Romans 6:13

6:13 and do not present your members to sin as instruments ¹  to be used for unrighteousness, ²  but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members to God as instruments ³  to be used for righteousness.

Joshua 24:15

24:15 If you have no desire ⁴  to worship ⁵  the Lord, choose today whom you will worship, ⁶  whether it be the gods whom your ancestors ⁷  worshiped ⁸  beyond the Euphrates, ⁹  or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But I and my family ¹⁰  will worship ¹¹  the Lord!”

Matthew 6:24

6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate ¹²  the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise ¹³  the other. You cannot serve God and money. ¹⁴ 

John 8:34

8:34 Jesus answered them, “I tell you the solemn truth, ¹⁵  everyone who practices ¹⁶  sin is a slave ¹⁷  of sin.

John 8:2

8:2 Early in the morning he came to the temple courts again. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach ¹⁸  them.

John 2:19

2:19 Jesus replied, ¹⁹  “Destroy ²⁰  this temple and in three days I will raise it up again.”

¹ tn Or “weapons, tools.”

² tn Or “wickedness, injustice.”

³ tn Or “weapons, tools.”

⁴ tn Heb “if it is bad in your eyes.”

⁵ tn Or “to serve.”

⁶ tn Or “will serve.”

⁷ tn Heb “your fathers.”

⁸ tn Or “served.”

⁹ tn Heb “the river,” referring to the Euphrates. This has been specified in the translation for clarity; see v. 3.

¹⁰ tn Heb “house.”

¹¹ tn Or “will serve.”

¹² sn The contrast between hate and love here is rhetorical. The point is that one will choose the favorite if a choice has to be made.

¹³ tn Or “and treat [the other] with contempt.”

¹⁴ tn Grk “God and mammon.”

¹⁵ tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

¹⁶ tn Or “who commits.” This could simply be translated, “everyone who sins,” but the Greek is more emphatic, using the participle ποιῶν (poiwn) in a construction with πᾶς (pas), a typical Johannine construction. Here repeated, continuous action is in view. The one whose lifestyle is characterized by repeated, continuous sin is a slave to sin. That one is not free; sin has enslaved him. To break free from this bondage requires outside (divine) intervention. Although the statement is true at the general level (the person who continually practices a lifestyle of sin is enslaved to sin) the particular sin of the Jewish authorities, repeatedly emphasized in the Fourth Gospel, is the sin of unbelief. The present tense in this instance looks at the continuing refusal on the part of the Jewish leaders to acknowledge who Jesus is, in spite of mounting evidence.

¹⁷ tn See the note on the word “slaves” in 4:51.

¹⁸ tn An ingressive sense for the imperfect fits well here following the aorist participle.

¹⁹ tn Grk “answered and said to them.”

²⁰ tn The imperative here is really more than a simple conditional imperative (= “if you destroy”); its semantic force here is more like the ironical imperative found in the prophets (Amos 4:4, Isa 8:9) = “Go ahead and do this and see what happens.”