Paul speaks to those who know the law: the law has authority over a person only while that person lives. He uses marriage as a picture of a law that binds while a person lives. "Therefore, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might produce fruit to God." Now believers are released from the law, so that they serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.
"What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be!" Paul would not have known sin except through the law; he would not have known coveting unless the law had said, "You shall not covet." Sin, finding an opportunity through the commandment, produced every kind of coveting in him. "Therefore the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, righteous, and good."
"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, sold under sin." "For I don't understand what I am doing. For I don't practice what I desire to do; but what I hate, that I do." Paul says desire for good is present with him, but he does not find himself doing it. The good he desires he does not do, but the evil he does not desire, that he practices.
Paul delights in God's law after the inward person, but sees a different law in his members, warring against the law of his mind. "What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me out of the body of this death?" "I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! So then with the mind, I myself serve God's law, but with the flesh, sin's law."