Romans 7

1Or are you unaware, brothers—for I speak to those who know the law—that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?

2For a married woman remains bound by law to her living husband, but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.

3So then, while her husband lives she will be called an adulteress if she weds another man, but if her husband dies she is free from the law so she is no adulteress though she has wed another man.

4So, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so you might belong to another, to the one raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God.

5For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins through the law worked in our members to bear fruit to death.

6But now we have been released from the law, having died to what held us, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter.

7What, then, shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means! But I would not have known sin except through the law, for I would not have known coveting unless the law said, "Do not covet."

8But sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, gave rise to every desire in me. For without law, sin is dead.

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

10But I died, and I found this commandment, which was for life, to be for death.

11For sin, seizing opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.

12So the law is indeed holy, and the commandment holy, righteous, and good.

13So then, did the good become death to me? By no means! But sin, that it might appear as sin by working death for me through the good, so that sin might become sinful in the extreme through the commandment.

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

15For I do not understand what I accomplish; for what I want, that I do not practice, but what I hate, that I do.

16But if I do what I do not desire, I agree with the law that it is good.

17Now it is no longer I who performs it, but sin that dwells in me.

18For I know that no good dwells in me, in my flesh. For willing is present with me, but performing the good is not.

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

20But if what I do not desire, that I do, no longer do I perform it, but the sin that dwells in me.

21I find then the law that, as I desire to do good, evil lies present with me.

22For I delight in God's law according to the inner man.

23But I see another law in my members battling against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.

24I am a wretched man! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

25Thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve God's law with the mind, but the law of sin with the flesh.