Surely you know that when you surrender yourselves as slaves to obey someone, you are in fact the slaves of the master you obey---either of sin, which results in death, or of obedience, which results in being put right with God.

Certainly you will understand what I am about to say, my friends, because all of you know about law. The law rules over people only as long as they live.

Surely you know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you!

It is not right for you to be proud! You know the saying, "A little bit of yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise."

Don't you know that God's people will judge the world? Well, then, if you are to judge the world, aren't you capable of judging small matters?

Do you not know that we shall judge the angels? How much more, then, the things of this life!

Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God's Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts

You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ's body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible!

Or perhaps you don't know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, "The two will become one body."

Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God;

Surely you know that the men who work in the Temple get their food from the Temple and that those who offer the sacrifices on the altar get a share of the sacrifices.

Surely you know that many runners take part in a race, but only one of them wins the prize. Run, then, in such a way as to win the prize.

Put yourselves to the test and judge yourselves, to find out whether you are living in faith. Surely you know that Christ Jesus is in you?---unless you have completely failed.

Unfaithful people! Don't you know that to be the world's friend means to be God's enemy? If you want to be the world's friend, you make yourself God's enemy.

Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

In the same way, all of us, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slaves or free, have been baptized into the one body by the same Spirit, and we have all been given the one Spirit to drink.

You were baptized into union with Christ, and now you are clothed, so to speak, with the life of Christ himself.

which was a symbol pointing to baptism, which now saves you. It is not the washing off of bodily dirt, but the promise made to God from a good conscience. It saves you through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

By our baptism, then, we were buried with him and shared his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from death by the glorious power of the Father, so also we might live a new life.

For since we have become one with him in dying as he did, in the same way we shall be one with him by being raised to life as he was.

Since we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

Now, what about those people who are baptized for the dead? What do they hope to accomplish? If it is true, as some claim, that the dead are not raised to life, why are those people being baptized for the dead?

so that it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. This life that I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me.

I refuse to reject the grace of God. But if a person is put right with God through the Law, it means that Christ died for nothing!