United to Christ
Romans 7Or don’t y’all know, siblings (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law lords over a human for as long as they live? For example, a married woman is bound by law to the husband while he lives, but if the husband dies, she is released from the law regarding the husband. Therefore, while the husband is alive, she would be called an adulteress if she is joined to another man. But if the husband dies, she is free from the law and is not an adulteress, even though she is joined to another man. Therefore, my siblings, y’all also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, so that y’all would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, so that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law worked in our body parts to bring out fruit to death. But now we have been released from the law, having died to what hindered us, in order to serve in newness of the Spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.
The Law and Sin
What should we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! But I wouldn’t have known sin except through the law. For I wouldn’t have known forbidden desire unless the law had said, “You must not covet.”+Exo 20:21 But sin, seizing the opportunity of the commandment, produced in me every kind of desire. For apart from the law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died. I found that the commandment which was intended for life, resulted in death. For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. So then, the law indeed is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.
Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.
The Conflict Within
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold as a slave to sin. For I don’t understand what I am accomplishing, and I don’t habitually do what I intend. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I do what I don’t intend, then I agree that law is excellent. So now, it is no longer I who accomplishes it, but it is the sin that inhabits me. For I know that no good thing lives in me, that is, in my flesh. The intention is present me, but the accomplishing of excellence is not there. For the good that I intend to do, I don’t do, but the evil that I don’t intend, I habitually do. But if I do what I don’t intend, it is no longer I who accomplishes it, but sin that lives in me. So I find this law: when I desire to do what is excellent, worthlessness is present within me. For I delight in God’s law in my inward humanity, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my body parts. What a wretched human I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! So then I myself am a slave to the law of God in my mind, but a slave to the law of sin with my flesh.