Our Fight Against Sin

⁷ You might think that I am saying that sin and the law are the same thing. That is not true. But the law was the only way I could learn what sin meant. I would never have known what it means to want something wrong if the law had not said, “You must not want to take your neighbor’s things.”^{[a] 8} And sin found a way to use that command and cause me to want every kind of wrong thing. So sin came to me because of that command. But without the law, sin has no power. ⁹ I was alive without the law before I knew the law. But when the law’s command came to me, then sin began to live.