All who sin without having the Law will perish without regard to the Law, and all who sin under the Law will be judged by the Law.

For merely hearing the Law read does not make a man upright in the sight of God; men must obey the Law to be made upright.

When heathen who have no Law instinctively obey what the Law demands, even though they have no law they are a law to themselves,

for they show that what the Law demands is written on their hearts, and their consciences will testify for them, and with their thoughts they will either accuse or perhaps defend themselves,

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

and can understand his will, and from hearing the Law read can tell what is right,

train the foolish, teach the young, since you have knowledge and truth formulated in the Law??21 why, then, will you teach others and refuse to teach yourself? Will you preach against stealing, and yet steal yourself?

Will you boast of the Law and yet dishonor God by breaking it?

Circumcision will help you only if you observe the Law; but if you are a lawbreaker, you might as well be uncircumcised.

So if people who are uncircumcised observe the requirements of the Law, will they not be treated as though they were circumcised?

And if, although they are physically uncircumcised, they obey the Law, they will condemn you, who break the Law, although you have it in writing, and are circumcised.

Now we know that everything the Law says is addressed to those under its authority, so that every mouth may be shut, and the whole world be made accountable to God.

For no human being can be made upright in the sight of God by observing the Law. All that the Law can do is to make man conscious of sin.

But now God's way of uprightness has been disclosed without any reference to law, though the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it.

For we hold that a man is made upright by faith; the observance of the Law has nothing to do with it.

Is this using faith to overthrow law? Far from it. This confirms the Law.

"Happy are they whose violations of the Law have been forgiven, whose sins are covered up!

For the promise made to Abraham and his descendants that the world should belong to him did not come to him or his descendants through the Law, but through the uprightness that resulted from his faith.

For if it is the adherents of the Law who are to possess it, faith is nullified and the promise amounts to nothing!

For the Law only brings down God's wrath; where there is no law, there is no violation of it.

That is why it all turns upon faith; it is to make it a matter of God's favor, so that the promise may hold good for all Abraham's descendants, not only those who are adherents of the Law, but also those who share the faith of Abraham. For he is the father of all of us;

It is true sin was in the world before the Law was given, and men are not charged with sin where there is no law.

Then law slipped in, and multiplied the offense. But greatly as sin multiplied, God's mercy has far surpassed it,

For sin must no longer control you, for you live not under law but under mercy.

What follows, then? Are we to sin, because we live not under law but under mercy? Certainly not!

Do you not know, brothers??or I am speaking to men who know what law is??hat law governs a man only as long as he lives?

For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if he dies, the marriage law no longer applies to her.

So if she marries another man while her husband is alive, she is called an adulteress, but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and can marry someone else without being an adulteress.

So you, in turn, my brothers, in the body of Christ have become dead as far as the Law is concerned, so that you may belong to another husband, who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God.

For when we were living mere physical lives the sinful passions, awakened by the Law, operated through the organs of our bodies to make us bear fruit for death.

But now the Law no longer applies to us; we have died to what once controlled us, so that we can now serve in the new Spirit, not under the old letter.

Then what shall we conclude? That the Law is sin? Certainly not! Yet, if it had not been for the Law, I should never have learned what sin was; I should not have known what it was to covet if the Law had not said, "You must not covet."

That command gave sin an opening, and it led me to all sorts of covetous ways, for sin is lifeless without law.

I was once alive and without law, but when the command came, sin awoke and then I died;

So the Law itself is holy, and each command is holy, just, and good.

We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am physical, sold into slavery to sin.

But if I do what I do not want to do, I acknowledge that the Law is right.

I find the law to be that I who want to do right am dogged by what is wrong.

My inner nature agrees with the divine law,

but all through my body I see another principle in conflict with the law of my reason, which makes me a prisoner to that law of sin that runs through my body.

Thank God! it is done through Jesus Christ our Lord! So mentally I am a slave to God's law, but physically to the law of sin.

For the life-giving law of the Spirit through Christ Jesus has freed you from the Law of sin and death.

For though it was impossible for the Law to do it, hampered as it was by our physical limitations, God, by sending his own Son in our sinful physical form, as a sin-offering, put his condemnation upon sin through his physical nature,

so that the requirement of the Law might be fully met in our case, since we live not on the physical but on the spiritual plane.

For to be physically minded means hostility to God, for it refuses to obey God's law, indeed it cannot obey it.

while Israel, straining after a law that should bring uprightness, did not come up to it.

For Christ marks the termination of law, so that now anyone who has faith may attain uprightness.

Moses said that anyone who carried out the uprightness the Law prescribed would find life through it.

Owe nobody anything??xcept the duty of mutual love, for whoever loves his fellow-men has fully satisfied the Law.

