Not Ashamed of the Good News

“Through him we received grace and the work of an apostle, for the obedience of faith among all the nations, for the sake of his name. You are among them too, called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all of you in Rome, loved by God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

“First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. The news of your faith is going out through the whole world. I serve God in my spirit in the Good News of his Son, and he is my witness that I mention you in my prayers always, without stopping. I ask that somehow, now at last, by the will of God, I may be able to come to you.

“I long to see you. I want to give you some spiritual gift, so that you will stand firm. That is, I want us to be encouraged together while I am among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine.

“Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that I have often planned to come to you, though until now I have been kept from coming. I wanted to have some fruit among you too, just as among the rest of the Gentiles. I owe a debt both to Greeks and to foreigners, both to the wise and to the foolish. So, as far as it is up to me, I am eager to preach the Good News to you who are in Rome as well.”

“The anger of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and wrongdoing of people who hold down the truth in their wrongdoing. That is because what is known of God is revealed in them. God revealed it to them. Since the world was created, the unseen things about him, his everlasting power and divinity, are clearly seen. People recognize them through the things that are made, that they may be without excuse.

“They knew God, and yet they didn’t glorify him as God, and they didn’t give thanks. Instead their reasoning became empty, and their senseless heart was darkened. They called themselves wise, but they became fools. They traded the glory of the God who never decays for the likeness of an image of a man who decays, and of birds, four-footed animals and creeping things.

“Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves; who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

“For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural function of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men doing what is inappropriate with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.

“They refused to keep God in their knowledge, so God gave them up to a worthless mind, to do things that should not be done. They are filled with wrongdoing of every kind, with sexual sin, wickedness, greed and spite. They are full of envy, murder, fighting, deceit and wicked habits. They whisper lies about people and run them down behind their backs. They are hateful to God, insulting, arrogant and boastful. They invent evil things. They disobey their parents. They are without understanding, they don’t keep their word, they have no natural love, they won’t forgive, and they show no mercy.

“They know God’s ruling, that those who do such things deserve to die, and yet they not only do the same, but also approve of those who do them.”

“You judge those who do such things, and yet you do the same. Do you think you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you look down on the riches of his goodness, his tolerance and his patience? Don’t you know that God’s goodness leads you to repentance? But because your heart is hard and unrepentant, you are saving up anger for yourself for the day of anger, of revelation, and of God’s righteous judgment.

“He ‘will pay back to everyone according to their works.’ He will give eternal life to those who keep doing what is good and look for glory, honor and what can never decay. But there will be anger and fury for those who are selfish, who don’t obey the truth but obey wrongdoing. Hardship and anguish will come on every person who does evil, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. But glory, honor and peace go to everyone who does good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. God has no favorites.

“Everyone who has sinned without the law will also perish without the law. Everyone who has sinned under the law will be judged by the law. It isn’t the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified on the day when God will judge people’s secrets by Jesus Christ, as my Good News says. When Gentiles, who don’t have the law, do by nature what is in the law, they are a law to themselves, even without the law. They show the work of the law written in their hearts. Their conscience testifies with them, and their thoughts among themselves accuse them or else excuse them.”

“So you who teach others, don’t you teach yourself? You who preach that people shouldn’t steal, do you steal? You who say people shouldn’t commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who hate idols, do you rob temples? You who are proud of the law, do you dishonor God by disobeying it? ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,’ just as it is written.

“Circumcision is worth something if you do what the law says, but if you disobey the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. If, then, a man who isn’t circumcised keeps the law’s commands, won’t his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision? Won’t those who are uncircumcised in body, but carry out the law, judge you? You have the law in writing, and circumcision, and still you break the law.

“A Jew is not someone who is one outwardly, and circumcision is not what is outward, in the flesh. But a Jew is someone who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter. The praise for that person comes not from people, but from God.”

“But if our wrongdoing makes the righteousness of God plain to see, what will we say? Is God unrighteous when he brings his anger? I am talking the way people talk. Never! Then how would God judge the world? If through my lie the truth of God has overflowed to his glory, why am I still judged as a sinner? Why not say, ‘Let’s do evil, that good may come’? Some falsely report that we say this, and some claim we do. Those who say so are rightly condemned.

“Now we know that everything the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. That way every mouth may be closed, and all the world may come under the judgment of God. That is because no person will be justified in God’s sight by the works of the law, since the knowledge of sin comes through the law.

“But now apart from the law, a righteousness of God has been revealed, being testified by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all those who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God sent to be an atoning sacrifice through faith in his blood, for a demonstration of his righteousness through the passing over of prior sins, in God’s forbearance; to demonstrate his righteousness at this present time, that he might himself be just and the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus.

“Where then is the boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. We maintain therefore that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

“Or is God the God of Jews only? Isn’t he the God of the Gentiles as well? Yes, of the Gentiles as well, because there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then cancel the law through faith? Never! No, we establish the law.”

“Now when someone works, what he earns isn’t counted as grace, but as something owed. But when someone doesn’t work, but believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, that person’s faith is counted for righteousness.

“Then is this blessing pronounced only on the circumcised, or on the uncircumcised too? We say that faith was counted to Abraham for righteousness. So how was it counted? While he was circumcised, or while he was uncircumcised? Not while he was circumcised, but while he was uncircumcised.

“Abraham received the sign of circumcision. It was a seal of the righteousness of the faith he had while he was uncircumcised. This was so that he would be the father of all who believe though they are uncircumcised, and so that righteousness would be counted to them too. He is also the father of the circumcised: of those who are not only of the circumcision, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, the faith he had while he was uncircumcised.

“The promise to Abraham and to his offspring was that he would be heir of the world. That promise came through the righteousness of faith, not by way of the law. If those who are of the law are heirs, then faith is emptied and the promise comes to nothing. The law produces anger. Where there is no law, there is no disobedience either.

“That is why it is by faith. That way it may be according to grace, and the promise may be sure to all the offspring. It is sure not only to those of the law, but also to those of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. As it is written, ‘I have made you a father of many nations.’ This is true in the presence of the one he believed: God, who gives life to the dead, and calls the things that are not as though they were.

“When there was no hope, Abraham believed in hope, so that he would become a father of many nations, just as he had been told: ‘So will your offspring be.’ His faith didn’t grow weak. He didn’t consider his own body, already worn out at about a hundred years old, or that Sarah’s womb could no longer bear children. Yet he looked to God’s promise and didn’t waver through unbelief. He grew strong through faith and gave glory to God. He was fully assured that God could also carry out what he had promised.

“That is why it was also ‘credited to him for righteousness.’ Now when it was written that it was counted to him, that was not for his sake alone, but for our sake too. It will be counted to us as well, we who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Jesus was given up for our wrongdoings, and was raised for our justification.”

“Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope. And hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who was given to us.

“At the right time, while we were still weak, Christ died for the ungodly. Hardly anyone will die for a righteous person, yet perhaps for a good person someone would even dare to die. But God makes his own love toward us clear: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

“Much more, then, now that we are justified by his blood, we will be saved from God’s anger through him. If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were enemies, then much more, now that we are reconciled, we will be saved by his life. Not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have now received the reconciliation.

“Therefore, as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death passed to all men because all sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not charged when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren’t like Adam’s disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him who was to come.

“But the free gift isn’t like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not as through one who sinned; for the judgment came by one to condemnation, but the free gift followed many trespasses to justification. For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.

“So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, all men were justified to life. For as through the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, many will be made righteous. The law came in that the trespass might abound; but where sin abounded, grace abounded more exceedingly, that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”