Romans 6:15 – 7:6

Romans 6

¹⁵ What then? Should we continue to sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! ¹⁶ Do you not know that when you offer yourselves to obey someone as slaves, you are slaves of the one you are obeying—whether slaves of sin, resulting in death, or slaves of obedience, resulting in righteousness?

¹⁷ Thanks be to God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to the pattern of the teaching into which you were placed. ¹⁸ After you were set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ (I am speaking in a human way because of the weakness of your flesh.) Indeed, just as you offered your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in more lawlessness, so now offer your members in the same way as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

²⁰ For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. ²¹ So what kind of fruit did you have then? They were things of which you are now ashamed. Yes, the final result of those things is death. ²² But now, since you were set free from sin and have become slaves to God, you have your fruit resulting in sanctification—and the final result is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 7

¹ Or don’t you know, brothers ^[1] (since I am speaking to those who know the law), that a law has jurisdiction over a person only as long as he lives? ² For example, a married woman is bound to her husband by law as long as he is alive, but if he dies, she is released from this law regarding her husband. ³ So then, she will be labeled an adulteress if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from this law, and she is not an adulteress if she marries another man.

⁴ In the same way, my brothers, you also were put to death in regard to the law by the body of Christ, so that you may be joined to another, to the one who was raised from the dead, in order that we might produce fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were in the flesh, strong sinful desires stirred up by the law were at work in our members, with the result that we produced fruit that results in death. ⁶ But now we have been released from the law by dying to what held us in its grip, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the letter of the law.