₁₂So then, my brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to. ₁₃For if you live according to your human nature, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death your sinful actions, you will live. ₁₄Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children. ₁₅For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, “Father! my Father!” ₁₆God's Spirit joins himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children. ₁₇Since we are his children, we will possess the blessings he keeps for his people, and we will also possess with Christ what God has kept for him; for if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory.

₁₈I consider that what we suffer at this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. ₁₉All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children. ₂₀For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so. Yet there was the hope ₂₁that creation itself would one day be set free from its slavery to decay and would share the glorious freedom of the children of God. ₂₂For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. ₂₃But it is not just creation alone which groans; we who have the Spirit as the first of God's gifts also groan within ourselves, as we wait for God to make us his children and set our whole being free. ₂₄For it was by hope that we were saved; but if we see what we hope for, then it is not really hope. For which of us hopes for something we see? ₂₅But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.