Study Desk

Law was introduced in order to increase wrongdoing; but where sin increased, God's grace increased much more.

In the same way you are to think of yourselves as dead, so far as sin is concerned, but living in fellowship with God through Christ Jesus.

Sin must not be your master; for you do not live under law but under God's grace.

What, then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law but under God's grace? By no means!

But thanks be to God! For though at one time you were slaves to sin, you have obeyed with all your heart the truths found in the teaching you received.

But now you have been set free from sin and are the slaves of God. Your gain is a life fully dedicated to him, and the result is eternal life.

For sin pays its wage—death; but God's free gift is eternal life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord.

A married woman, for example, is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if he dies, then she is free from the law that bound her to him.

So then, if she lives with another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is legally a free woman and does not commit adultery if she marries another man.

Now, however, we are free from the Law, because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit.

Shall we say, then, that the Law itself is sinful? Of course not! But it was the Law that made me know what sin is. If the Law had not said, "Do not desire what belongs to someone else," I would not have known such a desire.

But by means of that commandment sin found its chance to stir up all kinds of selfish desires in me. Apart from law, sin is a dead thing.

I myself was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life,

But does this mean that what is good caused my death? By no means! It was sin that did it; by using what is good, sin brought death to me, in order that its true nature as sin might be revealed. And so, by means of the commandment sin is shown to be even more terribly sinful.

We know that the Law is spiritual; but I am a mortal, sold as a slave to sin.

I do not understand what I do; for I don't do what I would like to do, but instead I do what I hate.

But I see a different law at work in my body—a law that fights against the law which my mind approves of. It makes me a prisoner to the law of sin which is at work in my body.

But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to—if, in fact, God's Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

But if Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you because you have been put right with God, even though your bodies are going to die because of sin.

So then, my friends, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to.