Romans

7 Or are you unaware, brothers (for I am speaking to men who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over man so long as he is alive? 2 For the wedded woman is bound to the living husband by the law; but if the husband dies she is disengaged from the husband’s law. 3 So while the husband is alive she will be called an adulteress if another man gets her; but if the husband dies she is free from the law so as not to be an adulteress when another man does get her. 4 Hence, my brothers, you too were brought into death to the law through the Christ’s body so that another might get you, he who rose from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5* For when we were in the flesh the susceptibilities to sin that come by the law were at work in our organism so that we should bear fruit for death, 6* but now we have been disengaged, having died, from the law in which we were held under, so that we serve in the new relation of spirit and not in the old relation of letter.

7 What shall we therefore say? “the law is sin”? away with the thought! but I should not have known sin except through the law. For I should not know about coveting if the law did not say “You shall not covet.” 8* But sin, getting a start by the commandment, produced in me a coveting of everything. For without the law sin is dead; 9 and I was alive without the law once. But when the commandment came sin came to life, and I died; 10 and for me the commandment, the very thing that led to life, was found to lead to death, 11 since sin, getting a start by the commandment, tricked me, and killed me through it.

12 Consequently: the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.— 13 Then did the good become death for me? away with the thought, but sin did, in order that it might appear as sin, producing death for me through the good, in order that sin might come out supremely sinful through the commandment.

14 For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold under sin. 15* For I do not know the product I am working out. For it is not just what I have a will for that I am busy at, it is just what I hate that I am doing; 16* but if I am doing just what I have no will for, I agree that the law is fine. 17* And now it is no longer I that work out what ensues, but my inmate sin. 18 For I know that there does not reside in me, that is, in my flesh, anything good; for to will is within my reach, but to work out what would be a fine thing is not, 19 for I do not do the good thing which I will, but it is just the bad thing which I do not will that I am busy at. 20 But if it is just what I do not will that I do, it is no longer I that work out what ensues, but sin residing in me. 21 I find the law, then, for me who have the will to do the fine thing, that the bad is what is laid out for me. 22 For I am in sympathy with the law of God as to my inward man, 23* but I see another law in my organism waging war with the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin that is in my organism. 24* Wretched man I! who will deliver me out of the body that carries this death? 25* thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ!—So then I myself belong in mind to the service of God’s law, but in flesh to that of sin’s law.