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.
In Romans 1-8 Paul teaches two things. First, no one, whether Gentile (1:18-32) or Jew (2:1-3:8), will be justified—delivered from eternal condemnation in hell—by works of law, i.e., by how well he or she keeps the law commandments of one’s applicable law code. This is because this way of getting to heaven (the law system) requires perfect obedience, which none of us has, since all have sinned. (This is the point of 1:18-3:20.)
Paul’s second and main point is that the only way a sinner can be saved is by the grace system, rather than the law system: “You are not under law but under grace” (6:14). This way of grace is made possible only by the death of Jesus, whereby He turned God’s wrath away from us by taking it upon Himself, a process the Bible calls “ propitiation” (3:21-26). The benefits of His death are applied to any believing sinner by means of sincere belief in its saving power. Thus we are justified by grace through faith apart from how well we respond to the law code that applies to us (3:28), as confirmed by the testimony of both Abraham and David (4:1-25).
The practical result of knowing we are justified through faith in Jesus is assurance of salvation (5:1-11). This assurance is reinforced by knowing that Christ’s cross is much more powerful than even the most universally catastrophic sin (5:12-21). Far from giving us an excuse to keep on sinning, this saving grace of Jesus—especially the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit—empowers us to live a life of sanctified obedience (6:1-8:39), an obedience that springs from faith (1:5). Some instructions on this life of obedience are given in chapters 12-16. To silence any Jews who may object that God’s rejection of them is not fair, Romans 9-11 explains that regarding salvation, God chose the Jews not to guarantee their individual salvation but to serve His purpose of bringing the Savior of all peoples into the world. Jews and Gentiles alike are saved in the same way, i.e., through faith in the one Messiah.