Study Desk

"But," you say, "if, through my lie, God's truth is enhanced and brings him greater glory, why am I still judged merely for being a sinner?"

(I am using popular language because your human nature is so weak.) For just as you used to offer your various parts as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led to more lawlessness; so now offer your various parts as slaves to righteousness, which leads to being made holy, set apart for God.

Surely you know, brothers — for I am speaking to those who understand Torah — that the Torah has authority over a person only so long as he lives?

For we know that the Torah is of the Spirit; but as for me, I am bound to the old nature, sold to sin as a slave.

Now if I am doing what I don't want to do, I am agreeing that the Torah is good.

But if I am doing what "the real me" doesn't want, it is no longer "the real me" doing it but the sin housed inside me.

What a miserable creature I am! Who will rescue me from this body bound for death?

Thanks be to God [, he will]! — through Yeshua the Messiah, our Lord! To sum up: with my mind, I am a slave of God's Torah; but with my old nature, I am a slave of sin's "Torah."

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers, neither what exists nor what is coming,

I am speaking the truth — as one who belongs to the Messiah, I do not lie; and also bearing witness is my conscience, governed by the Ruach HaKodesh:

As the Tanakh puts it, "Look, I am laying in Tziyon a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will trip them up. But he who rests his trust on it will not be humiliated."

"In that case, I say, isn't it that God has repudiated his people?" Heaven forbid! For I myself am a son of Isra'el, from the seed of Avraham , of the tribe of Binyamin.

However, to those of you who are Gentiles I say this: since I myself am an emissary sent to the Gentiles, I make known the importance of my work

For I am telling every single one of you, through the grace that has been given to me, not to have exaggerated ideas about your own importance. Instead, develop a sober estimate of yourself based on the standard which God has given to each of you, namely, trust.

Now I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and well able to counsel each other.

But now I am going to Yerushalayim with aid for God's people there.

I am introducing to you our sister Phoebe, shammash of the congregation at Cenchrea,

And it matters very little to me how I am evaluated by you or by any human court; in fact, I don't even evaluate myself.

I am not aware of anything against me, but this does not make me innocent. The one who is evaluating me is the Lord.

I am not writing you this to make you feel ashamed, but, as my dear children, to confront you and get you to change.