Beginning

The Example of Abraham

4 So what can we say about Abraham,^[a] the father of our people? What did he learn about faith? ² If Abraham was made right by the things he did, then he had a reason to brag. But he could not brag before God. ³ The Scripture says, “Abraham believed God. And that faith made him right with God.”^[b]

⁴ When a person works, his pay is not given to him as a gift. He earns the pay he gets. ⁵ But a person cannot do any work that will make him right with God. So he must trust in God. Then God accepts his faith, and that makes him right with God. God is the One who can make even those who are evil right in his sight. ⁶ David said the same thing. He said that a person is truly blessed when God does not look at what he has done but accepts him as good:

⁹ Is this blessing only for those who are circumcised? Or is it also for those who are not circumcised? We have already said that God accepted Abraham’s faith, and that faith made him right with God. ¹⁰ So how did this happen? Did God accept Abraham before or after he was circumcised? God accepted him before his circumcision. ¹¹ Abraham was circumcised later to show that God accepted him. His circumcision was proof that he was right with God through faith before he was circumcised. So Abraham is the father of all those who believe but are not circumcised. He is the father of all believers who are accepted as being right with God. ¹² And Abraham is also the father of those who have been circumcised. But it is not their circumcision that makes him their father. He is their father only if they live following the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

God Keeps His Promise

¹³ Abraham^[c] and his descendants received the promise that they would get the whole world. But Abraham did not receive that promise through the law. He received it because he was right with God through his faith. ¹⁴ If people could receive what God promised by following the law, then faith is worthless. And God’s promise to Abraham is worthless, ¹⁵ because the law can only bring God’s anger. But if there is no law, then there is nothing to disobey.

¹⁶ So people receive God’s promise by having faith. This happens so that the promise can be a free gift. And if the promise is a free gift, then all of Abraham’s children can have that promise. The promise is not only for those people that live under the law of Moses. It is for anyone who lives with faith like Abraham. He is the father of us all. ¹⁷ As it is written in the Scriptures: “I am making you a father of many nations.”^[d] This is true before God. Abraham believed in God—the God who gives life to the dead and decides that things will happen that have not yet happened.

¹⁸ There was no hope that Abraham would have children. But Abraham believed God and continued hoping. And that is why he became the father of many nations. As God told him, “Your descendants will also be too many to count.”^{[e] 19} Abraham was almost 100 years old, much past the age for having children. Also, Sarah could not have children. Abraham thought about all this. But his faith in God did not become weak. ²⁰ He never doubted that God would keep his promise. Abraham never stopped believing. He grew stronger in his faith and gave praise to God. ²¹ Abraham felt sure that God was able to do the thing that God promised. ²² So, “God accepted Abraham’s faith, and that made him right with God.”^{[f] 23} Those words (“God accepted Abraham’s faith”) were written not only for Abraham. ²⁴ They were written also for us. God will accept us also because we believe. We believe in the One who raised Jesus our Lord from death. ²⁵ Jesus was given to die for our sins. And he was raised from death to make us right with God.

Right with God

5 We have been made right with God because of our faith. So we have^[g] peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ² Through our faith,^[h] Christ has brought us into that blessing of God’s grace that we now enjoy. And we are happy because of the hope we have of sharing God’s glory. ³ And we also have joy with our troubles because we know that these troubles produce patience. ⁴ And patience produces character, and character produces hope. ⁵ And this hope will never disappoint us, because God has poured out his love to fill our hearts. God gave us his love through the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to us.

⁶ Christ died for us while we were still weak. We were living against God, but at the right time, Christ died for us. ⁷ Very few people will die to save the life of someone else. Although perhaps for a good man someone might possibly die. ⁸ But Christ died for us while we were still sinners. In this way God shows his great love for us.

⁹ We have been made right with God by the blood of Christ’s death. So through Christ we will surely be saved from God’s anger. ¹⁰ I mean that while we were God’s enemies, God made us his friends through the death of his Son. Surely, now that we are God’s friends, God will save us through his Son’s life. ¹¹ And not only that, but now we are also very happy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Jesus we are now God’s friends again.

Adam and Christ

¹² Sin came into the world because of what one man did. And with sin came death. And this is why all men must die—because all men sinned. ¹³ Sin was in the world before the law of Moses. But God does not judge people guilty of sin if there is no law. ¹⁴ But from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, everyone had to die. Adam died because he sinned by not obeying God’s command. But even those who did not sin in the same way had to die.

Adam was like the One who was coming in the future. ¹⁵ But God’s free gift is not like Adam’s sin. Many people died because of the sin of that one man. But the grace that they received from God was much greater. Many people received God’s gift of life by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ. ¹⁶ After Adam sinned once, he was judged guilty. But the gift of God is different. God’s free gift came after many sins. And the gift makes people right with God. ¹⁷ One man sinned, and so death ruled all people because of that one man. But now some people accept God’s full grace and the great gift of being made right with him. They will surely have true life and rule through the one man, Jesus Christ.

