To the person who strikes you on the cheek, ¹  offer the other as well, ²  and from the person who takes away your coat, ³  do not withhold your tunic ⁴  either. ⁵ 

So the Jewish leaders ¹  said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and you are not permitted to carry your mat.” ² 

But to keep this matter from spreading any further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more ¹  to anyone in this name.”

Therefore if God ¹  gave them the same gift ²  as he also gave us after believing ³  in the Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴  who was I to hinder ⁵  God?”

You who tell others not to commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor ¹  idols, do you rob temples?

Do we then nullify ¹  the law through faith? Absolutely not! Instead ²  we uphold the law.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not!

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!

Then we left Horeb and passed through all that immense, forbidding wilderness that you saw on the way to the Amorite hill country as the Lord our God had commanded us to do, finally arriving at Kadesh Barnea.

The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ¹  ‘God, I thank ²  you that I am not like other people: ³  extortionists, ⁴  unrighteous people, ⁵  adulterers – or even like this tax collector. ⁶ 

Absolutely not! Let God be proven true, and every human being ¹  shown up as a liar, ²  just as it is written: “so that you will be justified ³  in your words and will prevail when you are judged.” ⁴ 

So I ask, God has not rejected his people, has he? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.

I ask then, they did not stumble into an irrevocable fall, ¹  did they? Absolutely not! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make Israel ²  jealous.

But if while seeking to be justified in Christ we ourselves have also been found to be sinners, is Christ then one who encourages ¹  sin? Absolutely not!

Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God? ¹  Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that was able to give life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. ² 

Far be it from us to rebel against the Lord by turning back today from following after the Lord by building an altar for burnt offerings, sacrifices, and tokens of peace ¹  aside from the altar of the Lord our God located in front of his dwelling place!” ² 

And I said, “Ah, sovereign Lord, I have never been ceremonially defiled before. I have never eaten a carcass or an animal torn by wild beasts; from my youth up, unclean meat ¹  has never entered my mouth.”

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! Certainly, I ¹  would not have known sin except through the law. For indeed I would not have known what it means to desire something belonging to someone else ²  if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” ³ 

Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.

So they approached the king and said to him, ¹  “Did you not issue an edict to the effect that for the next thirty days anyone who prays to any god or human other than to you, O king, would be thrown into a den of lions?” The king replied, “That is correct, ²  according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be changed.”