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| DB1 | New English Bible
18 FOR 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. 19 For all that may be known of God by men lies plain before their eyes; indeed God himself has disclosed it to them. 20 His 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; 21 knowing 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. 22 They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of themselves, 23 exchanging the splendour of immortal God for an image shaped like mortal man, even for images like birds, beasts, and creeping things.
24 For this reason God has given them up to the vileness of their own desires, and the consequent degradation of their bodies, 25 because 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.
26 In consequence, I say. God has given them up to shameful passions. Their women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, 27 and 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.
28 Thus, 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. 29 They are filled with every kind of injustice, mischief, rapacity, and malice; they are one mass of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and malevolence; whisperers 30 and scandal-mongers, hateful to God, insolent, arrogant, and boastful; they invent new kinds of mischief, they show no loyalty to parents, 31 no conscience, no fidelity to their plighted word; they are without natural affection and without pity. 32 They 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.
21 You therefore have no defence - you who sit in judgement, whoever you may be - for in judging your fellow-man you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, are equally guilty. 2 It is admitted that God's judgement is rightly passed upon all who commit such crimes as these; 3 and do you imagine - you who pass judgement on the guilty while committing the same crimes yourself - do you imagine that you, any more than they, will escape the judgement of God? 4 Or do you think lightly of his wealth of kindness, of tolerance, and of patience, without recognizing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to a change of heart? 5 In the rigid obstinacy of your heart you are laying up for yourself a store of retribution for the day of retribution, when God's just judgement will be revealed, 6 and he will pay every man for what he has done. 7 To those who pursue glory, honour, and immortality by steady persistence in well-doing, he will give eternal life; 8 but for those who are governed by selfish ambition, who refuse obedience to the truth and take the wrong for their guide, there will be the fury of retribution. 9 There will be grinding misery for every human being who is an evil-doer, for the Jew first and for the Greek also; 10 and for every well-doer there will be glory, honour, and peace, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
11 For God has no favourites: 12 those who have sinned outside the pale of the Law of Moses will perish outside its pale, and all who have sinned under that law will be judged by the law. 13 It is not by hearing the law, but by doing it, that men will be justified before God. 14 When Gentiles who do not possess the law carry out its precepts by the light of nature, then, although they have no law, they are their own law, 15 for they display the effect of the law inscribed on their hearts. Their conscience is called as witness, and their own thoughts argue the case on either side, against them or even for them, 16 on the day when God judges the secrets of human hearts through Christ Jesus. So my gospel declares.
17 But as for you - you may bear the name of Jew; you rely upon the law and are proud of your God; 18 you know his will; you are aware of moral distinctions because you receive instruction from the law; 19 you are confident that you are the one to guide the blind, to enlighten the benighted, 20 to train the stupid, and to teach the immature, because in the law you see the very shape of knowledge and truth. 21 You, then, who teach your fellow-man, do you fail to teach yourself? 22 You proclaim, 'Do not steal'; but are you yourself a thief? You say, 'Do not commit adultery'; but are you an adulterer? You abominate false gods; but do you rob their shrines? 23 While you take pride in the law, you dishonour God by breaking it. 24 For, as Scripture says, 'Because of you the name of God is dishonoured among the Gentiles.'
25 Circumcision has value, provided you keep the law; but if you break the law, then your circumcision is as if it had never been. 26 Equally, if an uncircumcised man keeps the precepts of the law, will he not count as circumcised? 27 He may be uncircumcised in his natural state, but by fulfilling the law he will pass judgement on you who break it, for all your written code and your circumcision. 28 The true Jew is not he who is such in externals, neither is the true circumcision the external mark in the flesh. 29 The true Jew is he who is such inwardly, and the true circumcision is of the heart, directed not by written precepts but by the Spirit; such a man receives his commendation not from men but from God.
31 Then what advantage has the Jew? 2 What is the value of circumcision? Great, in every way. In the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. 3 What if some of them were unfaithful ? Will their faithlessness cancel the faithfulness of God? 4 Certainly not! God must be true though every man living were a liar; for we read in Scripture, 'When thou speakest thou shalt be vindicated, and win the verdict when thou art on trial.'
5 Another question: if our injustice serves to bring out God's justice, what are we to say? Is it unjust of God (I speak of him in human terms) to bring retribution upon us? 6 Certainly not! If God were unjust, how could he judge the world?
7 Again, if the truth of God brings him all the greater honour because of my falsehood, why should I any longer be condemned as a sinner? 8 Why not indeed 'do evil that good may come', as some libellously report me as saying? To condemn such men as these is surely no injustice.
