The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that he would be heir of the world, was not through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

And he did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.

We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.

Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one to obey as slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, whether of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

I am speaking in human terms, because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for holiness.

But now, by dying to what once held us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed, I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."

And as Isaiah said: "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us children, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah."

And if it is by grace, then it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise, grace would no longer be grace.

And if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the rest to share the root of the olive tree,

For if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and were grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree!