Difficulties arising from this Teaching

6 What are we to say, then? Are we to continue to sin, in order that God’s loving kindness may be multiplied? 2 Heaven forbid! We became dead to sin, so how can we go on living in it? 3 Or can it be that you do not know that all of us, who were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, in our baptism shared his death? 4 Consequently, through sharing his death in our baptism, we were buried with him; so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by a manifestation of the Father’s power, so we also may live a new life. 5 If we have become united with him by the act symbolic of his death, surely we will also become united with him by the act symbolic of his resurrection. 6 We recognise the truth that our old self was crucified with Christ, in order that the body, the stronghold of sin, might be rendered powerless, so that we should no longer be slaves to sin. 7 For the man who has so died has been pronounced righteous and released from sin. 8 And our belief is, that, as we have shared Christ’s death, we will also share his life. 9 We know, indeed, that Christ, having once risen from the dead, will not die again. Death has power over him no longer. 10 For the death that he died was a death to sin, once and for all. But the life that he now lives, he lives for God. 11 So let it be with you – regard yourselves as dead to sin, but as living for God, through union with Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies and compel you to obey its cravings. 13 Do not offer any part of your bodies to sin, in the cause of unrighteousness, but once for all offer yourselves to God (as those who, though once dead, now have life), and devote every part of your bodies to the cause of righteousness. 14 For sin will not lord it over you. You are living under the reign, not of Law, but of love.

15 What follows, then? Are we to sin because we are living under the reign of love and not of Law? Heaven forbid! 16 Surely you know that when you offer yourselves as servants, to obey anyone, you are the servants of the person whom you obey, whether the service be a service to sin which leads to death, or a service to duty which leads to righteousness. 17 God be thanked that, though you were once servants of sin, yet you learned to give hearty obedience to that form of doctrine under which you were placed. 18 Set free from the control of sin, you became servants to righteousness. 19 I can but speak as people do because of the weakness of your earthly nature. Once you offered every part of your bodies to the service of impurity, and of wickedness, which leads to further wickedness. Now, in the same way, offer them to the service of righteousness, which leads to holiness. 20 While you were still servants of sin, you were free as regards righteousness. 21 But what were the fruits that you reaped from those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of such things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from the control of sin, and have become servants to God, the fruit that you reap is an ever increasing holiness, and the end eternal life. 23 The wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through union with Christ Jesus, our Lord.

7 Surely, friends, you know (for I am speaking to people who know what Law means) that Law has power over a person only as long as they lives. 2 For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband while he is living; but, if her husband dies, she is set free from the law that bound her to him. 3 If, then, during her husband’s lifetime, she unites herself to another man, she will be called an adulteress; but, if her husband dies, the law has no further hold on her, nor, if she unites herself to another man, is she an adulteress. 4 And so with you, my friends; as far as the Law was concerned, you underwent death in the crucified body of the Christ, so that you might be united to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that our lives might bear fruit for God. 5 When we were living merely earthly lives, our sinful passions, aroused by the Law, were active in every part of our bodies, with the result that our lives bore fruit for death. 6 But now we are set free from the Law, because we are dead to that which once kept us under restraint; and so we serve under new, spiritual conditions, and not under old, written regulations.

7 What are we to say, then? That Law and sin are the same thing? Heaven forbid! On the contrary, I should not have learned what sin is, had not it been for Law. If the Law did not say “You must not covet,” I should not know what it is to covet. 8 But sin took advantage of the commandment to arouse in me every form of covetousness, for where there is no consciousness of Law sin shows no sign of life. 9 There was a time when I myself, unconscious of Law, was alive; but when the commandment was brought home to me, sin sprang into life, while I died! 10 The commandment that should have meant life I found to result in death! 11 Sin took advantage of the commandment to deceive me, and used it to bring about my death. 12 And so the Law is holy, and each commandment is also holy, and just, and good. 13 Did, then, a thing, which in itself was good, involve death in my case? Heaven forbid! It was sin that involved death; so that, by its use of what I regarded as good to bring about my death, its true nature might appear; and in this way the commandment showed how intensely sinful sin is. 14 We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am earthly – sold into slavery to sin. 15 I do not understand my own actions. For I am so far from habitually doing what I want to do, that I find myself doing the thing that I hate. 16 But when I do what I want not to do, I am admitting that the Law is right. 17 This being so, the action is no longer my own, but is done by the sin which is within me. 18 I know that there is nothing good in me – I mean in my earthly nature. For, although it is easy for me to want to do right, to act rightly is not easy. 19 I fail to do the good thing that I want to do, but the bad thing that I want not to do – that I habitually do. 20 But, when I do the thing that I want not to do, the action is no longer my own, but is done by the sin which is within me. 21 This, then, is the law that I find – when I want to do right, wrong presents itself! 22 At heart I delight in the Law of God; 23 but throughout my body I see a different law, one which is in conflict with the law accepted by my reason, and which endeavours to make me a prisoner to that law of sin which exists throughout my body. 24 Miserable man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body that is bringing me to this death? 25 Thank God, there is deliverance through Jesus Christ, our Lord! Well then, for myself, with my reason I serve the Law of God, but with my earthly nature the Law of sin.

