1Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle and set apart for the good news of God,
2This Good News was promised beforehand by God through his prophets in the holy Scriptures.
3It is about his Son, a descendant of David by physical birth.
4He was powerfully shown to be the Son of God by the Holy Spirit when he was raised from the dead. This is Jesus Christ our Lord.
5Through him, we received God’s grace and the special work of an apostle. Our mission is to lead people from all nations to obey God through faith, for his name’s sake.
6You are among those from all nations who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
7To all of you in Rome, you who are loved by God and called to be holy: May you have grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
8First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because the news of your faith is being talked about all over the world.
9God, whom I serve with my whole spirit by spreading the Good News about his Son, is my witness that I always mention you constantly in my prayers.
10I always ask that by God’s will, I may finally succeed in coming to visit you.
11For I deeply desire to see you, so that I may share some spiritual gift with you to make you strong.
12I want to be encouraged together with you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine.
13Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that I often planned to visit you—but I’ve been prevented until now—so that I might have some spiritual fruit among you, just as I have among other non-Jewish people.
14I have a duty to serve both Greeks and non-Greeks, both the educated and the uneducated.
15That is why I am so eager to preach the Good News to you also who are in Rome.
16For I am not ashamed of the Good News about Christ, because it is God’s power that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jews, and also to the non-Jews.
17For in the Good News, God’s righteousness is revealed, a righteousness that starts with faith and ends with faith. As the Scriptures say, “The righteous person will live by faith.”
18For God’s anger is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wrongdoing of people who suppress the truth by their wrongdoing.
19This is because what can be known about God is obvious to them, since God has made it clear to them.
20For ever since the world was created, people have been able to understand God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—by looking at what he has made. So they have no excuse.
21Even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or thank him. Instead, their thinking became pointless, and their foolish minds were darkened.
22Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
23and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for images made to look like corruptible humans, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.
24Therefore, God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts, to impurity, so that they dishonored their bodies among themselves.
25They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and they worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26For this reason, God gave them over to shameful passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
27In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were consumed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the appropriate penalty for their error.
28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a corrupt mind, to do things that are not proper.
29They are filled with all kinds of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, and malice. They are full of envy, murder, conflict, deceit, and ill-will. They are gossips,
30slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
31senseless, faithless, heartless, and merciless.
32Even though they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.