Romans 7
The Good I Want, I Do Not Do
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Released from the Law
7:1Or do you not know, brothers—for I speak to those who know law—that the law rules over a person for as long as he lives?
7:2For the married woman is bound by law to her living husband; but if the husband dies, she has been released from the law of the husband.
7:3So then, while the husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she becomes another man’s; but if the husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress when she becomes another man’s.
7:4So, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, so that you might become Another’s, the One raised from the dead, so that we might bear fruit for God.
7:5For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins that were through the law were at work in our members, to bear fruit for death.
7:6But now we were released from the law, having died to that in which we were held, so that we serve in newness of Spirit and not in oldness of letter.
Is the Law Sin?
7:7What, then, shall we say? Is the law sin? May it never be! Rather, I did not know sin except through law; for I would not have known desire if the law had not said, “You shall not desire.”
7:8But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, worked every desire in me; for apart from law sin is dead.
7:9And I was once alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin came to life,
7:10and I died; and the commandment that was for life was found for me to result in death.
7:11For sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
7:12So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good.
7:13Did the good, then, become death to me? May it never be! But sin did, so that it might appear as sin, working death to me through the good, so that through the commandment sin might become sinful beyond measure.
The Conflict Within
7:14For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold under sin.
7:15For I do not understand what I work out; for I do not practice what I wish, but what I hate, this I do.
7:16But if I do what I do not wish, I agree with the law that it is good.
7:17But now it is no longer I who work it out, but sin dwelling in me.
7:18For I know that good does not dwell in me—that is, in my flesh. For willing is at hand for me, but working what is good is not.
7:19For I do not do the good that I wish, but the evil that I do not wish, this I practice.
7:20But if I do what I do not wish, it is no longer I who work it out, but sin dwelling in me.
7:21So I find this law: when I wish to do the good, evil is at hand for me.
7:22For I delight in God’s law according to the inward person,
7:23but I see another law in my members, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me captive in the law of sin that is in my members.
Who Will Rescue Me
7:24Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from the body of this death?
7:25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself, with the mind, serve God’s law, but with the flesh, sin’s law.
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Saints Translation · Liturgical reading edition · V1 · working draft awaiting specialist review.