Outline
I.
Introduction (1:1-15)
- Commendation, Greetings and Doxology (ch. 16)
Romans 1
1 This letter is from Paul, a slave of
Christ Jesus, chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach his Good
News.
2 God promised this Good News long ago
through his prophets in the holy Scriptures.
3 The Good News is about his Son. In his
earthly life he was born into King David’s family line,
4 and he was shown to be the Son of God
when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. He is Jesus
Christ our Lord.
5 Through Christ, God has given us the
privilege and authority as apostles to tell Gentiles everywhere what God has
done for them, so that they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his
name.
6 And you are included among those
Gentiles who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ.
7 I am writing to all of you in Rome who
are loved by God and are called to be his own holy people. May God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.
8 Let me say first that I thank my God
through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith in him is being talked
about all over the world.
9 God knows how often I pray for you. Day
and night I bring you and your needs in prayer to God, whom I serve with all my
heart by spreading the Good News about his Son.
10 One of the things I always pray for is
the opportunity, God willing, to come at last to see you.
11 For I long to visit you so I can bring
you some spiritual gift that will help you grow strong in the Lord.
12 When we get together, I want to
encourage you in your faith, but I also want to be encouraged by yours.
13 I want you to know, dear brothers and
sisters, that I planned many times to visit you, but I was prevented until now.
I want to work among you and see spiritual fruit, just as I have seen among
other Gentiles.
14 For I have a great sense of obligation
to people in both the civilized world and the rest of the world, to the
educated and uneducated alike.
15 So I am eager to come to you in Rome,
too, to preach the Good News.
16 For I am not ashamed of this Good News
about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the
Jew first and also the Gentile.
17 This Good News tells us how God makes us
right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the
Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”
18 But God shows his anger from heaven
against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their
wickedness.
19 They know the truth about God because he
has made it obvious to them.
20 For ever since the world was created,
people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can
clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So
they have no excuse for not knowing God.
21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t
worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish
ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and
confused.
22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became
utter fools.
23 And instead of worshiping the glorious,
ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds
and animals and reptiles.
24 So God abandoned them to do whatever
shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading
things with each other’s bodies.
25 They traded the truth about God for a
lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator
himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen.
26 That is why God abandoned them to their
shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and
instead indulged in sex with each other.
27 And the men, instead of having normal
sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful
things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within
themselves the penalty they deserved.
28 Since they thought it foolish to
acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do
things that should never be done.
29 Their lives became full of every kind of
wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious
behavior, and gossip.
30 They are backstabbers, haters of God,
insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they
disobey their parents.
31They refuse to understand, break their
promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.
32 They know God’s justice requires that
those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet,
they encourage others to do them, too.
