¹ Or are you ignorant, brothers; for I speak to those who know the Law; that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?

² For the married woman was bound by law to the living husband. But if the husband is dead, she is set free 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 the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress by becoming another man's wife.

⁴ So, my brothers, you also have become dead to the law by the body of Christ so that you should be married to Another, even to Him raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit to God.

⁵ For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sin worked in our members through the law to bring forth fruit to death.

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

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Let it not be said! But I did not know sin except through the law. For also I did not know lust except the law said, You shall not lust.

⁸ But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, worked in me all kinds of lust. For apart from 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 to life, was found to be death to me.

¹¹ For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.

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

¹³ Then has that which is good become death to me? Let it not be! But sin, that it might appear to be sin, working death in me by that which is good; in order that sin might become exceedingly sinful by the commandment.

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

¹⁵ For that which I do, I know not. For what I desire, that I do not do; but what I hate, that I do.

¹⁶ If then I do that which I do not desire, I consent to the law that it is good.

¹⁷ But now 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.

¹⁹ For I do not do the good that I desire; but the evil which I do not will, that I do.

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

²¹ I find then a law: when I will to do the right, 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, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to 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 with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.