Submit Yourselves to God

4 What causes fights and quarrels^(A) among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle^(B) within you? ² You desire but do not have, so you kill.^(C) You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive,^(D) because you ask with wrong motives,^(E) that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ

6 What shall we say, then?^(A) Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?^{(B) 2} By no means! We are those who have died to sin;^(C) how can we live in it any longer? ³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized^(D) into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death^(E) in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead^(F) through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.^(G)

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.^{(H) 6} For we know that our old self^(I) was crucified with him^(J) so that the body ruled by sin^(K) might be done away with,^[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin^(L)— ⁷ because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.^(M)

⁸ Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.^{(N) 9} For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead,^(O) he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.^{(P) 10} The death he died, he died to sin^(Q) once for all;^(R) but the life he lives, he lives to God.

¹¹ In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin^(S) but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

²² You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off^(A) your old self,^(B) which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;^{(C) 23} to be made new in the attitude of your minds;^{(D) 24} and to put on^(E) the new self,^(F) created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.^(G)

²³ Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.^{(A) 24} For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.^(B)

²⁴ Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies,^(A) it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

¹² Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it.^{(A) 13} For if you live according to the flesh, you will die;^(B) but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body,^(C) you will live.^(D)

³⁰ He must become greater; I must become less.”^[a]

³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.^(A) Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,^{(B) 4} not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.^(C)

²⁴ Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.^(A)