Romans 7 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

You do know how law works, don't you, brothers and sisters? (I'm talking to people who understand legal systems.) The law only has authority over a person while they're alive.

Think about marriage: A married woman is legally bound to her husband while he's alive. But if her husband dies, she's released from that legal tie.

So if she gets with another man while her husband is alive, she'll be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she's free from that law -- she can be with another man and it's not adultery at all.

Here's the point, my brothers and sisters: You also died to the law through the body of The One -- so that you could belong to someone else, to the one who was raised from the dead. And the whole purpose? So that we'd produce something real for God.

Because when we were living by our old human nature, the destructive impulses that the law stirred up were at work in every part of us, and all we produced was death.

But now we've been released from the law, because we died to the thing that held us captive. So now we serve in a completely new way -- through the Breath, not through the old written code.

So what are we saying here -- that the law itself is corrupt? Absolutely not! But here's the thing: I wouldn't have known what corruption even looked like if it weren't for the law. I mean, I never would have known what it meant to crave what belongs to someone else if the law hadn't said, "Don't crave what belongs to someone else."

But corruption saw its opportunity and used that very commandment to generate every kind of craving inside me. Because without the law, corruption has nothing to work with -- it's dead in the water.

There was a time when I was alive without the law. But when the commandment showed up, corruption sprang to life --

and I died. The very commandment that was supposed to lead to life? It led to death instead.

Because corruption saw its opportunity, used the commandment to deceive me, and through it -- killed me.

So here's the bottom line: The law itself is set apart, and the commandment is set apart, just, and good.

Wait -- so did something good kill me? Absolutely not! It was corruption. It used something good to bring about my death, so that corruption would be exposed for what it really is. Through the commandment, corruption became more corrupt than ever.

We know the law comes from the Breath -- it's something beyond us. But I? I'm thoroughly human, sold as a slave to corruption.

I don't even understand my own actions. Because the good I want to do? I don't do it. But the thing I hate? That's exactly what I keep doing.

And if I keep doing what I don't want to do, then I'm actually agreeing with the law -- that it's good.

So here's the reality: It's no longer me doing it -- it's corruption living inside me.

Because I know that nothing good lives in me -- I mean, in my old human nature. I have the desire to do what's right, but I can't pull it off.

I don't do the good I want to do. Instead, I keep doing the very harm I don't want to do.

And if I keep doing what I don't want to do, then it's not really me doing it anymore -- it's corruption that has made itself at home inside me.

So I've discovered this pattern: When I want to do what's right, harm is right there with me, every single time.

In the deepest part of who I am, I genuinely love God's law.

But I see a different pattern at work in every part of my body -- waging war against the pattern my mind follows, and taking me prisoner to the pattern of corruption that operates through my body.

What a miserable situation I'm in! Who is going to rescue me from this body that's being dragged toward death?

Thank God -- it's through Jesus, The One, our master! So here's where I stand: With my mind, I serve God's pattern. But with my old human nature, I serve corruption's pattern.