1 Or do you not know, brothers (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law is master of a person for as long a time [as] he lives?
2 For the married woman is bound by law to [her] husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband.
3 Therefore as a result, if she belongs to another man [while] her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress [if she] belongs to another man.
4 So then, my brothers, you also were brought to death with respect to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to the one who was raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
5 For when we were in the flesh, sinful desires were working through the law in our members, to bear fruit for death.
6 But now we have been released from the law, [because we] have died [to that] by which we were bound, so that we may serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter [of the law].
7 What then shall we say? [Is] the law sin? May it never be! But I would not have known sin except through the law, for I would not have known covetousness if the law had not said, "Do not covet."
8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all [kinds of] covetousness. For apart from the law, sin [is] dead.
9 And I was alive once, apart from the law, but [when] the commandment came, sin sprang to life
10 and I died, and this commandment which [was] to [lead to] life was found with respect to me to [lead to] death.
11 For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed [me].
12 So then, the law [is] holy, and the commandment [is] holy and righteous and good.
13 Therefore, [did that which is] good become death to me? May it never be! Rather [it was] sin, in order that it might be recognized [as] sin, producing death through [what is] good for me, in order that sin might become sinful to an extraordinary degree through the commandment.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, {sold into slavery to sin}.
15 For what I am doing I do not understand, because what I want [to do], this I do not practice, but what I hate, this I do.
16 But if what I do not want [to do], this I do, I agree with the law that [it is] good.
17 But now I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that lives in me.
18 For I know that good does not live in me, that is, in my flesh. For the willing is present in me, but the doing [of] the good [is] not.
19 For the good that I want [to do], I do not do, but the evil that I do not want [to do], this I do.
20 But if what I do not want [to do], this I am doing, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that lives in me.
21 Consequently, I find the principle with me, the one who wants to do good, that evil is present with me.
22 For I joyfully agree with the law of God in my inner person,
23 but I observe another law in my members, at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that exists in my members.
24 Wretched man [that] I [am]! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
25 Thanks [be] to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself with my mind am enslaved to the law of God, but with my flesh [I am enslaved] to the law of sin.