And I was once alive apart from the law, but with the coming of the commandment sin became alive

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹ 

so that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and provide her with whatever help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many, including me.

(I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.) ¹  For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

(as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”). ¹  He is our father ²  in the presence of God whom he believed – the God who ³  makes the dead alive and summons the things that do not yet exist as though they already do. ⁴ 

For there is no distinction between the Jew and the Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, who richly blesses all who call on him.

If the first portion ¹  of the dough offered is holy, then the whole batch is holy, and if the root is holy, so too are the branches. ² 

Without being weak in faith, he considered ¹  his own body as dead ²  (because he was about one hundred years old) and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.

and I always ask ¹  in my prayers, if perhaps now at last I may succeed in visiting you according to the will of God. ² 

For these are the kind who do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By their smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds ¹  of the naive.

Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type ¹  of the coming one) transgressed. ² 

And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God ¹  has been poured out ²  in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Also greet the church in their house. Greet my dear friend Epenetus, ¹  who was the first convert ²  to Christ in the province of Asia. ³ 

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

For if by my lie the truth of God enhances ¹  his glory, why am I still actually being judged as a sinner?

For when we were in the flesh, ¹  the sinful desires, ²  aroused by the law, were active in the members of our body ³  to bear fruit for death.

And so ¹  all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion; he will remove ungodliness from Jacob.

Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. ¹ 

Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, ¹  by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice – alive, holy, and pleasing to God ²  – which is your reasonable service.

because those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that his Son ¹  would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. ²