Read the Bible

¹ Are you ignorant, brothers—for to those knowing law I speak—that the law has lordship over the man as long as he lives?² For the married woman to the living husband has been bound by law, and if the husband may die, she has been free from the law of the husband;³ so then, the husband being alive, she will be called an adulteress if she may become another man's; and if the husband may die, she is free from the law, so as not to be an adulteress, having become another man's.⁴ So that, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of the Christ, for your becoming another's, who was raised up out of the dead, that we might bear fruit to God;⁵ for when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, that [are] through the Law, were working in our members, to bear fruit to death;⁶ and now we have ceased from the Law, that being dead in which we were held, so that we may serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.

⁷ What, then, will we say? The Law [is] sin? Let it not be! But I did not know sin except through law, for also the covetousness I had not known if the Law had not said:⁸ "You will not covet"; and sin having received an opportunity, through the command, worked in me all covetousness—for apart from law sin is dead.⁹ And I was alive apart from law once, and the command having come, sin revived, and I died;¹⁰ and the command that [is] for life, this was found by me for death;¹¹ for sin, having received an opportunity, through the command, deceived me, and through it, slew [me],¹² so that the Law, indeed, [is] holy, and the command holy, and righteous, and good.¹³ That which is good then, has it become death to me? Let it not be! But sin, that it might appear sin, through the good, working death to me, that sin might become exceedingly sinful through the command.

¹⁴ For we have known that the Law is spiritual, and I am fleshly, sold by sin;¹⁵ for that which I work, I do not acknowledge; for not what I will, this I practice, but what I hate, this I do.¹⁶ And if what I do not will, this I do, I consent to the Law that [it is] good,¹⁷ and now it is no longer I that work it, but sin dwelling in me,¹⁸ for I have known that there does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh, good: for to will is present with me, and I do not find to work that which is right,¹⁹ for the good that I will, I do not do; but the evil that I do not will, this I practice.²⁰ And if what I do not will, this I do, it is no longer I that work it, but sin that is dwelling in me.²¹ I find, then, the law, that when I desire to do what is right, the evil is present with me,²² for I delight in the Law of God according to the inward man,²³ and I behold another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin that [is] in my members.²⁴ A wretched man I [am]! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death?²⁵ I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord; so then, I myself indeed serve the Law of God with the mind, and with the flesh, the law of sin.