1. So now anyone who is in Christ Jesus is not judged guilty.
2. That is because in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit that brings life made you free. It made you free from the law that brings sin and death.
3. The law was without power because it was made weak by our sinful selves. But God did what the law could not do: He sent his own Son to earth with the same human life that everyone else uses for sin. God sent him to be an offering to pay for sin. So God used a human life to destroy sin.
4. He did this so that we could be right just as the law said we must be. Now we don’t live following our sinful selves. We live following the Spirit.
5. People who live following their sinful selves think only about what they want. But those who live following the Spirit are thinking about what the Spirit wants them to do.
6. If your thinking is controlled by your sinful self, there is spiritual death. But if your thinking is controlled by the Spirit, there is life and peace.
7. Why is this true? Because anyone whose thinking is controlled by their sinful self is against God. They refuse to obey God’s law. And really they are not able to obey it.
8. Those who are ruled by their sinful selves cannot please God.
9. But you are not ruled by your sinful selves. You are ruled by the Spirit, if that Spirit of God really lives in you. But whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ.
10. Your body will always be dead because of sin. But if Christ is in you, then the Spirit gives you life, because Christ made you right with God.
11. God raised Jesus from death. And if God’s Spirit lives in you, he will also give life to your bodies that die. Yes, God is the one who raised Christ from death, and he will raise you to life through his Spirit living in you.
12. So, my brothers and sisters, we must not be ruled by our sinful selves. We must not live the way our sinful selves want.