The Letter of Paul to the Romans, chapters 1 - 6
1 FROM PAUL, SERVANT of Christ Jesus, apostle by God's call,
set apart for the service of the Gospel.
This Gospel God announced beforehand in sacred scriptures
through his prophets. It is about his Son: on the human level he was
declared Son of God by a mighty act in that he rose from the dead: it is
about Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him I received the privilege of a
commission in his name to lead to faith and obedience men in all nations,
yourselves among them, you who have heard the call and belong to Jesus
Christ.
I send greetings to all of you in Rome whom God loves and has called
to be his dedicated people. Grace and peace to you from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let me begin by thanking my God, through Jesus Christ, for you all,
because all over the world they are telling the story of your faith. God is
my witness, the God to whom I offer the humble service of my spirit by
preaching the gospel of his Son: God knows how continually I make
mention of you in my prayers, and am always asking that by his will I may,
somehow or other, succeed at long last in coming to visit you. For I long to
see you; I want to bring you some spiritual gift to make you strong; or
rather, I want to be among you to be myself encouraged by your faith as
well as you by mine.
But I should like you to know, my brothers, that I have often planned
to come, though so far without success, in the hope of achieving something
among you, as I have in other parts of the world. I am under obligation to
Greek and non-Greek, to learned and simple; hence my eagerness to
declare the Gospel to you in Rome as well as to others. For I am not
ashamed of the Gospel. It is the saving power of God for everyone who
has faith — the Jew first, but the Greek also — because here is revealed
God's way of righting wrong, a way that starts from faith and ends
in faith; as Scripture says, 'he shall gain life who is justified through
faith'.
FOR WE SEE divine retribution revealed from heaven and falling upon all
the godless wickedness of men. In their wickedness they are stifling the
truth. For all that may be known of God by men lies plain before their eyes;
indeed God himself has disclosed it to them. His invisible attributes, that
is to say his everlasting power and deity, have been visible, ever since the
world began, to the eye of reason, in the things he has made. There is
therefore no possible defence for their conduct; knowing God, they have
refused to honour him as God, or to render him thanks. Hence all their
thinking has ended in futility, and their misguided minds are plunged in
darkness. They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of them-
selves, exchanging the splendour of immortal God for an image shaped
like mortal man, even for images like birds, beasts, and creeping things.
For this reason God has given them up to the vileness of their own
desires, and the consequent degradation of their bodies, because they have
bartered away the true God for a false one, and have offered reverence and
worship to created things instead of to the Creator, who is blessed for
ever; amen.
In consequence, I say, God has given them up to shameful passions.
Their women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and their
men in turn, giving up natural relations with women, burn with lust for
one another; males behave indecently with males, and are paid in their
own persons the fitting wage of such perversion.
Thus, because they have not seen fit to acknowledge God, he has given
them up to their own depraved reason. This leads them to break all rules
of conduct. They are filled with every kind of injustice, mischief, rapacity,
and malice; they are one mass of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and
malevolence; whisperers and scandal-mongers, hateful to God, insolent,
arrogant, and boastful; they invent new kinds of mischief, they show no
loyalty to parents, no conscience, no fidelity to their plighted word; they
are without natural affection and without pity. They know well enough the
just decree of God, that those who behave like this deserve to die, and yet
they do it; not only so, they actually applaud such practices.
2 You therefore have no defence — you who sit in judgement, whoever
you may be — for in judging your fellow-man you condemn yourself, since
you, the judge, are equally guilty. It is admitted that God's judgement is
rightly passed upon all who commit such crimes as these; and do you
imagine — you who pass judgement on the guilty while committing the
same crimes yourself — do you imagine that you, any more than they, will
escape the judgement of God? Or do you think lightly of his wealth of
kindness, of tolerance, and of patience, without recognizing that God's
kindness is meant to lead you to a change of heart? In the rigid obstinacy
of your heart you are laying up for yourself a store of retribution for the
day of retribution, when God's just judgement will be revealed, and he will
pay every man for what he has done. To those who pursue glory, honour,
and immortality by steady persistence in well-doing, he will give eternal
life; but for those who are governed by selfish ambition, who refuse
obedience to the truth and take the wrong for their guide, there will be
the fury of retribution. There will be trouble and distress for every human
being who is an evil-doer, for the Jew first and for the Greek also; and for
every well-doer there will be glory, honour, and peace, for the Jew first
and also for the Greek.
