1 Or do you not know, brothers {adelphoi: spiritual kinship}—since I am addressing those who know the law {nomos: Torah instruction}—that the law holds authority over a person only while he lives?
2 A married woman {hypandros: under her husband’s authority} remains bound by law {nomos: binding legal code} to her husband while he lives; yet when he dies she is released from her husband’s law.
3 So then, while her husband is living, she will be called an adulteress {moikhalis: breaks marriage} if she is joined to another man; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law {nomos: covenant code}, so that she is not an adulteress, having become another man’s wife.
4 Therefore, my brothers, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ {Christos: Crucified Redeemer}, so that you might belong to Another—the One raised from the dead—so that we might bear fruit for God {Theos: Fruit-Receiving God}.
5 For when we were confined to the flesh {sarki: unregenerate condition}, the impulses of sin stirred by the law were at work in our members, bearing fruit destined for death {thanatos: spiritual ruin}.
6 But now we have been released from the law, having died to that which held us, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit {pneuma: Life-Giving Presence} and not in oldness of the letter {gramma: written code}.
7 What, then, shall we say? Is the law {nomos: covenant law} sin {hamartia: moral failure}? May it never be! Yet I did not know sin except through the law; for I would not have known coveting, if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin {hamartia: moral failure}, having seized an opportunity through the commandment {entole: divine decree}, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin is dead.
9 But formerly I was living without the law {nomos: covenant standard}; but when the commandment came, sin revived {anezesen: became active again}.
10 But I died, and the commandment {entole: binding requirement}, which was for life {zoe: promised blessing}, was found to result in death to me.
11 For sin {hamartia: rebellious wrongdoing}, having seized an opportunity {aphormen: strategic opening} through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.
12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just {dikaia: morally right} and good {agathe: intrinsically beneficial}.
13 Therefore, did the good become death to me? May it never be! But it was sin {hamartia: missing the mark}, so that it might be shown to be sin by producing death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment {entole: authoritative instruction}, sin might become exceedingly sinful.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly {sarkinos: marked by human weakness}, having been sold under sin {hamartia: enslaving power of wrongdoing}.
15 For what I am doing, I do not understand {ginōskō: recognize fully}; and for what I desire, I do not practice this, but what I hate {misō: detest deeply}, this I do.
16 But if I do what I do not want, I consent to the law {nomos: divine standard} that it is good {kalos: morally sound}.
17 So now it is no longer I who perform it, but sin {hamartia: inner corruption} dwelling {oikousa: continually residing} within me.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh {sarx: sin-ruled nature}; for the willing {thelein: moral intention} is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
19 For I do not do the good {agathon: morally upright} that I want, but the evil that I do not want, this I practice {prasso: habitual doing}.
20 Now, if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one who accomplishes it, but sin {hamartia: moral failure} that dwells in me {emoi: inner self}.
21 Therefore, I find the law {nomos: inner moral principle} that, for me who desires to do the good, evil is present {parakeitai: persistently close}.
22 For I delight in the law of God {Theos, Holy Lawgiver} according to the inner person {anthropos: renewed inner self}.
23 But I perceive another law within my members {melos: bodily parts}, waging war against the law of my mind {nous: rational will} and holding me in bondage to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Wretched {talaiporos: deeply distressed} man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body {somatos: physical existence subject to mortality} of death?
25 Thanks be to God {Theos, Supreme Sovereign} through Jesus Christ our Lord {Kyrios Iesous Christos, Redeeming Lord}. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh the law of sin.