Chapter 1

1From Paul, a servant of Jesus the Messiah, called to be a commissioned messenger and set apart for God’s good news.

2God promised this good news beforehand through the prophets who spoke for him in the sacred writings.

3It concerns God’s Son, who in his human ancestry was born a descendant of David.

4By his resurrection from the dead, he was designated God’s Son in power, in accordance with the Holy Spirit. He is Jesus the Messiah, our Lord.

5Through him, God gave us his favor and commissioned us as messengers, so that people in every nation would respond with the obedience that comes from faith, for the honor of Jesus’ name.

6You are among those nations, and you too have been called to belong to Jesus the Messiah.

7I am writing to everyone in Rome whom God loves and has called to be his holy people. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus the Messiah give you kindness and peace.

8First, through Jesus the Messiah, I thank my God for all of you, because people throughout the world are talking about your faith.

9God can confirm how constantly I mention you. I serve him with my whole inner being by announcing the good news about his Son.

10In every prayer, I ask whether at last, by God’s will, the way may somehow be opened for me to visit you.

11I long to see you so that I may share some gift from God’s Spirit with you to make you stronger.

12That is, I want us to encourage one another through the faith we share—yours and mine.

13Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that I have often planned to visit you, but I have been prevented until now. I wanted my work to produce good results among you, just as it has among the other nations.

14I am under obligation to people of Greek culture and to those outside it, to the wise and the foolish alike.

15That is why I am eager to announce the good news also to you who are in Rome.

16I am not ashamed of the good news, because it is God’s power to rescue everyone who trusts him—the Jew first, and also the non-Jew.

17The good news reveals God’s way of putting people right with him, and this happens through faith from beginning to end. As Scripture says, “The person who is right with God will live by faith.”

18God’s anger is being revealed from heaven against all the ways people disregard him and act unjustly, suppressing the truth through their wrongdoing.

19What can be known about God is clear to them, because God has made it clear to them.

20Ever since the world was created, God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and the fact that he is divine—have been clearly understood from the things he made. So people have no excuse.

21Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or thank him. Instead, their thinking became empty, and their foolish hearts grew dark.

22While claiming to be wise, they became foolish.

23They traded the glory of the immortal God for images shaped like mortal people, birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures.

24As a result, God handed them over to the impure desires of their hearts, so that they dishonored one another’s bodies.

25They exchanged the truth about God for a lie. They revered and served what was created instead of the Creator, who is worthy of praise forever. Truly.

26For this reason, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for relations contrary to nature.

27In the same way, the men stopped having natural sexual relations with women and burned with desire for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men and received within themselves the consequence their error deserved.

28Because they did not consider it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God handed them over to a corrupt mind, so they did what should not be done.

29They became filled with every kind of injustice, wickedness, greed, and malice. They were full of envy, murder, conflict, deceit, and spite. They became secret gossips,

30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invented new ways to do evil and disobeyed their parents.

31They lacked understanding, broke their promises, had no love for their own families, and showed no mercy.

32They know God’s just ruling that people who practice such things deserve death. Yet they not only do these things but also approve of others who practice them.