The Message Bible MSG
New American Standard Bible NAS
1 So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving?
1
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2 I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there?
2
May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
3 Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace - a new life in a new land!
3
Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
4 When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus.
4
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
5 Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new grace-sovereign country.
5
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6 Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life - no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this:
6
knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;
7
7
for he who has died is freed from sin.
8 If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.
8
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
9 We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word.
9
knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
10 When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us.
10
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
11 From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.
11
Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don't give it the time of day.
12
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,
13 Don't even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time - remember, you've been raised from the dead! - into God's way of doing things.
13
and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 Sin can't tell you how to live. After all, you're not living under that old tyranny any longer. You're living in the freedom of God.
14
For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
15 So, since we're out from under the old tyranny, does that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we're free in the freedom of God, can we do anything that comes to mind?
15
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
16 Hardly. You know well enough from your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it's your last free act. But offer yourselves to the ways of God and the freedom never quits. All your lives you've let sin tell you what to do.
16
Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
17 But thank God you've started listening to a new master,
17
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
18 one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
18
and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
19 I'm using this freedom language because it's easy to picture. You can readily recall, can't you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing - not caring about others, not caring about God - the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God's freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness?
19
I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
20 As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn't have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter.
20
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
21 But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you're proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end.
21
Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.
22 But now that you've found you don't have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way!
22
But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.
23 Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.
23
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord .
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.
New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, California. All rights reserved.