Romans 7:7-13

7So someone might say, ‘God's Law must be bad.’ No! Certainly, it is not bad! Without that law, I would not have known what sin really is. One rule says, ‘You must not want to take things for yourself that belong to other people.’ Without that command, I would not have known that it is wrong to want other people's things.

8But the command gave sin a chance to come into my thoughts. As a result, I started to want all kinds of wrong things. If there is no law to tell us what is wrong, then sin has no power to make us guilty.

9As for me, there was a time when I did not know God's laws. I was living without any law to obey. But when I learned about that command, sin now had power in my life.

10As a result, I became separate from God, as if I had died. So the command that should have brought life to me brought death instead.

11That command gave sin a chance to deceive me. It caused me to become separate from God.

12So we understand that God's Law and its commands are completely good. They are holy, fair and good.

13But someone might say, ‘This means that something good brought death to you.’ No! God's Law did not do that! It was sin that brought death to me. Sin used God's good Law to show that I was guilty. Because of that, we can see that sin is really very bad. The commands in God's Law help to show that sin is completely bad.