Chapter 7

Believers United to Christ

1 Or do you not know, abrethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?

2 For athe married woman is bound by law to her 1husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law 2concerning the husband.

3 So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.

4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were amade to die bto the Law cthrough the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

5 For while we were ain the flesh, the sinful passions, which were baroused by the Law, were at work cin 1the members of our body to bear fruit for death.

6 But now we have been areleased from the Law, having bdied to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in cnewness of dthe 1Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.

7 aWhat shall we say then? Is the Law sin? bMay it never be! On the contrary, cI would not have come to know sin except 1through the Law; for I would not have known about 2coveting if the Law had not said, “dYou shall not 2covet.”

8 But sin, ataking opportunity bthrough the commandment, produced in me 1coveting of every kind; for capart 2from the Law sin is dead.

9 I was once alive apart 1from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died;

10 and this commandment, which was 1ato result in life, proved 2to result in death for me;

11 for sin, ataking an opportunity bthrough the commandment, cdeceived me and through it killed me.

12 aSo then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

13 Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? aMay it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.

The Conflict of Two Natures

14 For we know that the Law is aspiritual, but I am aof flesh, bsold 1cinto bondage to sin.

15 For what I am doing, aI do not understand; for I am not practicing bwhat I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.

16 But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with athe Law, confessing that the Law is good.

17 So now, ano longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my aflesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

19 For athe good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.

20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, aI am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

21 I find then athe 1principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

22 For I joyfully concur with the law of God 1in athe inner man,

23 but I see aa different law in 1the members of my body, waging war against the blaw of my mind and making me a prisoner 2of cthe law of sin which is in my members.

24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from 1athe body of this bdeath?

25 aThanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh bthe law of sin.