¹Or do you not know, brothers and sisters (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law is lord over a person as long as he lives? ²For a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the marriage.³So then, if she is joined to another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she is joined to another man, she is not an adulteress. ⁴So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you could be joined to another, to the one who was raised from the dead, to bear fruit to God. ⁵For when we were in the flesh, the sinful desires, aroused by the law, were active in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. ⁶But now we have been released from the law, because we have died to what controlled us, so that we may serve in the new life of the Spirit and not under the old written code. ⁷What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! Certainly, I would not have known sin except through the law. For indeed I would not have known what it means to desire something belonging to someone else if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” ⁸But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. For apart from the law, sin is dead. ⁹And I was once alive apart from the law, but with the coming of the commandment, sin became alive ¹⁰and I died. So I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life brought death! ¹¹For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it I died. ¹²So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. ¹³Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. ¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual—but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin. ¹⁵For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want—instead, I do what I hate. ¹⁶But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it.¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want! ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me.²¹So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me. ²²For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. ²³But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this 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.