For God has no favourites: those who have sinned outside the pale of
the Law of Moses will perish outside its pale, and all who have sinned
under that law will be judged by the law. It is not by hearing the law, but
by doing it, that men will be justified before God. When Gentiles who do
not possess the law carry out its precepts by the light of nature, then,
although they have no law, they are their own law, for they display the
effect of the law inscribed on their hearts. Their conscience is called as
witness, and their own thoughts argue the case on either side, against them
or even for them, on the day when God judges the secrets of human hearts
through Christ Jesus. So my gospel declares.
But as for you — you may bear the name of Jew; you rely upon the law
and are proud of your God; you know his will; instructed by the law, you
know right from wrong; you are confident that you are the one to guide
the blind, to enlighten the benighted, to train the stupid, and to teach the
immature, because in the law you see the very shape of knowledge and
truth. You, then, who teach your fellow-man, do you fail to teach your-
self? You proclaim, 'Do not steal'; but are you yourself a thief? You say,
'Do not commit adultery'; but are you an adulterer? You abominate false
gods; but do you rob their shrines? While you take pride in the law, you
dishonour God by breaking it. For, as Scripture says, 'Because of you the
name of God is dishonoured among the Gentiles.'
Circumcision has value, provided you keep the law; but if you break the
law, then your circumcision is as if it had never been. Equally, if an un-
circumcised man keeps the precepts of the law, will he not count as cir-
cumcised? He may be uncircumcised in his natural state, but by fulfilling
the law he will pass judgement on you who break it, for all your written
code and your circumcision. The true Jew is not he who is such in externals,
neither is the true circumcision the external mark in the flesh. The true
Jew is he who is such inwardly, and the true circumcision is of the heart,
directed not by written precepts but by the Spirit; such a man receives his
recommendation not from men but from God.
3 Then what advantage has the Jew? What is the value of circumcision?
Great, in every way. In the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the
oracles of God. What if some of them were unfaithful? Will their faithless-
ness cancel the faithfulness of God? Certainly not! God must be true
though every man living were a liar; for we read in Scripture, 'When thou
speakest thou shalt be vindicated, and win the verdict when thou art
on trial.'
Another question: if our injustice serves to bring out God's justice, what
are we to say? Is it unjust of God (I speak of him in human terms) to bring
retribution upon us? Certainly not! If God were unjust, how could he
judge the world?
Again, if the truth of God brings him all the greater honour because of
my falsehood, why should I any longer be condemned as a sinner? Why
not indeed 'do evil that good may come', as some libellously report me as
saying? To condemn such men as these is surely no injustice.
What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all! For we have
already drawn up the accusation that Jews and Greeks alike are all under
the power of sin. This has scriptural warrant:
'There is no just man, not one;
no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
All have swerved aside, all alike have become debased;
there is no one to show kindness; no, not one.
Their throat is an open grave,
they use their tongues for treachery,
adders' venom is on their lips,
and their mouth is full of bitter curses.
Their feet hasten to shed blood,
ruin and misery lie along their paths,
they are strangers to the high-road of peace,
and reverence for God does not enter their thoughts.'
Now all the words of the law are addressed, as we know, to those who
are within the pale of the law, so that no one may have anything to say in
self-defence, but the whole world may be exposed to the judgement of
God. For (again from Scripture) 'no human beings can be justified in the
sight of god' for having kept the law: law brings only the consciousness
of sin.
BUT NOW, quite independently of law, God's justice has been brought to
light. The Law and the prophets both bear witness to it: it is God's way
of righting wrong, effective through faith in Christ for all who have such
faith — all, without distinction. For all alike have sinned, and are deprived
of the divine splendour, and all are justified by God's free grace alone,
through his act of liberation in the person of Christ Jesus. For God
designed him to be the means of expiating sin by his sacrificial death,
effective through faith. God meant by this to demonstrate his justice,
because in his forbearance he had overlooked the sins of the past — to
demonstrate his justice now in the present, showing that he is himself
just and also justifies any man who puts his faith in Jesus.
