‏ Romans 6

Difficulties arising from this Teaching

1What are we to say, then? Are we to continue to sin, in order that God’s loving kindness may be multiplied? 2Heaven forbid! We became dead to sin, and how can we go on living in it? 3Or can it be that you do not know that all of us, who were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, in our baptism shared his death? 4Consequently, through sharing his death in our baptism, we were buried with him; that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by a manifestation of the Father’s power, so we also may live a new life. 5If we have become united with him by the act symbolic of his death, surely we will also become united with him by the act symbolic of his resurrection. 6We recognise the truth that our old self was crucified with Christ, in order that the body, the stronghold of sin, might be rendered powerless, so that we should no longer be slaves to sin. 7For the man who has so died has been pronounced righteous and released from sin. 8And our belief is, that, as we have shared Christ’s death, we will also share his life. 9We know, indeed, that Christ, having once risen from the dead, will not die again. Death has power over him no longer. 10For the death that he died was a death to sin, once and for all. But the life that he now lives, he lives for God. 11So let it be with you — regard yourselves as dead to sin, but as living for God, through union with Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies and compel you to obey its cravings. 13Do not offer any part of your bodies to sin, in the cause of unrighteousness, but once for all offer yourselves to God (as those who, though once dead, now have life), and devote every part of your bodies to the cause of righteousness. 14For sin will not lord it over you. You are living under the reign, not of law, but of love. 15 What follows, then? Are we to sin because we are living under the reign of love and not of law? Heaven forbid! 16Surely you know that, when you offer yourselves as servants, to obey anyone, you are the servants of the person whom you obey, whether the service be a service sin which leads to death, or a service Duty which leads to righteousness. 17God be thanked that, though you were once servants of sin, yet you learned to give hearty obedience to that form of doctrine under which you were placed. 18Set free from the control of sin, you became servants to righteousness. 19I can but speak as people do because of the weakness of your earthly nature. Once you offered every part of your bodies to the service of impurity, and of wickedness, which leads to further wickedness. Now, in the same way, offer them to the service of righteousness, which leads to holiness. 20While you were still servants of sin, you were free as regards righteousness. 21But what were the fruits that you reaped from those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of such things is death. 22But now that you have been set free from the control of sin, and have become servants to God, the fruit that you reap is an ever increasing holiness, and the end eternal life. The wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through union with Christ Jesus, our Lord.

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