4. So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you could be joined to another, to the one who was raised from the dead, to bear fruit to God.
5. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful desires, aroused by the law, were active in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.
6. But now we have been released from the law, because we have died to what controlled us, so that we may serve in the new life of the Spirit and not under the old written code.
7. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not! Certainly, I would not have known sin except through the law. For indeed I would not have known what it means to desire something belonging to someone else if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”
8. But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. For apart from the law, sin is dead.
9. And I was once alive apart from the law, but with the coming of the commandment sin became alive
10. and I died. So I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life brought death!
11. For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it I died.
12. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.
13. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? Absolutely not! But sin, so that it would be shown to be sin, produced death in me through what is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.