The Daily Audio Bible

¹⁴ We know, you see, that the law is spiritual. I, however, am made of flesh, sold as a slave under sin’s authority. ¹⁵ I don’t understand what I do. I don’t do what I want, you see, but I do what I hate. ¹⁶ So if I do what I don’t want to do, I am agreeing that the law is good.

¹⁷ But now it is no longer I that do it; it’s sin, living within me. ¹⁸ I know, you see, that no good thing lives in me, that is, in my human flesh. For I can will the good, but I can’t perform it. ¹⁹ For I don’t do the good thing I want to do, but I end up doing the evil thing I don’t want to do. ²⁰ So if I do what I don’t want to do, it’s no longer “I” doing it; it’s sin, living inside me.

The double “law” and the miserable “I”

²¹ This, then, is what I find about the law: when I want to do what is right, evil lies close at hand! ²² I delight in God’s law, you see, according to my inmost self; ²³ but I see another “law” in my limbs and organs, fighting a battle against the law of my mind, and taking me off into captivity in the law of sin which is in my limbs and organs.

²⁴ What a miserable person I am! Who is going to rescue me from the body of this death? ²⁵ Thank God—through Jesus our Messiah and Lord! So then, left to my own self I am enslaved to God’s law with my mind, but to sin’s law with my human flesh.

God’s action in Messiah and spirit

8 So, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in the Messiah, Jesus! ² Why not? Because the law of the spirit of life in the Messiah, Jesus, released you from the law of sin and death.

³ For God has done what the law (being weak because of human flesh) was incapable of doing. God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sin-offering; and, right there in the flesh, he condemned sin. ⁴ This was in order that the right and proper verdict of the law could be fulfilled in us, as we live not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.

The work of the spirit

⁵ Look at it like this. People whose lives are determined by human flesh focus their minds on matters to do with the flesh, but people whose lives are determined by the spirit focus their minds on matters to do with the spirit. ⁶ Focus the mind on the flesh, and you’ll die; but focus it on the spirit, and you’ll have life, and peace. ⁷ The mind focused on the flesh, you see, is hostile to God. It doesn’t submit to God’s law; in fact, it can’t. ⁸ Those who are determined by the flesh can’t please God.