¹ ARE you unacquainted, brethren, (for I am speaking to those who know the law,) that the law exercises dominion over a person for as long time as he liveth?

² For the woman who is subject to a husband, is bound by the law to that husband during his life; but if the husband be dead, she is discharged from that husband.

³ She shall therefore certainly be counted an adulteress, if, her husband being alive, she be for another man: but if her husband is dead, she is free from the law; so that she shall be no adulteress, though married to another husband.

⁴ Wherefore, my brethren, ye also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye might be for another, who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit for God.

⁵ For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions excited by the law, wrought powerfully in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death.

⁶ But now we have been discharged from the law, that being dead by which we were held fast; that we should serve in renovation of spirit, and not in the antiquity of the letter.

⁷ What then shall we say? Is the law sin? God forbid. Yea, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not even known concupiscence, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

⁸ But sin, seizing the opportunity by the law, wrought in me all concupiscence. For without the law sin is dead.

⁹ For though I lived without the law formerly; yet when the commandment came, sin revived, but I died.

¹⁰ And the commandment, which was for life, the same was found by me for death.

¹¹ For sin, seizing the occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and thereby slew me.

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

¹³ Did then that which is good become fatal to me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin by that which was good in itself, was the cause of death to me; that sin through the commandment might become transcendantly sinful.

¹⁴ For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am fleshly, sold under sin.

¹⁵ For that which I am doing I approve not: for not the thing which I wish, that do I practise; but the very thing I hate, that I do.

¹⁶ But if what I would not, that I do, I concur with the law that it is excellent.

¹⁷ Now then no more I do this, but sin dwelling in me.

¹⁸ For I know that there dwelleth not in me (that is, in my flesh) any good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.

¹⁹ For I do not the good which I wish: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

²⁰ If then I do that which I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

²¹ I find then a law, that, when I wish to do good, evil is presented to me.

²² For I am delighted with the law of God, as respecting the inward man:

²³ but I see another law in my members, militating against the law in my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin which is in my members.

²⁴ O wretched man, I! who shall pluck me from the body of this death?

²⁵ I give thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Well then, I myself with my mind am servant to the law of God; but in my flesh to the law of sin.