What I Want to Do

The wages of sin is death

but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord

Or do you not know

brothers--for I am speaking to those who know the law--that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?

For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives

but if her husband dies

she is released from the law or marriage

Accordingly

She will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive

But if her husband dies

she is free from that law

If she marries another man she is not an adulteress

Likewise my brothers

you also have died to the law through the body of Christ

so that you may belong to another

to him who has been raised from the dead

in order that we may bear fruit for God

For while we were living in the flesh our sinful passions

aroused by the law

were at work in our members to bear fruit for death

But now we are released from the law

having died to that which held us captive

so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code

What then shall  we say? That the l;aw is sin?

By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law

I would not have known sin

For I would not have known what it is to covent if the law had not said,

"You shall not covet." 

But sin

seizing an opportunity through the commandment

produced in me all kinds of covetousness

for apart from the law sin lies dead

I was once alive apart from the law

but when the commandment came

sin came alive and I died

the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me

For sin

seizing an opportunity through the commandment

deceived me and through it killed me

So the law is holy

and the commandment is righteous and good

Did that which is good, then, bring me to death?

By no means!

It was sin producing death in me through what is good

in order that sin might be shown to be sin

and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure

For we know that law is spiritual

but I am of the flesh

sold under sin

For I do not understand my own actions 

For I do not do what I want

but I do the very thing I hate

Now if I do what I do not want

I agree with the law

that it is good

So now it is no longer I who do it

but sin that dwells in me

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, 

that is, in my flesh

For I have the desire to do what is right

but not the ability to carry it out

For I do not do the good I want

but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing

Now if I do not want it

it is no longer I who do it

but sin that dwells within me

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right

evil lies close at hand

For I delight in the law of God

in my inner being

but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind

and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members

Wretched man that I am!

who will deliver me from this body of sin of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!