Romans 7

1. Are you ignorant, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know law), that the law rules over a man for as long a time as he may live?

2. For the woman who is married is bound by law to the husband as long as he is living; but if the husband should die, she is released from the law that bound her to the husband.

3. So then, if she should marry another man as long as the husband is living, she shall be called an adulteress; but if the husband should die, she is free from the law that bound her to the husband, so that she is no longer an adulteress if she is married to another man.

4. In the same way, my brethren, you also were made dead to the marriage law of the Old Covenant by the body of Christ in order for you to be married to another, Who was raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit to God.

5. For as long as we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, were working within our own members to bring forth fruit unto death.

6. But now we have been released from the law (see explanation) because we have died to that in which we were held so that we might serve in newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

7. What then shall we say? Is the law sin? MAY IT NEVER BE! But I had not known sin, except through the law. Furthermore, I would not have been conscious of lust, except that the law said, “You shall not covet.”

8. But sin, having grasped an opportunity by the commandment, worked out within me every kind of lust because apart from law, sin was dead.

9. For I was once alive without law; but after the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. Paul died through the symbolic death of baptism. Rom. 6:3

10. And the commandment, which was meant to result in life, was found to be unto death for me;

11. Because sin, having taken opportunity by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.

12. Therefore, the law is indeed holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good.

13. Now then, did that which is good become death to me? MAY IT NEVER BE! But sin, in order that it might truly be exposed as sin in me by that which is good, was working out death; so that, by means of the commandment, sin might become exceedingly sinful.

14. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, having been sold as a slave under sin;

15. Because what I am working out myself, I do not know. For what I do not desire to do, this I do; moreover, what I hate, this is what I do.

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

17. So then, I am no longer working it out myself; rather, it is sin that is dwelling within me;

18. Because I fully understand that there is not dwelling within me—that is, within my fleshly being—any good. For the desire to do good is present within me; but how to work out that which is good, I do not find.

19. For the good that I desire to do, I am not doing; but the evil that I do not desire to do, this I am doing.

20. But if I do what I do not desire to do, I am no longer working it out myself, but sin that is dwelling within me.

21. Consequently, I find this law in my members, that when I desire to do good, evil is present with me.

22. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man;

23. But I see another law within my own members, warring against the law of my mind, and leading me captive to the law of sin that is within my own members.

24. O what a wretched man I am! Who shall save me from the body of this death?

25. I thank God for His salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of this, on the one hand, I myself serve the law of God with my mind; but on the other hand, with the flesh, I serve the law of sin.