But now that you know God---or, I should say, now that God knows you---how is it that you want to turn back to those weak and pitiful ruling spirits? Why do you want to become their slaves all over again?

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 before the time for faith came, the Law kept us all locked up as prisoners until this coming faith should be revealed.

And so the Law was in charge of us until Christ came, in order that we might then be put right with God through faith.

Sin must not be your master; for you do not live under law but under God's grace.

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.

Now, however, we are free from the Law, because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit.

So we say that the Gentiles, who were not trying to put themselves right with God, were put right with him through faith;

And why not? Because they did not depend on faith but on what they did. And so they stumbled over the "stumbling stone"

They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself, and instead, they have tried to set up their own way; and so they did not submit themselves to God's way of putting people right.

Moses wrote this about being put right with God by obeying the Law: "Whoever obeys the commands of the Law will live."

"Nor are you to ask, Who will go down into the world below?" (that is, to bring Christ up from death).

If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.

Jesus said to them, "Haven't you ever read what the Scriptures say? 'The stone which the builders rejected as worthless turned out to be the most important of all. This was done by the Lord; what a wonderful sight it is!'

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Jesus answered them, "How wrong you are! It is because you don't know the Scriptures or God's power.

Now, as for the dead rising to life: haven't you ever read what God has told you? He said,

If you had really believed Moses, you would have believed me, because he wrote about me.

But since you do not believe what he wrote, how can you believe what I say?"

Jesus answered, "It is written in your own Law that God said, 'You are gods.'

The crowd answered, "Our Law tells us that the Messiah will live forever. How, then, can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?"

This, however, was bound to happen so that what is written in their Law may come true: 'They hated me for no reason at all.'

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.