Knox Bible

1

Well then, no judgement stands now against those who live in Christ Jesus, not following the ways of flesh and blood.

2

The spiritual principle of life has set me free, in Christ Jesus, from the principle of sin and of death.

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There was something the law could not do, because flesh and blood could not lend it the power; and this God has done, by sending us his own Son, in the fashion of our guilty nature, to make amends for our guilt. He has signed the death-warrant of sin in our nature,

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so that we should be fully quit of the law’s claim, we, who follow the ways of the spirit, not the ways of flesh and blood.

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To live the life of nature is to think the thoughts of nature; to live the life of the spirit is to think the thoughts of the spirit;

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and natural wisdom brings only death, whereas the wisdom of the spirit brings life and peace.

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That is because natural wisdom is at enmity with God, not submitting itself to his law; it is impossible that it should.

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Those who live the life of nature cannot be acceptable to God;

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but you live the life of the spirit, not the life of nature; that is, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. A man cannot belong to Christ unless he has the Spirit of Christ.

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But if Christ lives in you, then although the body be a dead thing in virtue of our guilt, the spirit is a living thing, by virtue of our justification.✻

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And if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead will give life to your perishable bodies too, for the sake of his Spirit who dwells in you.

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Thus, brethren, nature has no longer any claim upon us, that we should live a life of nature.

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If you live a life of nature, you are marked out for death; if you mortify the ways of nature through the power of the Spirit, you will have life.✻

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Those who follow the leading of God’s Spirit are all God’s sons;

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the spirit you have now received is not, as of old, a spirit of slavery, to govern you by fear; it is the spirit of adoption, which makes us cry out, Abba, Father.

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The Spirit himself thus assures our spirit, that we are children of God;

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and if we are his children, then we are his heirs too; heirs of God, sharing the inheritance of Christ; only we must share his sufferings, if we are to share his glory.

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Not that I count these present sufferings as the measure of that glory which is to be revealed in us.

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If creation is full of expectancy, that is because it is waiting for the sons of God to be made known.

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Created nature has been condemned to frustration; not for some deliberate fault of its own, but for the sake of him who so condemned it, with a hope to look forward to;✻

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namely, that nature in its turn will be set free from the tyranny of corruption, to share in the glorious freedom of God’s sons.

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The whole of nature, as we know, groans in a common travail all the while.✻

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And not only do we see that, but we ourselves do the same; we ourselves, although we have already begun to reap our spiritual harvest, groan in our hearts, waiting for that adoption which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery.

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It must be so, since our salvation is founded upon the hope of something. Hope would not be hope at all if its object were in view; how could a man still hope for something which he sees?

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And if we are hoping for something still unseen, then we need endurance to wait for it.

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Only, as before,✻ the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; when we do not know what prayer to offer, to pray as we ought, the Spirit himself intercedes for us, with groans beyond all utterance:

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and God, who can read our hearts, knows well what the Spirit’s intent is; for indeed it is according to the mind of God that he makes intercession for the saints.

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Meanwhile, we are well assured that everything helps to secure the good of those who love God, those whom he has called in fulfilment of his design.✻

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All those who from the first were known to him, he has destined from the first to be moulded into the image of his Son, who is thus to become the eldest-born among many brethren.

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So predestined, he called them; so called, he justified them; so justified, he glorified them.

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When that is said, what follows? Who can be our adversary, if God is on our side?

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He did not even spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all; and must not that gift be accompanied by the gift of all else?

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Who will come forward to accuse God’s elect, when God acquits us?

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Who will pass sentence against us, when Jesus Christ, who died, nay, has risen again, and sits at the right hand of God, is pleading for us?

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Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?

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For thy sake, says the scripture, we face death at every moment, reckoned no better than sheep marked down for slaughter.✻

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Yet in all this we are conquerors, through him who has granted us his love.

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Of this I am fully persuaded; neither death nor life, no angels or principalities or powers, neither what is present nor what is to come, no force whatever,

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neither the height above us nor the depth beneath us, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which comes to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.