Letter to the Romans 6

¹ Does it follow that we should remain in sin so as to let grace have greater scope?

² Of course not. We are dead to sin, so how can we continue to live in it?

³ You have been taught that when we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death;

⁴ in other words, when we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.

⁵ If in union with Christ we have imitated his death, we shall also imitate him in his resurrection.

⁶ We must realise that our former selves have been crucified with him to destroy this sinful body and to free us from the slavery of sin.

⁷ When a Christian dies, of course, he has finished with sin.

⁸ But we believe that having died with Christ we shall return to life with him:

⁹ Christ, as we know, having been raised from the dead will never die again. Death has no power over him any more.

¹⁰ When he died, he died, once for all, to sin, so his life now is life with God;

¹¹ and in that way, you too must consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.

¹² That is why you must not let sin reign in your mortal bodies or command your obedience to bodily passions,

¹³ why you must not let any part of your body turn into an unholy weapon fighting on the side of sin; you should, instead, offer yourselves to God, and consider yourselves dead men brought back to life; you should make every part of your body into a weapon fighting on the side of God;

¹⁴ and then sin will no longer dominate your life, since you are living by grace and not by law.

¹⁵ Does the fact that we are living by grace and not by law mean that we are free to sin? Of course not.

¹⁶ You know that if you agree to serve and obey a master you become his slaves. You cannot be slaves of sin that leads to death and at the same time slaves of obedience that leads to righteousness.

¹⁷ You were once slaves of sin, but thank God you submitted without reservation to the creed you were taught.

¹⁸ You may have been freed from the slavery of sin, but only to become ‘slaves’ of righteousness.

¹⁹ If I may use human terms to help your natural weakness: as once you put your bodies at the service of vice and immorality, so now you must put them at the service of righteousness for your sanctification.

²⁰ When you were slaves of sin, you felt no obligation to righteousness,

²¹ and what did you get from this? Nothing but experiences that now make you blush, since that sort of behaviour ends in death.

²² Now, however, you have been set free from sin, you have been made slaves of God, and you get a reward leading to your sanctification and ending in eternal life.

²³ For the wage paid by sin is death; the present given by God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.