Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; indeed, sin is lawlessness.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them.
I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until everything takes place.
Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’
This is the first and greatest commandment.
The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
For all who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous before God, but those who do the law will be declared righteous.
For whenever the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things required by the law, these who do not have the law are a law to themselves.
They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts, as their conscience bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or else defend them,
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
For no one is declared righteous before him by the works of the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded! By what principle? Of works? No, but by the principle of faith!
For we consider that a person is declared righteous by faith apart from the works of the law.
Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles too? Yes, of the Gentiles too!
Since God is one, he will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
Do we then nullify the law through faith? Absolutely not! Instead we uphold the law.
Now the law came in so that the transgression may increase, but where sin increased, grace multiplied all the more,
so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not!
Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness?
But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to,
and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! Certainly, I would not have known sin except through the law. For indeed I would not have known what it means to desire something belonging to someone else if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”
But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. For apart from the law, sin is dead.
So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.
Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.
For we know that the law is spiritual – but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin.
For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate.
But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good.
But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me.
So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me.
For I delight in the law of God in my inner being.
But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.
For God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
so that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
because the outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so.
Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.
For the commandments, “Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet,” (and if there is any other commandment) are summed up in this, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
But if you fulfill the royal law as expressed in this scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well.
But if you show prejudice, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as violators.
For the one who obeys the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.
We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners,
yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.
For all who rely on doing the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not keep on doing everything written in the book of the law.”
Now it is clear no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous one will live by faith.
But the law is not based on faith, but the one who does the works of the law will live by them.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”)
in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we could receive the promise of the Spirit by faith.
Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.
But the scripture imprisoned everything and everyone under sin so that the promise could be given – because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ – to those who believe.
The godly speak wise words
and promote justice.
The law of their God controls their thinking;
their feet do not slip.
I want to do what pleases you, my God.
Your law dominates my thoughts.”
In my heart I store up your words,
so I might not sin against you.
“But I will make a new covenant with the whole nation of Israel after I plant them back in the land,” says the Lord. “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts and minds. I will be their God and they will be my people.