Romans 7:1-11

¹Know ye not, brethren, (for I am speaking to those who are acquainted with the Law,) that the Law hath dominion over a man only as long as he liveth?

²For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he liveth; but if the husband die, she is released from the law which bound her to him.

³So then, if while her husband is living she connect herself with another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband die, she is no longer bound by that law, so that she will not be an adulteress, though she connect herself with another man.

⁴So then, my brethren, ye also were slain to the Law through the body of Christ, that ye might be connected with another, even with him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God.

⁵For when we were in the flesh, the affections of sins, which were through the Law, were working in our members to bear fruit unto death.

⁶But now we are delivered from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, that we might serve in the new life of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the letter.

⁷What then shall we say? Is the Law sin? God forbid! But I should not have known sin, except by the Law; for I should not have known sinful desire, unless the Law had said, “Thou shalt not covet.”

⁸But sin, seizing the opportunity, wrought in me by means of the commandment all manner of sinful desire; for without the Law sin is dead.

⁹And I, apart from the Law, was once alive; but when the commandment came, sin came to life again, and I died;

¹⁰and the very commandment whose design was life, I found to issue in death.

¹¹For sin, seizing the opportunity, deceived me through the commandment, and through it slew me.