1So what should we say? Should we keep on sinning so that grace can increase?
2Absolutely not! We died to sin; how can we continue to live in it?
3Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4When we were baptized, we were buried with him into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glorious power, we too can live a new kind of life.
5If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.
6We know that our old sinful self was crucified with him so that the power of sin in our bodies might be destroyed, and we would no longer be slaves to sin.
7Because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
9We know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has any power over him.
10When he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he now lives, he lives for God.
11In the same way, you should consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12Therefore, do not let sin rule in your mortal bodies, leading you to obey its desires.
13Do not offer any part of your body to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and offer all parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
14For sin will no longer have control over you, because you are not under law but under grace.
15So what then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not!
16Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
17But thanks be to God that, although you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the teaching you received.
18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19I am using an everyday comparison because your human nature is weak. Just as you once offered parts of your body as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, now offer them as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.
20When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.
21What benefit did you get from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the result of those things is death.
22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap is holiness, and the result is eternal life.
23For the payment for sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.