Dual Panel1NOW what is our response to be? Shall we sin to our heart's content and see how far we can exploit the grace of God?
2What a terrible thought! We, who have died to sinhow could we live in sin a moment longer?
3Have you forgotten that all of us who were baptized into Jesus Christ were, by that very action, sharing in his death?
4We were dead and buried with him in baptism, so that just as he was raised from the dead by that splendid revelation of the Father's power so we too might rise to life on a new plane altogether.
5If we have, as it were, shared his death, we shall also share in his resurrection.
6Let us never forget that our old selves died with him on the cross that the tyranny of sin over us might be broken
7for a dead man can safely be said to be free from the power of sin.
8And if we were dead men with Christ we can believe that we shall also be men alive with him.
9We can be sure that the risen Christ never dies againdeath's power to master him is finished.
10He died, because of sin, once: he lives for God for ever.
11In the same way look upon yourselves as dead to the appeal and power of sin but alive to God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
12Do not, then, allow sin to establish any power over your mortal bodies in making you give way to its lusts.
13Nor hand over your bodily parts to be, as it were, weapons of evil for the devil's purposes. But, like men rescued from certain death, put yourselves in God's hands as weapons of good for his own purposes.
14For sin can never be your masteryou are no longer living under the Law, but under grace.
15Now, what shall we do? Shall we go on sinning because we have no Law to condemn us any more, but are living under grace? Never!
16Just think what it would mean. You [belong] to the power which you choose to obey, whether you choose sin, whose reward is death, or God, obedience to whom means the reward of righteousness.
17Thank God that you, who were at one time the servants of sin, honestly responded to the impact of Christ's teaching when you came under its influence.
18Then, released from the service of sin, you entered the service of righteousness.
19(I use an everyday illustration because human nature grasps truth more readily that way.) In the past you voluntarily gave your bodies to the service of vice and wickednessfor the purposes of evil. So, now, give yourselves to the service of righteousnessfor the purpose of becoming truly good.
20For when you were employed by sin you owed no duty to righteousness.
21Yet what sort of a harvest did you reap from these things that today you blush to remember? In the long run those things mean one thing onlydeath.
22But now that you are freed from sin and employed by God, you owe no duty to sin, and you reap the fruit of being made righteous, while at the end of the road there is life for evermore.
23Sin [pays] its servants: the wage is death. But God [gives] to those who serve him: his free gift is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.