7. This letter is to all of you in Rome whom God loves and has called to be his holy people.May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ show you kindness and give you peace.
8. First I want to say that I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. I thank God because people everywhere in the world are talking about your great faith.
9-10. God knows that every time I pray I always mention you. God is the One I serve with my whole heart by telling the Good News about his Son. I pray that I will be allowed to come to you, and this will happen if God wants it.
11. I want very much to see you, to give you some spiritual gift to make you strong.
12. I mean that I want us to help each other with the faith that we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you.
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.”