7 ⁷ What follows? Is the law identical with sin? Of course not. But except through law I should never have become acquainted with sin. For example, I should never have known what it was to covet, if the law had not said, 'Thou shalt not covet.' 7 ⁸ Through that commandment sin found its opportunity, and produced in me all kinds of wrong desires. In the absence of law, sin is a dead thing. 7 ⁹ There was a time when, in the absence of law, I was fully alive; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 7 ¹⁰ The commandment which should have led to life proved in my experience to lead to death, 7 ¹¹ because sin found its opportunity in the commandment, seduced me, and through the commandment killed me.
7 ¹² Therefore the law is in itself holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. 7 ¹³ Are we to say then that this good thing was the death of me? By no means. It was sin that killed me, and thereby sin exposed its true character: it used a good thing to bring about my death, and so, through the commandment, sin became more sinful than ever.
7 ¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual; but I am not: 7 ¹⁵ I am unspiritual, the purchased slave of sin. I do not even acknowledge my own actions as mine, for what I do is not what I want to do, but what I detest. 7 ¹⁶ But if what I do is against my will, it means that I agree with the law and hold it to be admirable. 7 ¹⁷ But as things are, it is no longer I who perform the action, but sin that lodges in me. 7 ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good lodges in me—in my unspiritual nature, I mean—for though the will to do good is there, the deed is not. 7 ¹⁹ The good which I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is the wrong which is against my will; 7 ²⁰ and if what I do is against my will, clearly it is no longer I who am the agent, but sin that has its lodging in me.

7 ²¹ I discover this principle, then: that when I want to do the right, only the wrong is within my reach. 7 ²² In my inmost self I delight in the law of God, 7 ²³ but I perceive that there is in my bodily members a different law, fighting against the law that my reason approves and making me a prisoner under the law Or: by means of the law. that is in my members, the law of sin. 7 ²⁴ Miserable creature that I am, who is there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death? Or: out of the body doomed to this death. 7 ²⁵ God alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thanks be to God! In a word then, I myself, subject to God's law as a rational being, am yet, Or: Thus, left to myself, while subject ... rational being, I am yet ... in my unspiritual nature, a slave to the law of sin.