Love never wrongs a neighbor, and so love fully satisfies the Law.

and it was what the world calls low and insignificant and unreal that God chose to nullify its realities,

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

So no one should boast about men. For it all belongs to you??22 Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, the present, the future??ll of it belongs to you.

but one Christian has to go to law with another, and before unbelievers too?

Am I saying only what men say? Does not the Law say so too?

For in the Law of Moses it reads, "You shall not muzzle an ox that is treading out the grain." Is it about the oxen that God is concerned?

Is he not clearly speaking in our interests? Of course this law was written in our interests, because the plowman ought to plow, and the thresher to thresh, in the expectation of sharing in the crop.

To the Jews I have become like a Jew, to win Jews over; to men under the Law I have become like a man under the Law, though I am not myself under the Law, so as to win over those who are under the Law.

To those who have no law I have become like a man without any law??hough I am not without the law of God, but under the law of Christ??o as to win over those who are without any law.

In the Law it says, "By men of strange languages and by the lips of foreigners I will speak to this nation, and not even then will they listen to me, says the Lord."

Women are to keep quiet in church, for they are not allowed to speak. They must take a subordinate place, just as the Law says.

Here it is the third time that I have been ready to come to see you, and I do not intend to be a burden to you now; for it is not your money but yourselves that I want; for children are not expected to lay up money for their parents, but parents for their children.

but who know that a man is not made upright by doing what the Law commands, but by faith in Christ Jesus??ven we believed in Christ Jesus, so as to be made upright by faith in Christ and not by doing what the Law commands??or by doing what the Law commands no one can be made upright.

For it is through the Law that I have become dead to the Law, so that I may live for God.

I refuse to nullify the mercy of God. For if uprightness could be secured through law, then Christ died for nothing!

This is all I want to ask you: Did you receive the Spirit through doing what the Law commands, or through believing the message you heard?

When he supplies you with the Spirit and works wonders among you, is it because you do what the Law commands, or because you believe the message you heard?

For there is a curse upon all who rely on obedience to the Law, for the Scripture says, "Cursed be anyone who does not stand by everything that is written in the Book of the Law and obey it."

That no one is accepted as upright by God for obeying the Law is evident because the upright will have life because of his faith,

and the Law has nothing to do with faith; it teaches that it is the man who does these things that will find life by doing them.

Christ ransomed us from the Law's curse by taking our curse upon himself (for the Scripture says, "Cursed be anyone who is hung on a tree")

My point is this: An agreement already ratified by God cannot be annulled and its promise canceled by the Law, which arose four hundred and thirty years later.

If our inheritance rests on the Law, it has nothing to do with the promise. Yet it was as a promise that God bestowed it upon Abraham.

Then what about the Law? It was a later addition, designed to produce transgressions, until the descendant to which the promise was made should come, and it was enacted by means of angels, through an intermediary;

Is the Law then contrary to God's promises? By no means. For if a law had been given that could have brought life, uprightness would really have come through law.

But before this faith came, we were kept shut up under the Law, in order to obtain the faith that was to be revealed.

So the Law has been our attendant on our way to Christ, so that we might be made upright through faith.

but when the proper time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, and made subject to law,

to ransom those who were subject to law, so that we might receive adoption.

Tell me this, you who want to be subject to law: Will you not listen to the Law?

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

You people who propose to be made upright by law have finished with Christ; you have lost your hold upon 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 law.

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

Bear one another's burdens, and in that way carry out the law of the Christ.

Why, even those who let themselves be circumcised do not observe the Law themselves! But they want you to let yourselves be circumcised so that they can boast of that physical fact about you!

and through his human nature put an end to the feud between us, and abolished the Law with its rules and regulations, in order to make peace and create out of the two parties one new man by uniting them with himself,

You must lay aside with your former habits your old self which is going to ruin through its deceptive passions.

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

There must be no indecency or foolish or scurrilous talk??ll that is unbecoming. There should be thanksgiving instead.

I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a descendant of Israel. I belong to the tribe of Benjamin. I am a Hebrew, and the son of Hebrews. As to the Law, I was a Pharisee;

as to my zeal, I was a persecutor of the church; and by the Law's standard of uprightness, no fault could be found with me.

and be known to be united to him, with any uprightness I may have not based on law but coming through faith in Christ??he uprightness that comes from God through faith.

for it was through him that everything was created in heaven and on earth, the seen and the unseen, angelic thrones, dominions, principalities, authorities??ll things were created through him and for him.

You must not lie to one another. For you have stripped off your old self with its ways

They would like to be teachers of law although they do not understand the words they use or the matters they insist upon.

I agree that the Law is excellent??rovided it is legitimately used,

with the understanding that law is not intended for upright men but for the lawless and disorderly, the godless and irreligious, the irreverent and profane, men who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers,

At my first appearance in court no one came to help me; everybody deserted me. May no one lay it up against them!