Fluent Translation · Read & Reflect
Romans 7
Released from the Law
Or do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to people who know the Law—that the law has authority over a person only as long as that person lives? A married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning her husband. So if she belongs to another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and is not an adulteress if she belongs to another man. In the same way, my brothers and sisters, you also were put to death to the Law through Christ’s body so that you might belong to another—to the one raised from the dead—in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, sinful passions aroused through the Law were at work in the parts of our bodies to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to what held us, so that we serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the written code.
The Law and Sin
What then should we say? Is the Law sin? Absolutely not! But I would not have known sin except through the Law. I would not have known coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin seized an opportunity through the commandment and produced in me every kind of coveting. Apart from law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from law, but when the commandment came, sin came to life, and I died. The commandment intended for life turned out to bring death to me. For sin seized an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. So the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. Did something good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! Rather, sin, so that it might be shown as sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin might become sinful beyond measure.
The Conflict Within
We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin. I do not understand what I am doing. I do not practice what I want, but I do what I hate. But if I do what I do not want, I agree with the Law that it is good. So now it is no longer I doing it, but sin dwelling in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me—that is, in my flesh. The desire to do good is present with me, but the doing of it is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I practice the evil I do not want. But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I doing it, but sin dwelling in me.
So I find this principle: when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner self I delight in God’s Law, but I see another law at work in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. What a wretched person I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve God’s Law with my mind, but sin’s law with my flesh.