¹ Or don’t you know, Family (since I am speaking to those who know Torah), that the Torah is lord over a person for as long as they live? ² A married woman has been bound by Torah to a man while he is alive, but if the man dies, her obligation to Torah regarding the man has been counteracted.^{a 3} So then, if she were to come to be with a different man while the man is alive, she would be called maritally unfaithful, but if the man dies, she is liberated from the Torah obligation—she is not being maritally unfaithful having come to be with another man.

⁴ So to speak, my Family, through Christ’s body, you too died regarding Torah for you to come to be with another person—with the one who was raised from among the dead—so that we would produce fruit for God. ⁵ When we were in bodily existence,^b experiences of suffering, deviations, were enacted through the Torah among the parts of our body, resulting in producing fruit for death. ⁶ But now after dying, our obligation to the Torah with which we were being restrained^c was counteracted^d for us to be enslaved workers with a newness of Life-breath and not with the antiquatedness of a written document.^e

⁷ Then, what should we say? “Torah is deviation”? Absolutely not! Just the opposite: I did not understand deviation except through Torah. Indeed, I had not understood craving^f except that Torah said, “Do not crave.”^{g 8} However, deviation, taking the opportunity through the directive, produced in me every craving. Without Torah, deviation is lifeless. ⁹ I was once alive without Torah, but after the directive came, deviation came to life,^{h 10} but I died. I found that the same directive whose purpose was life resulted in death, ¹¹ for deviation, taking the opportunity through the directive, tricked me and killed me through it. ¹² So, Torah is, in fact, sacred, and the directive is sacred and just and beneficial.

¹³ Then, did what is beneficial become death for me? Absolutely not! Just the opposite, so that deviation would be brought into the light, deviation produced death for me through what is beneficial, so that the deviation would become excessively deviated through the directive. ¹⁴ You see, we have come to understand that the Torah is of the Life-breath,ⁱ but I am of bodily existence,^j having been sold into enslavement to deviation, ¹⁵ for I don’t understand what I perform.^k What I want to practice is what I don’t practice, but what I hate is what I do instead. ¹⁶ If what I don’t want to do is what I do, I acknowledge to Torah that it is right.^{l 17} But now, I am not the one who performs^m it anymore, but it is the deviation that resides within me instead. ¹⁸ I have learned that what is beneficial for othersⁿ does not reside within me, that is, within my body. For the desire to do things that benefit others is present for me, but performing them is not. ¹⁹ I don’t do the beneficial thing that I want to do, but instead, the harmful thing that I don’t want to do is what I practice. ²⁰ However, if what I don’t want to do is what I do, it’s no longer I but rather the deviation that resides within me who does it.

²¹ Therefore, I find the Torah when I want me to do the right thing because the harmful thing is present within me. ²² You see, I delight in the Torah of God in my core self,^{o 23} but I see a different torah among my parts that wages war against the Torah of my mind and takes me prisoner with the torah of deviation, with the one that is among my parts. ²⁴ I am a person in suffering! Who will rescue me from this deathly body! ²⁵ Thanks be to God who does so through Jesus Christ our Lord! So therefore, I myself am enslaved both to the Torah of God with my mind but also to the torah of deviation with my bodily impulses.