What room then is left for human pride? It is excluded. And on what
principle? The keeping of the law would not exclude it, but faith does.
For our argument is that a man is justified by faith quite apart from
success in keeping the law.
Do you suppose God is the God of Jews alone? Is he not the God of
Gentiles also? Certainly, of Gentiles also, if it be true that God is one. And
he will therefore justify both the circumcised in virtue of their faith, and
the uncircumcised through their faith. Does this mean that we are using
faith to undermine law? By no means: we are placing law itself on a firmer
footing.
4 WHAT, THEN, are we to say about Abraham, our ancestor in the natural
line? If Abraham was justified by anything he had done, then he has a
ground for pride. But he has no such ground before God; for what does
Scripture say? 'Abraham put faith in God, and that faith was counted
to him as righteousness.' Now if a man does a piece of work, his wages are
not 'counted' as a favour; they are paid as debt. But if without any work to
his credit he simply puts his faith in him who acquits the guilty, then his
faith is indeed 'counted as righteousness'. In the same sense David speaks
of hte happiness of the man whom God 'counts' as just, apart from any
specific act of justice: 'Happy are they', he says, 'whose lawless deeds are
forgiven, whose sins are buried away; happy is the man whose sins the
Lord does not count against him.' Is this happiness confined to the
circumcised, or is it the uncircumcised also? Consider: we say, 'Abra-
ham's faith was counted as righteousness;, in what circumstance was it so
counted? Was he circumcised at the time, or not? He was not yet cir-
cumcised, but uncircumcised; and he later received the symbolic rite of
circumcision as the hall-mark of the righteousness which faith had given
him when he was still uncircumcised. Consequently, he is the father of all
who have faith when uncircumcised, so that righteousness is 'counted' to
them; and at the same time he is the father of such of the circumcised as
do not rely upon their circumcision alone, but also walk in the footprints
of the faith which our father Abraham had while he was yet uncircumcised.
For it was not through law that Abraham, or his posterity, was given the
promise that the world should be his inheritance, but through the righteous-
ness that came from faith. For if those who hold by the law, and they alone,
are heirs, then faith is empty and the promise goes for nothing, because
law can bring only retribution; but where there is no law there can be no
breach of law. The promise was made on the ground of faith, in order that
it might be a matter of sheer grace, and that it might be valid for all Abra-
ham's posterity, not only for those who hold the law, but for those also
who have the faith of Abraham. For he is the father of us all, as Scripture
says: 'I have appointed you to be father of many nations.' This promise,
then, was valid before God, the God in whom he put his faith, the God
who makes the dead live and summons things that are not yet in existence
as if they already were. When hope seemed hopeless, his faith was such
that he became 'father of many nations', in agreement with the words
which had been spoken to him: 'Thus shall your descendants be.' With-
out any weakening of faith he contemplated his own body, as good as dead
(for he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb,
and never doubted God's promise in unbelief, but, strong in faith, gave
honour to God, in the firm conviction of his power to do what he had
promised. And that is why Abraham's faith was 'counted to him as
righteousness'.
Those words were written, not for Abraham's sake alone, but for our
sake too: it is to be 'counted' in the same way to us who have faith in the
God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead; for he was given up to
death for our misdeeds, and raised to life to justify us.
5 THEREFORE, NOW THAT we have been justified through faith, let us
continue at peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through
whom we have been allowed to enter the sphere of God's grace, where we
now stand. Let us exult in the hope of the divine splendour that is to be
ours. More than this: let us even exult in our present sufferings, because
we know that suffering trains us to endure, and endurance brings proof
that we have stood the test, and this proof is the ground of hope. Such a
hope is no mockery, because God's love has flooded our inmost heart
through the Holy Spirit he has given us.
For at the very time when we were still powerless, then Christ died for
the wicked. Even for a just man one of us would hardly die, though perhaps
for a good man one might actually brave death; but Christ died for us while
we were yet sinners, and that is God's own proof of his love towards us.
