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Exodus 20: 1-17

And God spoke all these words:

² “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

³ “You shall have no other gods before^[a] me.

⁴ “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.

 ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them;

for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,

 ⁶ but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

⁷ “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

⁸ “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. ⁹ Six days you shall labour and do all your work,

 ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.

 ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

 Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

¹² “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

¹³ “You shall not murder.

¹⁴ “You shall not commit adultery.

¹⁵ “You shall not steal.

¹⁶ “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.

¹⁷ “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey,

or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”

Romans 7: 1-13

Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives?

 ² For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him.

 ³ So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress.

 But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man.

⁴ So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another,

to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. ⁵ For when we were in the realm of the flesh,

 the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death.

 ⁶ But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

The Law and Sin

⁷ What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law.

 For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

⁸ But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting.

For apart from the law, sin was dead. ⁹ Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.

 ¹⁰ I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

¹¹ For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.

 ¹² So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

¹³ Did that which is good, then, become death to me?

By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin,

it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.