7:1  Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?

7:2  For the married woman has bound herself by law to her husband while he lives; but if her husband dies, she will become released from the law concerning the husband.

7:3  So then, if while her husband lives she joins herself to another man, people will call her an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she has freedom from the law, so that people will not call her an adulteress though she joins herself to another man.

7:4  Therefore, my brethren, you also died to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might join yourself to another, to Him who God raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

7:5  For while we lived in the flesh, the sinful passions, which became aroused by the Law, went to work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.

7:6  But now we have received liberation from the Law, having died to that by which we felt bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.

7:7   What shall we say then? Does the Law equate to sin? May it never happen! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, " YOU SHALL NOT COVET."

7:8  But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin dies.

7:9  I felt once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died;

7:10  and this commandment, which God intended to result in life, proved to result in death for me;

7:11  for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

7:12   So then, the Law has holiness, and the commandment has holiness and righteousness and goodness.

7:13  Therefore did that which we considered good become a cause of death for me? May it never happen! Rather sin, in order that it might reveal itself as sin by effecting my death through that which we considered good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.

7:14  For we know that the Law has spiritual characteristics, but I consist of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.

7:15  For what I do, I do not understand; for I do not practice what I would like to do, but I do the very thing I hate.

7:16  But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law has inherent goodness.

7:17  So now, no longer do I do it, but sin which dwells in me.

7:18  For I know that nothing good dwells in me, namely, in my flesh; for the willing takes place in me, but the doing of the good does not.

7:19  For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.

7:20  But if I do the very thing I do not want, I no longer do it, but sin which dwells in me.

7:21  I find then the principle that evil dwells in me, the one who wants to do good.

7:22  For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,

7:23  but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which dwells in my members.

7:24  Wretched man that I feel myself to have become! Who will set me free from the body of this death?

7:25  We thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind serve the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.