

a tutor for the foolish, a teacher of the simple, because in the Law you have the embodiment of knowledge and truth ??21 well then, do you ever teach yourself, you teacher of other people? You preach against stealing; do you steal?

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?)

no one understands, no one seeks for God.

their feet are swift for bloodshed,

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 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.

but they are justified for nothing by his grace through the ransom provided in Christ Jesus,

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

His faith never quailed, even when he noted the utter impotence of his own body (for he was about a hundred years old) or the impotence of Sara's womb;

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

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,

Jesus who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised that we might be justified.

For when we were still in weakness, Christ died in due time for the ungodly. For the ungodly!

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

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

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.

For if the trespass of one man allowed death to reign through that one man, much more shall those who receive the overflowing grace and free gift of righteousness reign in life through One, through Jesus Christ.

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.

Law slipped in to aggravate the trespass; sin increased, but grace surpassed it far,

For if we have grown into him by a death like his, we shall grow into him by a resurrection like his,

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).

for we know that Christ never dies after his resurrection from the dead ??death has no more hold over him;

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

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.

set free from sin, you have passed into the service of righteousness.

When you served sin, you were free of righteousness.

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.

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!

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

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.

the command that meant life proved death for me.

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.

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

Thus there is no doom now for those who are in Christ Jesus;

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.

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,

For those who follow the flesh have their interests in the flesh, and those who follow the Spirit have their interests in the Spirit.

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

For the sons of God are those who are guided by the Spirit of God.

You have received no slavish spirit that would make you relapse into fear; you have received the Spirit of sonship. And when we cry, "Abba! Father!",

and if children, heirs as well, heirs of God, heirs along with Christ ??for we share his sufferings in order to share his glory.

Even the creation waits with eager longing for the sons of God to be revealed.

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,

and He who searches the human heart knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, since the Spirit pleads before God for the saints.

For he decreed of old that those whom he predestined should share the likeness of his Son ??that he might be the firstborn of a great brotherhood.

Now what follows from all this? If God is for us, who can be against us?

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

who shall condemn? Will Christ? ??the Christ who died, yes and rose from the dead! the Christ who is at God's right hand, who actually pleads for us!

(Because, as it is written, For thy sake we are being killed all the day long, we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.)

For I am certain neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future,

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

for they are Israelites, theirs is the Sonship, the Glory, the covenants, the divine legislation, the Worship, and the promises;

the patriarchs are theirs, and theirs too (so far as natural descent goes) is the Christ. (Blessed for evermore be the God who is over all! Amen.)

It is not, of course, as if God's word had failed! Far from it! 'Israel' does not mean everyone who belongs to Israel;

For when God said, I will come about this time and Sara shall have a son, that was a word of promise.

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.

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?

What if he means to show the wealth that lies in his glory for the objects of his mercy, whom he has made ready beforehand to receive glory ??24 that is, for us whom he has called from among the Gentiles as well as the Jews?

for the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with rigour and despatch.

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

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

for with his heart man believes and is justified, with his mouth he confesses and is saved.

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.

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

And David says, Let their table prove a snare and a trap, a pitfall and a retribution for them;

let their eyes be darkened, that they cannot see, bow down their backs for ever.