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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.
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A married woman, for example, is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if he dies, then she is free from the law that bound her to him.
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So then, if she lives with another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is legally a free woman and does not commit adultery if she marries another man.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But by means of that commandment sin found its chance to stir up all kinds of selfish desires in me. Apart from law, sin is a dead thing.
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I myself was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life,
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and I died. And the commandment which was meant to bring life, in my case brought death.
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Sin found its chance, and by means of the commandment it deceived me and killed me.
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So then, the Law itself is holy, and the commandment is holy, right, and good.
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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.
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We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am a mortal, sold as a slave to sin.
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I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate.
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Since what I do is what I don't want to do, this shows that I agree that the Law is right.
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So I am not really the one who does this thing; rather it is the sin that lives in me.
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I know that good does not live in me---that is, in my human nature. For even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it.
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I don't do the good I want to do; instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do.
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If I do what I don't want to do, this means that I am no longer the one who does it; instead, it is the sin that lives in me.
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So I find that this law is at work: when I want to do what is good, what is evil is the only choice I have.
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My inner being delights in the law of God.
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But I see a different law at work in my body---a law that fights against the law which my mind approves of. It makes me a prisoner to the law of sin which is at work in my body.
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What an unhappy man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death?
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Thanks be to God, who does this through our Lord Jesus Christ! This, then, is my condition: on my own I can serve God's law only with my mind, while my human nature serves the law of sin.
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There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus.
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For the law of the Spirit, which brings us life in union with Christ Jesus, has set me free from the law of sin and death.
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What the Law could not do, because human nature was weak, God did. He condemned sin in human nature by sending his own Son, who came with a nature like our sinful nature, to do away with sin.
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God did this so that the righteous demands of the Law might be fully satisfied in us who live according to the Spirit, and not according to human nature.
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Those who live as their human nature tells them to, have their minds controlled by what human nature wants. Those who live as the Spirit tells them to, have their minds controlled by what the Spirit wants.
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To be controlled by human nature results in death; to be controlled by the Spirit results in life and peace.
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And so people become enemies of God when they are controlled by their human nature; for they do not obey God's law, and in fact they cannot obey it.
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Those who obey their human nature cannot please God.
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But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to---if, in fact, God's Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
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But if Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you because you have been put right with God, even though your bodies are going to die because of sin.
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If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then he who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of his Spirit in you.
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So then, my friends, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to.
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For if you live according to your human nature, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death your sinful actions, you will live.
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Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children.
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For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, "Father! my Father!"
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God's Spirit joins himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children.
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Since we are his children, we will possess the blessings he keeps for his people, and we will also possess with Christ what God has kept for him; for if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory.
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I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.
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All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children.
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For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so. Yet there was the hope
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that creation itself would one day be set free from its slavery to decay and would share the glorious freedom of the children of God.
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For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth.
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But it is not just creation alone which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God's gifts also groan within ourselves as we wait for God to make us his children and set our whole being free.
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For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For who of us hopes for something we see?
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But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
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In the same way the Spirit also comes to help us, weak as we are. For we do not know how we ought to pray; the Spirit himself pleads with God for us in groans that words cannot express.
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And God, who sees into our hearts, knows what the thought of the Spirit is; because the Spirit pleads with God on behalf of his people and in accordance with his will.
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We know that in all things God works for good with those who love him, those whom he has called according to his purpose.
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Those whom God had already chosen he also set apart to become like his Son, so that the Son would be the first among many believers.
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And so those whom God set apart, he called; and those he called, he put right with himself, and he shared his glory with them.
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In view of all this, what can we say? If God is for us, who can be against us?
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Certainly not God, who did not even keep back his own Son, but offered him for us all! He gave us his Son---will he not also freely give us all things?
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Who will accuse God's chosen people? God himself declares them not guilty!
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Who, then, will condemn them? Not Christ Jesus, who died, or rather, who was raised to life and is at the right side of God, pleading with him for us!
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Who, then, can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble do it, or hardship or persecution or hunger or poverty or danger or death?
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As the scripture says, "For your sake we are in danger of death at all times; we are treated like sheep that are going to be slaughtered."
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No, in all these things we have complete victory through him who loved us!
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For I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future,
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neither the world above nor the world below---there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord.
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I am speaking the truth; I belong to Christ and I do not lie. My conscience, ruled by the Holy Spirit, also assures me that I am not lying
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when I say how great is my sorrow, how endless the pain in my heart
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for my people, my own flesh and blood! For their sake I could wish that I myself were under God's curse and separated from Christ.
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They are God's people; he made them his children and revealed his glory to them; he made his covenants with them and gave them the Law; they have the true worship; they have received God's promises;
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they are descended from the famous Hebrew ancestors; and Christ, as a human being, belongs to their race. May God, who rules over all, be praised forever! Amen.
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I am not saying that the promise of God has failed; for not all the people of Israel are the people of God.
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Nor are all of Abraham's descendants the children of God. God said to Abraham, "It is through Isaac that you will have the descendants I promised you."
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This means that the children born in the usual way are not the children of God; instead, the children born as a result of God's promise are regarded as the true descendants.
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For God's promise was made in these words: "At the right time I will come back, and Sarah will have a son."
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And this is not all. For Rebecca's two sons had the same father, our ancestor Isaac.
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But in order that the choice of one son might be completely the result of God's own purpose, God said to her, "The older will serve the younger." He said this before they were born, before they had done anything either good or bad; so God's choice was based on his call, and not on anything they had done.
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As the scripture says, "I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau."
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Shall we say, then, that God is unjust? Not at all.
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For he said to Moses, "I will have mercy on anyone I wish; I will take pity on anyone I wish."
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So then, everything depends, not on what we humans want or do, but only on God's mercy.
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For the scripture says to the king of Egypt, "I made you king in order to use you to show my power and to spread my fame over the whole world."
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So then, God has mercy on anyone he wishes, and he makes stubborn anyone he wishes.
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But one of you will say to me, "If this is so, how can God find fault with anyone? Who can resist God's will?"
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But who are you, my friend, to talk back to God? A clay pot does not ask the man who made it, "Why did you make me like this?"
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After all, the man who makes the pots has the right to use the clay as he wishes, and to make two pots from the same lump of clay, one for special occasions and the other for ordinary use.
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And the same is true of what God has done. He wanted to show his anger and to make his power known. But he was very patient in enduring those who were the objects of his anger, who were doomed to destruction.
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And he also wanted to reveal his abundant glory, which was poured out on us who are the objects of his mercy, those of us whom he has prepared to receive his glory.
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For we are the people he called, not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles.
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This is what he says in the book of Hosea: "The people who were not mine I will call 'My People.' The nation that I did not love I will call 'My Beloved.'
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And in the very place where they were told, 'You are not my people,' there they will be called the children of the living God."
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And Isaiah exclaims about Israel: "Even if the people of Israel are as many as the grains of sand by the sea, yet only a few of them will be saved;
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for the Lord will quickly settle his full account with the world."
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It is as Isaiah had said before, "If the Lord Almighty had not left us some descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah."
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So we say that the Gentiles, who were not trying to put themselves right with God, were put right with him through faith;
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while God's people, who were seeking a law that would put them right with God, did not find it.
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And why not? Because they did not depend on faith but on what they did. And so they stumbled over the "stumbling stone"
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that the scripture speaks of: "Look, I place in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall. But whoever believes in him will not be disappointed."
