Romans 1

[image by Don Sniegowski]

From Paul

This letter is from Paul, a slave of the Chosen One, Jesus. I’ve been called as a messenger devoted to spreading the good news that God promised a long time ago through His prophets and scriptures. The prophets and scriptures both told about how God’s son would descend from David’s lineage, and that he would be declared as God’s powerful Son by resurrecting from the dead through the sacred spirit. Though Jesus, we received God’s favor and a mission. Our mission is to lead nonbelievers to believe so strongly that they obey God and boost Jesus’s reputation. You guys used to be among those unbelievers, but now you’re one of the Chosen One’s invited. 

To believers in Rome

I write this letter to all of God’s cherished people in Rome who have been invited into holiness. I wish you favor and peace from God our Dad, and the Jesus, the Chosen One who is our master. 

Paul wants to visit Rome

First off, I thank God via Jesus the Chosen One for all of you because the whole world is talking about the way you guys depend on God. God is the one my spirit serves (as you can see by the way I preach the good news of his Son), and God knows how relentlessly I mention you whenever I ask him to finally let me come visit you. I’ve been dying to visit you guys so that I can give you a spiritual present for your fortification. I’m sure we’d both be mutually encouraged by the other’s dependence on God. I want you to know that I’ve been trying to come visit you, but I keep getting prevented. I want to visit so I can see your fruit just like I’ve done with the rest of the non-Israelites. I’m indebted to both the Greeks and non-Greeks—the wise and the foolish. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m also eager to share the good news with you guys in Rome too. 

Depending on God generates life

I’m not ashamed of the good news because it’s God’s method for rescuing everyone who depends on him—especially for Israelites but also for non-Israelites. One piece of the good news is that when we depend on God, His goodness is revealed… and when we see His goodness, it causes us to depend on him. That’s why it’s written that:

“The upright man will live by dependence.”

—Habakkuk 2:4

People Chose Perishable Replicas Over the Immortal God

The heavens peel back and God’s fury comes down against all of humanity’s corruption for suppressing the truth. There’s so much we can learn about God from everything around us, because God put it all in plain sight. God’s intangible qualities such as His divinity and eternal power have been clearly on display ever since the beginning of the universe. God’s qualities can be observed all throughout creation, which leaves people no excuse.

Even though God made Himself known through creation, they didn’t honor Him as God or thank Him—instead, they thought about foolish things, and their hearts were darkened as they failed to have true understanding. They claimed to be intelligent, yet they foolishly traded the splendor of an immortal God for perishable replicas like human beings, four-legged animals, and reptiles. 

So God handed them and their lustful hearts over to impurity, allowing their bodies to be dishonored. They traded God’s truth for a lie by working for the creation and worshiping it instead of the Creator Himself who is eternally superior. 

People Abandoned God, so God Abandoned Them to Death

Their women exchanged their natural sexual functions for unnatural ones, and their men abandoned their natural orientations to let their appetites burn for other men. Men did shameful things with other men and their souls received the natural consequences of their misdirected ways.

They didn’t care to stay acquainted with God any more, so God handed them over to their broken mindsets. They did unfitting things that filled them with all kinds of corruption, wickedness, greed, and evil. They became full of jealousy, murder, conflict, deceit, and bad intentions. They were whisperers, reputation-attackers, and God-haters. They arrogantly talked a big game and were violent. They invented new kinds of destruction, and defied their own parents. They had little understanding, and they were unreliable, unloving, and ruthless. They knew that God said whoever engages in those things deserves death, yet that didn’t stop them. Not only did they practice those things themselves, but they also validated anybody else who did.