Released from the Law

¹Or do you not know, brothers1—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? ²For ea married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.2 ³Accordingly, fshe will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

⁴Likewise, my brothers, gyou also have died hto the law ithrough the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, jin order that we may bear fruit for God. ⁵For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work kin our members lto bear fruit for death. ⁶But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the mnew way of nthe Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.3

The Law and Sin

⁷What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, oI would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if pthe law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸But sin, qseizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. rFor apart from the law, sin lies dead. ⁹I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. ¹⁰The very commandment sthat promised life proved to be death to me. ¹¹For sin, tseizing an opportunity through the commandment, udeceived me and through it killed me. ¹²So vthe law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. ¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, wsold under sin. ¹⁵For I do not understand my own actions. For xI do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with ythe law, that it is good. ¹⁷So now zit is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells ain me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹bFor I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, cit is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²²For dI delight in the law of God, ein my inner being, ²³but I see in my members fanother law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from gthis body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.