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¹¹Then Balak said to Balaam, “What have you done to me? I brought you to curse my enemies, but now you have done nothing but bless them.” ¹²He answered, “Must I not take care to say what the Lord puts into my mouth?”

¹³So Balak said to him, “Come with me to another place from which you may see them; you shall see only part of them, and shall not see them all; then curse them for me from there.” ¹⁴So he took him to the field of Zophim, to the top of Pisgah. He built seven altars, and offered a bull and a ram on each altar. ¹⁵Balaam said to Balak, “Stand here beside your burnt offerings, while I meet the Lord over there. ¹⁶The Lord met Balaam, put a word into his mouth, and said, “Return to Balak, and this is what you shall say.” ¹⁷When he came to him, he was standing beside his burnt offerings with the officials of Moab. Balak said to him, “What has the Lord said?” ¹⁸Then Balaam uttered his oracle, saying: “Rise, Balak, and hear; listen to me, O son of Zippor: ¹⁹God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? ²⁰See, I received a command to bless; he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it. ²¹He has not beheld misfortune in Jacob; nor has he seen trouble in Israel. The Lord their God is with them, acclaimed as a king among them. ²²God, who brings them out of Egypt, is like the horns of a wild ox for them. ²³Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, no divination against Israel; now it shall be said of Jacob and Israel, ‘See what God has done!’ ²⁴Look, a people rising up like a lioness, and rousing itself like a lion! It does not lie down until it has eaten the prey and drunk the blood of the slain.” ²⁵Then Balak said to Balaam, “Do not curse them at all, and do not bless them at all.” ²⁶But Balaam answered Balak, “Did I not tell you, ‘Whatever the Lord says, that is what I must do’?”

8There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. ²For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. ³For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, ⁴so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. ⁵For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. ⁶To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, ⁸and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. ⁹But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

¹⁰But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.