1Do you not know, brethren—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only 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 her husband. 3So then, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and though she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. 4Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit to God. 5While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6But now, by dying to what once held us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. 7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed, I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, »You shall not covet.« 8But sin, finding opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetous desire. For apart from the law sin lies dead. 9I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10The very commandment which was to bring life I found to be death to me. 11For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. 12So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. 13Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Certainly not! But it was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, so that through the commandment sin might become sinful beyond measure. 14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15I do not understand what I do. For I do not do what I want to do, but I do what I hate. 16Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17So then, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will to do what is good, but I cannot do it. 19For I do not do the good I want to do; but the evil I do not want to do is what I do. 20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21So I find it to be a 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 in my members another law, at war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.