5. For when we were in the flesh, our sinful passions, awakened by the law, worked in our members to bear fruit for death.
6. But now we are released from the law, dead to what held us captive, so that we may serve in the newness of the spirit and not under the obsolete letter.
7. What then can we say? That the law is sin? Of course not! Yet I did not know sin except through the law, and I did not know what it is to covet except that the law said, “You shall not covet.”
8. But sin, finding an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetousness. Apart from the law sin is dead.
9. I once lived outside the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive;
10. then I died, and the commandment that was for life turned out to be death for me.
11. For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it put me to death.
12. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13. Did the good, then, become death for me? Of course not! Sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin, worked death in me through the good, so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment.
14. We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold into slavery to sin.
15. What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.
16. Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good.