The Bible

Romans Chapter 7

¹Or don't you know, brothers (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law dominates a person for as long as they live? ²For 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. ³So then if, while the husband lives, she is joined to another man, she would 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. ⁴So, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of AnointedOne, that you would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might produce fruit of God. ⁵For when we were in the flesh, the shortcoming passions which were through the law worked in our members to bear fruit to death. ⁶But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.

⁷What shall we say then? Is the law shortcoming? Not at all! However, I wouldn't have known sin except through the law. For I wouldn't have known coveting unless the law had said, "Don't covet." ⁸But shortcoming, finding occasion through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of coveting. For without the law, sin is dead. ⁹I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, shortcoming revived and I died. ¹⁰The commandment which was for life, this I found to be for death; ¹¹for shortcoming, finding occasion through the commandment, deceived me, and killed me through it. ¹²So the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, righteous, and good.

¹³Did then what is good become death to me? Not at all! But shortcoming, that it might be shown to be shortcoming, was producing death in me through what is good; that through the commandment shortcoming might become an excessive shortcomer. ¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under shortcoming. ¹⁵For I don't understand what I am doing. For I don't practice what I desire to do; but what I hate, that I do. ¹⁶But if what I don't desire, that I do, I consent to the law that it is good. ¹⁷[So] now [it is no] longer I doing it, but shortcoming which lives in me! ¹⁸For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, no good thing lives. For the will is present with me, but I can't [seem to] do good. ¹⁹For the good which I desire, I don't do; but the evil which I don't desire, [that's] what I do. ²⁰But if what I don't desire, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but shortcoming which lives in me. ²¹So I find [there's this] law that, while I desire to do good, evil is right there! ²²For I delight in God's law after the inward person, ²³but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of shortcoming which is in my members. ²⁴What a wretched person I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death? ²⁵I thank God through Jesus AnointedOne, our Lord! So then with the mind, I myself serve God's law, but with the flesh, shortcoming's law.