7
“You, Likewise, Were Put to Death with Respect to Torah through the Crucified Body of the Messiah”
1 Surely you understand,+ brothers and sisters (it is to people who are familiar with Torah, after all, that I am speaking), that Torah is binding on+ someone only while that person+ is alive?
2 A married woman, for example, is bound by Torah to her husband only while he is living. If her husband dies, though, she is released from Torah with respect to the husband.
3 So then, if her husband is still alive, the woman+ will be called an adulteress if she becomes joined to another man. If her husband dies, however, she is now free from Torah, so that she is not guilty of adultery if she becomes joined to another man.
4 So then, my brothers and sisters, you, likewise, were put to death with respect to Torah through the crucified body of the Messiah, so that you could become joined to+ another husband+—to the one who was raised from the dead—and produce fruit through union with God.+
5 When we were without the Spirit,+ you see, the sinful desires that were stirred up by Torah+ exerted their power so dominantly throughout our mortal bodies that we produced the kind of fruit that results in death.
6 Now, however, we have been released from Torah, having died to that under whose jurisdiction+ we were being held prisoner,+ so that we serve God under the newness of the Spirit and not the oldness of letters on scrolls.+
“Apart from Torah, You See, Sin is Lifeless”
7 What, then, shall we say? That Torah is identical with sin?+ Absolutely not! Sin, on the contrary, I wouldn’t have truly come to know if it had not been for Torah. I wouldn’t have come to know, for example, covetousness, if Torah had not said, “ˢYou must not covet.”+
8 Yet sin, having found through the commandment its opportunity, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. Apart from Torah, you see, sin is lifeless.+
9 As for me, I was alive apart from Torah at one time. When the commandment came, however, sin sprang to life,
10 while I, for my part, died. And so I discovered that the very commandment that was meant to bring life actually resulted in death.
11 Sin, you see, having found through the commandment its opportunity, thoroughly deceived me, and, through the commandment, condemned me to death.
12 So then, Torah is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
“Who Will Rescue Me from This Body of Death?”
13 Did that which is good, therefore, cause my death+? Absolutely not! Sin, rather, so that its true character as sin would be made known, through what is good brought about my death.+ And so, according to God’s plan, sin became sinful in the extreme through the commandment.
14 We know, you see, that even though Torah is of divine origin and character,+ I, for my part, am corrupt, a mere mortal,+ sold as a slave to the overpowering tyranny+ of sin,,
15 as shown by the fact that I don’t understand+ my own actions.+ The thing I would like to do, you see, is the very thing that I’m failing to carry out; the thing I hate, however, that I am doing!
16 If, moreover, it is the very thing I don’t want to do that I am, in fact, doing, this shows that I am in agreement with Torah, namely, that it is good.
17 As the situation now stands, I myself am no longer the one who is determining the action; no, it is sin dwelling within me that is doing it.
18 Indeed, I know that there dwells in me, that is, in my weak mortal nature,+ nothing good, because even though the desire to do good is in me, the ability to carry it out is not.
19 For it isn’t the good thing I want to do, but the evil thing I don’t want to do, that I am carrying out.
20 If, moreover, it is the very thing that I don’t want to do that I am, in fact, doing, this shows that I myself am no longer the one who is doing it; no, it is sin dwelling within me that is doing it.
21 Consequently, I discover this instruction+: When I want to do what is good, with me there standing in the way is a fierce evil.
22 Although I delight in God’s instruction through Torah+ in my inner being,+ you see,
23 I observe a different kind of instruction+ at work throughout my body,+ continually waging war against the instruction+ approved+ by my mind and making me a prisoner to sin’s instruction,+ which is at work in the parts of my body.+
24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God, who does this+ through Jesus the Messiah our Lord!
So then, although I myself, in my mind, am a slave to God’s instruction through Torah,
+ in my lowly body subject to death
+ I am a slave to the instruction
+ of sin.