For those who know the law – it is binding on him as long as he lives. A married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, after his death she is released. Similarly we have died to the law through the body of Christ, so we belong to Jesus through his resurrection to bear fruit for God. When we lived in sin we bore the fruit of death. Now we are released from the law. We now serve in the new way of the Spirit, not the old way of the written code. The law isn’t sin, but if it weren’t for the law we wouldn’t have known sin. Apart from the law sin lies dead. When the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. The law and commandment is holy, righteous and good and didn’t bring death to me. Sin produced death in me through what is good. The law is spiritual, but I’m under flesh, sold under sin. I don’t understand my own actions – I do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. If I do what I don’t want I agree that the law is good. It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I know nothing good dwells in me, I want to do what is right, but don’t have the ability to do it. The evil I don’t want is what I keep doing. If I do what I don’t want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. When I want to do right, evil is close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive of the law of sin that dwells in my members. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Sin is so intermingled with our hearts that for a believer they must fight against sin with what they know, not merely what they feel to be true. The law is good, but it exposes sin. When I consider my heart and see the sin that my heart too often longs for, I am grieved that I do the evil while I long for what is good and pleasing to God. Give thanks and praise to God that through Christ we have the certainty of liberation from our the bondage of our flesh to sin. Continue to persevere in trusting in the power of Christ’s death and resurrection. I am wretched, but it was God’s grace that saved a wretch like me.