Riverside(i)
1 WHAT shall we say then? Shall we remain in sin so that grace may be great?
2 Never. How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
3 Are you ignorant that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have grown into union with him by the likeness of his death, surely we shall be united with him by the likeness of his resurrection.
6 For we know this, that our old-time humanity was crucified with him, in order that the sinful body might be made powerless, that we might no longer be slaves of sin.
7 For one who has died has been pronounced righteous and free from sin.
8 But if we died with Christ we believe that we shall live with him,
9 knowing that Christ, after being raised from the dead, dies no more; death no more reigns over him.
10 For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life that he lives, he lives to God.
11 So you must think yourselves dead to sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you will obey its lusts,
13 and do not yield your members to sin as the instruments of wickedness; but present yourselves to God as men once dead, but now living, and yield your members to God as the instruments of righteousness.
14 For sin shall not be king over you; for you are not under law, but under grace.
15 What then? May we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Never.
16 Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as servants intending obedience, you are the servants of the one you obey, whether of sin, resulting in death, or of obedience, resulting in righteousness?
17 Thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin you became obedient from the heart to the type of teaching in which you were instructed.
18 You were made free from sin and made servants to righteousness.
19 I am speaking humanly on account of the weakness of your human nature. As you did present your members as servants to impurity and to lawlessness to do lawlessness, so now you have presented your members as servants to righteousness for holy living.
20 When you were servants of sin you were free from righteousness.
21 What fruit did you have then? Fruit of which you are now ashamed; for the end of those things is death.
22 But now freed from sin and having become servants of God you have your fruit in holy living and its outcome, life eternal.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is life eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord.
7 1 ARE you ignorant, brethren, for I am speaking to those who know law, that the Law rules over a person while he is living?
2 For a married woman is by law bound to her husband while he is living. But if the husband dies, she is freed from the law of her husband.
3 Therefore while her husband is living she is called an adulteress if she becomes another man's. But if her husband dies she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress when she becomes another man's.
4 So, my brethren, you were made dead to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might become wedded to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God.
5 For when we were in the flesh the sinful passions that arise through the Law were active in our members, so that we bore fruit to death.
6 But now the Law has been made inoperative on us, since we have died to that by which we were held, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
7 What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? Never. But I should not have come to know sin except through the Law. I should not have known lust if the Law had not said, "Thou shalt not lust."
8 Sin, taking occasion through the commandment, worked in me every lust. For apart from the Law sin is dead.
9 I was living once, apart from law. But when the commandment came, sin began to live and I died,
10 and the commandment which meant life was found to mean death.
11 For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me.
12 So the Law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good.
13 Did then what is good become death to me? Never. But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through the good, in order that it might become beyond measure sinful.
14 For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am fleshly, sold under sin.
15 For what I am doing I do not understand. For not what I choose is what I practice, but what I hate, this I do.
16 But if I do what I do not choose, I agree with the law that it is right.
17 And now it is no longer I that do it, but the Sin that dwells in me.
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21 I find then this rule, when I choose to do the right, that evil is present with me.
22 I delight in the Law in my inner man,
23 but I see another law in my members, warring with the law of my mind and leading me captive under the law of sin which is in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then I myself with my mind serve the Law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.
8 1 THERE is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the Law of sin and death.
3 For, what was impossible for the Law, because it was weak through the flesh — God, sending his own Son in the form of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned the sin that is in the flesh,
4 so that the righteousness required by the Law might be fulfilled in us who live not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
5 For those who are living according to the flesh have their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are living according to the spirit have their minds on the things of the spirit.
6 Fleshly mindedness is death, but spiritual mindedness is life and peace.
7 Therefore fleshly mindedness is hostile to God; for it is not subject to the Law of God, nor can it be.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. If any one has not the Spirit of Christ, that man is not his.
10 If Christ is in you the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.
11 If the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead gives life even to your mortal bodies, through his indwelling Spirit in you.
12 So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh;
13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the practices of the body, you will live.
