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.
Dear friends, in this world you’re outsiders who are living away from their land. So don’t give in to your wrong desires, which fight against your soul.
So keep far away from sexual sins. All the other sins a person commits are outside the body. But if a person commits sexual sins, those are sins against their own body.
They’ve lost all feeling for what is right, and so they allow themselves to indulge in all kinds of wrong pleasures. They take part in every kind of unclean act, and they’re full of greed.
I’m afraid that when I come my God will humble me before you. I’ll be grieved about many who have sinned earlier and who haven’t turned away from the impurity, sexual sin, and wild living that they’ve gotten involved in.
But others will be thrown into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur: cowards, unbelievers, and murderers; those who are impure or commit sexual sins or practice witchcraft; those who worship idols; and all liars. The lake of fire is the second death.”
But I recognize that there’s another law at work inside of me. It’s fighting the law of my mind and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that’s at work within me.
Outside the city are those who are impure, those who practice witchcraft, those who commit sexual sins and murder, those who worship idols, and everyone who loves and does what is false.
Some of you are saying, “Food is meant for the stomach, and the stomach is meant for food, and God will destroy both of them.” But you can’t say the same thing about the body and sexual sins. The body is meant for the Lord, and the Lord is meant for the body.
We know that our old self was nailed to the cross with him. That happened so that our bodies that were so used to sinning wouldn’t control us anymore. Now we’re not slaves of sin any longer.
It’s actually reported that there is a sexual sin among you that’s so bad even people who don’t know God wouldn’t tolerate it. I’m told that a man is sleeping with his father’s wife.
The power of sin used to control us. The law told us we couldn’t do certain things, but that only made us want to do them more. So our lives produced only death.
They did things that shouldn’t be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, fighting, deception, and bad motives.
Some of you used to do things like that. But you were washed and made holy and right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
In Christ, you have received a circumcision that has not been done by human hands. Your circumcision has been done by Christ, and he has put away the person you used to be when wrong desires ruled over you.
Love for money causes all kinds of evil. By trying to get rich, some people have wandered away from the faith and been hurt by many sad things that have happened to them.