Hence I too endeavour to have a clear conscience before God and men all the time.

who ought to have been here before you with any charge they may have against me.

He gave orders to the officer to have Paul kept in custody but to allow him some freedom and not to prevent any of his own people from rendering him any service.

Paul's defence was, "I have committed no offence against the Law of the Jews, against the temple, or against Caesar."

Paul said, "I am standing before Caesar's tribunal; that is where I ought to be tried. I have done no wrong whatever to the Jews ??you know that perfectly well.

If I am a criminal, if I have done anything that deserves death, I do not object to die; but if there is nothing in any of their charges against me, then no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar!"

Then, after conferring with the council, Festus answered, "You have appealed to Caesar? Very well, you must go to Caesar! "

"King Agrippa and all here present," said Festus, "you see before you a man of whom the entire body of the Jews at Jerusalem and also here have complained to me. They loudly insist he ought not to live any longer.

Only, I have nothing definite to write to the sovereign about him. So I have brought him up before you all, and especially before you, O king Agrippa, in order that I may have something to write as the result of your cross-examination.

Then Agrippa said to Paul, "You have our permission to speak upon your own behalf." At this Paul stretched out his hand and began his defence.

Now get up and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you in order to appoint you to my service as a witness to what you have seen and to the visions you shall have of me.

To this day I have had the help of God in standing, as I now do, to testify alike to low and high, never uttering a single syllable beyond what the prophets and Moses predicted was to take place.

"At this rate," Agrippa remarked, "it won't be long before you believe you have made a Christian of me!"

"He might have been released," said Agrippa to Festus, "if he had not appealed to Caesar."

When they had gone without food for a long time, Paul stood up among them and said, "Men, you should have listened to me and spared yourselves this hardship and loss by refusing to set sail from Crete.

saying, 'Have no fear, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And God has granted you the lives of all your fellow-voyagers.'

Cheer up, men! I believe God, I believe it will turn out just as I have been told.

Just before daybreak Paul begged them all to take some food. "For fourteen days," he said, "you have been on the watch all the time, without a proper meal.

Three days later, he called the leading Jews together, and when they met he said to them, "Brothers, although I have done nothing against the People or our ancestral customs, I was handed over to the Romans as a prisoner from Jerusalem.

This is my reason for asking to see you and have a word with you. I am wearing this chain because I share Israel's hope."

They replied, "We have had no letters about you from Judaea, and no brother has come here with any bad report or story about you.

For the heart at this people is obtuse, their ears are heavy at hearing, their eyes they have closed, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they understand with their heart and turn again, and I cure them.

through whom I have received the favour of my commission to promote obedience to the faith for his sake among all the Gentiles,

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.

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.

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.

They claimed to be wise, but they have become fools;

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.

[Move vss 14,15 to follow vs 16] (When Gentiles who have no law obey instinctively the Law's requirements, they are a law to themselves, even though they have no law;

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?

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

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.

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

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.

All have sinned, all come short of the glory of God,

He only got circumcision as a sign or seal of the righteousness which belonged to his faith as an uncircumcised man. The object of this was to make him the father of all who believe as uncircumcised persons and thus have righteousness counted to them,

(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

As we are justified by faith, then, let us enjoy the peace we have with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him we have got access to this grace where we have our standing, and triumph in the hope of God's glory.

Surely you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death!

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

We believe that as we have died with Christ we shall also live with 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.

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

Thank God, though you did serve sin, you have rendered whole-hearted obedience to what you were taught under the rule of faith;

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.

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.

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

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!",

Present suffering, I hold, is a mere nothing compared to the glory that we are to have revealed.

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 know also that those who love God, those who have been called in terms of his purpose, have his aid and interest in everything.

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

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

God says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I choose to have mercy, I will have compassion on whom I choose to have compassion.

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.

What are we to conclude, then? That Gentiles who never aimed at righteousness have attained righteousness, that is, righteousness by faith;

whereas Israel who did aim at the law of righteousness have failed to reach that law.

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.

Now Christ is an end to law, so as to let every believer have righteousness.

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?

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.

And then Isaiah dares to say, I have been found by those who never sought me, I have shown myself to those who never inquired of me.

He also says of Israel, All the day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.

Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have demolished thine altars; I alone am left, and they seek my life.

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.

Now I ask, have they stumbled to their ruin? Never! The truth is, that by their lapse salvation has passed to the Gentiles, so as to make them jealous.

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,

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?

For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.

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.

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

Never revenge yourselves, beloved, but let the Wrath of God have its way; for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will exact a requital ??the Lord has said it. No,

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

So why do you criticize your brother? And you, why do you look down upon your brother? All of us have to stand before the tribunal of God ??11 for it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bend before me, every tongue shall offer praise to God.

Each of us then will have to answer for himself to God.

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.

Personally I am quite certain, my brothers, that even as it is you have ample goodness of heart, you are filled with knowledge of every kind, and you are well able to give advice to one another.

Still, by way of refreshing your memory, I have written you with a certain freedom, in virtue of my divine commission

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.

But now, as I have no further scope for work in these parts, and as for a number of years I have had a longing to visit you

whenever I went to Spain, I am hoping to see you on my way there, and to be sped forward by you after I have enjoyed your company for a while.

For Macedonia and Achaia have decided to make a contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem.

Such was their decision; and yet this is a debt they owe to these people, for if the Gentiles have shared their spiritual blessings, they owe them a debt of aid in material blessings.

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.

Brothers, I beg of you to keep your eye on those who stir up dissensions and put hindrances in your way, contrary to the doctrine which you have been taught. Avoid them.

in him you have received a wealth of all blessing, full power to speak of your faith and full insight into its meaning,

Why, look at your own ranks, my brothers; not many wise men (that is, judged by human standards), not many leading men, not many of good birth, have been called!