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Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—
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and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.
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And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
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To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Paul’s Longing to Visit Rome
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world.
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Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
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Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
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In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
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This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
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The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.
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A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.
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No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.
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No One Is Righteous
What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.
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As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
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there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.
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All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
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Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
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This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile,
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and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
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God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—
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he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
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since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.
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Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation.
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However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.
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David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
