Study Desk

So men, there is nothing to worry about. I trust God, and I am sure everything will happen just as his angel told me.

After he said this, Paul took some bread and thanked God for it before all of them. He broke off a piece and began eating.

The people thought he would swell up or fall down dead. They waited and watched him for a long time, but nothing bad happened to him. So they changed their opinion. They said, "He is a god!"

The brothers and sisters in Rome heard about us and came out to meet us at the Market of Appius and at the Three Inns. When Paul saw these believers, he thanked God and felt encouraged.

"I want you Jews to know that God has sent his salvation to the non-Jewish people. They will listen!"

Greetings from Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. God chose me to be an apostle and gave me the work of telling his Good News.

God promised long ago through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures to give this Good News to his people.

Through Christ, God gave me the special work of an apostle—to lead people of all nations to believe and obey him. I do all this to honor Christ.

This letter is to all of you in Rome. God loves you, and he has chosen you to be his holy people. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

First I want to say that I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. I thank him because people everywhere in the world are talking about your great faith.

Every time I pray, I always remember you. God knows this is true. He is the one I serve with all my heart by telling people the Good News about his Son. I pray that I will be allowed to come to you. It will happen if God wants it.

I am proud of the Good News, because it is the power God uses to save everyone who believes—to save the Jews first, and now to save those who are not Jews.

The Good News shows how God makes people right with himself. God's way of making people right begins and ends with faith. As the Scriptures say, "The one who is right with God by faith will live forever."

God shows his anger from heaven against all the evil and wrong things that people do. Their evil lives hide the truth they have.

This makes God angry because they have been shown what he is like. Yes, God has made it clear to them.

There are things about God that people cannot see—his eternal power and all that makes him God. But since the beginning of the world, those things have been easy for people to understand. They are made clear in what God has made. So people have no excuse for the evil they do.

People knew God, but they did not honor him as God, and they did not thank him. Their ideas were all useless. There was not one good thought left in their foolish minds.

Instead of honoring the divine greatness of God, who lives forever, they traded it for the worship of idols—things made to look like humans, who get sick and die, or like birds, animals, and snakes.

People wanted only to do evil. So God left them and let them go their sinful way. And so they became completely immoral and used their bodies in shameful ways with each other.

They traded the truth of God for a lie. They bowed down and worshiped the things God made instead of worshiping the God who made those things. He is the one who should be praised forever. Amen.