“Or do you not know, brothers - for I am speaking to those who know the law - that the law is binding on a
person only as long as he lives? 2 Thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives,
but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an
adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free
from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. 4 Likewise, my brothers, you also
have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been
raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our
sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we
are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old
written code but in the new life of the Spirit. 7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means!
Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if
the law had not said, "You shall not covet." 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment,
produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from
the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that
promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment,
deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous
and good. 13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in
me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment
might become sinful beyond measure.”
- Romans 7:1-13
