Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

⁷ So what shall we say? Shall we say that the law is bad? No! I would not have known what is wrong if there had been no law. The law says, `Do not want to take other people's things.' That is how I know it is wrong to want another person's things.

⁸ My wrong ways used the law to make me want all kinds of things. When there is no law, the thing within me that wants to do wrong is dead.

⁹ Once I had no law, and I lived. But when the law came, that which wanted to do wrong things came to life, and I died.

¹⁰ The same law which was meant to make a person live, made me die.

¹¹ My wrong ways used the law to fool me and kill me.

¹² So the law is holy. And what the law says is holy and right and good.

¹³ So did that good thing make me die? No. The wrong things I did made me die, because that good thing showed they were wrong. And the law shows that the wrong things are very, very bad.

¹⁴ We know that the law came from the Holy Spirit. But I am a weak man. I have been sold like a slave to do wrong things.

¹⁵ I do not know why I do the things I do. I do not do what I want to do. But I do the things I hate.

¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

¹⁷ So now it is no longer I who do it, but my wrong ways in me.

¹⁸ I know that no good thing lives in me. I mean, no good thing lives in my body. I want to do what is good, but I cannot do it.

¹⁹ I do not do the good thing I want to do, but I do the wrong thing that I do not want to do.

²⁰ If I do the thing I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but the wrong thing in me that does it.