Read the New Testament in 24 Weeks

Dead to Sin but Alive in Christ

6 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may increase? ² God forbid! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? ³ Do you not know that we who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with Him by baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, so shall we also be united with Him in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him, so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we should no longer be slaves to sin. ⁷ For the one who has died is freed from sin.

⁸ Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, ⁹ knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death has no further dominion over Him. ¹⁰ For the death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God.

¹¹ Likewise, you also consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. ¹³ Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but yield yourselves to God, as those who are alive from the dead, and your bodies to God as instruments of righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace.

Slaves of Righteousness

¹⁵ What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? God forbid! ¹⁶ Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves as slaves to obey, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? ¹⁷ But thanks be to God, for you were slaves of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of teaching to which you were entrusted, ¹⁸ and having been freed from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness.

¹⁹ I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for just as you have yielded your members as slaves to impurity and iniquity leading to more iniquity, even so now yield your members as slaves to righteousness unto holiness. ²⁰ For when you were the slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. ²¹ What fruit did you have then from the things of which you are now ashamed? The result of those things is death. ²² But now, having been freed from sin and having become slaves of God, you have fruit unto holiness, and the end is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

An Analogy From Marriage

7 Do you not know, brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? ² For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding her husband. ³ So then, she will be called an adulteress if she marries another man while her husband lives. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she would not be an adulteress if she marries another man.

⁴ So, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may be married to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, so that we may bear fruit for God. ⁵ When we were in the flesh, the passions of sin, through the law, worked in our members to bear fruit leading to death. ⁶ But now we are delivered from the law, having died to things in which we were bound, so that we may serve in newness of the Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter of the law.

The Problem of Indwelling Sin

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! But I did not know sin, except through the law. I would not have known coveting if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”^{[a] 8} But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of coveting. For apart from the law sin is dead. ⁹ I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. ¹⁰ And the commandment, which was intended for life, proved to be death in me. ¹¹ For sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and killed me through it. ¹² So then, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good.

¹³ Therefore has that which is good become death unto me? God forbid! Rather, sin, that it might be shown to be sin, was working death in me through that which is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.

¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. ¹⁵ For what I am doing, I do not understand, for I do not practice what I will to do, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ But if I practice what I do not will to do, I agree with the law that it is good. ¹⁷ So now it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. ¹⁸ For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing, for the will to do what is right is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. ¹⁹ For the good I desire to do, I do not do, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who does it, but sin that lives in me.

²¹ I find then a law that when I desire to do good, evil is present with me. ²² For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, ²³ but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. ²⁴ O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? ²⁵ I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then, with my mind, I serve the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.