Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 199
6:14–7:7
R o ma n s
187
now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do
what is right for the glory of God. Sin is no longer your master, for you no
longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the
freedom of God’s grace.
Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we
can go on sinning? Of course not! Don’t you realize that you become the
slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads
to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.
Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly
obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery
to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.
Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into
sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that
you will become holy.
When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do
right. And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you
used to do, things that end in eternal doom. But now you are free from the
power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that
lead to holiness and result in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but
the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now, dear brothers and sisters—you who are familiar with the law—
don’t you know that the law applies only while a person is living? For
example, when a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long
as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. So
while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and
does not commit adultery when she remarries.
So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power
of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the
one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest
of good deeds for God. When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful
desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that
produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. But now we have
been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to
its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter
of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.
Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not!
In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known
