¹Or are you ignorant, brothers — for I speak to those knowing law — that the law rules over the man for as long a time as he is alive?

²For the married woman has been bound by law to the living husband; however if the husband shall die, she has been cleared from the law of the husband.

³Then therefore, while the husband is living, she will be called an adulteress if she shall become married to another man; however if the husband shall die, she is free from the law, so as not to be an adulteress, having become married to another man.

⁴Likewise, my brothers, you yourselves also were put to death to the law through the body of the Anointed One, for you to belong to another, to the One having been raised out from the dead, so that we may bear fruit to God.

⁵For while we were in the flesh, the passions of sins that were through the law were at work in our members to the bringing forth of fruit to the death;

⁶however now we have been released from the law, having died to that which we were bound, in order for us to serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.

⁷What then will we say? Is the law sin? Never would it be! But I have not known the sin except through law; for I had not known covetousness, except the law was saying, You will not covet;

⁸however the sin, having taken an occasion through the commandment, produced in me all covetousness; for apart from the law sin is dead;

⁹however I myself was alive apart from law once; however when the commandment was coming, the sin revived,

¹⁰then I myself died, and the commandment that was to life proved to be to me this to death;

¹¹for the sin, having taken an occasion through the commandment, deceived me and through it put me to death;

¹²so indeed the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

¹³Then that which is good became death to me? Never would it be! But the sin, in order that it may be shown as sin, is working out death to me through that which is good, so that the sin may become beyond excess sinful through the commandment.

¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual, however I myself am fleshly, sold under the sin.

¹⁵For what I do, I do not understand; for not what I want, this I do, but what I hate, this I do.

¹⁶Now if that which I do not want, this I do, I consent to the law that it is good;

¹⁷now in that case no longer am I myself doing it, but the sin that is dwelling in me.

¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for to wish to do is present with me, but to do the good I do not find.

¹⁹For not the good that I desire do I do, but the evil that I do not want, this I practice.

²⁰Now if what I do not want, this I myself do, no longer am I myself who do it, but the sin that is dwelling in me.

²¹I find then the principle, that which is desiring me to do the good, that the evil is present with me.

²²For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man,

²³however 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 being in my members.

²⁴O wretched man I myself am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death?

²⁵Thanks then be to God through Jesus the Anointed One our Lord! So then I myself, with the mind indeed, serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.