10. and I died spiritually. The command was meant to bring life, but for me it brought death.
11. Sin found a way to fool me by using the command to make me die.
12. Now the law is holy, and the command is holy and right and good.
13. Does this mean that something that is good brought death to me? No, it was sin that used the good command to bring me death. This shows how terrible sin really is. It can use a good command to produce a result that shows sin at its very worst.
14. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am not. I am so human. Sin rules me as if I were its slave.
15. I don’t understand why I act the way I do. I don’t do the good I want to do, and I do the evil I hate.
16. And if I don’t want to do what I do, that means I agree that the law is good.
17. But I am not really the one doing the evil. It is sin living in me that does it.
18. Yes, I know that nothing good lives in me—I mean nothing good lives in the part of me that is not spiritual. I want to do what is good, but I don’t do it.
19. I don’t do the good that I want to do. I do the evil that I don’t want to do.
20. So if I do what I don’t want to do, then I am not really the one doing it. It is the sin living in me that does it.
21. So I have learned this rule: When I want to do good, evil is there with me.
22. In my mind I am happy with God’s law.
23. But I see another law working in my body. That law makes war against the law that my mind accepts. That other law working in my body is the law of sin, and that law makes me its prisoner.
24. What a miserable person I am! Who will save me from this body that brings me death?