Romans 1:16-32, Revised from "The Practice of the Way"

Because I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the divine power¹ for the rescue of every single person who trusts, both Iudaean first and Greek. Because the divine state of right being is revealed with the Gospel starting from trust and ending with trust, just like it is written, “and the person set right will be alive by trust.”

Because the divine overwhelming passion is revealed from the heavenly realm against every irreverence and wrongdoing² of human beings who keep Reality suppressed with that wrongdoing, for the reason that what is known of the God is visible inside them; because the God made it visible to them. Because His unseen things, or also His endless power and state of being God (the mind being aware of them) are observed from the creation of the universe by the things made, as far as them to be without defense for the reason that experiencing the God they didn’t think of Him like God or thank Him, but were brought to nothing with their thoughts and their witless heart was darkened. Asserting to be wise they became stupid and exchanged the reputation of the undecaying God with the likeness of an icon of a decaying human being, and birds and mammals and reptiles.

Therefore the God handed them over with the desires of their hearts into this filthy pus of them treating their bodies as worthless among themselves; such ones as exchanged the reality of the God with the lie and revered and ministered as priests to the creation aside from the One having created, who is blessed into the eons, amen. Because of this the God handed them over into worthless experiences, because their females too exchanged the natural employment into what is beside nature³, likewise too the males also letting go the natural employment of the female were kindled with their affinity for one another, males with males accomplishing an obscenity and getting from their going astray with themselves the compensation which was necessary⁴. And just like they didn’t examine whether or not they possessed the God with the knowledge gained by observation, the God handed them over to a failed mind, to do unbecoming things. Having been filled with every single wrongdoing, good-for-nothingness, avarice, harm, full of envy, murder, discord, cheating, malice, whisperers, slanderers, God-haters, violent, arrogant, braggarts, inventors of harm, disobedient to parents, witless, disloyal, unloving, unmerciful; such ones as knowing the regulation of God by observation that those practicing such things as these are worthy of death, don’t just do them but also approve of those who practice them.

1Here and following is once more the genitive of θεος without the definite article, signifying a more generalized adjectival use than specifying the individual person of “the God.”

2“Overwhelming passion” can also be translated “wrath, anger, or orgy.” Notice that it is directed towards the irreverence and the wrongdoing of human beings, not towards the human beings themselves.

3Referring to the bestiality which was at times a part of pagan worship rites of idols which was forbidden in Exodus 22:18, Leviticus 18:23, and 20:15-16.

4Also in the context of pagan worship rites of idolas as forbidden in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Of particular note was the worship of Cybele in ancient Rome and prior where her priests would emasculate themselves, live as women, and offer themselves as temple prostitutes. The writings of the Early Fathers and the Didache specify the practice of pederasty as well.