New Testament · Easy read · Romans
Romans 7
1Or do you not know, brothers — for I am speaking to those who know law — that the law exercises dominion over a person as long as he lives?
2For the married woman is bound by law to her living husband; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband.
3So then, if while her husband is alive she becomes another man's, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is not an adulteress though she has become another man's.
4So then, my brothers, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Messiah, so that you might belong to another — to Him who was raised from the dead — in order that we might bear fruit to God.
5For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions that came through the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.
6But now we have been released from the law, having died to what held us captive, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of the written letter.
7What then shall we say? Is the law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through law; for I would not have known desire if the law had not said, "You shall not have desire."
8But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of desire; for apart from law, sin is dead.
9I was once alive apart from law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died,
10and the commandment that was to lead to life — this I found to lead to death.
11For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
12So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13Did then what is good become death to me? May it never be! Rather it was sin — so that sin might be shown to be sin, producing death in me through what is good — so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin.
15For what I produce I do not understand; for what I want, this I do not practice; but what I hate, this I do.
16But if what I do not want is what I do, I agree with the law that it is good.
17But now it is no longer I who produce it but sin that dwells in me.
18For I know that nothing good dwells in me — that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the producing of the good I do not find.
19For the good that I want I do not do, but the evil I do not want, this I practice.
20But if what I do not want is what I do, it is no longer I who produce it but sin that dwells in me.
21I find then the law — to me who wants to do the good — that evil is present with me.
22For I delight in the law of God according to the inner person,
23but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my intellect and taking me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.
24Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
25I give thanks to God through Yeshua Messiah our Lord! So then, I myself with my intellect serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.