8 There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in union with Christ Jesus; 2 for through your union with Christ Jesus, the Law of the life-giving Spirit has set you free from the Law of sin and death. 3 What Law could not do, in so far as our earthly nature weakened its action, God did, by sending his own Son, with a nature resembling our sinful nature, to atone for sin. He condemned sin in that earthly nature, 4 so that the requirements of the Law might be satisfied in us who live now in obedience, not to our earthly nature, but to the Spirit. 5 They who follow their earthly nature are earthly-minded, while they who follow the Spirit are spiritually minded. 6 To be earthly-minded means death, to be spiritually minded means life and peace; 7 because to be earthly-minded is to be an enemy to God, for such a mind does not submit to the Law of God, nor indeed can it do so. 8 They who are earthly cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not earthly but spiritual, since the Spirit of God lives within you. Unless a person has the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ; 10 but, if Christ is within you, then, though the body is dead as a consequence of sin, the spirit is life as a consequence of righteousness. 11 And, if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives within you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life even to your mortal bodies, through his Spirit living within you.

12 So then, friends, we owe nothing to our earthly nature, that we should live in obedience to it. 13 If you live in obedience to your earthly nature, you will inevitably die; but if, by the power of the Spirit, you put an end to the evil habits of the body, you will live. 14 All who are guided by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of a slave, to fill you once more with fear, but the spirit of a child by adoption, which leads us to cry “Abba, our Father.” 16 The Spirit himself unites with our spirits in bearing witness to our being God’s children, 17 and if children, then heirs – heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, since we share Christ’s sufferings in order that we may also share his glory.

18 I do not count the sufferings of our present life worthy of mention when compared with the glory that is to be revealed and bestowed on us. 19 All nature awaits with eager expectation the appearing of the sons of God. 20 For nature was made subject to imperfection – not by its own choice, but owing to him who made it so – 21 yet not without the hope that some day nature, also, will be set free from enslavement to decay, and will attain to the freedom which will mark the glory of the children of God. 22 We know, indeed, that all nature alike has been groaning in the pains of labour to this very hour. 23 And not nature only; but we ourselves also, though we have already a first gift of the Spirit – we ourselves are inwardly groaning, while we eagerly await our full adoption as sons – the redemption of our bodies. 24 By our hope we were saved. But the thing hoped for is no longer an object of hope when it is before our eyes; for who hopes for what is before his eyes? 25 But when we hope for what is not before our eyes, then we wait for it with patience.

26 So, also, the Spirit supports us in our weakness. We do not even know how to pray as we should; but the Spirit himself pleads for us in sighs that can find no utterance. 27 Yet he who searches all our hearts knows what the Spirit’s meaning is, because the pleadings of the Spirit for Christ’s people are in accordance with his will. 28 But we do know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him – those who have received the call in accordance with his purpose. 29 For those whom God chose from the first he also destined from the first to be transformed into likeness to his Son, so that his Son might be the eldest among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those whom God destined for this he also called; and those whom he called he also pronounced righteous; and those whom he pronounced righteous he also brought to glory.

31 What are we to say, then, in the light of all this?

If God is on our side, who can there be against us?

32 God did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up on behalf of us all; will he not, then, with him, freely give us all things?

33 Who will bring a charge against any of God’s people? He who pronounces them righteous is God!

34 Who is there to condemn them? He who died for us is Christ Jesus! – or, rather, it was he who was raised from the dead, and who is now at God’s right hand and is even pleading on our behalf!

35 Who is there to separate us from the love of the Christ? Will trouble, or difficulty, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?

36 Scripture says – “For your sake we are being killed all the day long, We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 Yet amid all these things we more than conquer through him who loved us! 38 For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor archangels, nor the present, nor the future, nor any powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus, our Lord!