Romans 1

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¹This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach his Good News. ✦ ²God promised this Good News long ago through his prophets in the holy Scriptures. ✦ ³The Good News is about his Son. In his earthly life he was born into King David’s family line, ✦ ⁴and 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. ✦ ⁵Through 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. ✦ ⁶And you are included among those Gentiles who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ. ✦ ⁷I 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. ✦ ⁸Let 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. ✦ ⁹God 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. ✦ ¹⁰One of the things I always pray for is the opportunity, God willing, to come at last to see you. ✦ ¹¹For I long to visit you so I can bring you some spiritual gift that will help you grow strong in the Lord. ✦ ¹²When we get together, I want to encourage you in your faith, but I also want to be encouraged by yours. ✦ ¹³I 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. ✦ ¹⁴For 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. ✦ ¹⁵So I am eager to come to you in Rome, too, to preach the Good News. ✦ ¹⁶For 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. ✦ ¹⁷This 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.” ✦ ¹⁸But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. ✦ ¹⁹They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. ✦ ²⁰For 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. ✦ ²¹Yes, 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. ✦ ²²Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. ✦ ²³And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. ✦ ²⁴So 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. ✦ ²⁵They 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. ✦ ²⁶That 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. ✦ ²⁷And 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. ✦ ²⁸Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. ✦ ²⁹Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. ✦ ³⁰They 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. ✦ ³²They 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. ✦

Tap any verse for its study page. Underlined terms mark a concept, person, or place; ✦ marks verses with cross-references.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

In this chapter

Concept The Spirit of Holiness Concept Wrath

Where this chapter connects

Rom 1 ·28 Rom 15 ·17 Col 1 ·12 1 Tim 1 ·10 2 Th 2 ·9 Rom 2 ·9 Eph 1 ·9 2 Tim 1 ·8

Christ at the center

Paul unfolds the gospel in full: Christ our righteousness received by faith, the second Adam in whom many are made righteous, in whose death and resurrection we are buried and raised.

How Romans 1 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.

Resources, by level

Lay

★ Start hereVideoBibleProject — video overviews & word studiesBibleProject · 5–10 min · Free · evangelical
Free animated overviews of every book of the Bible, plus themes and Hebrew/Greek word studies — the best visual on-ramp to any book. (Biblical-theology, broadly evangelical, not distinctly Reformed.)
★ Start hereAudioThrough the WordThrough the Word · ~10 min/chapter · Free · evangelical
A clear ~10-minute audio teaching for every one of the Bible's 1,189 chapters — the most systematic free way to study chapter by chapter.
VideoMike Winger — BibleThinkerMike Winger · Free · reformed
Free verse-by-verse studies through whole books plus careful apologetics — "learn to think biblically about everything." (Reformed-leaning, non-denominational.)

Pastoral

★ Start hereSermonMLJ Trust — Martyn Lloyd-Jones sermonsMartyn Lloyd-Jones · Free · reformed
1,600+ free sermons from "the Doctor," including landmark verse-by-verse series (Romans, John, Ephesians, Acts) — a gold standard of expository preaching.
SermonGrace to You — John MacArthurJohn MacArthur · Free · reformed
Decades of careful verse-by-verse expository sermons, especially through the New Testament. (MacArthur, d. 2025; archive remains free.)
SermonGospel in Life — Tim KellerTim Keller · Free · reformed
Tim Keller's gospel-centered preaching — sermons stream free (the complete downloadable archive is paid).
ArticleRecommended NT commentaries (9Marks / Schreiner)Thomas R. Schreiner · Free · reformed
A trusted pastor-oriented guide to the best commentary on each New Testament book.
SermonChuck Smith — C2000 SeriesChuck Smith · Free · evangelical
Free verse-by-verse audio through the entire Bible from the founder of Calvary Chapel.
VideoVerse By Verse Ministry InternationalVerse By Verse Ministry Int'l · Free · evangelical
In-depth, verse-by-verse expository teaching book-by-book — strong for working straight through a whole New Testament book.
VideoLook at the Book — John PiperJohn Piper · Free · reformed
Watch Piper trace the logic of a passage phrase by phrase on screen — a model of close reading.

Commentaries & study tools

VideoBibleProject — Romans videosBibleProject · Lay · Free · evangelical
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
VideoWatch teaching on Romans 1YouTube · Lay · Free
Sermons and chapter teaching from across YouTube.
CommentaryEnduring Word — Romans 1David Guzik · Lay · Free · evangelical
Readable, verse-by-verse exposition of the whole chapter.
CommentaryMatthew Henry on RomansMatthew Henry · Pastoral · Free · evangelical
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
ReferenceBlue Letter Bible — Romans 1Blue Letter Bible · Seminary · Free
Interlinear, lexicon, and study tools across the chapter.

Romans 2 →