¹⁹ (I’m speaking with ordinary metaphors because of your limitations.) Once, you offered the parts of your body to be used as slaves to impurity and to lawless behavior that leads to still more lawless behavior. Now, you should present the parts of your body as slaves to righteousness, which makes your lives holy. ²⁰ When you were slaves of sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. ²¹ What consequences did you get from doing things that you are now ashamed of? The outcome of those things is death. ²² But now that you have been set free from sin and become slaves to God, you have the consequence of a holy life, and the outcome is eternal life. ²³ The wages that sin pays are death, but God’s gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

BOOK I

(Psalms 1–41)

Psalm 1

Conflicts brought by Jesus

⁴⁹ “I came to cast fire upon the earth. How I wish that it was already ablaze! ⁵⁰ I have a baptism I must experience. How I am distressed until it’s completed! ⁵¹ Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, I have come instead to bring division. ⁵² From now on, a household of five will be divided—three against two and two against three. ⁵³ Father will square off against son and son against father; mother against daughter and daughter against mother; and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”