Romans 7

7 ¹ Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over a person only as long as he lives? ² For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. ³ So then, if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and she is not an adulteress if she marries another man. ⁴ So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for our Father. ⁵ For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our bodies to bear fruit for death. ⁶ But now we are released from the law, having died to what held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

The Law Exposes Sin's Power

⁷ What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Yet I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." ⁸ But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin is dead. ⁹ Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. ¹⁰ I found that the very commandment that was meant to bring life actually brought death. ¹¹ For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. ¹² So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³ Did what is good, then, become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, in order to be recognized as sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. ¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ For I know that good itself does not live in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin living in me that does it. ²¹ So I find this law at work: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in the law of our Father. ²³ But I see another law at work in my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to our Father through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am a slave to the law of our Father, but in the flesh a slave to the law of sin.