¹⁸ So one sin of Adam brought the punishment of death to all people. But in the same way, one good act that Christ did makes all people right with God. And that brings true life for all. ¹⁹ One man disobeyed God, and many became sinners. But in the same way, one man obeyed God, and many will be made right. ²⁰ The law came to make people have more sin. But when people had more sin, God gave them more of his grace. ²¹ Sin once used death to rule us. But God gave people more of his grace so that grace could rule by making people right with him. And this brings life forever through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Dead to Sin but Alive in Christ

6 So do you think that we should continue sinning so that God will give us more and more grace? ² No! We died to our old sinful lives. So how can we continue living with sin? ³ Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ when we were baptized? We shared his death in our baptism. ⁴ So when we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and shared his death. We were buried with him so that we could live a new life, just as Christ was raised from death by the wonderful power of the Father.

⁵ Christ died, and we have been joined with Christ by dying too. So we will also be joined with him by rising from death as he did. ⁶ We know that our old life died with Christ on the cross. This was so that our sinful selves would have no power over us, and we would not be slaves to sin. ⁷ Anyone who has died is made free from sin’s control.

⁸ If we died with Christ, we know that we will also live with him. ⁹ Christ was raised from death. And we know that he cannot die again. Death has no power over him now. ¹⁰ Yes, when Christ died, he died to defeat the power of sin one time—enough for all time. He now has a new life, and his new life is with God. ¹¹ In the same way, you should see yourselves as being dead to the power of sin and alive with God through Christ Jesus.

¹² So, do not let sin control you in your life here on earth. You must not be ruled by the things your sinful self makes you want to do. ¹³ Do not offer the parts of your body to serve sin. Do not use your bodies as things to do evil with, but offer yourselves to God. Be like people who have died and now live. Offer the parts of your body to God to be used for doing good. ¹⁴ Sin will not be your master, because you are not under law but under God’s grace.

Slaves of Righteousness

¹⁵ So what should we do? Should we sin because we are under grace and not under law? No! ¹⁶ Surely you know that when you give yourselves like slaves to obey someone, then you are really slaves of that person. The person you obey is your master. You can follow sin, or obey God. Sin brings spiritual death. But obeying God makes you right with him. ¹⁷ In the past you were slaves to sin—sin controlled you. But thank God, you fully obeyed the things that were taught to you. ¹⁸ You were made free from sin, and now you are slaves to goodness. ¹⁹ I use this example because this is hard for you to understand. In the past you offered the parts of your body to be slaves to sin and evil. You lived only for evil. In the same way now you must give yourselves to be slaves of goodness. Then you will live only for God.

²⁰ In the past you were slaves to sin, and goodness did not control you. ²¹ You did evil things, and now you are ashamed of them. Those things only bring death. ²² But now you are free from sin and have become slaves of God. This brings you a life that is only for God. And this gives you life forever. ²³ The payment for sin is death. But God gives us the free gift of life forever in Christ Jesus our Lord.

An Example from Marriage

7 Brothers, all of you understand the law of Moses. So surely you know that the law rules over a person only while he is alive. ² For example, a woman must stay married to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, then she is free from the law of marriage. ³ But if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, the law says she is guilty of adultery. But if her husband dies, then the woman is free from the law of marriage. So if she marries another man after her husband dies, she is not guilty of adultery.

⁴ In the same way, my brothers, your old selves died, and you became free from the law through the body of Christ. Now you belong to someone else. You belong to the One who was raised from death. We belong to Christ so that we can be used in service to God. ⁵ In the past, we were ruled by our sinful selves. The law made us want to do sinful things. And those sinful things we wanted to do controlled our bodies, so that the things we did were only bringing us death. ⁶ In the past, the law held us like prisoners. But our old selves died, and we were made free from the law. So now we serve God in a new way, not in the old way with written rules. Now we serve God in the new way, with the Spirit.

Our Fight Against Sin

⁷ You might think that I am saying that sin and the law are the same thing. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin meant. I would never have known what it means to want something wrong if the law had not said, “You must not want to take your neighbor’s things.”^{[i] 8} And sin found a way to use that command and cause me to want every kind of wrong thing. So sin came to me because of that command. But without the law, sin has no power. ⁹ I was alive without the law before I knew the law. But when the law’s command came to me, then sin began to live. ¹⁰ And I died because of sin. The command was meant to bring life, but for me that command brought death. ¹¹ Sin found a way to fool me by using the command. Sin used the command to make me die.

¹² So the law is holy, and the command is holy and right and good. ¹³ Does this mean that something that is good brought death to me? No! Sin used something that is good to bring death to me. This happened so that I could see what sin is really like. The command was used to show that sin is something very evil.

The War Within Man

¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual. But I am not spiritual. Sin rules me as if I were its slave. ¹⁵ I do not understand the things I do. I do not do the good things I want to do. And I do the bad things I hate to do. ¹⁶ And if I do not want to do the bad things I do, then that means that I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But I am not really the one who is doing these bad things. It is sin living in me that does these things. ¹⁸ Yes, I know that nothing good lives in me—I mean nothing good lives in the part of me that is earthly and sinful. I want to do the things that are good. But I do not do them. ¹⁹ I do not do the good things that I want to do. I do the bad things that I do not want to do. ²⁰ So if I do things I do not want to do, then I am not the one doing those things. It is sin living in me that does those bad things.

²¹ So I have learned this rule: When I want to do good, evil is there with me. ²² In my mind, I am happy with God’s law. ²³ But I see another law working in my body. That law makes war against the law that my mind accepts. That other law working in my body is the law of sin, and that law makes me its prisoner. ²⁴ What a miserable man I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death? ²⁵ God will. I thank him for saving me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So in my mind I am a slave to God’s law. But in my sinful self I am a slave to the law of sin.