RomansChapter 7

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¹Brothers and sisters, I am speaking to people who know the law. Don't you know that the law has power over a person only as long as he lives? ²For example, a married woman is joined by law to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law of marriage. ³So if she goes with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law. Then if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. ⁴My brothers and sisters, it is the same with you. You died to the law through the body of Christ. Now you can belong to someone else. You belong to Christ, who was raised from the dead. So now we can produce good fruit for God. ⁵We used to be controlled by our sinful nature. Back then, the law stirred up sinful desires in us. These desires worked in our bodies. They produced fruit that leads to death. ⁶But now we have died to what once held us. We have been set free from the law. So now we serve in the new way of the Spirit. We don't serve in the old way of the written law. ⁷So what should we say? Is the law sin? No way! But I would not have known what sin was without the law. I wouldn't have known what coveting was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." ⁸But sin used the command to get its chance. It made me want all kinds of things that were not mine. Without the law, sin is dead. ⁹Once I was alive without the law. But when the command came, sin came to life. And I died. ¹⁰So I found out something. The very command that was meant to bring life brought death instead. ¹¹Sin used the command to get its chance. It tricked me. And through the command it killed me. ¹²So the law is holy. And the command is holy, right, and good. ¹³Then did something good become death to me? No way! Sin used what was good to bring death to me. This was so that sin would be shown to be sin. So through the command, sin would become completely sinful. ¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual. But I am not spiritual. I am sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵I don't understand what I do. I don't do what I want to do. Instead, I do what I hate. ¹⁶If I do what I don't want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷So it is no longer I who do it. It is sin living in me that does it. ¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me. That is, nothing good lives in my sinful nature. I want to do what is good, but I can't do it. ¹⁹I don't do the good things I want to do. Instead, I keep on doing the evil I don't want to do. ²⁰If I do what I don't want to do, it is no longer I who do it. It is sin living in me that does it. ²¹So this is the rule I have found. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²²Deep inside, I love God's law. ²³But I see another law at work in my body. It fights against the law of my mind. It makes me a prisoner of the law of sin that lives in me. ²⁴What a miserable man I am! Who will save me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! So with my mind I serve God's law. But with my sinful nature I serve the law of sin.