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 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.

Never! In that case, how could he judge the world?

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;

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.

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.

But, I ask, "Have they never heard?" Indeed they have. Their voice carried over all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.

Well, if their lapse has enriched the world, if their defection is the gain of the Gentiles, what will it mean when they all come in?

For if their exclusion means that the world is reconciled to God, what will their admission mean? Why, it will be life from the dead!

Instead of being moulded to this world, have your mind renewed, and so be transformed in nature, able to make out what the will of God is, namely, what is good and acceptable to him and perfect.