Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know
the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he
lives? 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. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she
lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her
husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another
man she is not an adulteress.
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the
body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has
been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused
by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
But now we are released from the law, having died to that which
held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and
not in the old way of the written code.
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if
it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I
would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said,
“You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the
commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart
from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law,
but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very
commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin,
seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and
through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is
holy and righteous and good.
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It
was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that
sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might
become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is
spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not
understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do
the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with
the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but
sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in
me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is
right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the
good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but
sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies
close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,
but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of
my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my
members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body
of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then,
I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I
serve the law of sin.
