Romans 6-7

Amplified Bible

Believers Are Dead to Sin, Alive to God

6 What shall we say [to all this]? Should we continue in sin and practice sin as a habit so that [God’s gift of] ^[a]grace may increase and overflow? ² Certainly not! How can we, the very ones who died to sin, continue to live in it any longer? ³ Or are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been ^[b]baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? ⁴ We have therefore been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory and power of the Father, we too might walk habitually in newness of life [abandoning our old ways]. ⁵ For if we have become one with Him [permanently united] in the likeness of His death, we will also certainly be [one with Him and share fully] in the likeness of His resurrection. ⁶ We know that our old ^[c]self [our human nature without the Holy Spirit] was nailed to the cross with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. ⁷ For the person who has died [with Christ] has been freed from [the power of] sin.

⁸ Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live [together] with Him, ⁹ because we know [the self-evident truth] that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has power over Him. ¹⁰ For the death that He died, He died to sin [ending its power and paying the sinner’s debt] once and for all; and the life that He lives, He lives to [glorify] God [in unbroken fellowship with Him]. ¹¹ Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin [and your relationship to it broken], but alive to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus.

¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts and passions. ¹³ Do not go on offering members of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness. But offer yourselves to God [in a decisive act] as those alive [raised] from the dead [to a new life], and your members [all of your abilities—sanctified, set apart] as instruments of righteousness [yielded] to God. ¹⁴ For sin will no longer be a master over you, since you are not under Law [as slaves], but under [unmerited] grace [as recipients of God’s favor and mercy].

¹⁵ What then [are we to conclude]? Shall we sin because we are not under Law, but under [God’s] grace? Certainly not! ¹⁶ Do you not know that when you continually offer yourselves to someone to do his will, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, either [slaves] of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness (right standing with God)? ¹⁷ But thank God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient with all your heart to the standard of teaching in which you were instructed and to which you were committed. ¹⁸ And having been set free from sin, you have become the slaves of righteousness [of conformity to God’s will and purpose]. ¹⁹ I am speaking in [familiar] human terms because of your natural limitations [your spiritual immaturity]. For just as you presented your bodily members as slaves to impurity and to [moral] lawlessness, leading to further lawlessness, so now offer your members [your abilities, your talents] as slaves to righteousness, leading to ^[d]sanctification [that is, being set apart for God’s purpose].

²⁰ When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness [you had no desire to conform to God’s will]. ²¹ So what benefit did you get at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? [None!] For the outcome of those things is death! ²² But now since you have been set free from sin and have become [willing] slaves to God, you have your benefit, resulting in sanctification [being made holy and set apart for God’s purpose], and the outcome [of this] is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God [that is, His remarkable, overwhelming gift of grace to believers] is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Believers United to Christ

7 Or do you not know, ^[e]brothers and sisters (for I am speaking to those who know the Law), that the Law has jurisdiction [to rule] over a person as long as he lives? ² For the married woman [as an example] is bound and remains bound by law to her husband while he lives; but if her husband dies, she is released and exempt from the law concerning her husband. ³ Accordingly, she will be designated as an adulteress if she ^[f]unites herself to another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law [regarding marriage], so that she is not an adulteress if she marries another man.

⁴ Therefore, my ^[g]fellow believers, you too died to the Law through the [crucified] body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. ⁵ When we were living in the flesh [trapped by sin], the sinful passions, which were awakened by [that which] the Law [identifies as sin], were at work in our body to bear fruit for death [since the willingness to sin led to death and separation from God]. ⁶ But now we have been released from the Law and its penalty, having died [through Christ] to that by which we were held captive, so that we serve [God] in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter [of the Law].

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, if it had not been for the Law, I would not have recognized sin. For I would not have known [for example] about coveting [what belongs to another, and would have had no sense of guilt] if the Law had not [repeatedly] said, “You shall not covet.”^{(A) 8} But sin, finding an opportunity through the commandment [to express itself] produced in me every kind of coveting and selfish desire. For without the Law sin is dead [the recognition of sin is inactive]. ⁹ I was once alive without [knowledge of] the Law; but when the commandment came [and I understood its meaning], sin became alive and I died [since the Law sentenced me to death].^{(B) 10} And the very commandment which was intended to bring life, actually proved to bring death for me.^{(C) 11} For sin, seizing its opportunity through the commandment, beguiled and completely deceived me, and ^[h]using it as a weapon killed me [separating me from God]. ¹² So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³ Did that which is good [the Law], then become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, in order that it might be revealed as sin, was producing death in me by [using] this good thing [as a weapon], so that through the commandment sin would become exceedingly sinful.

The Conflict of Two Natures

¹⁴ We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am a creature of the flesh [worldly, self-reliant—carnal and unspiritual], sold into slavery to sin [and serving under its control]. ¹⁵ For I do not understand my own actions [I am baffled and bewildered by them]. I do not practice what I want to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate [and yielding to my human nature, my worldliness—my sinful capacity]. ¹⁶ Now if I habitually do what I do not want to do, [that means] I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good (morally excellent). ¹⁷ So now [if that is the case, then] it is no longer I who do it [the disobedient thing which I despise], but the sin [nature] which lives in me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh [my human nature, my worldliness—my sinful capacity]. For the willingness [to do good] is present in me, but the doing of good is not. ¹⁹ For the good that I want to do, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. ²⁰ But if I am doing the very thing I do not want to do, I am no longer the one doing it [that is, it is not me that acts], but the sin [nature] which lives in me.

²¹ So I find it to be the law [of my inner self], that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. ²² For I joyfully delight in the law of God in my inner self [with my new nature],^{(D) 23} but I see a different law and rule of action in the members of my body [in its appetites and desires], waging war against the law of my mind and subduing me and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is within my members. ²⁴ Wretched and miserable man that I am! Who will [rescue me and] set me free from this body of death [this corrupt, mortal existence]? ²⁵ Thanks be to God [for my deliverance] through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind serve the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh [my human nature, my worldliness, my sinful capacity—I serve] the law of sin.