1 What is our conclusion then? Are we to continue to sin for His unmerited favor to multiply?
2 Not at all! Since we have ended our relation to sin, how can we live in it any longer?
3 Or, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into union with Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
4 So through baptism we have been buried with Him in death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father's glorious power, so we too should live an entirely new life.
5 For if we have grown into fellowship with Him by sharing a death like His, surely we shall share a resurrection life like His,
6 for we know that our former self was crucified with Him, to make our body that is liable to sin inactive, so that we might not a moment longer continue to be slaves to sin.
7 For when a man is dead, he is freed from the claims of sin.
8 So if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
9 for we know that Christ, who once was raised from the dead, will never die again; death has no more power over Him.
10 For by the death He died He once for all ended His relation to sin, and by the life He now is living He lives in unbroken relation to God.
11 So you too must consider yourselves as having ended your relation to sin but living in unbroken relation to God.
12 Accordingly, sin must not continue to reign over your mortal bodies, so as to make you continue to obey their evil desires,
13 and you must stop offering to sin the parts of your bodies as instruments for wrongdoing, but you must once for all offer yourselves to God as persons raised from the dead to live on perpetually, and once for all offer the parts of your bodies to God as instruments for right-doing.
14 For sin must not any longer exert its mastery over you, for now you are not living as slaves to law but as subjects to God's favor.
15 What are we to conclude? Are we to keep on sinning, because we are not living as slaves to law but as subjects to God's favor? Never!
16 Do you not know that when you habitually offer yourselves to anyone for obedience to him, you are slaves to that one whom you are in the habit of obeying, whether it is the slavery to sin whose end is death or to obedience whose end is right-doing?
17 But, thank God, that though you once were slaves of sin, you became obedient from your hearts to that form of teaching in which you have been instructed,
18 and since you have been freed from sin, you have become the slaves of right-doing.
19 I am speaking in familiar human terms because of the frailty of your nature. For just as you formerly offered the parts of your bodies in slavery to impurity and to ever increasing lawlessness, so now you must once for all offer them in slavery to right-doing, which leads to consecration.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free so far as doing right was concerned.
21 What benefit did you then derive from doing the things of which you are now ashamed? None, for they end in death.
22 But now, since you have been freed from sin and have become the slaves of God, the immediate result is consecration, and the final destiny is eternal life.
23 For the wages paid by sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life through union with Christ Jesus our Lord.