1What 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 Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ 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 Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, 9knowing that Christ, 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 Christ Jesus our Lord.
12Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13Also, do not 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 law, 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 when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone, you are the servants of whomever you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered. 18Being made free from sin, you became bondservants of righteousness.
19I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh; for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification. 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 your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
"4. If, therefore, flesh and blood are the things which procure for us life, it has not been declared of flesh and blood, in the literal meaning (proprie) of the terms, that they cannot inherit the kingdom of God; but [these words apply] to those carnal deeds already mentioned, which, perverting man to sin, deprive him of life. And for this reason he says, in the Epistle to the Romans: Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, to be under its control: neither yield your members instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves to God, as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. Romans 6:12-13, etc. In these same members, therefore, in which we used to serve sin, and bring forth fruit unto death, does He wish us to [be obedient] unto righteousness, that we may bring forth fruit unto life. Remember, therefore, my beloved friend, that you have been redeemed by the flesh of our Lord, re-established by His blood; and holding the Head, from which the whole body of the Church, having been fitted together, takes increase Colossians 2:19 — that is, acknowledging the advent in the flesh of the Son of God, and [His] divinity (deum), and looking forward with constancy to His human nature (hominem), availing yourself also of these proofs drawn from Scripture — you easily overthrow, as I have pointed out, all those notions of the heretics which were concocted afterwards." New Advent, Fathers of the Church, Against Heresies (Book V, Chapter 14).