⁹ At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life,

¹⁰ But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under his curse, for the Scriptures say, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God’s Book of the Law.”^[a]

⁷ For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will.

Salvation Is for Everyone

⁵ For Moses writes that the law’s way of making a person right with God requires obedience to all of its commands.^[a]

²¹ I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. ²² I love God’s law with all my heart. ²³ But there is another power^[a] within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

⁶ But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

¹⁰ For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws. ¹¹ For the same God who said, “You must not commit adultery,” also said, “You must not murder.”^[a] So if you murder someone but do not commit adultery, you have still broken the law.

¹⁹ For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God.

¹¹ Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me.

⁴ So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God.