Romans 7:1-11 ▼

1 DO you not know, my brethren, I speak to them who know the law, that the law has authority over a person as long as he lives?

2 Just as a woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband should die, she is freed from the law of her husband.

3 Thus if, while her husband is alive, she should be attached to another man, she becomes an adulteress: but if her husband is dead, she is free from the law; so that she is not an adulteress though she becomes another man’s wife.

4 Wherefore, my brethren, you also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that you might become another’s, even to him who arose from the dead, so that you may bring forth fruit to God.

5 For when we were in the flesh, the wounds of sin, which were by the law, worked in our members to bring forth fruits to death.

6 But now we are freed from the law, being dead to that which had hold upon us; and we should henceforth serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Far be it. I would not have known the meaning of sin, except by means of the law: for I would never have known the meaning of lust, except the law said, Thou shalt not covet.

8 So by means of this commandment, sin found an occasion and provoked in me every kind of lust. For without the law sin was dead.

9 Formerly I lived without the law: but when the commandment came, sin came to life and I died.

10 And the commandment which was ordained to life I found to be for death.

11 For sin, finding occasion by the commandment, misled me and by it killed me.