I find that the law, for me, who wish to do good, comes as an evil. I rejoice, in my inner person, in the law of God, but I see another law in my body arrayed for battle against the law of my mind, and it takes me captive by means of the law of sin which is in my body. I ^ a wretched human being. Who will rescue me from this body which belongs to death? Thanks be to God, it will be through Jesus Christ our Lord. I myself am slave by the mind to the law of God, but slave by the flesh to the law of sin.
iThus there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus; for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus set you free from the law of sin and death. God did what the law could not do, because it was weakened by the flesh; he sent his own son in the likeness of the sinful flesh, and found sin in the flesh guilty of sin; so that the requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not in the way of the flesh but in the way of the Spirit. For those who are in the flesh think the thoughts of the flesh, but those who are in the spirit think the thoughts of the Spirit. The thinking of the flesh is death, but the thinking of the Spirit is life and peace; because the thinking of the flesh is hostility against God, since it is not obedient to the law of God, for it cannot be. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if the Spirit of God lives in you. One who does not have the Spirit of Christ is not his. But if Christ is in you, your body is a dead thing, because of sin, but your spirit is life, because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will make your mortal bodies live through his Spirit that dwells in you.
So then, brothers, we are under obligation, but not to the flesh to live according to the flesh, since if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by spirit you make the activities of the body die, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. You did not receive the spirit of slavery, to be afraid again, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons, in which we cry aloud: Abba, Father! This spirit bears witness to our spirit, that we are the children of God. If we are children, we are also heirs: heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ, if we are suffering with him so that we may be glorified with him.
I reason that the sufferings of the present time are not comparable to the glory that is going to be revealed to us. For the expectation of the world awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For the world is subjected to vanity not because it wishes to be but because of him who subjected it; but there is hope, because this world will be set free from slavery to decay into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole world groans and is in labor together, until now; not only that, but even we who have some foretaste of the Spirit also groan within ourselves as we await adoption and the redemption of the body. It was by hope that we were saved; but hope that sees is not hope, since who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it steadfastly.
So also the Spirit takes a hand to help our weakness. We do not know what we should rightly pray for, but the Spirit itself intercedes for us with inarticulate groans, and he who scrutinizes our hearts knows the will of the Spirit, that by the will of God it intercedes for the saints. We know that God helps make everything good for those who love God, those who are summoned by preference. Those whom he foreknew, he foreordained to share the likeness of his son so that that son should be the firstborn among many brothers; and those whom he foreordained, he also summoned; and those whom he summoned, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified.
What then shall we say to that? If God is for us, who is against us? For he did not spare his own son, but sacrificed him for the sake of us all. How, with his help, will not every grace be given us? Who will speak against the chosen of God? It is God who justifies us. Who will condemn us? It is Christ who died, or rather was raised from the dead, who is on the right hand of God, it is he who intercedes for us. Who will take us away from the love of the Christ? Will it be affliction or distress or persecution or starvation or nakedness or peril or the sword? It is written: For your sake we are killed all day long, we are counted like sheep for the slaughter. But in all this we are more than winners because of him who loves us. For I believe that neither death nor life; neither angels nor authorities; neither things that are nor things to come; not powers, nor height nor depth nor any other state of the world will be able to take us away from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
1 ^ speaking the truth, in Christ, I am not lying, and my conscience in the Holy Spirit bears me witness: there is great sorrow and incessant pain in my heart. I could have wished to be outcast from the Christ myself for the sake of my brothers, who are my blood kindred. They are Israelites. Theirs is the adoption and the glory, theirs the covenants and the giving of the law and the service and the promises. From them are the fathers, from them, in the way of the flesh, the Christ, who is over all, God to be praised forever. Amen. But it is not possible that the word of God has failed. For not all who are from Israel are Israel; nor, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all his children, but: Your seed shall be named through Isaac. That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of his promise are counted as his seed. For this is what the promise says: I will come at that time, and Sarah shall have a son. Not only that, but there was Rebeccah whose children were conceived from a single person, Isaac our forefather. Then, when her children had not yet been born, when they had done nothing either good or bad, so that the purpose in the choice of God might hold good, not because of what they had done but because of him who called them, she was told: The elder shall be the slave of the younger. As it is written: I loved Jacob and I hated Esau.
What then shall we say? Could there be any unfairness in God? Never! To Moses he says: I will pity whom I pity, and I will have mercy on him on whom I have mercy. But that is not a matter of wish or effort but of God's mercy. For scripture says to Pharaoh: For this I have raised you up, to show my power through you, and for you to make my name known in all the earth. He pities the one he wishes to pity, and he makes insensitive the one he wishes to be so.
Will you then ask me: What fault can he still find? Who ever stood up against his will? My good man, who are you to argue with God? Shall the work of art say to the artist: Why did you make me the way you did? Does not the potter have power over his clay to make, from the same material, one piece that is to be prized and another to be despised? But if God, while wishing to show his anger and make known his power, endured with great patience the vessels of anger which were made for destruction, it was to make known the abundance of his glory given to the vessels of mercy which he had foreordained for glory: ourselves, whom he summoned not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles. So he says in Hosea: I will call what is not my people my people, and her who was not beloved, beloved; and in the place where it was said to them: You are not my people, they shall be called sons of the living God. Isaiah cries aloud concerning Israeclass="underline" Though the number of the sons of Israel is as the sands of the sea, only a remnant will be saved; for the Lord will complete and conclude his sentence upon the earth. And as Isaiah said before: If the Lord of Hosts had not left us children, we would have been like Sodom, and we would have been in the likeness of Gomorrah.