3 All of us have been baptised in water. This means we are joined to Christ Jesus. We were baptised into his death. Do you know that?
4 We were buried when he was buried because we were baptised into his death. Christ was raised from death by the wonderful power of the Father. So we also must live a new life.
11 So you also must think you are dead, and stop your wrong ways. And you must think you are living for God along with Christ Jesus our Lord.
3 At one time we too all lived like them. We lived to please ourselves. We did what our bodies and our minds wanted us to do. We were people with whom God was angry, just like other people.
4 But God was very, very kind. He loved us very, very much.
5 We were dead because of the wrong things we had done. He has made us alive with Christ. You have been saved by his love and kindness.
20 I died when Christ died on a cross. I do not live now, but Christ lives in me. Now while I still live in my body, I live by believing in the Son of God. He loved me and gave himself for me.
5 Have we shared with Christ and died as he died? Then we shall share with him by rising from death as he arose.
6 We know this is true. The old person we used to be was nailed to the cross with him, so that our bodies which do wrong things would die. Then we will no longer be like slaves to the wrong things we used to do.
7 Anyone who has died no longer does wrong things.
22 Stop being the person you used to be in your old life. That person was bad because he wanted to do wrong things.
23 Have a new mind and heart.
24 Be a new person. That new person has been made like God. He does what is right and holy because he knows the truth.
8 But now you must stop all these: being angry, hating people, wrong feelings toward others, saying wrong things about people, and dirty talking.
9 Do not tell lies to one another. You have stopped being the person you used to be who did wrong things.
10 And now you have become a new person. That new person is always learning more and more until he becomes like God who made him.
9 Let us tell God about our wrong ways. God can be trusted. He does what is right. He will forgive us for the wrong things we have done. He will make us clean from all that was wrong.
11 In this new person, there is no difference between a Greek and a Jew. There is no difference between a man who is circumcised with the mark of the Jew and a man who is not circumcised. There is no difference between a person from a friendly country or someone from a country which is not friendly. There is no difference between a slave and a person who is free. Christ is everything and is in all of them.
17 But it is God who has done all this. He sent Christ to make peace with us and to bring us back to himself. Now he has given us the work of bringing other people back to God.