concerning his Son, who was born of David's offspring by natural descent

and installed as Son of God with power by the Spirit of holiness when he was raised from the dead ??concerning Jesus Christ our Lord,

God is my witness, the God whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, how unceasingly I always mention you in my prayers,

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

Well now, are we Jews in a better position? Not at all. I have already charged all, Jews as well as Greeks, with being under sin ??10 as it is written, None is righteous, no, not one;

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.

Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not count to him.

He only got circumcision as a sign or seal of the righteousness which belonged to his faith as an uncircumcised man. The object of this was to make him the father of all who believe as uncircumcised persons and thus have righteousness counted to them,

If we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son when we were enemies, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

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.

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

Nor is the free gift like the effect of the one man's sin; for while the sentence ensuing on a single sin resulted in doom, the free gift ensuing on many trespasses issues in acquittal.

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

so that, while sin had reigned the reign of death, grace might also reign with a righteousness that ends in life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now what are we to infer from this? That we are to 'remain on in sin, so that there may be all the more grace'?

Never! How can we live in sin any longer, when we died to sin?

knowing as we do that our old self has been crucified with him in order to crush the sinful body and free us from any further slavery to sin

(for once dead, a man is absolved from the claims of sin).

the death he died was for sin, once for all, but the life he lives is for God.

So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sin is not to reign, then, over your mortal bodies and make you obey their passions;

you must not let sin have your members for the service of vice, you must dedicate yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, dedicating your members to God for the service of righteousness.

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!

Do you not know you are the servants of the master you obey, of the master to whom you yield yourselves obedient, whether it is Sin, whose service ends in death, or Obedience, whose service ends in righteousness?

Thank God, though you did serve sin, you have rendered whole-hearted obedience to what you were taught under the rule of faith;

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

When you served sin, you were free 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.

Sin's wage is death, but God's gift is life eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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;

The command gave an impulse to sin, sin beguiled me and used the command to kill me.

Then did what was meant for my good prove fatal to me? Never! It was sin; sin resulted in death for me by making use of this good thing. This was how sin was to be revealed in its true nature; it was to use the command to become sinful in the extreme.

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

That being so, it is not I who do the deed but sin that dwells within me.

Well, if I act against my wishes, it is not I who do the deed but sin that dwells within me.

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,

On the other hand, if Christ is within you, though the body is a dead thing owing to Adam's sin, the spirit is living as the result of righteousness.

We were saved with this hope in view. Now when an object of hope is seen, there is no further need to hope. Who ever hopes for what he sees already?

For he decreed of old that those whom he predestined should share the likeness of his Son ??that he might be the firstborn of a great brotherhood.

The God who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, surely He will give us everything besides!

For when God said, I will come about this time and Sara shall have a son, that was a word of promise.

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.

This done, all Israel will be saved ??as it is written, The deliverer will come from Sion, he will banish all godlessness from Jacob:

In virtue of my office, I tell everyone of your number who is self-important, that he is not to think more of himself than he ought to think; he must take a sane view of himself, corresponding to the degree of faith which God has assigned to each.

But if anyone has doubts about eating and then eats, that condemns him at once; it was not faith that induced him to eat, and any action that is not based on faith is a sin.

or again, as Isaiah says, Then shall the Scion of Jessai live, he who rises to rule the Gentiles; on him shall the Gentiles set their hope.

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.