Released from the Law

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

2For a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning her husband.

3So then, she will be called an adulteress if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and is not committing adultery if she is joined to another man.

4So then, my brothers, you also were put to death with respect to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, so that we might bear fruit for God.

5For when we were in the flesh, our sinful passions, which were aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit leading to death.

6But now we have been released from the ²⁵law, having died to that by which we were held, so that we may serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

The Law and Sin

7What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Yet I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness if the law had not said, “Yoʋ shall not covet.”

8But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetousness. For apart from the law sin is dead.

9Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came to life and I died.

10So I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

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

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

13²⁶Has that then which is good brought death to me? Certainly not! But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

14For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave to sin.

15I do not understand what I do. Instead of doing what I want to do, I do the very thing I hate.

16Now if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

17But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. I have the desire to do what is right, but ²⁷I find that the ability to carry it out is lacking.

19For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I do the very evil that I do not want to do.

20Now if I do the very thing I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

21I find then the law that when I want to do what is right, evil is present with me.

22For I delight in the law of God in my inner being,

23but I see another law at work in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that is in my members.

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

25²⁸I thank God that he will do so through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.