9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all! For we have already formulated the charge that Jews and Greeks alike are all under the power of sin. 10 This has scriptural warrant:
21 BUT NOW, quite independently of law. God's justice has been brought to light. The Law and the prophets both bear witness to it: 22 it is God's way of righting wrong, effective through faith in Christ for all who have such faith - all, without distinction. 23 For all alike have sinned, and are deprived of the divine splendour, 24 and all are justified by God's free grace alone, through his act of liberation in the person of Christ Jesus. 25 For God designed him to be the means of expiating sin by his sacrificial death, effective through faith. God meant by this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had overlooked the sins of the past - 26 to demonstrate his justice now in the present, showing that he is both himself just and justifies any man who puts his faith in Jesus.
27 What room then is left for human pride? It is excluded. And on what principle? The keeping of the law would not exclude it, but faith does. 28 For our argument is that a man is justified by faith quite apart from success in keeping the law.
29 Do you suppose God is the God of the Jews alone? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Certainly, of Gentiles also, if it be true that God is one. 30 And he will therefore justify both the circumcised in virtue of their faith, and the uncircumcised through their faith. 31 Does this mean that we are using faith to undermine law? By no means: we are placing law itself on a firmer footing.
41 WHAT, THEN, are we to say about Abraham, our ancestor in the natural line? 2 If Abraham was justified by anything he had done, then he has a ground for pride. 3 But he has no such ground before God; for what does Scripture say? 'Abraham put his faith in God, and that faith was counted to him as righteousness.' 4 Now if a man does a piece of work, his wages are not 'counted' as a favour; they are paid as debt. 5 But if without any work to his credit he simply puts his faith in him who acquits the guilty, then his faith is indeed 'counted as righteousness'. 6 In the same sense David speaks of the happiness of the man whom God 'counts' as just, apart from any specific acts of justice: 7 'Happy are they', he says, 'whose lawless deeds are forgiven, whose sins are buried away; 8 happy is the man whose sins the Lord does not count against him.' 9 Is this happiness confined to the circumcised, or is it for the uncircumcised also? Consider: we say, 'Abraham's faith was counted as righteousness'; 10 in what circumstances was it so counted? Was he circumcised at the time, or not? He was not yet circumcised, but uncircumcised; 11 and he later received the symbolic rite of circumcision as the hall-mark of the righteousness which faith had given him when he was still uncircumcised. Consequently, he is the father of all who have faith when uncircumcised, so 12 and at the same time he is the father of such of the circumcised as do not rely upon their circumcision alone, but also walk in the footprints of the faith which our father Abraham had while he was yet uncircumcised.
13 For it was not through law that Abraham, or his posterity, was given the promise that the world should be his inheritance, but through the righteousness that came from faith. 14 For if those who hold by the law, and they alone, are heirs, then faith is empty and the promise goes for nothing, 15 because law can is bring only retribution; but where there is no law there can be no breach of law. 16 The promise was made on the ground of faith, in order that if might be a matter of sheer grace, and that it might be valid for all Abraham's posterity, not only for those who hold by the law, but for those also who have the faith 17 For he is the father of us all, as Scripture says: 'I have appointed you to be father of many nations.' This promise, then, was valid before God, the God in whom he put his faith, the God who makes the dead live and summons thing 18 When hope seemed is hopeless, his faith was such that he became 'father of many nations', in agreement with the words which had been spoken to him: 'Thus shall your posterity be.' 19 Without any weakening of faith he contemplated his own body, as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb, 20 and never doubted God's promise, but, strong in faith, gave honour to God, 21 in the firm conviction of his power to do what he had promised. 22 And that is why Abraham's faith was 'counted to him as righteousness'.
23 Those words were written, not for Abraham's sake alone, but for our sake too: 24 it is to be 'counted' in the same way to us who have faith in the God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead; 25 for he was delivered to death for our-misdeeds, and raised to life to justify us.
51 THEREFORE, NOW THAT we have been justified through faith, let us continue at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have been allowed to enter the sphere of God's grace, where we now stand. Let us exult in the hope of the divine Splendour that is to be ours. 3 More than this: let us even exult in our present sufferings, because we know that suffering trains us to endure, 4 and endurance brings proof that we have stood the test, and this proof is the ground of hope. 5 Such a hope is no mockery, because God's love has flooded our inmost heart through the Holy Spirit he has given us.
6 For at the very time when we were still powerless, then Christ died for the wicked. 7 Even for a just man one of us would hardly die, though perhaps for a good s man one might actually brave death; 8 but Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that is God's own proof of his love towards us. 9 And so, since we have now been justified by Christ's sacrificial death, we shall all the more certainly be saved through him from final retribution. 10 For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 But that is not all: we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus, through whom we have now been granted reconciliation.
12 Mark what follows. It was through one man that sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus death pervaded the whole human race, inasmuch as all men have sinned. 13 For sin was already in the world before there was law, though in the absence of law no reckoning is kept of sin. 14 But death held sway from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned as Adam did, by disobeying a direct command-and Adam foreshadows the Man who was to come.
