Romans 6

¹What, then, are we to say? Should we continue in sin so that grace will increase?

²Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

³Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into union with Christ Jesus were baptized into union with his death?

⁴Therefore, we were buried with him by baptism into union with his death, in order that just as Christ was raised from among the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also can walk in a new way of life.

⁵For if we have become united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.

⁶For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that our body of sin would be rendered powerless, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin,

⁷because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

⁸Now since we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him,

⁹because we know that Christ, having been raised from among the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

¹⁰For the death that he died, he died once and for all with respect to the power of sin, but the life that he lives, he lives in relation to God.

¹¹So you also must consider yourselves to be dead with respect to the power of sin, but in union with Christ Jesus, alive in relation to God.

¹²Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you then obey its desires,

¹³and do not offer any parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but offer yourselves to God as those who are alive from among the dead, and offer the parts of your body to God as instruments of righteousness.

¹⁴For sin must not have dominion over you, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

¹⁵What then? Should we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Absolutely not!

¹⁶Do you not know that if you offer yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, whether slaves of sin resulting in death or slaves of obedience resulting in righteousness?

¹⁷But thanks be to God that although you were formerly slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart the pattern of teaching you were entrusted with,

¹⁸and so having been set free from sin, you have become slaves to righteousness.

¹⁹I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for just as you formerly offered the parts of your body as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in more lawlessness, so now offer the parts of your body as slaves to righteousness, resulting in holiness.

²⁰For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from obedience to righteousness.

²¹So what fruit did you reap at that time from the things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death.

²²But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you reap results in holiness, the end of which is life in the age to come.

²³For the wages of sin is death, but in union with Christ Jesus our Lord, the free gift of God is life in the age to come.