I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.

In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.

No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.

No One Is Righteous

What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;

there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.

All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.

Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation.

However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.

David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

Blessed is the one whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”

As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Death Through Adam, Life Through Christ

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—

Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.