For merely hearing the Law read does not make a man upright in the sight of God; men must obey the Law to be made upright.

By no means! God must prove true, though every man be false; as the Scripture says, "That you may be shown to be upright in what you say, And win your case when you go into court."

So you also must think of yourselves as dead to sin but alive to God, through union with Christ Jesus.

So sin must not reign over your mortal bodies, and make you obey their cravings,

and you must not offer the parts of your bodies to sin as the instruments of wrong, but offer yourselves to God as men brought back from death to life, and offer the parts of your bodies to him as instruments of uprightness.

For sin must no longer control you, for you live not under law but under mercy.

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.

Then what shall we conclude? That the Law is sin? Certainly not! Yet, if it had not been for the Law, I should never have learned what sin was; I should not have known what it was to covet if the Law had not said, "You must not covet."

you must not look down upon the branches. If you do, remember that you do not support the root; the root supports you.

You must not adopt the customs of this world but by your new attitude of mind be transformed so that you can find out what God's will is??hat is good, pleasing, and perfect.

Your love must be genuine. You must hate what is wrong, and hold to what is right.

Everyone must obey the authorities that are over him, for no authority can exist without the permission of God; the existing authorities have been established by him,

You must obey them, therefore, not only to escape God's wrath, but as a matter of principle,

For the commandments, "You must not commit adultery, You must not murder, You must not steal, You must not covet," and any other commandments there are, are all summed up in one saying, "You must love your neighbor as you do yourself."

The man who will eat anything must not look down on the man who abstains from some things, and the man who abstains from them must not criticize the one who does not, for God has accepted him.

One man thinks one day better than another, while another thinks them all alike. Everybody must be fully convinced in his own mind.

So each one of us must give an account of himself to God.

Therefore let us not criticize one another any more. You must resolve instead never to put any hindrance or obstacle in your brother's way.

For if your brother's feelings are hurt by what you eat, your life is not governed by love. You must not, by what you eat, ruin a man for whom Christ died.

The thing you have a right to do must not become a cause of reproach.

You must not, just for the sake of food, undo the work of God. It is true, everything is clean, but it is wrong for a man to hurt the consciences of others by what he eats.

For your part, you must keep the faith you have to yourself, as between God and you. He is a happy man who has no fault to find with himself in following the course that he approves,

Everyone of us must try to please his neighbor, to do him good, and help in his development.