An Example From Marriage

¹Let me say something to those who are familiar with the law. Don’t you know, brothers and sisters, that the law has authority over people only while they’re alive?

²For example, when a woman gets married, as long as her husband is alive, by law she’s still married.

³But if the husband dies, then the law doesn’t consider her to be married to him anymore. If a woman sleeps with another man while her husband is alive, the law says that she has committed adultery. But if her husband dies, then she’s free from that law, and she’s not guilty of adultery if she marries another man.

⁴My brothers and sisters, when Christ died, you also died, and so you were no longer “married” to the law. Then it became possible for you to belong to Christ instead. He was raised from the dead so that our lives could produce what God wanted.

⁵The power of sin used to control us. The law told us we couldn’t do certain things, but that only made us want to do them more. So our lives produced only death.

⁶But now we have died to what used to control us, and we have been set free from the law. We serve in the new way of the Holy Spirit, not in the old way of the written law.

The Law and Sin

⁷What should we say then? That the law is sinful? Not at all! But I wouldn’t have known what sin was unless the law had told me. The law says, “Do not covet.” If the law hadn’t said that, I wouldn’t have known that wanting what belongs to other people was “coveting,” and that it was wrong.

⁸But once I did know about coveting, sin took that opportunity to make me want all kinds of things that belonged to other people! A person can’t sin by breaking a law if that law doesn’t exist.

⁹Before I knew about the law, I was alive. But then the commandment came, sin came to life, and I died.

¹⁰I found that the commandment that was supposed to bring life brought death.

¹¹Sin took advantage of the opportunity that the commandment provided, and it tricked me. It used the commandment to put me to death.

¹²Still, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and right and good.

¹³Did what is good cause me to die? Not at all! But sin had to be recognized for what it was. So it used what was good to bring about my death. Because of the commandment, sin became totally sinful.

¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual. But I am unspiritual. I have been sold as a slave to sin.

¹⁵I don’t understand what I do. I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do what I hate to do.

¹⁶And when I do what I don’t want to do, I agree that the law is good.

¹⁷As it is, I’m no longer the one who does these things. It’s the sin living in me that does them.

¹⁸I know there’s nothing good in my desires that are controlled by sin. I want to do what’s good, but I can’t.

¹⁹I don’t do the good things I want to do. I keep on doing the evil things I don’t want to do.

²⁰So if I do what I don’t want to do, then I’m not the one who’s doing it. It’s the sin living in me that does it.

²¹Here’s the law that I find to be at work in me. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

²²Deep inside I want to follow God’s law.

²³But I recognize that there’s another law at work inside of me. It’s fighting the law of my mind and making me a prisoner to the law of sin that’s at work within me.

²⁴What a terrible situation I’m in! Who will save me from this sin that brings death to my body?

²⁵Thanks be to God, who saves me through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So in my mind, I’m a slave to God’s law. But if I follow my sinful desires, then I’m a slave to the law of sin.