Why not? Because they pursued<n id="1" /> it not by faith but (as if it were possible) by works.<n id="2" /> They stumbled over the stumbling stone,<n id="3" />

<p class="otpoetry"><b><i>let their eyes be darkened so that they may not see,i>b>p> <p class="otpoetry"><b><i>and make their backs bend continually.&#8221;i>b><n id="1" />p>

so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.p>

But the gracious gift is not like the transgression.<n id="1" /> For if the many died through the transgression of the one man,<n id="2" /> how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ multiply to the many!

and I always ask<n id="1" /> in my prayers, if perhaps now at last I may succeed in visiting you according to the will of God.<n id="2" />

<p class="bodytext">Therefore God gave them over<n id="1" /> in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor<n id="2" /> their bodies among themselves.<n id="3" />

And do you think,<n id="1" /> whoever you are, when you judge<n id="2" /> those who practice such things and yet do them yourself,<n id="3" /> that you will escape God&#8217;s judgment?

But because of your stubbornness<n id="1" /> and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourselves in the day of wrath, when God&#8217;s righteous judgment is revealed!<n id="2" />

For whenever the Gentiles,<n id="1" /> who do not have the law, do by nature<n id="2" /> the things required by the law,<n id="3" /> these who do not have the law are a law to themselves.

but someone is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart<n id="1" /> by the Spirit<n id="2" /> and not by the written code.<n id="3" /> This person&#8217;s<n id="4" /> praise is not from people but from God.p>

For if by my lie the truth of God enhances<n id="1" /> his glory, why am I still actually being judged as a sinner?

And he is also the father of the circumcised,<n id="1" /> who are not only circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham possessed when he was still uncircumcised.<n id="2" />p>

He<n id="1" /> did not waver in unbelief about the promise of God but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God.

through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice<n id="1" /> in the hope of God&#8217;s glory.

Not<n id="1" /> only this, but we also rejoice<n id="2" /> in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.p>

so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.p>

We know that<n id="1" /> our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us,<n id="2" /> so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

For the payoff<n id="1" /> of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.p>

<t /><p class="bodytext">Or do you not know, brothers and sisters<n id="1" /> (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law is lord over a person<n id="2" /> as long as he lives?

But now we have been released from the law, because we have died<n id="1" /> to what controlled us, so that we may serve in the new life of the Spirit and not under the old written code.<n id="2" />p>