which he promised long ago through his prophets in the holy Scriptures,

It is just like the way in which through one man sin came into the world, and death followed sin, and so death spread to all men, because all men sinned.

I use these familiar human terms because of the limitations of your nature. For just as you before gave up the parts of your bodies in slavery to vice and greater and greater license, you must now give them up in slavery to uprightness, which leads to consecration.

In reality, it is not I that do these things; it is sin, which has possession of me.

But if I do the things that I do not want to do, it is not I that am acting, it is sin, which has possession of me.

but all through my body I see another principle in conflict with the law of my reason, which makes me a prisoner to that law of sin that runs through my body.

It is not a consciousness of servitude that has been imparted to you, to fill you with fear again, but the consciousness of adoption as sons, which makes us cry, "Abba!" that is, Father.

For before the children were born or had done anything either good or bad, in order to carry out God's purpose of selection, which depends not on what men do but on his calling them,

Then what do we conclude? That heathen who were not striving for uprightness attained it, that is, an uprightness which was produced by faith;

God has not repudiated his people, which he had marked out from the first. Do you not know what the Scripture says in speaking of Elijah, how he appealed to God against Israel?

For if you were cut from a wild olive and unnaturally grafted upon a cultivated one, how much easier it will be to graft them upon the olive to which they properly belong!

"Or who has advanced anything to him, for which he will have to be repaid?"