Romans 1
1
1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called as an Apostle, separated for the Gospel of God,
2 which he had promised beforehand, through his Prophets, in the Holy Scriptures,
3 about his Son, who was made for him from the offspring of David according to the flesh,
4 the Son of God, who was predestined in virtue according to the Spirit of sanctification from the resurrection of the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ,
5 through whom we have received grace and Apostleship, for the sake of his name, for the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles,
6 from whom you also have been called by Jesus Christ:
7 To all who are at Rome, the beloved of God, called as saints. Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
8 Certainly, I give thanks to my God, through Jesus Christ, first for all of you, because your faith is being announced throughout the entire world.
9 For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit by the Gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I have kept a remembrance of you
10 always in my prayers, pleading that in some way, at some time, I may have a prosperous journey, within the will of God, to come to you.
11 For I long to see you, so that I may impart to you a certain spiritual grace to strengthen you,
12 specifically, to be consoled together with you through that which is mutual: your faith and mine.
13 But I want you to know, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, (though I have been hindered even to the present time) so that I might obtain some fruit among you also, just as also among the other Gentiles.
14 To the Greeks and to the uncivilized, to the wise and to the foolish, I am in debt.
15 So within me there is a prompting to evangelize to you also who are at Rome.
16 For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. For it is the power of God unto salvation for all believers, the Jew first, and the Greek.
17 For the justice of God is revealed within it, by faith unto faith, just as it was written: "For the just one lives by faith."
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven over every impiety and injustice among those men who fend off the truth of God with injustice.
19 For what is known about God is manifest in them. For God has manifested it to them.
20 For unseen things about him have been made conspicuous, since the creation of the world, being understood by the things that were made; likewise his everlasting virtue and divinity, so much so that they have no excuse.
21 For although they had known God, they did not glorify God, nor give thanks. Instead, they became weakened in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was obscured.
22 For, while proclaiming themselves to be wise, they became foolish.
23 And they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of flying things, and of four-legged beasts, and of serpents.
24 For this reason, God handed them over to the desires of their own heart for impurity, so that they afflicted their own bodies with indignities among themselves.
25 And they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And they worshipped and served the creature, rather than the Creator, who is blessed for all eternity. Amen.
26 Because of this, God handed them over to shameful passions. For example, their females have exchanged the natural use of the body for a use which is against nature.
27 And similarly, the males also, abandoning the natural use of females, have burned in their desires for one another: males doing with males what is disgraceful, and receiving within themselves the recompense that necessarily results from their error.
28 And since they did not prove to have God by knowledge, God handed them over to a morally depraved way of thinking, so that they might do those things which are not fitting:
29 having been completely filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness; full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, spite, gossiping;
30 slanderous, hateful toward God, abusive, arrogant, self-exalting, devisers of evil, disobedient to parents,
31 foolish, disorderly; without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.
32 And these, though they had known the justice of God, did not understand that those who act in such a manner are deserving of death, and not only those who do these things, but also those who consent to what is done.
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Romans 1
1
1I, Paul, am a devoted slave of Jesus Christ on assignment, authorized as an apostle to proclaim God’s words and acts. I write this letter to all the believers in Rome, God’s friends.
2-7The sacred writings contain preliminary reports by the prophets on God’s Son. His descent from David roots him in history; his unique identity as Son of God was shown by the Spirit when Jesus was raised from the dead, setting him apart as the Messiah, our Master. Through him we received both the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on to others who receive it by entering into obedient trust in Jesus. You are who you are through this gift and call of Jesus Christ! And I greet you now with all the generosity of God our Father and our Master Jesus, the Messiah.
8-12I thank God through Jesus for every one of you. That’s first. People everywhere keep telling me about your lives of faith, and every time I hear them, I thank him. And God, whom I so love to worship and serve by spreading the good news of his Son—the Message!—knows that every time I think of you in my prayers, which is practically all the time, I ask him to clear the way for me to come and see you. The longer this waiting goes on, the deeper the ache. I so want to be there to deliver God’s gift in person and watch you grow stronger right before my eyes! But don’t think I’m not expecting to get something out of this, too! You have as much to give me as I do to you.
13-15Please don’t misinterpret my failure to visit you, friends. You have no idea how many times I’ve made plans for Rome. I’ve been determined to get some personal enjoyment out of God’s work among you, as I have in so many other non-Jewish towns and communities. But something has always come up and prevented it. Everyone I meet—it matters little whether they’re mannered or rude, smart or simple—deepens my sense of interdependence and obligation. And that’s why I can’t wait to get to you in Rome, preaching this wonderful good news of God.
16-17It’s news I’m most proud to proclaim, this extraordinary Message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him, starting with Jews and then right on to everyone else! God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what Scripture has said all along: “The person in right standing before God by trusting him really lives.”
Ignoring God Leads to a Downward Spiral
18-23But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying accumulate, as people try to put a shroud over truth. But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.
24-25So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!
26-27Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.
28-32Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.