And he said to the man, "You listened to your wife and ate the fruit which I told you not to eat. Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you.

You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil, and you will become soil again."

You tell us to return to what we were; you change us back to dust.

You carry us away like a flood; we last no longer than a dream. We are like weeds that sprout in the morning,

We are destroyed by your anger; we are terrified by your fury.

Our life is cut short by your anger; it fades away like a whisper.

Who has felt the full power of your anger? Who knows what fear your fury can bring?

Wicked people bring about their own downfall by their evil deeds, but good people are protected by their integrity.

Again Jesus said to them, "I will go away; you will look for me, but you will die in your sins. You cannot go where I am going."

That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. And you will die in your sins if you do not believe that 'I Am Who I Am'."

But the two are not the same, because God's free gift is not like Adam's sin. It is true that many people died because of the sin of that one man. But God's grace is much greater, and so is his free gift to so many people through the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ.

It is true that through the sin of one man death began to rule because of that one man. But how much greater is the result of what was done by the one man, Jesus Christ! All who receive God's abundant grace and are freely put right with him will rule in life through Christ.

For sin pays its wage---death; but God's free gift is eternal life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord.

Everyone must die once, and after that be judged by God.

Now we know that everything in the Law applies to those who live under the Law, in order to stop all human excuses and bring the whole world under God's judgment.

For no one is put right in God's sight by doing what the Law requires; what the Law does is to make us know that we have sinned.

The Law brings down God's anger; but where there is no law, there is no disobeying of the law.

There was sin in the world before the Law was given; but where there is no law, no account is kept of sins.

Law was introduced in order to increase wrongdoing; but where sin increased, God's grace increased much more.

For when we lived according to our human nature, the sinful desires stirred up by the Law were at work in our bodies, and all we did ended in death.

Shall we say, then, that the Law itself is sinful? Of course not! But it was the Law that made me know what sin is. If the Law had not said, "Do not desire what belongs to someone else," I would not have known such a desire.

I myself was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life,

Sin found its chance, and by means of the commandment it deceived me and killed me.

But does this mean that what is good caused my death? By no means! It was sin that did it; by using what is good, sin brought death to me, in order that its true nature as sin might be revealed. And so, by means of the commandment sin is shown to be even more terribly sinful.

Those who depend on obeying the Law live under a curse. For the scripture says, "Whoever does not always obey everything that is written in the book of the Law is under God's curse!"

But the Law has nothing to do with faith. Instead, as the scripture says, "Whoever does everything the Law requires will live."