Surely you know, my brothers ??for I am speaking to men who know what law means ??that the law has hold over a person only during his lifetime!

All who sin outside the Law will perish outside the Law, and all who sin under the Law will be condemned by the Law.

[Move vss 14,15 to follow vs 16] (When Gentiles who have no law obey instinctively the Law's requirements, they are a law to themselves, even though they have no law;

What follows, then? That 'the Law is equivalent to sin'? Never! Why, had it not been for the Law, I would never have known what sin meant! Thus I would never have known what it is to covet, unless the Law had said, You must not covet.

but then I find quite another law in my members which conflicts with the law of my mind and makes me a prisoner to sin's law that resides in my members.

the law of the Spirit brings the life which is in Christ Jesus, and that law has set me free from the law of sin and death.

It is the same in your case, my brothers. The crucified body of Christ made you dead to the Law, so that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead that we might be fruitful to God.

For it is not the hearers of the Law who are just in the eyes of God, it is those who obey the Law who will be acquitted,

You pride yourself on the Law; do you dishonour God by your breaches of the Law?

Circumcision is certainly of use, provided you keep the Law; but if you are a breaker of the Law, then your circumcision is turned into uncircumcision.

And shall not those who are physically uncircumcised and who fulfil the Law, judge you who are a breaker of the Law for all your written code and circumcision?)

Whatever the Law says, we know, it says to those who are inside the Law, that every mouth may be shut and all the world made answerable to God;

for no person will be acquitted in his sight on the score of obedience to law. What the Law imparts is the consciousness of sin.

But now we have a righteousness of God disclosed apart from law altogether; it is attested by the Law and the prophets,

Then 'by this faith' we 'cancel the Law'? Not for one moment! We uphold the Law.

(What the Law produces is the Wrath, not the promise of God; where there is no law, there is no transgression either.)

Sin was indeed in the world before the Law, but sin is never counted in the absence of law.

whereas Israel who did aim at the law of righteousness have failed to reach that law.

Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is alive; but if the husband dies, she is done with the law of 'the husband.'

God will! Thanks be to him through Jesus Christ our Lord! [Move second part of this vers to follow vs 23] (Thus, left to myself, I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.)