13. Brothers, I want you to know that I planned many times to come to you. But this has not been possible. I wanted to come so that I could help you grow spiritually. I wanted to help you as I have helped the other non-Jewish people.
14. I must serve all people—Greeks and non-Greeks, the wise and the foolish.
15. That is why I want so much to preach the Good News to you in Rome.
16. I am not ashamed of the Good News. It is the power God uses to save everyone who believes—to save the Jews first, and then to save the non-Jews.
17. The Good News shows how God makes people right with himself. God’s way of making people right with him begins and ends with faith. As the Scripture says, “The person who is made right with God by faith will live forever.”
18. God’s anger is shown from heaven against all the evil and wrong things that people do. By their own evil lives they hide the truth.
19. God shows his anger because everything that may be known about God has been made clear. Yes, God has clearly shown them everything that may be known about him.
20. There are things about God that people cannot see—his eternal power and all the things that make him God. But since the beginning of the world those things have been easy to understand. They are made clear by what God has made. So people have no excuse for the bad things they do.
21. They knew God. But they did not give glory to God, and they did not thank him. Their thinking became useless. Their foolish minds were filled with darkness.
22. They said they were wise, but they became fools.
23. They gave up the glory of God who lives forever. They traded that glory for the worship of idols made to look like earthly people. They traded God’s glory for things that look like birds, animals, and snakes.
24. People were full of sin, wanting only to do evil. So God left them to follow their evil desires, and they made one another’s bodies impure by what they did.
25. They traded the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served things that were made by man. But they did not worship and serve the God who made those things. God should be praised forever. Amen.