Romans 7

¹Or are you ignorant, brothers — for I am speaking to those who know law — that the law has dominion over a person for as long as he lives?

²For the married woman is bound by law to her living husband; but if the husband should die, she is discharged from the law of the husband.

³So then, while her husband lives she will be called an adulteress if she is joined to another man; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.

⁴So then, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might become another's — to him who was raised from the dead — in order that we might bear fruit to God.

⁵For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions that were operative through the law were at work in our members, bearing fruit for death.

⁶But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held, so that we serve in newness of Spirit and not in oldness of letter.

⁷What then shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means! But I would not have known sin except through law; for I would not have known covetousness either, unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet.'

⁸But sin, having seized an opportunity through the commandment, worked out in me every desire; for apart from law, sin is dead.

⁹And I was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin came to life,

¹⁰And the commandment that was for life — this proved for me to be for death.

¹¹For sin, having seized an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

¹²So then the law is indeed holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³Did then the good become death for me? By no means! But sin, in order that it might be shown as sin, worked death in me through the good — so that sin might become exceedingly sinful through the commandment.

¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin.

¹⁵For what I accomplish, I do not recognize; for what I want, this I do not practice, but what I hate, this I do.

¹⁶But if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good.

¹⁷Now therefore it is no longer I who accomplish it, but sin dwelling in me.

¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for to wish is present with me, but to accomplish the good is not.

¹⁹For the good that I want, I do not do; but the evil that I do not want, this I practice.

²⁰But if what I do not want I do, it is no longer I who bring it about, but sin dwelling in me.

²¹I find then the principle that when I want to do the good, the evil is present with me.

²²For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man,

²³But I see a different law in my members warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin that is in my members.

²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.