7:1 Sisters and brothers, how can you not know— for I am talking to those who know law— that the law only has jurisdiction over a person while they are alive?

7:2 For example, a married woman is legally bound to her husband while he is alive. But if he dies, she is exempt from the law concerning her husband.

7:3 Now if she were with another man while her husband lived, she would be guilty of adultery. But if her husband died she would not be guilty of adultery, even if she were with another man.

7:4 So then, my brothers and sisters, you too were put to death in the eyes of the law by means of the body of the Anointed, in order to belong to Another— the One who was raised from the dead— so that we should always be productive for God.

7:5 For when we were governed by the flesh, the passions caused by the law were active in our body parts, producing death.

7:6 Yet we were discharged from the law, dying to that which held us down, so that now we are able to slave in the new way of the spirit and not the old way of the letter.

7:7 What will we do then, declare that the law is Failure? Absolutely not! But I would not have known what Failure is without law. For example, I wouldn’t have been conscious of wanting what belongs to others without the law stating, “You must not want what belongs to others.”

7:8 Now Failure, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me a desire for other people’s belongings, because apart from law, Failure is dead.

7:9 I once lived apart from law, but with the arrival of the commandment, Failure came to life and I died.

7:10 So the commandment that was intended to bring life brought only death.

7:11 Failure seized the opportunity through the commandment to completely seduce me and thereby kill me.

7:12 So in fact the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just, and good.

7:13 So then, did that which is good become the death of me? Absolutely not! Instead, Failure, in order to be exposed as such, was producing death in me by that which is good so it could be exposed through the commandment as utter failure.

7:14 For though we know the law is spiritual, yet I am fleshly, having been disposed of under Failure.

7:15 I don’t know what I’m accomplishing, because I don’t do what I intend, and instead do what I hate.

7:16 Now if I do what I don’t want to do, I concede that the law is respectable.

7:17 But then I know it isn’t really I who am doing this, but Failure who is taking up residence in me.

7:18 I am aware that nothing good makes its home in me (that is, in my flesh), for my will lies in wait for me, to accomplish that which is not respectable.

7:19 I don’t do the good I want to do, but instead, I put into practice the evil I don’t want to do.

7:20 Now if I do what I don’t want to do, it is no longer I who am practicing it, but Failure which makes its home in me.

7:21 Consequently I discover this principle: whenever I intend to do good, evil is lying in ambush.

7:22 I delight in the law of God in my inner person,

7:23 but in my body parts I observe a different law that makes war with the law of my mind and leads me into captivity to the law of Failure that lives in my body parts.

7:24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will rescue me from this body condemned to die?

7:25 Give thanks to God through Jesus the Anointed, our Master! In conclusion, I myself, in my mind, slave for the law of God, but in the flesh I slave for the law of Failure.