New Revised Standard NRS
The Message Bible MSG
1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
1
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.
2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
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A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
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God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
4 so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
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And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
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Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them - living and breathing God!
6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
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Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.
7 For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law—indeed it cannot,
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Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing.
8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
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And God isn't pleased at being ignored.
9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
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But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about.
10 But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
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But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells - even though you still experience all the limitations of sin - you yourself experience life on God's terms.
11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
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It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!
12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—
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So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent.
13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
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There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life.
14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.
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God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!
15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!"
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This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?"
16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
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God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children.
17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
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And we know we are going to get what's coming to us - an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.
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That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times.
19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;
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The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next.
20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
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Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in
21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
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until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now;
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All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs.
23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
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These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance.
24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?
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That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us.
25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
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But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.
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Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.
27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
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He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God.
28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
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That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family.
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God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.
30 And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
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After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
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So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose?
32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?
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If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us?
33 Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.
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And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen?
34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
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Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us - who was raised to life for us! - is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us.
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
35
Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
36 As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered."
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They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
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None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
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I'm absolutely convinced that nothing - nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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high or low, thinkable or unthinkable - absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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.