So confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you will be healed. The prayer of a godly person is very powerful, and great things happen because of it.
In the same way, Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people. He will also come a second time, not to take away our sins, but to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Don’t offer any part of yourself to serve sin and do what’s wrong. Instead, offer yourselves to God as people who have been brought from death to life. Offer every part of yourself to God to do what’s right.
But now we have died to what used to control us, and we have been set free from the law. We serve in the new way of the Holy Spirit, not in the old way of the written law.
Don’t you know that when you agree to obey someone the way a slave would, you become a slave to that person? If you’re slaves of sin, then you will die. But if you’re slaves who obey God, then you’ll live a godly life.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to announce the good news to the poor. He has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to make the blind see again, to set free those who are mistreated,
I tell you, unless your righteousness is even better than the righteousness of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you won’t enter the kingdom of heaven.
A high priest like him truly meets our needs. He’s holy, blameless, and pure, and he has been lifted up high above the heavens. He’s different from people who sin.
Some people still follow the basic spiritual powers of the world. But you died with Christ as far as those powers are concerned. So why do you act as if you still belonged to the world? You’re following rules such as,
But you’ve been set free from sin, and you’ve become slaves of God. You’re gaining a great benefit from that: You’re living in the right way, and the end result will be eternal life.
Pilate wanted to satisfy the crowd, so he let Barabbas go free. But he ordered Jesus to be whipped, and then he handed him over to be nailed to a cross.