So they fixed a day and came to him at his quarters in large numbers. From morning to evening he explained the Reign of God to them from personal testimony, and tried to convince them about Jesus from the law of Moses and the prophets.

and installed as Son of God with power by the Spirit of holiness when he was raised from the dead ??concerning Jesus Christ our Lord,

to all in Rome who are beloved by God, called to be saints, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

But God's anger is revealed from heaven against all the impiety and wickedness of those who hinder the Truth by their wickedness.

But now we have a righteousness of God disclosed apart from law altogether; it is attested by the Law and the prophets,

We hold a man is justified by faith apart from deeds of the Law altogether.

Just as David himself describes the bliss of the man who has righteousness counted to him by God apart from what he does ??7 Blessed are they whose breaches of the Law are forgiven, whose sins are covered!

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,

Much more then, now that we are justified by his blood, shall we be saved by him from Wrath.

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,

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.

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'?

Our baptism in his death made us share his burial, so that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live and move in the new sphere of Life.

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;

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.

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

Accordingly, she will be termed an adulteress if she becomes another man's while her husband is alive; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law of 'the husband,' so that she is no adulteress if she becomes another man's.

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.

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

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.

And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also make your mortal bodies live by his indwelling Spirit in your lives.

the hope being that creation as well as man would one day be freed from its thraldom to decay and gain the glorious freedom of the children of God.

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

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!

What can ever part us from Christ's love? Can anguish or calamity or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword?

no powers of the Height or of the Depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to part us from God's love in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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

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.

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?

Or, 'who will go down to the abyss?' (that is, to bring Christ from the dead).

Confess with your mouth that 'Jesus is Lord,' believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved;

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?

(You see, faith must come from what is heard, and what is heard comes from word of Christ.)

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.

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!

For if you have been cut from an olive which is naturally wild, and grafted, contrary to nature, upon a garden olive, how much more will the natural branches be grafted into their proper olive?

To prevent you from being self-conceited, brothers, I would like you to understand this secret: it is only a partial insensibility that has come over Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in.

This done, all Israel will be saved ??as it is written, The deliverer will come from Sion, he will banish all godlessness from Jacob:

All comes from him, all lives by him, all ends in him. Glory to him for ever, Amen!

Every subject must obey the government-authorities, for no authority exists apart from God; the existing authorities have been constituted by God.

Be in debt to no man ??apart from the debt of love one to another. He who loves his fellow-man has fulfilled the law.

the right course is to abstain from flesh or wine or indeed anything that your brother feels to be a stumbling-block.

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.

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,

This is why I have been so often prevented from visiting you.

When I do come to you, I know I will bring a full blessing from Christ.

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

grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

it is the mysterious Wisdom of God that we discuss, that hidden wisdom which God decreed from all eternity for our glory.

Now we have received the Spirit ??not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that comes from God, that we may understand what God bestows upon us.

In virtue of my commission from God, I laid the foundation of the house like an expert master-builder. It remains for another to build on this foundation. Whoever he is, let him be careful how he builds.

if a man's work is burnt up, he will be a loser ??and though he will be saved himself, he will be snatched from the very flames.

So do not criticize at all; the hour of reckoning has still to come, when the Lord will come to bring dark secrets to the light and to reveal life's inner aims and motives. Then each of us will get his meed of praise from God.

I will come to you before long, if the Lord wills, and then I will find out from these puffed up creatures not what their talk but what their power amounts to.

Clean out the old dough that you may be a fresh lump. For you are free from the old leaven; Christ our paschal lamb has been sacrificed.

as for outsiders, God will judge them. Expel the wicked from your company.

And yet, when you have mundane issues to settle, you refer them to the judgment of men who from the point of view of the church are of no account!

Do you not know your body is the temple of the holy Spirit within you ??the Spirit you have received from God? You are not your own,

Do not withhold sexual intercourse from one another, unless you agree to do so for a time in order to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again. You must not let Satan tempt you through incontinence.

For married people these are my instructions (and they are the Lord's, not mine). A wife is not to separate from her husband ??11 if she has separated, she must either remain single or be reconciled to him ??and a husband must not put away his wife.

I have no orders from the Lord for unmarried women, but I will give you the opinion of one whom you can trust, after all the Lord's mercy to him.

I want you to be free from all anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the Lord's affairs, how best to satisfy the Lord;

Thus both are right alike in marrying and in refraining from marriage, but he who does not marry will be found to have done better.

(So-called gods there may be, in heaven or on earth ??as indeed there are plenty of them, both gods and 'lords' ??6 but for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all comes, and for whom we exist; one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom all exists, and by whom we exist.)

What! are we the only ones, myself and Barnabas, who are denied the right of abstaining from work for our living?

Does a soldier provide his own supplies? Does a man plant a vineyard without eating its produce? Does a shepherd get no drink from the milk of the flock?

Do you not know that as men who perform temple-rites get their food from the temple, and as attendants at the altar get their share of the sacrifices,

And my reward? This, that I can preach the gospel free of charge, that I can refrain from insisting on all my rights as a preacher of the gospel.

Why, free as I am from all, I have made myself the slave of all, to win over as many as I could.

and all drank the same supernatural drink (drinking from the supernatural Rock which accompanied them ??and that Rock was Christ),

Now this took place as a warning for us, to keep us from craving for evil as they craved.

(Man was not made from woman, woman was made from man;

(Of course, in the Lord, woman does not exist apart from man, any more than man apart from woman;

for as woman was made from man, so man is now made from woman, while both, like all things, come from God.)

I passed on to you what I received from the Lord himself, namely, that on the night he was betrayed the Lord Jesus took a loaf,

Let a man test himself; then he can eat from the loaf and drink from the cup.

I may prophesy, fathom all mysteries and secret lore, I may have such absolute faith that I can move hills from their place, but if I have no love, I count for nothing;

You challenge this rule? Pray, did God's word start from you? Are you the only people it has reached?

Now if we preach that Christ rose from the dead, how can certain individuals among you assert that 'there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead'?

If 'there is no such thing as a resurrection from the dead,' then even Christ did not rise;

But it is not so! Christ did rise from the dead, he was the first to be reaped of those who sleep in death.

For since death came by man, by man came also resurrection from the dead;

There is a splendour of the sun and a splendour of the moon and a splendour of the stars ??for one star differs from another in splendour.

Man the first is from the earth, material; Man the second is from heaven.

On the first day of the week let each of you put aside a sum from his weekly gains, so that the money may not have to be collected when I come.

grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

he rescued me from so terrible a death, he rescues still, and I rely upon him for the hope that he will continue to rescue me.

I intended to take you on my way to Macedonia, and to visit you again on my way back from Macedonia, so as to be sped by you on my journey to Judaea.

I call God to witness against my soul, it was to spare you that I refrained from revisiting Corinth.

This censure from the majority is severe enough for the individual in question,

Am I beginning again to 'commend' myself? Do I need, like some people, to be commended by written certificates either to you or from you?

It is not that I am personally qualified to form any judgment by myself; my qualifications come from God,

Now if the administration of death which was engraved in letters of stone, was invested with glory ??so much so, that the children of Israel could not gaze at the face of Moses on account of the dazzling glory that was fading from his face;

Such being my hope then, I am quite frank and open ??13 not like Moses, who used to hang a veil over his face to keep the children of Israel from gazing at the last rays of a fading glory.

Besides, their minds were dulled, for to this very day, when the Old Testament is read aloud, the same veil hangs. Veiled from them the fact that the glory fades in Christ!