1 Now what are we to infer from this? That we are to 'remain on in sin, so that there may be all the more grace'?
2 Never! How can we live in sin any longer, when we died to sin?
3 Surely you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death!
4 Our baptism in his death made us share his burial, so that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live and move in the new sphere of Life.
5 For if we have grown into him by a death like his, we shall grow into him by a resurrection like his,
6 knowing as we do that our old self has been crucified with him in order to crush the sinful body and free us from any further slavery to sin
7 (for once dead, a man is absolved from the claims of sin).
8 We believe that as we have died with Christ we shall also live with him;
9 for we know that Christ never dies after his resurrection from the dead ??death has no more hold over him;
10 the death he died was for sin, once for all, but the life he lives is for God.
11 So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Sin is not to reign, then, over your mortal bodies and make you obey their passions;
13 you must not let sin have your members for the service of vice, you must dedicate yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, dedicating your members to God for the service of righteousness.
14 Sin must have no hold over you, for you live under grace, not under law.
15 What follows, then? Are we 'to sin, because we live under grace, not under law'? Never!
16 Do you not know you are the servants of the master you obey, of the master to whom you yield yourselves obedient, whether it is Sin, whose service ends in death, or Obedience, whose service ends in righteousness?
17 Thank God, though you did serve sin, you have rendered whole-hearted obedience to what you were taught under the rule of faith;
18 set free from sin, you have passed into the service of righteousness.
19 (I use this human analogy to bring the truth home to your weak nature.) As you once dedicated your members to the service of vice and lawlessness, so now dedicate them to the service of righteousness that means consecration.
20 When you served sin, you were free of righteousness.
21 Well, what did you gain then by it all? Nothing but what you are now ashamed of! The end of all that is death;
22 but now that you are set free from sin, now that you have passed into the service of God, your gain is consecration, and the end of that is life eternal.
23 Sin's wage is death, but God's gift is life eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord.