¹From Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, who has been appointed as an apostle and set apart for the good news of God.

²Long ago God announced the good news about his Son through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.

³His Son was born into the family line of King David,

⁴and he was appointed by the Holy Spirit to be the mighty Son of God when God raised him from the dead. This is Jesus Christ our Lord.

⁵Through him we received grace to become apostles to the Gentiles and through that grace to bring them to obedience to God by trusting in Jesus. We do this to bring glory to him.

⁶You are among those Gentiles who have been chosen to belong to Jesus Christ.

⁷To all of you in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people.

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

Paul Is Eager to Visit Rome

⁸First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. All over the world, people are talking about your faith.

⁹I serve God with my whole heart as I preach the good news about his Son. And God is my witness that I remember you constantly in my prayers.

¹⁰I’m praying that now at last God will open a way for me to come and visit you.

¹¹I’m eager to see you so that I can give you some spiritual gift that will make you strong.

¹²I want us to encourage one another in the faith that we share.

¹³Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that I’ve planned many times to visit you. But until now, I’ve been kept from coming. My work has produced results among the other Gentiles, and in the same way, I want to see results among you.

¹⁴I have a duty to preach the good news to people whether they’re civilized or uncivilized, educated or uneducated.

¹⁵So I’m eager to preach the good news to you who live in Rome as well.

¹⁶I’m not ashamed of the good news. It’s the power of God that can save everyone who believes, first the Jews and then also the Gentiles.

¹⁷The good news reveals how God makes people right with himself. This happens by faith from beginning to end, just as it is written, “The one who is right with God will live by faith.”

God’s Anger Against Human Wrongdoing

¹⁸God is showing his anger from heaven against all the godless and wrong things that people do. People are so bad that they say no to the truth about God,

¹⁹even though that truth is obvious to them, because God has made it obvious.

²⁰Ever since the world was created, the invisible qualities of God have been visible in everything he has made. Those qualities are his eternal power and his nature as God. So people have no excuse for what they do.

²¹They knew God, but they didn’t honor him as God, and they didn’t thank him. Their thinking became useless and their foolish hearts were darkened.

²²They claimed to be wise, but they turned into fools.

²³Instead of the glorious God who lives forever, they wanted to have statues of gods that looked people, birds, animals, and reptiles.

²⁴So God allowed them to do what their sinful hearts wanted. He let them commit sexual sins, and they made one another’s bodies impure by what they did.

²⁵They chose a lie instead of the truth about God. They worshiped and served created things instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.

²⁶So God let them be taken over by their shameful desires. Their women committed sexual acts that were not natural.

²⁷In the same way, the men turned away from their natural love for women. They burned with sexual desire for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and they suffered in their bodies for all the wrong things they did.

²⁸They didn’t think it was important to know God, so God left them unable to discern right from wrong.

²⁹They did things that shouldn’t be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, fighting, deception, and bad motives.

³⁰They gossip and lie about other people, and they hate God. They’re rude and arrogant. They brag about themselves. They keep thinking of new ways to do wrong. They don’t honor their parents.

³¹They have no understanding, they can’t be trusted, and they’re not loving or kind.

³²They know that God’s commands are right, and that people who do wrong things like this deserve to die. But they continue to do those things anyway, and they even approve of others who do them.