D.3 The law is good

I know - it's a bit more than one chapter a day - but I want it done by the end of the month. It is surprising to me how so much changes in the NT when you really get serious about the OT. You simply cannot make assumptions about what teaching (Torah) or mercy is or even your idea of logic. Just look for instance at the grace of Psalm 109 and imagine yourself in the position of one who is an outcast and a reproach - pick your favorite enemy - then ask if you can continue to read Romans as if you are the judge.

6 [D.3 what about the law - is sin OK and the law not? a. sin and grace; law and grace]

1: What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?[11] 2: By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?[11a note the first person plural as related to the third person singular, then the switch to second person plural]

3: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?[11b]
4: We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death,
so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,
we too might walk in newness of life.
5: For if we have been united with him in a death like his,
we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
6: We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed,
and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7: For the one who has died is freed from sin.
[verse 7 is ambiguous with respect to the pronoun - it could be 'him' or 'us' in him individually and together]
8: But if we have died with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with him.
9: For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again;
death no longer has dominion over him.
10: The death he died he died to sin, once for all,
but the life he lives he lives to God.
11: So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin [all you's are plural]
and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12: Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.
13: Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness,
but yield yourselves to God as if alive from the dead,
and your members to God as instruments of righteousness.
14: For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

15: What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?[12] By no means! 16: Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?[12a]

17: But thanks be to God, that you who were once
slaves of sin
have become obedient from the heart to the standard [pattern] of teaching to which you were committed,
18: and, having been set free from sin, have become
slaves of righteousness.
19: I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations (sarx - flesh).
For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity,
so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification.
20: When you were
slaves of sin,
you were free in regard to righteousness.
21: But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed?[12b]
The end of those things is death.
22: But now that you have been set free from sin and have become
slaves of God,
the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.
23: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This series on Romans begins here