The righteousness of God revealed: justified by faith in Romans 1-4

1Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, and set apart for the gospel of God— ²the gospel He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, ³regarding His Son, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh, ⁴and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. ⁵Through Him and on behalf of His name, we received grace and apostleship to call all those among the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. ⁶And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. ⁷To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. ⁸First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being proclaimed all over the world. ⁹God, whom I serve with my spirit in preaching the gospel of His Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you ¹⁰in my prayers at all times, asking that now at last by God’s will I may succeed in coming to you. ¹¹For I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, ¹²that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. ¹³I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, how often I planned to come to you (but have been prevented from visiting until now), in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles. ¹⁴I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. ¹⁵That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. ¹⁶I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Greek. ¹⁷For the gospel reveals the righteousness of God that comes by faith from start to finish, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” ¹⁸The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. ¹⁹For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse. ²¹For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts. ²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images of mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. ²⁴Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another. ²⁵They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise! Amen. ²⁶For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. ²⁸Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. ²⁹They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They invent new forms of evil; they disobey their parents. ³¹They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless. ³²Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things are worthy of death, they not only continue to do these things, but also approve of those who practice them.

2You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on another. For on whatever grounds you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. ²And we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. ³So when you, O man, pass judgment on others, yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? ⁴Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance? ⁵But because of your hard and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. ⁶God “will repay each one according to his deeds.” ⁷To those who by perseverance in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, He will give eternal life. ⁸But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow wickedness, there will be wrath and anger. ⁹There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, first for the Jew, then for the Greek; ¹⁰but glory, honor, and peace for everyone who does good, first for the Jew, then for the Greek. ¹¹For God does not show favoritism. ¹²All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. ¹³For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but it is the doers of the law who will be declared righteous. ¹⁴Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. ¹⁵So they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or defending them ¹⁶on the day when God will judge men’s secrets through Christ Jesus, as proclaimed by my gospel. ¹⁷Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; ¹⁸if you know His will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; ¹⁹if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those in darkness, ²⁰an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— ²¹you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? ²²You who forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? ²³You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? ²⁴As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” ²⁵Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. ²⁶If a man who is not circumcised keeps the requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? ²⁷The one who is physically uncircumcised yet keeps the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker. ²⁸A man is not a Jew because he is one outwardly, nor is circumcision only outward and physical. ²⁹No, a man is a Jew because he is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise does not come from men, but from God.

3What, then, is the advantage of being a Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? ²Much in every way. First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God. ³What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness? ⁴Certainly not! Let God be true and every man a liar. As it is written: “So that You may be proved right when You speak and victorious when You judge.” ⁵But if our unrighteousness highlights the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unjust to inflict His wrath on us? I am speaking in human terms. ⁶Certainly not! In that case, how could God judge the world? ⁷However, if my falsehood accentuates God’s truthfulness, to the increase of His glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner? ⁸Why not say, as some slanderously claim that we say, “Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is deserved! ⁹What then? Are we any better? Not at all. For we have already made the charge that Jews and Greeks alike are all under sin. ¹⁰As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one. ¹¹There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. ¹²All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” ¹³“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The venom of vipers is on their lips.” ¹⁴“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” ¹⁵“Their feet are swift to shed blood; ¹⁶ruin and misery lie in their wake, ¹⁷and the way of peace they have not known.” ¹⁸“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” ¹⁹Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. ²⁰Therefore no one will be justified in His sight by works of the law. For the law merely brings awareness of sin. ²¹But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, as attested by the Law and the Prophets. ²²And this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no distinction, ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. ²⁵God presented Him as the atoning sacrifice through faith in His blood, in order to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins committed beforehand. ²⁶He did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and to justify the one who has faith in Jesus. ²⁷Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of works? No, but on that of faith. ²⁸For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. ²⁹Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, ³⁰since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. ³¹Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Certainly not! Instead, we uphold the law.

4What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, has discovered? ²If Abraham was indeed justified by works, he had something to boast about, but not before God. ³For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” ⁴Now the wages of the worker are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. ⁵However, to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. ⁶And David speaks likewise of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: ⁷“Blessed are they whose lawless acts are forgiven, whose sins are covered. ⁸Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.” ⁹Is this blessing only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. ¹⁰In what context was it credited? Was it after his circumcision, or before? It was not after, but before. ¹¹And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. So then, he is the father of all who believe but are not circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them. ¹²And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. ¹³For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world was not given through the law, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. ¹⁴For if those who live by the law are heirs, faith is useless and the promise is worthless, ¹⁵because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression. ¹⁶Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may rest on grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. ¹⁷As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the presence of God, in whom he believed, the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not yet exist. ¹⁸Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” ¹⁹Without weakening in his faith, he acknowledged the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) and the lifelessness of Sarah’s womb. ²⁰Yet he did not waver through disbelief in the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, ²¹being fully persuaded that God was able to do what He had promised. ²²This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” ²³Now the words “it was credited to him” were written not only for Abraham, ²⁴but also for us, to whom righteousness will be credited—for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. ²⁵He was delivered over to death for our trespasses and was raised to life for our justification.