Montgomery - Romans - 7

7:1  Surely, brothers, you know (for I am speaking to those who know what law means) that law governs a person only during his lifetime?

7:2  For a married woman who has a husband is bound by law to her husband during his lifetime; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.

7:3  So then, if during her husband lifetime, she unites herself with another man, she will be counted an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the Law, so that she is no adulteress, even if she unites herself with another man.

7:4  So also, my brother, you were made dead to the Law through the body of Christ; that you should be joined to another, even to Him who was raised from the dead that we might bear fruit for God.

7:5  For while we were unspiritual, the sinful passions, aroused by the Law, were ever active in every part of our bodies, leading us to bear fruit unto death.

7:6  But now we have been released from the Law, because we are dead to that in which we were held; so that we are now in thraldom in new and spiritual conditions, and not under the old written code.

7:7  What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary I should not have become acquainted with sin had it not been for the Law; for except the Law had repeatedly said, "Thou shalt not lust," I should never have known the sin of lust.

7:8  But when sin had gained a vantage-ground, by means of the commandment, it stirred up within me all manner of lust; for where there is no law, sin is dead.

7:9  Once I lived apart from the Law, myself; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died;

7:10  and the very commandment which should have meant life, this I found to mean death.

7:11  For sin, when it had gained a vantage-ground through the commandment, beguiled me, and through it slew me.

7:12  So then the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

7:13  Did then that which was good become for me death? Never! but sin did; that it might be manifest as sin, by that the unutterable malignity of sin might become plain through the commandment.

7:14  For we know that the Law is spiritual; but as for me, I am a creature of flesh, bought and sold under the dominion of sin.

7:15  For what I perform I know not; what I practise is not what I intend to do, but what I detest, that I habitually do.

7:16  If then I habitually do what I do not intend to do, I am consenting to the Law, that it is right.

7:17  And now it is longer I myself who do the deed, but it is sin which has its home in me.

7:18  For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, no good thing has its home; for while to will is present with me, to carry out that which is right is not.

7:19  For the good that I intend to do, I do not; but the evil which I do not; but the evil which I do not intend to do, that I am ever practising.

7:20  But if I do the very thing I do not intend to do, it is no more I who practise it, but sin which has its home in me.

7:21  I find, then, this law, that when I intend to do good, evil is ever present with me.

7:22  For in my inmost self I delight in the law of God;

7:23  but I find a different law in my bodily faculties, waging war with the law of my will, and taking me prisoner to that law of sin which is in my bodily faculties.

7:24  Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this slave of death?

7:25  Oh, thank God! it is through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself in my will am in thraldom to the law of God; yet in my animal nature I am in thraldom to the law of sin.