Romans

Comparison with Marriage

You, my friends, understand the law. The law only has power while a person is alive.

The married woman, for example, is legally bound to her husband while he is alive; but if he dies, she is free from her duties as a wife.

If she has relations with another man while her husband is alive, she will be considered an adulteress; however, once her husband dies, she is free, and if she has relations with another man after that, she is not an adulteress.

The same applies to you, brothers and sisters: you have died to the law through Christ, and you now belong to another, who has been raised from the dead, so that we may bear fruit for God.

When we lived as humans used to do, the law stirred up desires for all that is sinful, and they worked in our bodies with the fruits of death.

But we have died to what held us; we are freed from the law and no longer serve a written law—which was the old; with the Spirit, we are in the new.

The Sinful Condition

Then, should we say that the law is part of sin? Certainly not! However, I would not have known what sin is if it weren’t for the law. I wouldn’t be aware of greed if the law didn’t tell me: Don’t covet.

Sin exploited the commandment to awaken all kinds of greed in me, whereas without the law, sin remains inactive.

First, there was no law, and I lived. Then the commandment came and triggered sin,

and I died. It turned out that the law of life brought me death.

Sin took advantage of the commandment. It tempted me and led to my death through the commandment.

But the law itself is sacred, fair, and good.

Could something good bring death to me? Of course not. This comes from sin, which may be seen as sinful when it takes advantage of something good to kill: the commandment makes sin appear entirely sinful.

Dominated by Sin

We know that the law is spiritual; as for me, I am flesh and have been sold to sin.

I can’t explain what’s happening to me because I don’t do what I want; instead, I end up doing the very things I hate.

Well then, if I do the evil I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good;

but, in this case, I am not the one striving toward evil, but it is sin living in me.

I know that what is right does not reside in me, I mean, in my flesh. I can want to do what is right, but I am unable to do it.

In fact, I do not do the good I want, but the evil I hate.

Therefore, if I do what I do not want to do, I am not the one trying to do wrong, but sin, which is within me.

I realize, then, this truth: although I want to do what is right, the evil inside me rises first.

My innermost self agrees with and rejoices in the law of God,

but I notice in my body another law, challenging the law of the Spirit and making me a slave to the law of sin, which is written in my members.

Alas for me! Who will rescue me from this entity that is nothing but death?

Let us give thanks to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! So, with my conscience, I am a servant of the law of God, and with my mortal body, I serve the law of sin.