What I mean is that God made a covenant with Abraham and promised to keep it. The Law, which was given four hundred and thirty years later, cannot break that covenant and cancel God's promise.

What I mean, my friends, is this: there is not much time left, and from now on married people should live as though they were not married;

The Spirit has given us life; he must also control our lives.

If you plant in the field of your natural desires, from it you will gather the harvest of death; if you plant in the field of the Spirit, from the Spirit you will gather the harvest of eternal life.

There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus.

God did this so that the righteous demands of the Law might be fully satisfied in us who live according to the Spirit, and not according to human nature.

Those who live as their human nature tells them to, have their minds controlled by what human nature wants. Those who live as the Spirit tells them to, have their minds controlled by what the Spirit wants.

So then, my friends, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to.

Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children.

Now that by your obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves and have come to have a sincere love for other believers, love one another earnestly with all your heart.

That is why the Good News was preached also to the dead, to those who had been judged in their physical existence as everyone is judged; it was preached to them so that in their spiritual existence they may live as God lives.

These are the people who cause divisions, who are controlled by their natural desires, who do not have the Spirit.

and keep yourselves in the love of God, as you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ in his mercy to give you eternal life.

What human nature does is quite plain. It shows itself in immoral, filthy, and indecent actions;

they are envious, get drunk, have orgies, and do other things like these. I warn you now as I have before: those who do these things will not possess the Kingdom of God.

Sin must no longer rule in your mortal bodies, so that you obey the desires of your natural self.

Let us conduct ourselves properly, as people who live in the light of day---no orgies or drunkenness, no immorality or indecency, no fighting or jealousy.

But take up the weapons of the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop paying attention to your sinful nature and satisfying its desires.

All these promises are made to us, my dear friends. So then, let us purify ourselves from everything that makes body or soul unclean, and let us be completely holy by living in awe of God.

Actually all of us were like them and lived according to our natural desires, doing whatever suited the wishes of our own bodies and minds. In our natural condition we, like everyone else, were destined to suffer God's anger.

In union with Christ you were circumcised, not with the circumcision that is made by human beings, but with the circumcision made by Christ, which consists of being freed from the power of this sinful self.

You must put to death, then, the earthly desires at work in you, such as sexual immorality, indecency, lust, evil passions, and greed (for greed is a form of idolatry).

At one time you yourselves used to live according to such desires, when your life was dominated by them.

Do not lie to one another, for you have put off the old self with its habits

Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant.

I appeal to you, my friends, as strangers and refugees in this world! Do not give in to bodily passions, which are always at war against the soul.

Since Christ suffered physically, you too must strengthen yourselves with the same way of thinking that he had; because whoever suffers physically is no longer involved with sin.

You have spent enough time in the past doing what the heathen like to do. Your lives were spent in indecency, lust, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and the disgusting worship of idols.

Do not love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you do not love the Father.

Everything that belongs to the world---what the sinful self desires, what people see and want, and everything in this world that people are so proud of---none of this comes from the Father; it all comes from the world.