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1Do you not know, brothers--for I am speaking to men who know the law--that the law has authority over a man only as long
as he lives?
2For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released
from the law of marriage.
3So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband
dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
4So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was
raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.
5For when we were controlled by the sinful nature,[1] the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies,
so that we bore fruit for death.
6But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit,
and not in the old way of the written code.
Struggling With Sin
7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the
law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet."[2]
8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart
from law, sin is dead.
9 Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. Ro
10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death (in that it ritualized my
behavior and replaced good Conscience).
11 For sin (became unnoticed), seizing the opportunity afforded by (devotion to) the commandment, deceived me (by re-inforcing
an assumed self righteousness), and through (rigid adherence), the commandment put me to death (in that I ignored the works
to serve the needs of others with mercy).
12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.
13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But, (by my earliest enculturation through the organized
religion pertaining to it), in order that sin might be recognized as sin, (in ritualized but perfunctory conformance), it
produced death (in its fruits) in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
15I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
16And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
17As it is, it is no longer I myself, (who knows the Truth), who do it, but it is (the archetypical based) sin living
in me.
18I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I
cannot carry it out.
19For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.
20Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
22For in my inner being I delight in God's law;
23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner
of the law of sin at work within my members.
24What a wretched man I am! (Truth is) who will rescue me from this body of death!?
25Thanks be to God, (leaving the evidence of truth dwelling in me),--through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
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