Open English Translation ROM Chapter 7

7 Brothers and sisters, you know the Law well that I’m talking about, so surely you realise that the law acts as a person’s master for as long as they live? 2 For example, a woman who is married to her husband is bound by the law, but if her husband dies then she’s released from the law concerning her husband. 3 So while her husband was still living, he’d call her an adulteress if she slept with another man, but after her husband is deceased, she’s free from the law and doesn’t become an adulteress if she marries another man. 4 So my brothers and sisters, you also were made dead to the law through the body of the messiah so that you could join to another—to the one who came back to life from the dead—so that we may bear fruit for God. 5 When we were still focused on the physical, the passions aroused by sinning against the law were working in our body parts so that the fruit would be death, 6 but now that we’re released from the law which held us—released by dying to it—we can serve in new ways guided by the spirit instead of by the letter of the law.

7 [ref]So what will we say then? Say that the law is sin? Not on your life! I wouldn’t have known what sin was if it wasn’t for the Law. For example, I wouldn’t have known what coveting was if the Law hadn’t told me not to covet. 8 But sin took the opportunity from that commandment to produce covetousness in me, because sin would be dead apart from the Law. 9 For a time I was living without the Law, but once the commandment came then sin revived 10 and I died, and I discovered that the commandment which should lead to life, led to death. 11 [ref]Sin deceived me when the commandment gave it an opportunity, and in doing so, it killed me.

12 Now the Law is indeed holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good, 13 so did what is good turn into death? Not on your life! Rather it was the good Law that allowed me to see sin as sin and a producer of death

14 We know that God’s law is spiritual, but I am physical, having been born[fn] into sin. 15 [ref]I don’t know what’s going on because I do what I don’t want to do and I end up doing what I hate. 16 So if I do something that I didn’t want to do, then I’m agreeing with the Law that it’s good, 17 and it’s no longer me that’s doing it, but the sin that’s in me. 18 I’m aware that good isn’t in my physical body because I want to do good but I can’t. 19 I don’t do the good that I want to do, but rather I do the evil that I don’t want to do, 20 so if I’m doing what I don’t want to do, then it’s not me doing it, but it’s the sin in me that does it.

21 As a result, I’ve discovered the principle that when I want to do good, actually there’s evil in me, 22 because I’m happily accepting God’s Law on the inside, 23 but I’m observing another law inside my body parts, fighting against my mind and keeping me imprisoned in the law of sin which is in my body parts. 24 I’m a miserable person. Who will rescue me from this body that’s full of death? 25 Thankfully it’s God through our master Yeshua Messiah. So I end up with my mind wanting to serve God’s Law, but on the other hand, my body wants to serve the law of sin.