The Evangel - Romans
Chapter Seven
7:1 Or are you ignorant, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know law), that the law is lording it over a man for as much time as he is living?
2 For a woman in wedlock is bound to a living man by law. Yet if the man should be dying, she is exempt from the law of the man. 3 Consequently, then, while the man is living, she will be styled an adulteress if she should be becoming another man’s, yet, if the man should be dying, she is free from the law, being no adulteress on becoming another man’s.
4 So that, my brethren, you also were put to death to the law through the body of Christ, for you to become Another’s, Who is roused from among the dead, that we should be bearing fruit to God. 5 For, when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, operated in our members to be bearing fruit to Death. 6 Yet now we were exempted from the law, dying in that in which we were retained, so that it is for us to be slaving in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter.
7 What, then, shall we declare? That the law is sin?
May it not be coming to that! But sin I knew not except through law. For besides, I had not been aware of coveting except the law said, “You shall not be coveting.” 8 Now Sin, getting an incentive through the precept, produces in me all manner of coveting. For apart from law Sin is dead. 9 Now I lived, apart from law, once, yet at the coming of the precept Sin revives. Yet I died, 10 and it was found that, to me, the precept for life, this is for death. 11 For Sin, getting an incentive through the precept, deludes me, and through it, kills me. 12 So that the law, indeed, is holy, and the precept holy and just and good.
13 Became good, then, death to me? May it not be coming to that! But Sin, that it may be appearing Sin, is producing death to me through good, that Sin may become an inordinate sinner through the precept. 14 For we are aware that the law is spiritual, yet I am fleshly, having been disposed of under Sin. 15 For what I am effecting I know not, for not what I will, this I am putting into practice, but what I am hating, this I am doing. 16 Now if what I am not willing, this I am doing, I am conceding that the law is ideal. 17 Yet now it is no longer I who am effecting it, but Sin making its home in me.
18 For I am aware that good is not making its home in me (that is, in my flesh), for to will is lying beside me, yet to be effecting the ideal is not. 19 For it is not the good that I will that I am doing, but the evil that I am not willing, this I am putting into practice. 20 Now if what I am not willing, this I am doing, it is no longer I who am effecting it, but Sin which is making its home in me.
21 Consequently, I am finding the law that, at my willing to be doing the ideal, the evil is lying beside me. 22 For I am gratified with the law of God as to the man within, 23 yet I am observing a different law in my members, warring with the law of my mind, and leading me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
24 A wretched man am I! What will rescue me out of this body of death? Grace! 25 I thank God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Consequently, then, I myself, with the mind, indeed, am slaving for God’s law, yet with the flesh for Sin’s law.
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