Praise for God's Mighty Deeds

66¹ Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; ² sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise. ³ Say to God, "How awesome are your deeds! Because of your great power, your enemies cringe before you. ⁴ All the earth worships you; they sing praises to you, sing praises to your name." Selah ⁵ Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds among mortals. ⁶ He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the river on foot. There we rejoiced in him, ⁷ who rules by his might forever, whose eyes keep watch on the nations- let the rebellious not exalt themselves. Selah

⁸ Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, ⁹ who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip. ¹⁰ For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. ¹¹ You brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs; ¹² you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.

¹³ I will come into your house with burnt offerings; I will pay you my vows, ¹⁴ those that my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble. ¹⁵ I will offer to you burnt offerings of fatlings, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah ¹⁶ Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for me. ¹⁷ I cried aloud to him, and he was extolled with my tongue. ¹⁸ If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. ¹⁹ But truly God has listened; he has given heed to the words of my prayer. ²⁰ Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me.

The Nations Exhorted to Praise God

67¹ May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, Selah ² that your way may be known upon earth, your saving power among all nations. ³ Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. ⁴ Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Selah ⁵ Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. ⁶ The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, has blessed us. ⁷ May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere him.

An Analogy from Marriage

7¹ Do you not know, brothers and sisters -for I am speaking to those who know the law-that the law is binding on a person only during that person's lifetime? ² Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. ³ Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. ⁴ In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. ⁵ While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. ⁶ But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

The Problem of Indwelling Sin

⁷ What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." ⁸ But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. ⁹ I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived ¹⁰ and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. ¹¹ For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. ¹² So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. ¹³ Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

¹⁴ For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. ¹⁵ I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ²¹ So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³ but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.