For merely hearing the law read does not make men upright with God, but men who practice the law will be recognized as upright.

Indeed, when heathen people who have no law instinctively do what the law demands, although they have no law, they are a law to themselves,

for they show that the deeds the law demands are written on their hearts, because their consciences will testify for them, and their inner thoughts will either accuse or defend them,

Now if you call yourself a Jew, and rely on law, and boast about God,

and understand His will, and by being instructed in the law can know the things that excel,

a tutor of the foolish, a teacher of the young, since you have a knowledge of the truth as formulated in the law --

You who boast about the law, do you by breaking it dishonor God?

Now circumcision benefits you only if you practice the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision is no better than uncircumcision.

So if the uncircumcised heathen man observes the just demands of the law, will he not be counted as though he were a Jew?

And shall not the heathen man who is physically uncircumcised, and yet observes the law, condemn you who have the letter of the law and are physically circumcised, and yet break the law?

Now we know that everything the law says is spoken to those who are under its authority, that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world be held responsible to God.

Because no human creature can be brought into right standing with God by observing the law. For all the law can do is to make men conscious of sin.

But now God's way of giving men right standing with Himself has come to light; a way without connection with the law, and yet a way to which the law and the prophets testify.

For we hold that a man is brought into right standing with God by faith, that observance of the law has no connection with it.

Do we then through faith make null and void the law? Not at all; instead, we confirm it.

For the promise made to Abraham and his descendants, that he should own the world, was not conditioned on the law, but on the right standing he had with God through faith.

For if the law party is to possess the world, then faith has been nullified and the promise has been made null and void.

For the law results in wrath alone, but where there is no law, there can be no violation of it.

So it is conditioned on faith, that it might be in accordance with God's unmerited favor, so that the promise might be in force for all the descendants of Abraham, not only for those who belong to the law party but also for those who belong to the faith group of Abraham. He is the father of us all,

Certainly sin was in the world before the law was given, but it is not charged to men's account where there is no law.

Then law crept in to multiply the offense. Though sin has multiplied, yet God's favor has surpassed it and overflowed,

For sin must not any longer exert its mastery over you, for now you are not living as slaves to law but as subjects to God's favor.

What are we to conclude? Are we to keep on sinning, because we are not living as slaves to law but as subjects to God's favor? Never!

Do you not know, brothers -- for I speak to those who are acquainted with the law -- that the law can press its claim over a man only so long as he lives?

For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is freed from the marriage bond.

So, my brothers, you too in the body of Christ have ended your relation to the law, so that you may be married to another husband, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

For when we were living in accordance with our lower nature, the sinful passions that were aroused by the law were operating in the parts of our bodies to make us bear fruit that leads to death.

But now we have been freed from our relation to the law; we have ended our relation to that by which we once were held in bonds, so that we may serve in a new spiritual way and not in the old literalistic way.

What are we then to conclude? Is the law sin? Of course not! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I should not have learned what sin was, for I should not have known what an evil desire was, if the law had not said, "You must not have an evil desire."

Sin found its rallying point in that command and stirred within me every sort of evil desire, for without law, sin is lifeless.

I was once alive when I had no connection with the law, but when the command came, sin revived, and then I died;

So the law itself is holy, and its specific commands are holy, right, and good.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am made of flesh that is frail, sold into slavery to sin.

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

So I find this law: When I want to do right, the wrong is always in my way.

For in accordance with my better inner nature I approve God's law,

Thank God! It has been done through Jesus Christ our Lord! So in my higher nature I am a slave to the law of God, but in my lower nature, to the law of sin.

For though the law could not do it, because it was made helpless through our lower nature, yet God, by sending His own Son in a body similar to that of our lower nature, and as a sacrifice for sin, passed sentence upon sin through His body,

so that the requirement of the law might be fully met in us who do not live by the standard set by our lower nature, but by the standard set by the Spirit.

Because one's thinking the things suggested by the lower nature means enmity to God, for it does not subject itself to God's law, nor indeed can it.

I am telling the truth as a Christian man. I am telling no lie, because my conscience enlightened by the Holy Spirit is bearing me witness to this fact,

For they are Israelites; to them belong the privileges of sonship, God's glorious presence, the special covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, the promises,

while Israel, though ever in pursuit of a law that would bring right standing, did not attain to it.

For Christ has put an end to law as a way to right standing for everyone who puts his trust in Him.

For Moses says of the law-way to right standing with God that whoever can perform the law will live by it.

Stop owing anybody anything, except the obligation to love one another, for whoever practices loving others has perfectly satisfied the law.

Love never does a wrong to one's neighbor; so love is the perfect satisfaction of the law.

what the world calls of low degree, yea, what it counts as nothing and what it thinks does not exist, God chose to put a stop to what it thinks exists,

for no one can lay any other foundation than the one that is laid, that is, Jesus Christ Himself.

When one of you has a grievance against his neighbor, does he dare to go to law before a heathen court, instead of laying the case before God's people?

but one brother has to go to law with another, and that before unbelieving judges?

I am not saying this only by way of human illustrations, am I? Does not the law say so too?

For in the law of Moses it is written, "You must not muzzle an ox that is treading out your grain." Is it that God is concerned about oxen only?

