¹ Or are ye ignorant, brothers (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law has dominion over the man for as long a time as he lives?

² For the woman under authority to the living husband has been bound by law, but if the husband should die, she has been released from the law of the husband.

³ So then, of the living husband, she will be called an adulteress if she becomes to another man, but if the husband should die, she is free from the law, for her not to be an adulteress having become to another man.

⁴ Therefore, my brothers, ye also became dead to the law through the body of Christ in order for ye to become to another, to him who was raised from the dead, so that we would bear fruit to God.

⁵ For when we were in the flesh, the passions of the sins were working in our body-parts (through the law) in order to bear fruit to death.

⁶ But now we have been released from the law, having died to what we were held, so as for us to serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of a document.

⁷ What will we say then? The law is sin? May it not happen! Yet I did not know sin except through law. For likewise I would not have known lust, if the law did not say, Thou shall not covet.

⁸ But sin, having taken opportunity through the commandment, wrought in me every evil desire, for apart from law sin is dead.

⁹ And I was alive once apart from law, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

¹⁰ And I found to me, the commandment being for life, this is for death.

¹¹ For sin, having taken opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.

¹² So the law is indeed holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³ Has therefore what is good become death to me? May it not happen! Instead, it is sin, so that it might be revealed, sin working death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin might become sinful to extreme.

¹⁴ For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, having been sold under sin.

¹⁵ For I do not understand what I do, for I do not do this that I want, but what I hate, this I do.

¹⁶ But if I do this that I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good.

¹⁷ But now I no longer perform it, but the sin dwelling in me.

¹⁸ For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, for to will is present in me, but to do the good, I find not.

¹⁹ For I do not do good that I want, instead, wrong that I do not want, this I do.

²⁰ But if I do this that I do not want, I no longer perform it, but sin dwelling in me.

²¹ Consequently I find the law in my wanting to do good, that evil is present in me.

²² For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man,

²³ but I see a different law in my body-parts, warring against the law of my mind, and taking me captive in the law of sin, which is in my body-parts.

²⁴ I am a wretched man. Who will rescue me out of the body of this death?

²⁵ I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I of myself in the mind indeed serve a law of God, but in the flesh a law of sin.