Romans 8:5-38

⁵They who follow their earthly nature are earthly-minded, while they who follow the Spirit are spiritually minded.

⁶To be earthly-minded means death, to be spiritually minded means life and peace;

⁷because to be earthly-minded is to be an enemy to God, for such a mind does not submit to the Law of God, nor indeed can it do so.

⁸They who are earthly cannot please God.

⁹You, however, are not earthly but spiritual, since the Spirit of God lives within you. Unless a person has the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ;

¹⁰but, if Christ is within you, then, though the body is dead as a consequence of sin, the spirit is life as a consequence of righteousness.

¹¹And, if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives within you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life even to your mortal bodies, through his Spirit living within you.

¹²So then, friends, we owe nothing to our earthly nature, that we should live in obedience to it.

¹³If you live in obedience to your earthly nature, you will inevitably die; but if, by the power of the Spirit, you put an end to the evil habits of the body, you will live.

¹⁴All who are guided by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

¹⁵For you did not receive the spirit of a slave, to fill you once more with fear, but the spirit of a son which leads us to cry ‘Abba, Our Father.’

¹⁶The Spirit himself unites with our spirits in bearing witness to our being God's children,

¹⁷and if children, then heirs — heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, since we share Christ's sufferings in order that we may also share his glory.

¹⁸I do not count the sufferings of our present life worthy of mention when compared with the glory that is to be revealed and bestowed on us.

¹⁹All Nature awaits with eager expectation the appearing of the sons of God.

²⁰For Nature was made subject to imperfection — not by its own choice, but owing to him who made it so —

²¹yet not without the hope that some day Nature, also, will be set free from enslavement to decay, and will attain to the freedom which will mark the glory of the children of God.

²²We know, indeed, that all Nature alike has been groaning in the pains of labour to this very hour.

²³And not Nature only; but we ourselves also, though we have already a first gift of the Spirit — we ourselves are inwardly groaning, while we eagerly await our full adoption as sons — the redemption of our bodies.

²⁴By our hope we were saved. But the thing hoped for is no longer an object of hope when it is before our eyes; for who hopes for what is before his eyes?

²⁵But when we hope for what is not before our eyes, then we wait for it with patience.

²⁶So, also, the Spirit supports us in our weakness. We do not even know how to pray as we should; but the Spirit himself pleads for us in sighs that can find no utterance.

²⁷Yet he who searches all our hearts knows what the Spirit's meaning is, because the pleadings of the Spirit for Christ's people are in accordance with his will.

²⁸But we do know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him — those who have received the call in accordance with his purpose.

²⁹For those whom God chose from the first he also destined from the first to be transformed into likeness to his Son, so that his Son might be the eldest amongst many brothers and sisters.

³⁰And those whom God destined for this he also called; and those whom he called he also pronounced righteous; and those whom he pronounced righteous he also brought to glory.

³¹What are we to say, then, in the light of all this? If God is on our side, who can there be against us?

³²God did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up on behalf of us all; will he not, then, with him, freely give us all things?

³³Who will bring a charge against any of God's people? He who pronounces them righteous is God!

³⁴Who is there to condemn them? He who died for us is Christ Jesus! — or, rather, it was he who was raised from the dead, and who is now at God's right hand and is even pleading on our behalf!

³⁵Who is there to separate us from the love of the Christ? Will trouble, or difficulty, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?

³⁶Scripture says — ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long, We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’

³⁷Yet amid all these things we more than conquer through him who loved us!

³⁸For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor archangels, nor the present, nor the future, nor any powers,