Chapter 7

¹Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know what law is—that law governs a man only as long as he lives? ²For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if he dies, the marriage law no longer applies to her. ³So if she marries another man while her husband is alive, she is called an adulteress, but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and can marry someone else without being an adulteress. ⁴So you, in turn, my brothers, in the body of Christ have become dead as far as the Law is concerned, so that you may belong to another husband, who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God. ⁵For when we were living mere physical lives the sinful passions, awakened by the Law, operated through the organs of our bodies to make us bear fruit for death. ⁶But now the Law no longer applies to us; we have died to what once controlled us, so that we can now serve in the new Spirit, not under the old letter.

⁷Then what shall we conclude? That the Law is sin? Certainly not! Yet, if it had not been for the Law, I should never have learned what sin was; I should not have known what it was to covet if the Law had not said, “You must not covet.” ⁸That command gave sin an opening, and it led me to all sorts of covetous ways, for sin is lifeless without law. ⁹I was once alive and without law, but when the command came, sin awoke and then I died; ¹⁰and the command that should have meant life in my case proved to mean death. ¹¹The command gave sin an opening and sin deceived me and killed me with it. ¹²So the Law itself is holy, and each command is holy, just, and good.

¹³Did what was good, then, prove the death of me? Certainly not! It was sin that did so, so that it might be recognized as sin, because even through something that was good it effected my death, so that through the command it might appear how immeasurably sinful sin was. ¹⁴We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am physical, sold into slavery to sin. ¹⁵I do not understand what I am doing, for I do not do what I want to do; I do things that I hate. ¹⁶But if I do what I do not want to do, I acknowledge that the Law is right. ¹⁷In reality, it is not I that do these things; it is sin, which has possession of me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good resides in me, that is, in my physical self; I can will, but I cannot do what is right. ¹⁹I do not do the good things that I want to do; I do the wrong things that I do not want to do. ²⁰But if I do the things that I do not want to do, it is not I that am acting, it is sin, which has possession of me. ²¹I find the law to be that I who want to do right am dogged by what is wrong. ²²My inner nature agrees with the divine law, ²³but all through my body I see another principle in conflict with the law of my reason, which makes me a prisoner to that law of sin that runs through my body. ²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who can save me from this doomed body? ²⁵Thank God! it is done through Jesus Christ our Lord! So mentally I am a slave to God’s law, but physically to the law of sin.