Romans 7

Translated from the SBL Greek New Testament. Tap a verse to see why it reads as it does. Tap a small letter to read its footnote.

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Free from the law

¹Surely you understand, brothers and sisters, since I am speaking to people who know the law, that the law is master over someone only while that person is alive. ²Take a married woman: the law binds her to her husband while he is alive. But if he dies, she is set free from the law that tied her to him. ³So if she joins herself to another man while her husband is still living, people will call her an adulteress. But once her husband has died she is free from the law, and marrying another man does not make her an adulteress.

⁴It is the same with you, my brothers and sisters. Through the body of Christ you were put to death as far as the law is concerned, so that you could be joined to another: to the one who was raised from the dead. And so we can bear fruit for God. ⁵When we lived in the flesh, the law stirred up sinful desires in us. They were at work in the parts of our bodies, and what we produced belonged to death. ⁶But now we are free from the law. We have died to what once held us fast, so that we serve in the new life of the Spirit, not in the old life of the written letter.

The law and sin

⁷What then are we to say? Is the law sin? Certainly not! But it was the law that taught me what sin is. I would never have recognized wrong desire for what it is unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸Sin found its opening in the commandment and used it to rouse every kind of wrong desire in me, for without the law sin is dead. ⁹There was a time when I lived without the law. Then the commandment arrived, sin woke up and came alive, ¹⁰and I died. The commandment was given for life, yet for me it led to death. ¹¹Sin found its opening in the commandment, deceived me, and used the commandment to kill me. ¹²The law, then, is holy. The commandment is holy, just and good.

¹³Did something good, then, become death to me? Certainly not! Sin was the cause. It used what was good to work death in me, so that sin would be seen for what it really is. Through the commandment sin showed itself sinful past all measure.

Wanting the good, not doing it

¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual. I, however, am made of flesh, and I have been sold to sin as its slave. ¹⁵What I am doing makes no sense to me. The things I want to do, I fail to do; the things I hate are what I end up doing. ¹⁶But if I do things I do not want to do, that shows I side with the law: I agree that it is good. ¹⁷In that case, I am no longer the one doing it; sin is, the sin that has made its home in me. ¹⁸I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, there is nothing good living. Wanting the good is within my reach; doing it is not. ¹⁹I fail to do the good I want, and the evil I do not want is what I carry out. ²⁰But if I do what I do not want, then I am no longer the one doing it; sin is, the sin that has made its home in me.

²¹This, then, is the law I discover: whenever I set out to do what is good, evil is already there at my side. ²²In my inner self I gladly agree with God’s law. ²³But I see another law in the parts of my body. It is at war with the law of my mind, and it takes me prisoner to the law of sin that is in those parts of my body. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself serve God’s law with my mind, but the law of sin with my flesh.