14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
15 For you did not receive a spirit of bondage leading again to fear, but you received a spirit of sonship, in which we cry, Abba, Father.
16 The Spirit itself witnesses with our spirits that we are children of God.
17 And if children, we are also heirs — heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, since we suffer with him that we may also be glorified with him.
18 For I estimate that the sufferings of this present time amount to nothing in comparison with the glory that is to be revealed for us.
19 For the earnest expectation of the creation is waiting for the revelation of the sons of God.
20 For the creation was made subject to folly not willingly, but for the sake of him who subjected it, in hope,
21 because the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of decay into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22 For we know that all the creation groans in the pangs of childbirth until now.
23 And not the creation alone, but we ourselves also who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves in expectation of the sonship, the liberation of our bodies.
24 For we are saved by hope; but hope that is seen is not hope, for what any one sees, why does he hope for?
25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we patiently wait for it.
26 Thus also the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes for us with sighs beyond words.
27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the holy according to the will of God.
28 We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.
29 For those whom he foreknew he also predetermined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren.
30 And those whom he predetermined he also called, and those whom he called he also pronounced righteous, and those whom he pronounced righteous he also glorified.
31 What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us?
32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him graciously give us all things?
33 Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? God pronounces them righteous.
34 Who is there to condemn? Christ Jesus died, or rather was raised, and he is on the right hand of God interceding for us.
35 Who shall separate us from Christ's love? Shall trial or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
36 (As it is written, "For thy sake we are killed all the day. We are counted as sheep for slaughter.")
37 On the contrary, in all these we more than conquer through him who loved us.
38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor archangels, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from God's love in Christ Jesus our Lord.
9 1 I AM speaking the truth in Christ; I am saying nothing false; my conscience bears witness with me in the Holy Spirit
2 that I have great grief and unceasing pain in my heart.
3 For I could wish myself to be accursed and cast away from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,
4 who are Israelites, whose is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the reception of the law and the worship and the promises;
5 whose are the fathers and from whom by physical descent the Christ came. God who is over all be blessed through the ages! Amen.
6 Not that God's word has failed. For not all who are of Israel are Israel;
7 nor because they are descendants of Abraham are they all children; but "through Isaac shall your descendants be named."
8 That is, not the physical descendants are children, but the children of the promise are counted for descendants.
9 For the wording of the promise was, "At this time next year I will come and Sarah shall have a son."
10 And not only so, but when Rebecca was about to bear children to our father Isaac,
11 though the same man was father of both children and they were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad, in order that the purpose of God according to his choice might stand, not according to their works, but according to his call,
12 it was said to her, "The older shall serve the younger."
13 In the same way it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness on God's part? Never.
15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
16 So then it is not a question of the man who wills or who runs, but of God who shows mercy.
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up in order to show my power upon you and to have my name proclaimed in all the earth."
18 So then he has mercy on whom he chooses and he hardens whom he chooses.
19 You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who has opposed his will?"
20 But who are you, O man, who are answering back to God? Does the thing that is moulded say to the moulder, "Why have you made me so?"
21 Has not the potter the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
22 What if God, choosing to exhibit his wrath and to make known what he can do, bore in long patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction,
23 and in order to make known the richness of his glory upon the vessels of mercy which he had prepared for glory
24 called us not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
25 As also he says in Hosea, "Those who are not my people I will call my people, and her who has not been beloved I will call beloved,
26 and in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they shall be called sons of the living God."
27 Isaiah cried aloud regarding Israel, "Though the number of the sons of Israel is as the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved.
28 For the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth completely and speedily."
29 Even as Isaiah predicted, "Unless the Lord of armies had left us some descendants, we should have become like Sodom and should have been made to resemble Gomorrah."
30 What shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness obtained righteousness, the righteousness of faith,
31 but Israel pursuing after the Law of righteousness did not attain to the Law.
32 Why? Because they pursued it not by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled over that stumbling stone,
33 as it is written, "See, I am laying in Zion a stumbling stone, a rock to trip over, but he who has faith in him will never be put to shame."