What 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.”
In context
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.” 8But sin, seizing its chance through the commandment, worked up in me every kind of craving; for apart from the law, sin is dead. 9Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.
