But if so, what can we say about Abraham, our forefather by natural descent?

Never! How can we live in sin any longer, when we died to sin?

but now we are done with the Law, we have died to what once held us, so that we can serve in a new way, not under the written code as of old but in the Spirit.

So this is my experience of the Law: I want to do what is right, but wrong is all I can manage;

Now what follows from all this? If God is for us, who can be against us?

What can ever part us from Christ's love? Can anguish or calamity or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword?

"Then," you will retort, "why does he go on finding fault? Who can oppose his will?"

I can vouch for their zeal for God; only, it is not zeal with knowledge.

Moses writes of law-righteousness, Anyone who can perform it, shall live by it.

And how can men preach unless they are sent? ??as it is written, How pleasant is the coming of men with glad, good news!

And even the others will be grafted in, if they do not adhere to their unbelief; God can graft them in again.

Now in Christ Jesus I can be proud of my work for God.

[Now to Him who can strengthen you by my gospel, by the preaching of Jesus Christ, by revealing the secret purpose which after the silence of long ages