Romans 7:1–13

Know you not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law) that the law hath dominion over a man as long as it liveth?

²For the woman that hath an husband, whilst her husband liveth is bound to the law. But if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.

³Therefore, whilst her husband liveth, she shall be called an adulteress, if she be with another man: but if her husband be dead, she is delivered from the law of her husband: so that she is not an adulteress, if she be with another man.

⁴Therefore, my brethren, you also are become dead to the law, by the body of Christ: that you may belong to another, who is risen again from the dead that we may bring forth fruit to God.

⁵For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death.

⁶But now we are loosed from the law of death wherein we were detained; so that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

⁷What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? God forbid! But I do not know sin, but by the law. For I had not known concupiscence, if the law did not say: Thou shalt not covet.

⁸But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

⁹And I lived some time without the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived,

¹⁰And I died. And the commandment that was ordained to life, the same was found to be unto death to me.

¹¹For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, seduced me: and by it killed me.

¹²Wherefore the law indeed is holy: and the commandment holy and just and good.

¹³Was that then which is good made death unto me? God forbid! But sin, that it may appear sin, by that which is good, wrought death in me: that sin, by the commandment, might become sinful above measure.