Chapter 6

¹Then what shall we conclude? Are we to continue to sin to increase the spread of mercy? ²Certainly not! When we have died to sin, how can we live in it any longer? ³Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into union with Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? ⁴Through baptism we have been buried with him in death, so that just as he was raised from the dead through the Father’s glory, we too may live a new life. ⁵For if we have grown into union with him by undergoing a death like his, of course we shall do so by being raised to life like him, ⁶for we know that our old self was crucified with him, to do away with our sinful body, so that we might not be enslaved to sin any longer, ⁷for when a man is dead he is free from the claims of sin. ⁸If we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, ⁹for we know that Christ, once raised from the dead, will never die again; death has no more hold on him. ¹⁰For when he died, he became once for all dead to sin; the life he now lives is a life in relation to God. ¹¹So you also must think of yourselves as dead to sin but alive to God, through union with Christ Jesus.

¹²So sin must not reign over your mortal bodies, and make you obey their cravings, ¹³and you must not offer the parts of your bodies to sin as the instruments of wrong, but offer yourselves to God as men brought back from death to life, and offer the parts of your bodies to him as instruments of uprightness. ¹⁴For sin must no longer control you, for you live not under law but under mercy.

¹⁵What follows, then? Are we to sin, because we live not under law but under mercy? Certainly not! ¹⁶Do you not know that when you submit to being someone’s slaves, and obeying him, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, whether your slavery is to sin, and leads to death, or is to obedience, and leads to uprightness? ¹⁷But, thank God! though you were once slaves of sin, you have become obedient from your hearts to the standard of teaching that you received, ¹⁸and so you have been freed from sin, and made slaves of uprightness. ¹⁹I use these familiar human terms because of the limitations of your nature. For just as you before gave up the parts of your bodies in slavery to vice and greater and greater license, you must now give them up in slavery to uprightness, which leads to consecration. ²⁰For when you were slaves of sin, you were free as far as uprightness was concerned. ²¹What good did you get from doing the things you are now ashamed of? Why, they result in death! ²²But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you get is consecration, and the final result is eternal life. ²³For the wages sin pays is death, but the gift God gives is eternal life through union with Christ Jesus our Lord.