More about law

1Do you not know, brothers (for I am speaking to those who know law), that the law has authority over someone only as long as he lives?

2For example, a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if the man should die, she is released from the law about the husband.

3So then, if she should ‘marry’ another man while her husband is living, she will be labeled an adulteress; but if the husband should die, she is free from that law, not being an adulteress if she marries another man.

4Therefore, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body ¹⁰⁹of the Christ so as to belong to another—to Him who was raised from the dead—so that we should produce fruit to God.

5Because when we were in the flesh, ¹¹⁰the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our body parts to produce fruit to death.

6But now we have been released from the law, having died to what was gripping us, so as to slave in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter. ¹¹¹

Law and sin

7So what shall we say then? Is the law sin? Of course not! Indeed, I would not have come to know the sin ¹¹²except through the law: I would not have recognized covetousness if the law had not said, “You must not covet.”

8But the sin, grasping an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of coveting. ¹¹³Now without the law sin is dead.

9Once upon a time, without law, I was actually ‘alive’; but when the commandment came, the sin came to life and I died.

10Yes, the commandment that was to bring me life turned out to bring death.

11Because the sin, grasping an opportunity through the commandment, completely deceived me, and used it to ‘kill’ me.

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

Indwelling sin

13So has what is good become death to me? Of course not! Rather the sin, that it might be exposed as sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment the sin might become extremely sinful.

14We know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, having been ‘sold’ under sin ¹¹⁴

15—you see, I do not understand what I am doing: I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate! ¹¹⁵

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

17So now it is no longer I who am doing it, but the sin dwelling in me.

18Further, I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; because to will is present with me, but I do not find how to perform the good.

19Because I do not do the good that I want to do; rather I practice the evil that I do not want to do.

20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin dwelling in me.

21So I find this ‘law’: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

22I joyfully agree with God's law according to the inner man,

23but I see a different ‘law’ in my body parts, warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of the sin that is in my body parts.

24What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ¹¹⁶

25I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve God's law, but with the flesh, sin's law.