Is He not really speaking on our behalf? Yes, indeed, this law was written on our behalf, because the plowman ought to plow and the thresher ought to thresh, in the hope of sharing in the crop.

To the Jews I have become like a Jew for the winning of Jews; to men under the law, like one under the law, though I am not under the law myself, to win the men under the law;

to men who have no written law, like one without any law, though I am not without God's law but specially under Christ's law, to win the men who have no written law.

still with the most of them God was not at all satisfied, for He allowed them to be laid low in the desert.

In the law it is written, "By men of foreign languages and by the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me, says the Lord."

Women must keep quiet in the churches, for no permission is given them to speak. On the contrary, they must take a subordinate place, just as the law says.

Now sin gives death its sting, and the law gives sin its power.

Now if the old religious service which resulted in death, although its law was carved in letters of stone, was introduced with a splendor so great that the Israelites could not keep their eyes fixed on Moses' face because of the splendor that was fading from it,

Stop forming intimate and inconsistent relations with unbelievers. What partnership can right-doing have with law-breaking, or how can light participate with darkness?

It is now the third time that I have been ready to come to see you, and I will never ask you for financial support, for it is not your money but you yourselves that I want; for children are not by duty bound to lay up money for their parents, but parents for their children.

because we know that a man does not come into right standing with God by doing what the law commands, but by simple trust in Christ, we too have trusted in Christ Jesus, in order to come into right standing with God by simple trust in Christ and not by doing what the law commands, because by doing what the law commands no man can come into right standing with God.

For through the law I myself have become dead to the law, so that I may live for God.

I never can nullify the unmerited favor of God. For if right standing with God could come through law, then Christ died for nothing.

I want to ask you only this one thing: Did you receive the Spirit by doing what the law commands, or by believing the message you heard?

Now when He supplies you with the Spirit and performs His wonder-works among you, does He do it because you do what the law commands, or because you believe the message that you heard --

For those who depend on what the law commands are under a curse, for the Scripture says, "Cursed be everyone who does not continue in all the commands that are written in the book of the law, to do them."

Now it is evident that through the law no man is brought into right standing with God, for "The man in right standing with God will live by faith,"

and the law has nothing to do with faith, but it says, "It is the man who does these things that will live by doing them."

Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us -- for the Scripture says, "Cursed be everyone who is hanged on a tree" --

I mean this: The law which was given four hundred and thirty years later could not annul the contract which had already been ratified by God, so as to cancel the promise.

For if our inheritance depends on the law, it can no longer depend on the promise. But it was by promise that God so graciously bestowed it upon Abraham.

Then what about the law? It was added later on to increase transgressions, until the descendant to whom the promise was made should come, enacted through the agency of angels in the person of an intermediary.

Is the law then contrary to God's promises? Of course not. For if a law had been given that was able to impart life, surely, then, right standing would have come through law.

But before this faith came, we were kept locked up under the law, in preparation for the faith which was to be unveiled.

So the law has been our attendant to lead us to Christ, so that we might through faith obtain right standing with God.

but when the proper time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born subject to law,

to ransom those who were subject to law, so that we might be adopted as sons.

Tell me, you who want to be subject to law, will you not listen to what the law says?

I again insist that if any man lets himself be circumcised, he is under obligation to obey the whole law.

You people, whoever you are among you, who try to get into right standing with God, through law have cut yourselves off from Christ, you have missed the way of God's favor.

For the whole law is summed up in one saying, "You must love your neighbor as you do yourself."

But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.

gentleness, self-control. There is no law against such things.

Practice bearing one another's burdens, and in this way carry out the law of Christ.

Indeed, the very men who let themselves be circumcised do not themselves observe the law. But they simply want you to let yourselves be circumcised, so that they can boast of you as members of their party.

through His human nature He has put a stop to the hostility between us, namely, the law with its commands and decrees, in order to create one new humanity out of the two parties and so make peace through union with Himself, and in one body

to lay aside, with your former way of living, your old self which is on the way to destruction in accordance with its deceptive impulses;

So you must lay aside falsehood and each of you practice telling the truth to his neighbor, for we are parts of one another.

circumcised when I was a week old; a descendant of Israel; a member of the tribe of Benjamin; a Hebrew, a son of Hebrews. Measured by the law, I was a Pharisee;

by the standard set by zeal, I was a persecutor of the church, and measured by the uprightness reached by keeping the law, I was faultless.

and be actually in union with Him, not having a supposed right standing with God which depends on my doing what the law commands, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the real right standing with God which originates from Him and rests on faith.

Because we were yearning for you so tenderly, we were willing, not only to share with you God's good news, but to lay down our very lives too for you, all because you were so dearly loved by us.

They want to be teachers of the law, although they do not understand the words they use or the things about which they make such confident assertions.

Indeed, I know that the law is an excellent thing, if a man makes a lawful use of it;

that is, if he understands that law is not enacted for upright people but for the lawless and disorderly, the godless and sinful, the ignorant and profane, people who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers,

But hold yourself aloof from foolish controversies, pedigrees, strife, and wrangles about the law, for these are fruitless and futile.

And those of the descendants of Levi who accept the priesthood are authorized by the law to collect a tenth from the people; that is, from their own brothers, though they have sprung from Abraham.