1Or are you unaware, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law rules over a person only for as long as he lives?
2For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband.
3So then, while her husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she becomes another man’s; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she becomes another man’s.
4So, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might become another’s—the one raised from the dead—that we might bear fruit to God.
5For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, aroused through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death;
6but now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were held, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
7What then shall we say? Is the law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law; for I would not have known covetousness if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
8But sin, seizing its opportunity through the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetousness; for apart from law sin is dead.
9And I was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life,
10and I died, and the commandment that was meant for life—this very one proved to be for death.
11For sin, seizing its opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.
12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good.
13Did then what is good become death to me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, that it might be shown to be sin, working death in me through what is good—so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment.
14For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am fleshly, sold under sin.
15For what I accomplish I do not understand; for it is not what I want that I practice, but what I hate—that I do.
16But if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
17But now it is no longer I who accomplish it, but the sin dwelling in me.
18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing lies ready at hand for me, but the accomplishing of the good does not.
19For the good that I want I do not do, but the evil that I do not want—that I practice.
20But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who accomplish it, but the sin dwelling in me.
21So I find this law: that when I want to do the good, evil lies ready at hand for me.
22For I delight in the law of God according to the inner person,
23but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin that is in my members.
24Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.
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