1. You, my friends, understand law. The law has power only while a person is alive.

2. The married woman, for example, is bound by law to her husband while he is alive; but if he dies, she is free from her obligations as a wife.

3. If she gives herself to another while her husband is alive, she will be an adulteress; but once the husband dies, she is free and if she gives herself to another man, she is not an adulteress.

4. It was the same with you, brothers and sisters: you have died to the Law with the person of Christ, and you belong to another, who has risen from among the dead, so that we may produce fruit for God.

5. When we lived as humans used to do, the Law stirred up the desires for all that is sin, and they worked in our bodies with fruits of death.

6. But we have died to what was holding us; we are freed from the Law and no longer serve a written law - which was the old; with the Spirit we are in the new.

7. Then, shall we say that the Law is part of sin? Of course not. However, I would not have known Sin, had it not been through the Law. I would not be aware of greed if the Law did not tell me: Do not covet.

8. Sin took advantage of the commandment to stir in me all kinds of greed; whereas, without a Law, Sin lies dead.

9. First there was no Law and I lived. Then the commandment came and gave life to Sin:

10. and I died. It happened that the Law of life had brought me death.

11. Sin took advantage of the commandment: it lured me and killed me through the commandment.

12. But the Law itself is holy, just and good.

13. Is it possible that something good brings death to me? Of course not. This comes from Sin which may be seen as sin when it takes advantage of something good to kill: the commandment let Sin appear fully sinful.

14. We know that the Law is spiritual; as for me, I am flesh and have been sold to sin.

15. I cannot explain what is happening to me, because I do not do what I want, but on the contrary, the very things I hate.

16. Well then, if I do the evil I do not want to do, I agree that the Law is good;

17. but, in this case, I am not the one striving toward evil, but it is sin, living in me.

18. I know that what is right does not abide in me, I mean, in my flesh. I can want to do what is right, but I am unable to do it.

19. In fact I do not do the good I want, but the evil I hate.

20. Therefore, if I do what I do not want to do, I am not the one striving towards evil, but Sin which is in me.

21. I discover, then, this reality: though I wish to do what is right, the evil within me asserts itself first.

22. My inmost self agrees and rejoices with the law of God,

23. but I notice in my body another law challenging the law of the spirit, and delivering me as a slave to the law of sin written in my members.

24. Alas, for me! Who will free me from this being which is only death?

25. Let us give thanks to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! So, with my conscience I am a servant of the law of God, and with my mortal I serve the law of sin.





“Devemos odiar os nossos pecados, visto que o amor ao Senhor significa paz”. São Padre Pio de Pietrelcina