Letters to the Churches

I don’t understand my own behavior — I don’t do what I want to do; instead, I do the very thing I hate!

Now if I am doing what I don’t want to do, I am agreeing that the Torah is good.

But now it is no longer “the real me” doing it, but the sin housed inside me.

For I know that there is nothing good housed inside me — that is, inside my old nature. I can want what is good, but I can’t do it!

For I don’t do the good I want; instead, the evil that I don’t want is what I do!

But if I am doing what “the real me” doesn’t want, it is no longer “the real me” doing it but the sin housed inside me.

So I find it to be the rule, a kind of perverse “torah,” that although I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me!

For in my inner self I completely agree with God’s Torah;

but in my various parts, I see a different “torah,” one that battles with the Torah in my mind and makes me a prisoner of sin’s “torah,” which is operating in my various parts.

What a miserable creature I am! Who will rescue me from this body bound for death?

Thanks be to God [, he will]! — through Yeshua the Messiah, our Lord! To sum up: with my mind, I am a slave of God’s Torah; but with my old nature, I am a slave of sin’s “Torah.”

Therefore, there is no longer any condemnation awaiting those who are in union with the Messiah Yeshua.

Why? Because the Torah of the Spirit, which produces this life in union with Messiah Yeshua, has set me free from the “Torah” of sin and death.

For what the Torah could not do by itself, because it lacked the power to make the old nature cooperate, God did by sending his own Son as a human being with a nature like our own sinful one [but without sin]. God did this in order to deal with sin, and in so doing he executed the punishment against sin in human nature,

so that the just requirement of the Torah might be fulfilled in us who do not run our lives according to what our old nature wants but according to what the Spirit wants.

For those who identify with their old nature set their minds on the things of the old nature, but those who identify with the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

Having one’s mind controlled by the old nature is death, but having one’s mind controlled by the Spirit is life and shalom.

For the mind controlled by the old nature is hostile to God, because it does not submit itself to God’s Torah — indeed, it cannot.

Thus, those who identify with their old nature cannot please God.

But you, you do not identify with your old nature but with the Spirit — provided the Spirit of God is living inside you, for anyone who doesn’t have the Spirit of the Messiah doesn’t belong to him.

However, if the Messiah is in you, then, on the one hand, the body is dead because of sin; but, on the other hand, the Spirit is giving life because God considers you righteous.

And if the Spirit of the One who raised Yeshua from the dead is living in you, then the One who raised the Messiah Yeshua from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you.

So then, brothers, we don’t owe a thing to our old nature that would require us to live according to our old nature.

For if you live according to your old nature, you will certainly die; but if, by the Spirit, you keep putting to death the practices of the body, you will live.

All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons.