10. in all my prayers. I’m always asking that somehow, by God’s will, I might succeed in visiting you at last.
11. I really want to see you to pass along some spiritual gift to you so that you can be strengthened.
12. What I mean is that we can mutually encourage each other while I am with you. We can be encouraged by the faithfulness we find in each other, both your faithfulness and mine.
13. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that I planned to visit you many times, although I have been prevented from coming until now. I want to harvest some fruit among you, just as I have done among the other Gentiles.
14. I have a responsibility both to Greeks and to those who don’t speak Greek, both to the wise and to the foolish.
15. That’s why I’m ready to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.
16. I’m not ashamed of the gospel: it is God’s own power for salvation to all who have faith in God, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
17. God’s righteousness is being revealed in the gospel, from faithfulness for faith, as it is written, The righteous person will live by faith.
18. God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the ungodly behavior and the injustice of human beings who silence the truth with injustice.
19. This is because what is known about God should be plain to them because God made it plain to them.
20. Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities—God’s eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through the things God has made. So humans are without excuse.
21. Although they knew God, they didn’t honor God as God or thank him. Instead, their reasoning became pointless, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22. While they were claiming to be wise, they made fools of themselves.
23. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images that look like mortal humans: birds, animals, and reptiles.
24. So God abandoned them to their hearts’ desires, which led to the moral corruption of degrading their own bodies with each other.