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you not know, brothers—since I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as he lives? 2 For example, a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning her husband. 3 So then, if she marries another man while her husband remains alive, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law, so that she is not an adulteress, even if she has married another man.
4 So, my brothers, you have also become dead to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For when we were living in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in every part of our bodies to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we have been delivered from the law, since we have died to what once bound us, so we may serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written law.
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For example, I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet”. 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me covetous desires of every kind. For apart from the law sin is dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, since spring to life 10 and I died. So the commandment that was meant to bring life for me actually resulted in death. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.
13 Has that which is good, then, become death to me? Certainly not! On the contrary, it was sin, in order that it might be recognized as sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am made of the flesh, and sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand my own actions. For what I want to do I do not do, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 So as it is, it is no longer I that do it, but it is sin living within me. 18 I know that nothing good lives within me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good that I want to do, but the evil that I do not want to do I continue doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is the sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For I delight in God’s law in my inner being. 23 But I see another law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.