¹ Or are you ignorant, brothers, (for I speak to those knowing law), that the law lords it over the man for as long a time as he lives?

² For the married woman was bound by law to the living husband; but if the husband dies, she is set free from the law of the husband.

³ So then, if the husband is living, she will be called an adulteress if she becomes another man's. But if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so as for her not to be an adulteress by becoming another man's.

⁴ So that, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, for you to become Another's, to One raised from the dead, so that we may bear fruit to God.

⁵ For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sin were working in our members through the law for the bearing of fruit unto death.

⁶ But now we have been set free from the law, having died to that in which we were held, so as for us to serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Let it not be! But I did not know sin except through law; for also I did not know lust except the law said, "You shall not lust." Ex. 20:17

⁸ But sin taking occasion through the commandment worked every lust in me; for apart from law, sin is dead.

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

¹⁰ And the commandment which was to life, this was found to be death to me;

¹¹ for sin taking occasion through the commandment deceived me, and through it killed me .

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

¹³ Then that which is good, has it become death to me? Let it not be! But sin, that it might appear to be sin, having worked out death to me through the good, in order that sin might become excessively sinful through the commandment.

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

¹⁵ For what I work out, I do not know. For what I do not will, this I do. But what I hate, this I do.

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

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

¹⁸ For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good. For to will is present to me, but to work out the good I do not find.

¹⁹ For what good I desire, I do not do. But the evil I do not desire, this I do.

²⁰ But if I do what I do not desire, it is no longer I working it out, but sin dwelling in me.

²¹ I find then the law, when I desire to do the right, that evil is present with me.

²² For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man;

²³ but I see another law in my members having warred against the law of my mind, and taking me captive by the law of sin being 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 I myself with the mind truly serve the law of God, and with the flesh the law of sin.