For surely you know that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into union with his death.

for my people, my own flesh and blood! For their sake I could wish that I myself were under God's curse and separated from Christ.

My friends, how I wish with all my heart that my own people might be saved! How I pray to God for them!

What about you? You call yourself a Jew; you depend on the Law and boast about God;

you know what God wants you to do, and you have learned from the Law to choose what is right;

"You, Ezra, using the wisdom which your God has given you, are to appoint administrators and judges to govern all the people in West-of-Euphrates who live by the Law of your God. You must teach that Law to anyone who does not know it.

Their instructions are a shining light; their correction can teach you how to live.

I don't have to limit myself to these everyday examples, because the Law says the same thing.

Let me ask those of you who want to be subject to the Law: do you not hear what the Law says?

Now, however, we are free from the Law, because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit.

Sin must not be your master; for you do not live under law but under God's grace.