For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Certainly not! We have died to sin---how then can we go on living in it?

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.

And we know that our old being has been put to death with Christ on his cross, in order that the power of the sinful self might be destroyed, so that we should no longer be the slaves of sin.

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

And so, because he died, sin has no power over him; and now he lives his life in fellowship with God.

That is how it is with you, my friends. As far as the Law is concerned, you also have died because you are part of the body of Christ; and now you belong to him who was raised from death in order that we might be useful in the service of God.

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 far as the Law is concerned, however, I am dead---killed by the Law itself---in order that I might live for God. I have been put to death with Christ on his cross,

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.

As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; for by means of his cross the world is dead to me, and I am dead to the world.

Since Christ suffered physically, you too must strengthen yourselves with the same way of thinking that he had; because whoever suffers physically is no longer involved with sin.

You have spent enough time in the past doing what the heathen like to do. Your lives were spent in indecency, lust, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and the disgusting worship of idols.

See to it, then, that no one enslaves you by means of the worthless deceit of human wisdom, which comes from the teachings handed down by human beings and from the ruling spirits of the universe, and not from Christ.

He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace.

If you belonged to the world, then the world would love you as its own. But I chose you from this world, and you do not belong to it; that is why the world hates you.

I gave them your message, and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.

Just as I do not belong to the world, they do not belong to the world.

It is true that we live in the world, but we do not fight from worldly motives.

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.

We know that we belong to God even though the whole world is under the rule of the Evil One.

he canceled the unfavorable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross.

So let no one make rules about what you eat or drink or about holy days or the New Moon Festival or the Sabbath.

In the same way, we too were slaves of the ruling spirits of the universe before we reached spiritual maturity.

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?

I am worried about you! Can it be that all my work for you has been for nothing?

Do not let all kinds of strange teachings lead you from the right way. It is good to receive inner strength from God's grace, and not by obeying rules about foods; those who obey these rules have not been helped by them.