1 Or do you not know, brothers (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law rules over a person only as long as that person lives? 2 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 binding her to him. 3 So then, if she belongs to another man while her husband lives, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law and is not an adulteress if she belongs to another man.

4 So, my brothers, you too were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to the one raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions that came through the law were at work in the parts of our body to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we have been released from the law, having died to what held us, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? By no means! Yet I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known coveting if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin seized an opportunity through the commandment and produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin is dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came to life 10 and I died. The very commandment meant for life proved to bring death to me. 11 For sin seized an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

13 Did what is good, then, become death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, so that it might be shown to be sin, and so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand what I do. I do not practice what I want, but I do what I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin dwelling in me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do good is present with me, but carrying it out is not. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but I practice the evil I do not want. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin dwelling in me.

21 So I find this law: when I want to do good, evil is present with me. 22 For in my inner self I delight in the law of God, 23 but I see another law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin in the parts of my body. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

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