1. Do you not know, brethren, (for I speak to those who know the law,) how the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?
2. For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if the husband is dead, she is freed from the law of her husband.
3. So then if, while her husband lives, she is married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband is dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.
4. Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that you should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit for God.
5. For when we were in the flesh, the emotions of sins, which were aroused by the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit leading to death.
6. But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead in which we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.
7. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. No, I would not have known sin, except by the law: for I would not have known lust, unless the law had said, You shall not covet.
8. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, worked in me all manner of evil desires. For without the law sin was dead.
9. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
10. And the commandment, which was established for life, I found to bring death.
11. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me.
12. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
13. Was then that which is good made death to me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear to be sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.
14. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
15. For that which I do I do not approve of: for what I would like to do, that I do not do; but what I hate, that I do.
16. If then I do that which I do not want to do, I consent to the law that it is good.
17. Now then it is no more I that do it, but 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 that which is good I do not find out.
19. For the good that I desire I do not do: but the evil which I do not desire, that I do.
20. Now if I do what I do not desire, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me.
21. I find it then to be a law that when I desire to do good, evil is present with me.
22. For I delight in the law of God in 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. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.