1FROM PAUL,
SERVANT of Christ Jesus,
apostle by God's call,
set apart for the service of the Gospel.
2This gospel God announced beforehand in sacred scriptures through his prophets. 3It is about his Son: on the human level he was born of David's stock, 4but on the level of the spirit—the Holy Spirit—he was declared Son of God by a mighty act in that he rose from the dead: it is about Jesus Christ our Lord. 5Through him I received the privilege of a commission in his name to lead to faith and obedience men in all nations, 6yourselves among them, you who have heard the call and belong to Jesus Christ.
7I send greetings to all of you in Rome whom God loves and has called to be his dedicated people. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
8Let me begin by thanking my God, through Jesus Christ, for you all, because all over the world they are telling the story of your faith. 9God is my witness, the God to whom I offer the humble service of my spirit by preaching the gospel of his Son: 10God knows how continually I make mention of you in my prayers, and am always asking that by his will I may, somehow or other, succeed at long last in coming to visit you. 11For I long to see you; I want to bring you some spiritual gift to make you strong; 12or rather, I want to be among you to be myself encouraged by your faith as well as you by mine.
13But I should like you to know, my brothers, that I have often planned to come, though so far without success, in the hope of achieving something among you, as I have in other parts of the world. 14I am under obligation to Greek and non-Greek, to learned and simple; 15hence my eagerness to declare the Gospel to you in Rome as well as to others.
16For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. It is the saving power of God for everyone who has faith?the Jew first, but the Greek also? 17 [ Hab.2.4. ] because here is revealed God's way of righting wrong, a way that starts from faith and ends in faith; as Scripture says, 'he shall gain life who is justified through faith'.
18FOR WE SEE divine retribution revealed from heaven is and falling upon all the godless wickedness of men. In their wickedness they are stifling the truth. 19For all that may be known of God by men lies plain before their eyes; indeed God himself has disclosed it to them. 20His invisible attributes, that is to say his everlasting power and deity, have been visible, ever since the world began, to the eye of reason, in the things he has made. There is therefore no possible defence for their conduct; 21knowing God, they have refused to honour him as God, or to render him thanks. Hence all their thinking has ended in futility, and their misguided minds are plunged in darkness. 22They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of themselves, 23exchanging the splendour of immortal God for an image shaped like mortal man, even for images like birds, beasts, and creeping things.
24For this reason God has given them up to the vileness of their own desires, and the consequent degradation of their bodies, 25because they have bartered away the true God for a false one, and have offered reverence and worship to created things instead of to the Creator, who is blessed for ever; amen.
26In consequence, I say. God has given them up to shameful passions. Their women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27and their men in turn, giving up natural relations with women, burn with lust for one another; males behave indecently with males, and are paid in their own persons the fitting wage of such perversion.
28Thus, because they have not seen fit to acknowledge God, he has given them up to their own depraved reason. This leads them to break all rules of conduct. 29They are filled with every kind of injustice, mischief, rapacity, and malice; they are one mass of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and malevolence; whisperers 30and scandal-mongers, hateful to God, insolent, arrogant, and boastful; they invent new kinds of mischief, they show no loyalty to parents, 31no conscience, no fidelity to their plighted word; they are without natural affection and without pity. 32They know well enough the just decree of God, that those who behave like this deserve to die, and yet they do it; not only so, they actually applaud such practices.
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