The gospel way to holy living
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📚✭What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? 2 📚Absolutely not✭! How shall we who died to sin, live any longer in it? 3 📚✭Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4 📚Therefore we are buried with him through baptism into death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also might walk in newness of life.5 📚For if we have been united in the likeness of his death, we will be united✭ also in the likeness of his resurrection. 6 📚We know that our old human nature✭ was crucified with him, so that the body of sin✭ might be deprived of force, that from now on we should not serve sin. 7 📚✭For he who has died with Christ has been freed from sin.
8 📚✭Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, 9 📚✭knowing that Christ being raised from the dead will not die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. 10 📚For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives for God.
Offering ourselves to God
11 📚✭Likewise you also must count yourselves as dead indeed to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12 📚✭Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its cravings. 13 📚✭And do not present your body’s members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as those who are alive from the dead, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. 14 📚✭For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the Law✭, but under grace✭.
Every person a slave to sin or to God
15 📚✭What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the Law, but under grace? Absolutely not! 16 📚✭Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether slaves✭ of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17 📚✭But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, you have obeyed from the heart that form of teaching to which you were delivered. 18 📚So having been freed from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness✭.
19 📚✭I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you have presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and to evil leading to further evil, even so now present✭ your members as slaves✭ to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 📚✭For when you were the slaves of sin, you were not controlled by righteousness. 21 📚✭What fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 📚✭But now, having been freed from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end is everlasting life.
23 📚✭For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.