Circumcision is certainly of use, provided you keep the Law; but if you are a breaker of the Law, then your circumcision is turned into uncircumcision.

(as it is written, I have made you a father of many nations). Such a faith implies the presence of the God in whom he believed, a God who makes the dead live and calls into being what does not exist.

Thus, then, sin came into the world by one man, and death came in by sin; and so death spread to all men, inasmuch as all men sinned.

Surely you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death!

For if we have grown into him by a death like his, we shall grow into him by a resurrection like his,

set free from sin, you have passed into the service of righteousness.

but now that you are set free from sin, now that you have passed into the service of God, your gain is consecration, and the end of that is life eternal.

You have received no slavish spirit that would make you relapse into fear; you have received the Spirit of sonship. And when we cry, "Abba! Father!",

For if you have been cut from an olive which is naturally wild, and grafted, contrary to nature, upon a garden olive, how much more will the natural branches be grafted into their proper olive?

Put affection into your love for the brotherhood; be forward to honour one another;