6. In the past, the law held us like prisoners, but our old selves died, and we were made free from the law. So now we serve God in a new way with the Spirit, and not in the old way with written rules.
7. You might think I am saying that sin and the law are the same thing. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin meant. I would never have known what it means to want to take something belonging to someone else if the law had not said, “You must not want to take your neighbor’s things.”
8. And sin found a way to use that command and cause me to want all kinds of things I should not want. But without the law, sin has no power.
9. I was alive before I knew the law. But when the law’s command came to me, then sin began to live,