Dead to sin, Alive to the Anointed
(Parallel teachings: Col 2:12-13; Eph 2:5-7; Col 3:1-4)
- 1 Therefore, what will we say? Should we continue in sin so that grace might abound?
- 2 May it never be! How will we who died to sin still live in it?
- 3 Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Jesus the Anointed were baptized into His death?
- 4 Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, so that just as the Anointed was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we might also walk in newness of life.
- 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in the likeness of His resurrection,
- 6 knowing this: that our old man was crucified with Him, so that the body of sin might be nullified, for it to enslave us to sin no longer.
- 7 For the man who died has been freed from sin.
- 8 And if we died with the Anointed, we believe that we will also live with Him,
- 9 *knowing that the Anointed (having been raised from the dead) no longer dies; death no longer has authority over Him.
- 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all time; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
- 11 And likewise, you must consider yourselves to be indeed dead to sin, but alive to God in Jesus the Anointed, [our Lord].
- 12 Therefore, don’t let sin reign in your mortal body in order to obey its cravings,
- 13 nor be presenting your parts to sin as tools of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your parts as tools of righteousness to God.
- 14 For sin won’t have authority over you, for you aren’t under the law, but under grace.
Sin into death, obedience into righteousness
(Parallel teachings: John 8:31-36; Gal 6:7-9)
- 15 What then, should we sin because we aren’t under the law but under grace? May it never be!
- 16 Don’t you *know that whoever you present yourselves to as slaves for obedience, you are slaves to whoever you obey? (Whether of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness.)
- 17 But thanks be to God because while you were formerly slaves of sin, yet you became obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were delivered,
- 18 and having been freed from sin, you were enslaved to righteousness.
- 19 I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your parts as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness resulting in more lawlessness, so now present your parts as slaves to righteousness resulting in becoming holy.
- 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness.
- 21 Therefore, what fruit did you have then from the things of which you’re now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
- 22 But now, having been freed from sin and having been made slaves to God, you have your fruit resulting in becoming holy, and the end is the life of ages.fn“life of ages” is literal, and captures the duration as well as the quality of the life, which the traditional interpretation of “eternal life” doesn’t. The word translated “ages” (αἰώνιον) is the adjective form of the Greek word “αἰών” (aion), which is used – for example – in Matthew 24:3 “what are the signs of your coming and the end of the age?”
- 23 For the wages of sin is death,CFParallel teaching: James 1:15 but God’s gift of grace is the life of agesfn“life of ages” see previous note. in Jesus the Anointed, our Lord.