¹Or are you unaware, brothers – for I speak to those who know the law – that the law rules over man as long as he is alive? ²For a married woman is bound by the law to her husband while he is alive, but if the husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband. ³So she will be called an adulteress if she becomes the wife of another man while the husband is alive. But if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she becomes the wife of another man. ⁴So, my brothers, you too have died to the law through the body of Christ so as to become subject to another, him who has been raised from the dead, so that we may bear fruit to God. ⁵For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions defined by the law were active in our members so as to produce fruit to death. ⁶But now, we have been released from the law, and we have died to that by which we were being held, so that we should serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. ⁷What, then, shall we say? Is the law sin? Far from it. But I would not have known sin, except through the law. For indeed I would not have known covetousness if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸And sin, having seized the opportunity through the commandment, engendered in me all sorts of covetousness. For without the law, sin is dead. ⁹And I was alive without the law at one time. But when the commandment came, sin came to life, but I died, ¹⁰and the very commandment leading to life was found by me to lead to death, ¹¹for sin seized the opportunity through the commandment, and it deceived me and killed me through that. ¹²And so the law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good. ¹³So did that which was good become death to me? Far from it. But sin did, in order that it might be shown up as sin, engendering death to me through that which is good – in order that sin might become exceedingly sinful through the commandment. ¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. ¹⁵For I do not approve of what I do. For it is not the case that I do what I want to do, but what I hate – that is what I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not wish to do, I assent to the law that it is good. ¹⁷But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin which dwells in me. ¹⁸For I know that there does not dwell in me – that is, in my flesh – anything good. For willing a thing is readily available to me, but doing that which is good escapes me. ¹⁹For I do not do the good that I wish to do, but as for the evil that I do not wish to do – that is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do that which I do not wish to do, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin which dwells in me. ²¹So I find the principle for me, who would like to do that which is good, that evil besets me. ²²For I delight in the law of God from the perspective of the inward man. ²³But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which is in my members. ²⁴Miserable man that I am! Who will rescue me from this mortal body? ²⁵I thank God that it is through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but the law of sin with the flesh.

Reference(s) in Chapter 7: v.7 ↔ Exodus 20:17, Deuteronomy 5:21.