For civil authorities are not a terror to the man who does right, but they are to the man who does wrong. Do you want to have no dread of the civil authorities? Then practice doing right and you will be commended for it.

For the civil authorities are God's servants to do you good. But if you practice doing wrong, you should dread them, for they do not wield the sword for nothing. Indeed, they are God's servants to inflict punishment upon people who do wrong.

Indeed, I do not understand what I do, for I do not practice what I want to do, but I am always doing what I hate.

But if I do the things that I do not want to do, it is really not I that am doing these things, but it is sin which has its home within me.

But if I am always doing what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is right.

But the man who has misgivings about eating, if he then eats, has already condemned himself by so doing, because he did not follow his faith, and any action that does not follow one's faith is a sin.

And you, who pose as a judge of those who practice such sins and yet continue doing the same yourself, do you for once suppose that you are going to escape the judgment of God?

Do you not know that when you habitually offer yourselves to anyone for obedience to him, you are slaves to that one whom you are in the habit of obeying, whether it is the slavery to sin whose end is death or to obedience whose end is right-doing?

What benefit did you then derive from doing the things of which you are now ashamed? None, for they end in death.

For the kingdom of God does not consist in what we eat and drink, but in doing right, in peace and joy through the Holy Spirit;

and males too have forsaken the natural function of females and been consumed by flaming passion for one another, males practicing shameful vice with other males, and continuing to suffer in their persons the inevitable penalty for doing what is improper.

because they overflow with every sort of evil-doing, wickedness, greed, and malice; they are full of envy, murder, quarreling, deceit, ill-will;

eternal life to those who patiently continue doing good and striving for glory, honor, and immortality,

to every human soul who practices doing evil, the Jew first and then the Greek.

But glory, honor, and peace will come to everyone who practices doing good, the Jew first and then the Greek;

So where has human boasting gone? It was completely shut out. On what principle? On that of doing something? No, but on the principle of faith.

and you must stop offering to sin the parts of your bodies as instruments for wrongdoing, but you must once for all offer yourselves to God as persons raised from the dead to live on perpetually, and once for all offer the parts of your bodies to God as instruments for right-doing.

and since you have been freed from sin, you have become the slaves of right-doing.

I am speaking in familiar human terms because of the frailty of your nature. For just as you formerly offered the parts of your bodies in slavery to impurity and to ever increasing lawlessness, so now you must once for all offer them in slavery to right-doing, which leads to consecration.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free so far as doing right was concerned.

Now really it is not I that am doing these things, but it is sin which has its home within me.

On your part, you must exercise your faith by the standard of yourself in the sight of God. Happy is the man who need not condemn himself for doing the thing that he approves.