Read the New Testament in 24 Weeks

Dead to Sin and Living for God

6 What shall we say then? Shall we keep on sinning so that grace may increase? ² Absolutely not! We died to sin. How can we go on living in it any longer? ³ Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him by this baptism into his death, so that just as he was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too would also walk in a new life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united with him in the likeness of his resurrection.

⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him, to make our sinful body powerless, so that we would not continue to serve sin. ⁷ For the person who has died has been declared free from sin. ⁸ And since we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that since Christ has been raised from the dead, he will never die again. Death no longer has control over him. ¹⁰ For the death he died, he died to sin once and for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. ¹¹ In the same way also consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.^[a]

Serve God, Not Sin, in Your Life

¹² Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires. ¹³ Do not offer the members of your body to sin as tools of unrighteousness. Instead, offer yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and offer the members of your body to God as tools of righteousness. ¹⁴ Indeed, sin will not continue to control you, because you are not under law but under grace.

¹⁵ What then? Should we continue to sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! ¹⁶ Do you not know that when you offer yourselves to obey someone as slaves, you are slaves of the one you are obeying—whether slaves of sin, resulting in death, or slaves of obedience, resulting in righteousness?

¹⁷ Thanks be to God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to the pattern of the teaching into which you were placed. ¹⁸ After you were set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ (I am speaking in a human way because of the weakness of your flesh.) Indeed, just as you offered your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in more lawlessness, so now offer your members in the same way as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

²⁰ For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. ²¹ So what kind of fruit did you have then? They were things of which you are now ashamed. Yes, the final result of those things is death. ²² But now, since you were set free from sin and have become slaves to God, you have your fruit resulting in sanctification—and the final result is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

7 Or don’t you know, brothers^[b] (since I am speaking to those who know the law), that a law has jurisdiction over a person only as long as he lives? ² For example, a married woman is bound to her husband by law as long as he is alive, but if he dies, she is released from this law regarding her husband. ³ So then, she will be labeled an adulteress if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from this law, and she is not an adulteress if she marries another man.

⁴ In the same way, my brothers, you also were put to death in regard to the law by the body of Christ, so that you may be joined to another, to the one who was raised from the dead, in order that we might produce fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were in the flesh, strong sinful desires stirred up by the law were at work in our members, with the result that we produced fruit that results in death. ⁶ But now we have been released from the law by dying to what held us in its grip, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the letter of the law.

The Law Stirs Up My Sinful Nature

⁷ What will we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! On the contrary, I would not have recognized sin except through the law. For example, I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”^{[c] 8} But sin, seizing the opportunity provided by this commandment, produced every kind of sinful desire in me.

For apart from the law, sin is dead. ⁹ Once I was alive without the law. But when this commandment came, sin came to life, ¹⁰ and I died. This commandment that was intended to result in life actually resulted in death for me. ¹¹ You see, sin, seizing the opportunity provided by this commandment, deceived me and put me to death through it.

¹² So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. ¹³ Then did what is good become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it might be recognized as sin, brings about my death by this good thing, so that through this commandment sin might prove itself to be totally sinful.

My Constant Struggle With My Sinful Nature

¹⁴ Certainly we know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not keep doing what I want. Instead, I do what I hate. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But now it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ Indeed, I know that good does not live in me, that is, in my sinful flesh. The desire to do good is present with me, but I am not able to carry it out. ¹⁹ So I fail to do the good I want to do. Instead, the evil I do not want to do, that is what I keep doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who am doing it, but it is sin living in me.

²¹ So I find this law^[d] at work: When I want to do good, evil is present with me. ²² I certainly delight in God’s law according to my inner self, ²³ but I see a different law at work in my members, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin, which is present in my members. ²⁴ What a miserable wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ I thank God^[e] through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my sinful flesh I serve the law of sin.