Romans
7
- Do you not know, brothers--for I am speaking
to men who know the law--that the law has authority over a man only as long
as he lives ?
- For example, by law a married woman is bound
to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released
from the law of marriage.
- So then, if she marries another man while
her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband
dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though
she marries another man.
- So, my brothers, you also died to the law
through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was
raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.
- For when we were controlled by the sinful
nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies,
so that we bore fruit for death.
- But now, by dying to what once bound us,
we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the
Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
- What shall we say, then? Is the law sin?
Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the
law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not
said, "Do not covet."
- But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded
by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart
from law, sin is dead.
- Once I was alive apart from law; but when
the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.
- I found that the very commandment that was
intended to bring life actually brought death.
- For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded
by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.
- So then, the law is holy, and the commandment
is holy, righteous and good.
- Did that which is good, then, become death
to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced
death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might
become utterly sinful.
- We know that the law is spiritual; but I
am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
- I do not understand what I do. For what I
want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
- And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree
that the law is good.
- As it is, it is no longer I myself who do
it, but it is sin living in me.
- I know that nothing good lives in me, that
is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot
carry it out.
- For what I do is not the good I want to do;
no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.
- Now if I do what I do not want to do, it
is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
- So I find this law at work: When I want to
do good, evil is right there with me.
- For in my inner being I delight in God's
law;
- but I see another law at work in the members
of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner
of the law of sin at work within my members.
- What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue
me from this body of death ?
- Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our
Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful
nature a slave to the law of sin.
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