Letters to the Churches

neither present ye your members instruments of unrighteousness to the sin, but present yourselves to God as living out of the dead, and your members instruments of righteousness to God;

for sin over you shall not have lordship, for ye are not under law, but under grace.

What then? shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? let it not be!

have ye not known that to whom ye present yourselves servants for obedience, servants ye are to him to whom ye obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness?

and thanks to God, that ye were servants of the sin, and--were obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which ye were delivered up;

and having been freed from the sin, ye became servants to the righteousness.

In the manner of men I speak, because of the weakness of your flesh, for even as ye did present your members servants to the uncleanness and to the lawlessness--to the lawlessness, so now present your members servants to the righteousness--t sanctification,

for when ye were servants of the sin, ye were free from the righteousness,

what fruit, therefore, were ye having then, in the things of which ye are now ashamed? for the end of those is death.

And now, having been freed from the sin, and having become servants to God, ye have your fruit--to sanctification, and the end life age-during;

for the wages of the sin is death, and the gift of God is life age-during in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Are ye ignorant, brethren--for to those knowing law I speak--that the law hath lordship over the man as long as he liveth?

for the married woman to the living husband hath been bound by law, and if the husband may die, she hath been free from the law of the husband;

so, then, the husband being alive, an adulteress she shall be called if she may become another man's; and if the husband may die, she is free from the law, so as not to be an adulteress, having become another man's.

So that, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of the Christ, for your becoming another's, who out of the dead was raised up, that we might bear fruit to God;

for when we were in the flesh, the passions of the sins, that are through the law, were working in our members, to bear fruit to the death;

and now we have ceased from the law, that being dead in which we were held, so that we may serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.

What, then, shall we say? the law is sin? let it not be! but the sin I did not know except through law, for also the covetousness I had not known if the law had not said:

`Thou shalt not covet;' and the sin having received an opportunity, through the command, did work in me all covetousness--for apart from law sin is dead.

And I was alive apart from law once, and the command having come, the sin revived, and I died;

and the command that is for life, this was found by me for death;

for the sin, having received an opportunity, through the command, did deceive me, and through it did slay me ;

so that the law, indeed, is holy, and the command holy, and righteous, and good.

That which is good then, to me hath it become death? let it not be! but the sin, that it might appear sin, through the good, working death to me, that the sin might become exceeding sinful through the command,

for we have known that the law is spiritual, and I am fleshly, sold by the sin;