What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? 2May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer? 3Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into AL-MASIH1 ‘ISA2 were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as AL-MASIH was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection; 6knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin. 7For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8But if we died with AL-MASIH, we believe that we will also live with him; 9knowing that AL-MASIH, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him! 10For the death that he died, he died to sin one time; but the life that he lives, he lives to God. 11Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in AL-MASIH ‘ISA our Lord.
12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13Neither present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law3, but under grace. 15What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be! 16Don’t you know that to whom you present yourselves as servants to obey, his servants you are whom you obey; whether of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18Being made free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
19I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for as you presented your bodies as servants to uncleanness and wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your bodies as servants to righteousness resulting in holiness. 20For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. 21What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22But now, being made free from sin, and having become servants of God, you have the fruit of holiness, and the result of eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in AL-MASIH ‘ISA our Lord.
- 6:3 AL-MASIH – an Arabic title equivalent to the Messiah (Hebrew) or Christ (Greek), all of which mean the Anointed One, that is, God’s Chosen One. In ancient times, divinely-appointed kings, priests and prophets were anointed with oil to signify their appointment to office. All of them point ahead to God’s ultimate Anointed One, the Messiah, AL-MASIH. Al-Kitab unanimously points to ‘ISA Ibn Maryam as the only person worthy to bear the title AL-MASIH. He is the one whom God sent into this world to save people from sin, and to usher in God’s Kingdom at his Second Coming. ↩︎
- 6:3 ‘ISA – The names ‘ISA (Arabic), ISHO (Syriac) and JESUS (Greek, IESOUS) are all derived from the Hebrew name YEHOSHUA, which means “YAHWEH saves.” (YAHWEH is God’s personal name revealed to Prophet Musa in the Taurat, Exodus 3:15 – God said moreover to Musa, “You shall tell Bani-Israel this, ‘YAHWEH, the God of your fathers, the God of Ibrahim, the God of Ishaq, and the God of Yaqub, has sent me to you.’ This is my Name forever, and this is how I am to be remembered to all generations.”) ↩︎
- 6:14 law, that is, the Law of Musa found within the Taurat, with its hundreds of rules and regulations covering many aspects of daily life for the people of Israel. The most famous of these laws are the Ten Commandments, found in Exodus 20. ↩︎