1 Or do you not know, brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?
2 For the woman who has a husband is bound by law to her husband while he lives; but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband.
3 So then, while the husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she is joined to another man; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.
4 So, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God.
5 For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.
6 But now we have been released from the law, that being dead in which we were held fast, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter.
7 What, then, shall we say? Is the law sin? May it never be! But I would not have known sin except through the law; for I would not have known lust if the law had not said, "You shall not lust."
8 But sin, taking occasion through the commandment, produced in me every kind of lust; for apart from the law sin was dead.
9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
10 And the commandment that was for life, this very one I found to be for death.
11 For sin, taking occasion through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.
12 So the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good.
13 Did, then, that which is good become death to me? May it never be! But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, worked death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am fleshly, sold under sin.
15 For what I am doing, I do not understand; for what I will, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.
16 But if I do what I do not will, I agree with the law that it is good.
17 But now it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.
18 For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.
19 For the good that I will, I do not do; but the evil that I do not will, that I practice.
20 But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.
21 I find, then, this law: that when I will to do good, evil is present with me.
22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man,
23 but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death?
25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.