15 But God's act of grace is out of all proportion to is Adam's wrongdoing. For if the wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many, its effect is vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so many by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. 16 And again, the gift of God is not to be compared in its effect with that one man's sin; for the judicial action, following upon the one offence, issued in a verdict of condemnation, but the act of grace, following upon so many mi 17 For if by the wrongdoing of that one man death established its reign, through a single sinner, much more shall those who receive in far greater measure God's grace, and his gift of righteousness, live and reign through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 It follows, then, that as the issue of one misdeed was condemnation for all men, so the issue of one just act is acquittal and life for all men. 19 For as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20 Law intruded into this process to multiply law-breaking. But where sin was thus multiplied, grace immeasurably exceeded it, 21 in order that, as sin established its reign by way of death, so God's grace might establish its reign in righteousness, and issue in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
61 What are we to say, then? Shall we persist in sin, so that there may be all the more grace? 2 No, no! We died to sin: how can we live in it any longer? 3 Have you forgotten that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus we were baptized into his death? 4 By baptism we were buried with him, and lay dead, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead in-the splendour of the Father, so also we might set our feet upon the new path of life.
5 For if we have become incorporate with him in a death like his, we shall also be one with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that the man we once were has been crucified with Christ, for the destruction of the sinful self, so that we may no longer be the slaves of sin, 7 since a dead man is no longer answerable for his sin. 8 But if we thus died with Christ, we believe that we shall also come to life with him. 9 We know that Christ, once raised from the dead, is never to die again: he is no longer under the dominion of death. 10 For in dying as he died, he died to sin, once for all, and in living as he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way you must regard yourselves as dead to sin and alive to God, in union with Christ Jesus.
12 So sin must no longer reign in your mortal body, exacting obedience to the body's desires. 13 You must no longer put its several parts at sin's disposal, as implements for doing wrong. No: put yourselves at the disposal of God, as dead men raised to life; yield your bodies to him as implements for doing right; 14 for sin shall no longer be your master, because you are no longer under law, but under the grace of God.
15 What then? Are we to sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Of course not. 16 You know well enough that if you put yourselves at the disposal of a master, to obey him, you are slaves of the master whom you obey; and this is true whether you serve sin, with death as its result; or obedience, with righteousness as its result. 17 But God be thanked, you, who once were slaves of sin, have yielded wholehearted obedience to the pattern of teaching to which you were made subject, 18 and, emancipated from sin, is have become slaves of righteousness 19 (to use words that suit your human weakness) - I mean, as you once yielded your bodies to the service of impurity and lawlessness, making for moral anarchy, so now you must yield them to the service of righteousness, making for a holy life.
20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free from the control of righteousness; 21 and what was the gain? Nothing but what now makes you ashamed, for the end of that is death. 22 But now, freed from the commands of sin, and bound to the service of God, your gains are such as make for holiness, and the end is eternal life. 23 For sin pays a wage, and the wage is death, but God gives freely, and his gift is eternal life, in union with Christ Jesus our Lord.
71 You cannot be unaware, my friends - I am speaking to those who have some knowledge of law - that a person is subject to the law so long as he is alive, and no longer. 2 For example, a married woman is by law bound to her husband while he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the obligations of the marriage-law. 3 If, therefore, in her husband's life-time she consorts with another man, she will incur the charge of adultery; but if her husband dies she is free of the law, and she does not commit adultery by consorting with another man. 4 So you, my friends, have died to the law by becoming identified with the body of Christ, and accordingly you have found another husband in him who rose from the dead, so that we may bear fruit for God. 5 While we lived on the level of our lower nature, the sinful passions evoked by the law worked in our bodies, to bear fruit for death. 6 But now, having died to that which held us bound, we are discharged from the law, to serve God in a new way, the way of the spirit, in contrast to the old way, the way of a written code.
7 What follows? Is the law identical with sin? Of course not. But except through law I should never have become acquainted with sin. For example, I should never have known what it was to covet, if the law had not said, 'Thou shalt n 8 Through that commandment sin found its opportunity, and produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. In the absence of law, sin is a dead thing. 9 There was a time when, in the absence of law, I was fully alive; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 The commandment which should have led to life proved in my experience to lead to death, 11 because sin found its opportunity in the commandment, seduced me, and through the commandment killed me.
12 Therefore the law is in itself holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. 13 Are we to say then that this good thing was the death of me? By no means. It was sin that killed me, and thereby sin exposed its true character: it used a good thing to bring about my death, and so, through the commandment, sin became more sinful than ever.
