Read the New Testament in 24 Weeks

Dead to Sin but Alive in Christ

6 So do you think we should continue sinning so that God will give us more and more grace? ² Of course not! Our old sinful life ended. It’s dead. So how can we continue living in sin? ³ Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ Jesus when we were baptized? In our baptism we shared in his death. ⁴ So when we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and took part in his death. And just as Christ was raised from death by the wonderful power of the Father, so we can now live a new life.

⁵ Christ died, and we have been joined with him 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 was put to death on the cross with Christ. This happened so that our sinful selves would have no power over us. Then 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 for God through Christ Jesus.

¹² But don’t let sin control your life here on earth. You must not be ruled by the things your sinful self makes you want to do. ¹³ Don’t offer the parts of your body to serve sin. Don’t use your bodies to do evil, but offer yourselves to God, as 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. You now live under God’s grace.

Slaves of Goodness

¹⁵ So what should we do? Should we sin because we are under grace and not under law? Certainly not! ¹⁶ Surely you know that you become the slaves of whatever you give yourselves to. Anything or anyone you follow will be your master. You can follow sin, or you can obey God. Following 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 what you were taught. ¹⁸ You were made free from sin, and now you are slaves to what is right. ¹⁹ I use this example from everyday life because you need help in understanding spiritual truths. In the past you offered the parts of your body to be slaves to your immoral and sinful thoughts. The result was that you lived only for sin. In the same way, you must now offer yourselves to be slaves to what is right. Then you will live only for God.

²⁰ In the past you were slaves to sin, and you did not even think about doing right. ²¹ You did evil things, and now you are ashamed of what you did. Did those things help you? No, they only brought death. ²² But now you are free from sin. You have become slaves of God, and the result is that you live only for God. This will bring you eternal life. ²³ When people sin, they earn what sin pays—death. But God gives his people a free gift—eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

An Example From Marriage

7 Brothers and sisters, you all understand the Law of Moses. So surely you know that the law rules over people only while they are alive. ² It’s like what the law says about marriage: A woman must stay married to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is made 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, she is made 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 and sisters, 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 desires controlled our bodies, so that what we did only brought us spiritual death. ⁶ In the past the law held us as 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 the written rules. Now we serve God in the new way, with the Spirit.

Our Fight Against Sin

⁷ You might think I am saying that sin and the law are the same. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin means. I would never have known it is wrong to want something that is not mine. But the law said, “You must not want what belongs to someone else.”^{[a] 8} And sin found a way to use that command and make me want all kinds of things that weren’t mine. So sin came to me because of the command. But without the law, sin has no power. ⁹ Before I knew the law, I was alive. But when I heard the law’s command, sin began to live, ¹⁰ and I died spiritually. The command was meant to bring life, but for me it brought death. ¹¹ Sin found a way to fool me by using the command to make me die.

¹² Now 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, it was sin that used the good command to bring me death. This shows how terrible sin really is. It can use a good command to produce a result that shows sin at its very worst.

The War Inside Us

¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual, but I am not. I am so human. Sin rules me as if I were its slave. ¹⁵ I don’t understand why I act the way I do. I don’t do the good I want to do, and I do the evil I hate. ¹⁶ And if I don’t want to do what I do, that means I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But I am not really the one doing the evil. It is sin living in me that does it. ¹⁸ Yes, I know that nothing good lives in me—I mean nothing good lives in the part of me that is not spiritual. I want to do what is good, but I don’t do it. ¹⁹ I don’t do the good that I want to do. I do the evil that I don’t want to do. ²⁰ So if I do what I don’t want to do, then I am not really the one doing it. It is the sin living in me that does it.

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 person I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death? ²⁵ I thank God for his salvation 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.