Romanos 7

¹ Do you not know, for I speak to men who know the law, that the law has dominion jurisdiction over a man as long as he lives?

² Law binds the married woman to her husband while he lives. But if the husband dies, she is discharged from the law of the husband.

³ So then if, while the husband lives, she is joined to another man, she will be called an adulteress. If the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she is joined to another man.

⁴ Brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ; that you should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit to God.

⁵ When we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit to death.

⁶ We have been discharged released from the law. We have died to that by which we were held. So we serve in newness of the Spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! I had not known sin except through the law. For I had not known coveting except the law had said: You should not covet.

⁸ But sin, finding occasion, worked out in me through the commandment all manner of coveting. Apart from the law sin is dead.

⁹ I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

¹⁰ The commandment, which was to life, this I found to be to death.

¹¹ For sin, finding occasion, through the commandment deceived me, and through it killed me.

¹² The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good.

¹³ Did that which is good become death to me? God forbid! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good. This way sin might be shown to be sin. Through the commandment sin could be recognized.

¹⁴ For we know that the law is spiritual. But I am fleshly and sold under sin.

¹⁵ I do not understand what I am doing. For what I want to do I do not do. What I hate, I do.

¹⁶ But if what I do not want to do, I do, I consent to the law that it is right.

¹⁷ Now then it is no longer I that do it, but the sin that dwells in me.

¹⁸ I know that good does not live in my human nature. For even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it.

¹⁹ I do not do the good I want to do. Instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do.

²⁰ If I do what I do not want to do, this means that I am no longer the one who does it. Instead, it is the sin that lives in me.

²¹ I find that this law is at work. When I want to do what is good, what is evil is the only choice I have.

²² My inner person delights in the law of God.

²³ However I see a different law at work in my body. This law fights against the law that my mind approves of. It makes me a prisoner to the law of sin that is at work in my body.

²⁴ Miserable man that I am! Who will rescue me from the body undergoing this death?

²⁵ Thanks to God, through our Lord Jesus Christ! So then I can serve God’s law only with my mind, while my human nature serves the law of sin.