Romans 7:10-19

¹⁰so I have to die. That law’s job was to show me how I can live, but all it did was this, it told me, “You will die.”

¹¹That bad part of me used the law to trick me so that I did bad things, and now I know that I will die.

¹²But that law itself is really good. It tells us to do things that are right and good.

¹³But if that law is good, will that good thing make me die? No way. It was like this – the law showed me what is right and what is wrong, and after I knew this, that bad part of me used that law to tell me that I’ve got to die. So that law does this. It shows us that it is really bad to go wrong and to do bad things.

¹⁴The problem is not the law, it is me. We know this. A long time ago God told Moses to write down that law, so there is nothing wrong with the law. But there is something wrong with me. I’m just a normal human. I keep going wrong. There is a bad part of me inside me that is my boss and I have to do everything that this boss tells me to do.

¹⁵I don’t understand it. I want to do good things. But I can’t do those good things that I want to do. What I do are the things that I hate.

¹⁶I know that I want to be better, and this shows that, really, I reckon the law is good.

¹⁷So, really, it’s not me that does those bad things. It’s that bad part of me that is inside me.

¹⁸I know that I can’t do anything good by myself. I want to do the right thing but I can’t.

¹⁹I keep trying to do good things, but I can’t. No, I keep doing the bad things I don’t want to do.