For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sin, aroused by the law, were at work in every part of us, bearing fruit for death.
In context
3So if she takes another man while her husband is alive, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and she is no adulteress when she takes another man. 4In the same way, my brothers and sisters, you were put to death to the law through the body of the Christ, so that you might belong to another—to him who was raised from the dead—and so bear fruit for God. 5For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sin, aroused by the law, were at work in every part of us, bearing fruit for death. 6But now we have been released from the law, dead to what once held us down, so that we serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. 7What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Never. And yet I would not have known sin except through the law. I would not have known craving if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”