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¹ Or are you ignorant, brothers (for I speak to men who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man for as long as he lives?² For the woman that has a husband is bound by law to the husband while he lives; but if the husband dies, she is discharged from the law of the husband.³ So then if, while the husband lives, she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is no adulteress, though she is joined to another man.⁴ Therefore, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that you should be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit to God.⁵ For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruit to death.⁶ But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held, in order to serve us as slaves in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nevertheless, I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, You shall not covet:⁸ but sin, finding occasion, worked in me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from the law sin [is] dead.⁹ And I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived,¹⁰ and I died, and the commandment, which [was] to life, this I found [to be] to death:¹¹ for sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through it slew me.¹² So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good.¹³ Did then that which is good become death to me? God forbid. But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, by working death to me through that which is good; -that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful.

¹⁴ For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.¹⁵ For that which I do, I don't know: for what I do not want, that do I do; but what I hate, that I do.¹⁶ But if what I do not want, that I do, I consent to the law that it is good.¹⁷ So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwells in me.¹⁸ For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing: for to want is present with me, but to do that which is good [is] not.¹⁹ For the good which I want, I do not: but the evil which I do not want, that I do.²⁰ But if I do what I do not want, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwells in me.²¹ I find then the law, that, to me who would do good, evil is present.²² For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:²³ but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and capturing me in the law of sin which is in my members.²⁴ Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?²⁵ But thanks to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve as a slave to the law of God; but with the flesh, to the law of sin.