Romans 7

7 ¹Or don't you know, brothers—I'm speaking to people who know the law—that the law rules over a person only while he lives? ²A married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives; if he dies, she is free from the law of the husband. ³While her husband lives, she's called an adulterous woman if she becomes another man's wife; but if he dies, she's free from that law—not an adulterous woman if she marries another. ⁴So, my brothers and sisters, you too were put to death to the law through Christ's body, to belong to another—the one raised from the dead—so we might bear fruit for our Father. ⁵For when we were in the flesh, sin's passions, stirred by the law, worked in our bodies to produce fruit for death. ⁶But now we're released from the law, dead to what held us bound, so we serve in the new way of the Spirit, not the old way of the written code.

The Law Exposes Sin's Power

⁷What then should we say? Is the law sin? Never! Yet I wouldn't have known sin except through the law—nor would I have known craving, had the law not said, "Do not crave what isn't yours." ⁸But sin, seizing an opening through the commandment, produced in me every covetous craving. For apart from law, sin is dead. ⁹I once lived apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. ¹⁰I found that the very commandment that was meant to bring life actually brought death. ¹¹For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment killed me. ¹²So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³Did the good, then, bring death to me? Absolutely not! Rather, sin—to be exposed as sin—produced death in me through the good, so that through the commandment sin might become extremely sinful. ¹⁴For we know the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin. ¹⁵I don't understand what I do; for I don't do what I want, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶If I do what I don't want, I agree the law is good. ¹⁷So now, it's no longer I who do it, but sin living in me. ¹⁸For I know nothing good lives in me—that is, in my flesh. For I want to do good but can't carry it out. ¹⁹For I don't do the good I want, but the evil I don't want—that I keep doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I don't want, it's no longer I doing it, but sin living in me doing it. ²¹So I find this law: when I want to do good, evil lies close at hand. ²²For in my inner being I delight in the law of our Father. ²³But I see another law in my body, warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin at work in my body. ²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks to our Father through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of our Father with my mind, but with my flesh, the law of sin.