And so, since we have now been justified by Christ's sacrificial death, we
shall all the more certainly be saved through him from final retribution.
For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through
the death of his Son, how much more, now that we are reconciled, shall
we be saved by his life! But that is not all: we also exult in God through our
Lord Jesus, through whom we have now been granted reconciliation.
Mark what follows. It was through one man that sin entered the world,
and through sin death, and thus death pervaded the whole human race,
inasmuch as all men have sinned. For sin was already in the world before
there was law, though in the absence of law no reckoning is kept of sin.
But death held sway from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not
sinned as Adam did, by disobeying a direct command — and Adam fore-
shadows the Man who was to come.
But God's act of grace is out of all proportion to Adam's wrongdoing.
For if the wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many, its
effect is vastly exceeded by the grace of God and the gift that came to so
many by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. And again, the gift of God
is not to be compared in its effect with that one man's sin; for the judicial
action, following upon the one offence, issued a verdict of condemna-
tion, but the act of grace, following upon so many misdeeds, issued in a
verdict of acquittal. For if by the wrongdoing of that one man death
established it reign, through a single sinner, much more shall those who
receive in far greater measure God's grace, and his gift of righteousness,
live and reign through the one man, Jesus Christ.
It follows, then that as the issue of one misdeed was condemnation for
all men, so the issue of just one act is acquittal and life for all men. For as
through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so
through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
Law intruded into this process to multiply law-breaking. But where sin
was thus multiplied, grace immeasurably exceeded it, in order that, as sin
established its reign by way of death, so God's grace might establish its
reign in righteousness, and issue in eternal life through Jesus Christ
our Lord.
6 What are we to say, then? Shall we persist in sin, so that there may be
all the more grace? No, no! We died to sin: how can we live in it any
longer? Have you forgotten that when we were baptized into union with
Christ Jesus we were baptized into his death? By baptism we were buried
with him, and lay dead, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead
in the splendour of the Father, so also we might set our feet upon the new
path of life.
For if we have become incorporate with him in a death like his, we shall
also be one with him in a resurrection like his. We know that the man we
once were has been crucified with Christ, for the destruction of the sinful
self, so that we may no longer be the slaves of sin, since a dead man is no
longer answerable for his sin. But if we thus died with Christ, we believe
that we shall also come to life with him. We know that Christ, once raised
from the dead, is never to die again: he is no longer under the dominion of
death. For in dying as he died, he died to sin, once for all, and in living as
he lives, he lives to God. In the same way you must regard yourselves as
dead to sin and alive to God, in union with Christ Jesus.
So sin must no longer reign in your mortal body, exacting obedience to
the body's desires. You must no longer put its several parts at sin's disposal,
as implements for doing wrong. No: put yourselves at the disposal of God,
as dead men raised to life; yield your bodies to him as implements for doing
right; for sin shall no longer be your master, because you are no longer
under law, but under the grace of God.
What then? Are we to sin, because we are not under law but under
grace? Of course not. You know well enough that if you put yourselves at
the disposal of a master, to obey him, you are slaves of the master whom
you obey; and this is true whether you serve , with death as the result;
or obedience, with righteousness as its result. But God be thanked, you,
who once were slaves of sin, have yielded whole-hearted obedience to the
pattern of teaching to which you were made subject, and, emancipated
from sin, have become slaves of righteousness (to use words that suit your
human weakness) — I mean, as you once yielded your bodies to the service
of impurity and lawlessness, making for moral anarchy, so now you must
yield them to the service of righteousness, making for a holy life.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free from the control of righteous-
ness; and what was the gain? Nothing but what now makes you ashamed,
for the end of that is death. But now. freed from the commands of sin, and
bound to the service of God, your gains are such as to make for holiness, and
the end is eternal life. For sin pays a wage, and the wage is death, but God
gives freely, and his gift is eternal life, in union with Christ Jesus our
Lord.
The New English Bible (with Apocrypha)
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970
Posted Dec 21, 2018, 7:06 PM UTC · edited
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