But, as to the spirit of holiness within him, was miraculously designated Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.

Because, although they learned to know God, yet they did not offer him as God either praise or thanksgiving. Their speculations about him proved futile, and their undiscerning minds were darkened.

Then, as they would not keep God before their minds, God abandoned them to depraved thoughts, so that they did all kinds of shameful things.

For God set him before the world, to be, by the shedding of his blood, a means of reconciliation through faith. And this God did to prove his righteousness, and because, in his forbearance, he had passed over the sins that men had previously committed;

Under what circumstances, then, did this take place? After his circumcision or before it?

For the promise that he should inherit the world did not come to Abraham or his descendants through Law, but through the righteousness due to faith.

As Scripture says-'I have made thee the Father of many nations.') And this they do in the sight of that God in whom Abraham had faith, and who gives life to the dead, and speaks of what does not yet exist as if it did.

Though he was nearly a hundred years old, yet his faith did not fail him, even when he thought of his own body, then utterly worn out, and remembered that Sarah was past bearing children.

But also with reference to us. Our faith, too, will be regarded by God in the same light, if we have faith in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead;

Heaven forbid! We became dead to sin, and how can we go on living in it?

Consequently, through sharing his death in our baptism, we were buried with him; that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by a manifestation of the Father's power, so we also may live a new Life.

We know, indeed, that Christ, having once risen from the dead, will not die again. Death has power over him no longer.

So let it be with you-regard yourselves as dead to sin, but as living for God, through union with Christ Jesus.

Do not offer any part of your bodies to Sin, in the cause of unrighteousness, but once for all offer yourselves to God (as those who, though once dead, now have Life), and devote every part of your bodies to the cause of righteousness.

And so with you, my Brothers; as far as the Law was concerned, you underwent death in the crucified body of the Christ, so that you might be united to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that our lives might bear fruit for God.

But now we are set free from the Law, because we are dead to that which once kept us under restraint; and so we serve under new, spiritual conditions, and not under old, written regulations.

What are we to say, then? That Law and sin are the same thing? Heaven forbid! On the contrary, I should not have learned what sin is, had not it been for Law. If the Law did not say 'Thou shalt not covet,' I should not know what it is to covet.

Did, then, a thing, which in itself was good, involve Death in my case? Heaven forbid! It was sin that involved Death; so that, by its use of what I regarded as good to bring about my Death, its true nature might appear; and in this way the Commandment showed how intensely sinful sin is.

What Law could not do, in so far as our earthly nature weakened its action, God did, by sending his own Son, with a nature resembling our sinful nature, to atone for sin. He condemned sin in that earthly nature,

But, if Christ is within you, then, though the body is dead as a consequence of sin, the spirit is Life as a consequence of righteousness.

And, if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives within you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give Life even to your mortal bodies, through his Spirit living within you.

For you did not receive the spirit of a slave, to fill you once more with fear, but the spirit of a son which leads us to cry 'Abba, Our Father.'

God did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up on behalf of us all; will he not, then, with him, freely give us all things?

Who is there to condemn them? He who died for us is Christ Jesus!-or, rather, it was he who was raised from the dead, and who is now at God's right hand and is even pleading on our behalf!

I might rather ask 'Who are you who are arguing with God?' Does a thing which a man has molded say to him who has molded it 'Why did you make me like this?'

Or "Who will go down into the depths below?"'--which means to bring Christ up from the dead.

For, if with your lips you acknowledge the truth of the Message that JESUS IS LORD, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.

Still, it may be said, every one did not give heed to the Good News. No, for Isaiah asks--'Lord, who has believed our teaching?'

But again I ask 'Did not the people of Israel understand? First there is Moses, who says--'I, the Lord, will stir you to rivalry with a nation which is no nation; Against an undiscerning nation I will arouse your anger.'

What follows from this? Why, that Israel as a nation failed to secure what it was seeking, while those whom God selected did secure it.

For, if their being cast aside has meant the reconciliation of the world, what will their reception mean, but Life from the dead?

For, if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you.

The very purpose for which Christ died and came back to life was this--that he might be Lord over both the dead and the living.

Even the Christ did not please himself! On the contrary, as Scripture says of him--'The reproaches of those who were reproaching thee fell upon me.'

To Andronicus and Junias, my countrymen and once my fellow- prisoners, who are men of note among the Apostles, and who became Christians before I did;