All who sin outside the Law will perish outside the Law, and all who sin under the Law will be condemned by the Law.

For it is not the hearers of the Law who are just in the eyes of God, it is those who obey the Law who will be acquitted,

[Move vss 14,15 to follow vs 16] (When Gentiles who have no law obey instinctively the Law's requirements, they are a law to themselves, even though they have no law;

they exhibit the effect of the Law written on their hearts, their conscience bears them witness, as their moral convictions accuse or it may be defend them.)

If you bear the name of 'Jew,' relying on the Law, priding yourself on God,

understanding his will, and with a sense of what is vital in religion; if you are instructed by the Law

a tutor for the foolish, a teacher of the simple, because in the Law you have the embodiment of knowledge and truth ??21 well then, do you ever teach yourself, you teacher of other people? You preach against stealing; do you steal?

You pride yourself on the Law; do you dishonour God by your breaches of the Law?

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.

(If then the uncircumcised observe the requirements of the Law, shall not their uncircumcision be reckoned equivalent to circumcision?

And shall not those who are physically uncircumcised and who fulfil the Law, judge you who are a breaker of the Law for all your written code and circumcision?)

Whatever the Law says, we know, it says to those who are inside the Law, that every mouth may be shut and all the world made answerable to God;

for no person will be acquitted in his sight on the score of obedience to law. What the Law imparts is the consciousness of sin.

But now we have a righteousness of God disclosed apart from law altogether; it is attested by the Law and the prophets,

We hold a man is justified by faith apart from deeds of the Law altogether.

Then 'by this faith' we 'cancel the Law'? Not for one moment! We uphold the Law.

Just as David himself describes the bliss of the man who has righteousness counted to him by God apart from what he does ??7 Blessed are they whose breaches of the Law are forgiven, whose sins are covered!

The promise made to Abraham and his offspring that he should inherit the world, did not reach him through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith.

For if it is adherents of the Law who are heirs, then faith is empty of all meaning and the promise is void.

(What the Law produces is the Wrath, not the promise of God; where there is no law, there is no transgression either.)

That is why all turns upon faith; it is to make the promise a matter of favour, to make it secure for all the offspring, not simply for those who are adherents of the Law but also for those who share the faith of Abraham ??of Abraham who is the father of us all

Sin was indeed in the world before the Law, but sin is never counted in the absence of law.

Law slipped in to aggravate the trespass; sin increased, but grace surpassed it far,

Sin must have no hold over you, for you live under grace, not under law.

What follows, then? Are we 'to sin, because we live under grace, not under law'? Never!

Surely you know, my brothers ??for I am speaking to men who know what law means ??that the law has hold over a person only during his lifetime!

Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is alive; but if the husband dies, she is done with the law of 'the husband.'

Accordingly, she will be termed an adulteress if she becomes another man's while her husband is alive; but if her husband dies, she is freed from the law of 'the husband,' so that she is no adulteress if she becomes another man's.

It is the same in your case, my brothers. The crucified body of Christ made you dead to the Law, so that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead that we might be fruitful to God.

For when we were unspiritual, the sinful cravings excited by the Law were active in our members and made us fruitful to Death;

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.

What follows, then? That 'the Law is equivalent to sin'? Never! Why, had it not been for the Law, I would never have known what sin meant! Thus I would never have known what it is to covet, unless the Law had said, You must not covet.

The command gave an impulse to sin, and sin resulted for me in all manner of covetous desire ??for sin, apart from law, is lifeless.

I lived at one time without law myself, but when the command came home to me, sin sprang to life and I died;

So the Law at any rate is holy, the command is holy, just, and for our good.

The Law is spiritual; we know that. But then I am a creature of the flesh, in the thraldom of sin.

Now, when I act against my wishes, that means I agree that the Law is right.

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

I cordially agree with God's law, so far as my inner self is concerned,

but then I find quite another law in my members which conflicts with the law of my mind and makes me a prisoner to sin's law that resides in my members.

God will! Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord! [Move second part of this vers to follow vs 23] (Thus, left to myself, I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.)

the law of the Spirit brings the life which is in Christ Jesus, and that law has set me free from the law of sin and death.

For God has done what the Law, weakened here by the flesh, could not do; by sending his own Son in the guise of sinful flesh, to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,

in order to secure the fulfilment of the Law's requirements in our lives, as we live and move not by the flesh but by the Spirit.

For the interests of the flesh are hostile to God; they do not yield to the law of God (indeed they cannot).

I am telling the truth in Christ ??it is no lie, my conscience bears me out in the holy Spirit

whereas Israel who did aim at the law of righteousness have failed to reach that law.

And why? Simply because Israel has relied not on faith but on what they could do. They have stumbled over the stone that makes men stumble ??33 as it is written, Here I lay a stone in Sion that will make men stumble, even a rock to trip them up; but he who believes in Him will never be disappointed.

Now Christ is an end to law, so as to let every believer have righteousness.

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

I tell you this, you Gentiles, that as an apostle to the Gentiles I lay great stress on my office,

Be in debt to no man ??apart from the debt of love one to another. He who loves his fellow-man has fulfilled the law.

Love never wrongs a neighbour; that is why love is the fulfilment of the law.