Romans 7:1 Brothers and sisters, I know you all understand the Law of Moses. So surely you know that the law rules over people only while they are alive.
Romans 7:2 The laws say that a woman who is married is her husband’s wife for as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, then she is free. That what the laws say.
Romans 7:3 The laws say she commits adultery if she marries another man while her husband lives. But if her husband dies, she is free from the laws. If she marries another man then, she does not commit adultery.
Romans 7:4 In the same way, my brothers and sisters, your old selves died and you became free from the law through the body of Christ. Now you belong to someone else. You belong to the one who was raised from death. We belong to Christ so that we can be used in service to God
Romans 7:5 In the past we were ruled by our sinful selves. The law made us want to do sinful things. And those sinful desires controlled our bodies, so that what we did only brought us death.
Romans 7:6 In the past the law held us as prisoners, but our old selves died, and we were made free from the law. So now we serve God in a new way, not in the old way, with the written rules.
Romans 7:7 Some people say: Is God’s laws are sin? No, it is wrong to say that. I know God’s laws and that is why I know what sin is. For example, God’s laws say: You must not want something that belongs to someone else.
Romans 7:8 But sin uses these laws and makes me feel like I want to have it. If there were no laws, then sin could not make me want to have those things that are wrong.
Romans 7:9 I was once alive without knowledge of the Law; but when I understood the meaning of the commandment, sin became alive and I died since the Law sentenced me to death
Romans 7:10 God gave the laws to make me alive, but what happened was that those laws brought me death.
Romans 7:11 Sin found a way to fool me by using the command to make me die.
Romans 7:12 Now the law is holy, and the command is holy and right and good.
Romans 7:13 Does this mean that something that is good brought death to me? No, it was sin that used the good command to bring me death. This shows how terrible sin really is. It can use a good command to produce a result that shows sin at its very worst.
Romans 7:14 We know that the law is spiritual, but I am not. I am so human. Sin rules me as if I were its slave.
Romans 7:15 I do not understand what I am doing. I don’t do the good I want to do, and I do the evil I hate.
Romans 7:16 And if I don’t want to do what I do, that means I agree that the law is good.
Romans 7:17 But I am not really the one doing the evil. It is sin living in me that does it.
Romans 7:18 I know that there is nothing in me that is good. I am sinful. I want to do good things, but I don’t do them.
Romans 7:19 I don’t do the good that I want to do. I do the evil that I don’t want to do.
Romans 7:20 So if I do what I don’t want to do, then I am not really the one doing it. It is the sin living in me that does it.
Romans 7:21 So I have learned this rule: When I want to do good, evil is there with me
Romans 7:22 In my mind I am happy with God’s law
Romans 7:23 But I see another law working in my body. That law makes war against the law that my mind accepts. That other law working in my body is the law of sin, and that law makes me its prisoner.
Romans 7:24 What a miserable person I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death?
Romans 7:25 I thank God for his salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord! So, in my mind I servant to God’s law, but in my sinful self I am a slave to the law of sin.