Romans 7

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1. 1Don't you know, brothers and sisters — since I'm speaking to those who know the law — that the law has authority over a person only as long as they live?
2. 2For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law regarding her husband.
3. 3So then, if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is not an adulteress even if she marries another man.
4. 4In the same way, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you could belong to another — to him who was raised from the dead — in order that we might bear fruit for God.
5. 5For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, bearing fruit for death.
6. 6But now we have been released from the law, having died to what once held us, so that we serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the written code.
7. 7What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! But I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known coveting if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.'
8. 8But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin is dead.
9. 9I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.
10. 10The very commandment that was meant to bring life turned out to bring death for me.
11. 11For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
12. 12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just, and good.
13. 13Did what is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, in order to be shown as sin, was producing death in me through what is good — so that through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful.
14. 14For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
15. 15For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I want to do, I do not do; but what I hate, that is what I do.
16. 16If I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good.
17. 17So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
18. 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me — that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do good is present with me, but the ability to carry it out I cannot find.
19. 19For the good that I want to do, I do not do; but the evil I do not want to do, that is what I keep doing.
20. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
21. 21I find then this principle: that when I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
22. 22For I delight in the law of God in my inner being.
23. 23But I see another law in my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that is in my body.
24. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25. 25I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.