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am not: 15 I am unspiritual, the purchased slave of sin. I do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine, for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest. 16 But if what I do is against my will, it means that I agree with the law and hold it to be admirable. 17 But as things are, it is no longer I who perform the action, but sin that lodges in me. 18 For I know that nothing good lodges in me - in my unspiritual nature, I mean - for though the will to do good is there, the deed is not. 19 The good which I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is the wrong which is against my will; 20 and if what I do is against my will, clearly it is no longer I who am the agent, but sin that has its lodging in me.
21 I discover this principle, then: that when I want to do the right, only the wrong is within my reach. 22 In my inmost self I delight in the law of God, 23 but I perceive that there is in my bodily members a different law, fighting against the law that my reason approves and making me a prisoner under the law that is in my members, the law of sin. 24 Miserable creature that I am, who is there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death? 25 God alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thanks be to God! In a word then, I myself, subject to God's law as a rational being, am yet, in my unspiritual nature, a slave to the law of sin.
81 The conclusion of the matter is this: there is no condemnation for those who are united with Christ Jesus, 2 because in Christ Jesus the life-giving law of the Spirit has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 What the law could never do, because our lower nature robbed it of all potency. God has done: by sending his own Son in a form like that of our own sinful nature, and as a sacrifice for sin, he has passed judgement against sin within that very nature, 4 so that the commandment of the law may find fulfilment in us, whose conduct, no longer under the control of our lower nature, is directed by the Spirit.
5 Those who live on the level of our lower nature have their outlook formed by it, and that spells death; 6 but those who live on the level of the spirit have the spiritual outlook, and that is life and peace. 7 For the outlook of the lower nature is enmity with God; it is not subject to the law of God; indeed it cannot be: 8 those who live on such a level cannot possibly please God.
9 But that is not how you live. You are on the spiritual level, if only God's Spirit dwells within you; and if a man does not possess the Spirit of Christ, he is no Christian. 10 But if Christ is dwelling within you, then although the body is a dead thing because you sinned, yet the spirit is life itself because you have been justified. 11 Moreover, if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells within you, then the God who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give new life to your mortal bodies through his indwelling Spirit.
12 It follows, my friends, that our lower nature has no claim upon us; we are not obliged to live on that level. 13 If you do so, you must die. But if by the Spirit you put to death all the base pursuits of the body, then you will live.
14 For all who are moved by the Spirit of God are is sons of God. 15 The Spirit you have received is not a spirit of slavery leading you back into a life of fear, but a Spirit that makes us sons, enabling us to cry 'Abba! Father!' 16 In that cry the Spirit of God joins with our spirit in testifying that we are God's children; and if children, then heirs. 17 We are God's heirs and Christ's fellow-heirs, if we share his sufferings now in order to share his splendour hereafter.
18 For I reckon that the sufferings we now endure bear no comparison with the splendour, as yet unrevealed, which is in store for us. 19 For the created universe waits with eager expectation for God's sons to be revealed. 20 It was made the victim of frustration, not by its own choice, but because of him who made it so; yet always there was hope, 21 because the universe itself is to be freed from the shackles of mortality and enter upon the liberty and splendour of the children of God. 22 Up to the present, we know, the whole created universe groans in all its parts as if in the pangs of childbirth. 23 Not only so, but even we, to whom the Spirit is given as firstfruits of the harvest to come, are groaning inwardly while we wait for God to make us his sons and set our whole body free. 24 For we have been saved, though only in hope. Now to see is no longer to hope: why should a man endure and wait for what he already sees? 25 But if we hope for something we do not yet see, then, in waiting for it, we show our endurance.
26 In the same way the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness. We do not even know how we ought to pray, but through our inarticulate groans the Spirit himself is pleading for us, 27 and God who searches our inmost being knows what the Spirit means, because he pleads for God's own people in God's own way; 28 and in everything, as we know, he co-operates for good with those who love God and are called according to his purpose. 29 For God knew his own before ever they were, and also ordained that they should be shaped to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the eldest among a large family of brothers; 30 and it is these, so fore-ordained, whom he has also called. And those whom he called he has justified, and to those whom he justified he has also given his splendour.
31 With all this in mind, what are we to say? If God is on our side, who is against us? 32 He did not spare his own Son, but surrendered him for us all; and with this gift how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give? 33 Who will be the accuser of God's chosen ones? It is God who pronounces acquittal: 34 then who can condemn? It is Christ-Christ who died, and, more than that, was raised from the dead-who is at God's right hand, and indeed pleads our cause. 35 Then what can sePte us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or hardship? Can persecution, hunger, nakedness, peril, or the sword? 36 'We are being done to death for thy sake all day long,' as Scripture says; 'we have been treated like sheep for slaughter' - 37 and yet, in spite of all, overwhelming victory is ours through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, 39 in heights or depths- nothing in all creation that can sePte us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.