1 ARE you ignorant, brethren, for I am speaking to those who know law, that the Law rules over a person while he is living?
2 For a married woman is by law bound to her husband while he is living. But if the husband dies, she is freed from the law of her husband.
3 Therefore while her husband is living she is called an adulteress if she becomes another man's. But if her husband dies she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress when she becomes another man's.
4 So, my brethren, you were made dead to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might become wedded to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God.
5 For when we were in the flesh the sinful passions that arise through the Law were active in our members, so that we bore fruit to death.
6 But now the Law has been made inoperative on us, since we have died to that by which we were held, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
7 What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? Never. But I should not have come to know sin except through the Law. I should not have known lust if the Law had not said, "Thou shalt not lust."
8 Sin, taking occasion through the commandment, worked in me every lust. For apart from the Law sin is dead.
9 I was living once, apart from law. But when the commandment came, sin began to live and I died,
10 and the commandment which meant life was found to mean death.
11 For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me.
12 So the Law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good.
13 Did then what is good become death to me? Never. But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through the good, in order that it might become beyond measure sinful.
14 For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am fleshly, sold under sin.
15 For what I am doing I do not understand. For not what I choose is what I practice, but what I hate, this I do.
16 But if I do what I do not choose, I agree with the law that it is right.
17 And now it is no longer I that do it, but the Sin that dwells in me.
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21 I find then this rule, when I choose to do the right, that evil is present with me.
22 I delight in the Law in my inner man,
23 but I see another law in my members, warring with the law of my mind and leading me captive under the law of sin which is in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then I myself with my mind serve the Law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.