Letter to the Romans 1

¹ From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus who has been called to be an apostle, and specially chosen to preach the Good News that God

² promised long ago through his prophets in the scriptures.

³ This news is about the Son of God who, according to the human nature he took was a descendant of David:

⁴ it is about Jesus Christ our Lord who, in the order of the spirit, the spirit of holiness that was in him, was proclaimed Son of God in all his power through his resurrection from the dead.

⁵ Through him we received grace and our apostolic mission to preach the obedience of faith to all pagan nations in honour of his name.

⁶ You are one of these nations, and by his call belong to Jesus Christ.

⁷ To you all, then, who are God’s beloved in Rome, called to be saints, may God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ send grace and peace.

⁸ First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you and for the way in which your faith is spoken of all over the world.

⁹ The God I worship spiritually by preaching the Good News of his Son knows that I never fail to mention you in my prayers,

¹⁰ and to ask to be allowed at long last the opportunity to visit you, if he so wills.

¹¹ For I am longing to see you either to strengthen you by sharing a spiritual gift with you,

¹² or what is better, to find encouragement among you from our common faith.

¹³ I want you to know, brothers, that I have often planned to visit you – though until now I have always been prevented – in the hope that I might work as fruitfully among you as I have done among the other pagans.

¹⁴ I owe a duty to Greeks[*a] just as much as to barbarians, to the educated just as much as to the uneducated,

¹⁵ and it is this that makes me want to bring the Good News to you too in Rome.

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the Good News: it is the power of God saving all who have faith – Jews first, but Greeks as well –

¹⁷ since this is what reveals the justice of God to us: it shows how faith leads to faith, or as scripture says: The upright man finds life through faith.[*b]

¹⁸ The anger of God is being revealed from heaven against all the impiety and depravity of men who keep truth imprisoned in their wickedness.

¹⁹ For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them since God himself has made it plain.

²⁰ Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity – however invisible – have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made. That is why such people are without excuse:

²¹ they knew God and yet refused to honour him as God or to thank him; instead, they made nonsense out of logic and their empty minds were darkened.

²² The more they called themselves philosophers, the more stupid they grew,

²³ until they exchanged the glory[*c] of the immortal God for a worthless imitation, for the image of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds and reptiles.

²⁴ That is why God left them to their filthy enjoyments and the practices with which they dishonour their own bodies,

²⁵ since they have given up divine truth for a lie and have worshipped and served creatures instead of the creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen!

²⁶ That is why God has abandoned them to degrading passions: why their women have turned from natural intercourse to unnatural practices

²⁷ and why their menfolk have given up natural intercourse to be consumed with passion for each other, men doing shameless things with men and getting an appropriate reward for their perversion.

²⁸ In other words, since they refused to see it was rational to acknowledge God, God has left them to their own irrational ideas and to their monstrous behaviour.

²⁹ And so they are steeped in all sorts of depravity, rottenness, greed and malice, and addicted to envy, murder, wrangling, treachery and spite.

³⁰ Libellers, slanderers, enemies of God, rude, arrogant and boastful; enterprising in sin, rebellious to parents,

³² without brains, honour, love or pity.

³³ They know what God’s verdict is: that those who behave like this deserve to die – and yet they do it; and what is worse, encourage others to do the same.