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Here I submit my experience and insight re: Romans 5-7 in paraphrase form, exchanging our words "God's Favor" for Paul's word "grace" and our word "guilt" for Paul's word "sin."

Of course, there are many other shades of meaning in Paul's words. So please don't stop with this insight. I give it to you with a prayer that it will bless you.

Romans 5:20 to 8:2: Living under the Favor of God or the Compulsions of Guilt

The Ten Commandments came that guilt might abound, but where guilt abounded, God’s favor did much more abound, in order that, as guilt had authority to death, in the same way God’s favor has authority through rightdoing to eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

What shall we say then? Shall we live in guilt so God’s favor may abound. God forbid! How shall we who are dead to guilt, live any longer in it? You should know that when you were baptized into Christ you were baptized into His death. . . .

Know this, that our old person is crucified with Jesus so the feelings of guilt might be destroyed, so that from now on we should not be controlled by guilt. Whoever is dead is freed from guilt. . . .

In this manner decide to consider yourselves truly dead to guilt but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So don’t let guilt rule your emotions to make you obey it and its compulsions. Don’t give yourselves as a tool to do the things demanded by guilt, but give yourselves to God, as people raised from the dead, and tools of right doing for God.

Guilt should not have power over you because you are not under the Ten Commandments but under God’s favor.

Are you afraid that we will break out in unlawful actions (sin as a verb) because we are not under the Ten Commandments but under God’s favor? God forbid. Surely you know that whomever you obey, you are servants of whom you obey, whether guilt to death, or obedience to right doing. God be praised that though you were servants of guilt, you now obey from the heart everything you’ve been taught. Being freed from guilt you became servants of right doing. . . .

When you acted out of guilt you could not do right. . . But now you are freed from guilt and can serve God. You have fruit in holiness and will end in everlasting life.

For the wages of guilt is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. . . .

When we were in the flesh, the emotions of guilt which came by the Ten Commandments worked in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we are delivered from the Ten Commandments, we being dead to that which held us, so that we should serve in a new spirit and not in the old letter.

What shall we say then? Are the Ten Commandments guilt? God forbid. No. I did not know guilt but by the Ten Commandments. . . but guilt, taking occasion by the Ten Commandments, wrought in me all manner of compulsions. For without the Ten Commandments, guilt was dead. I was alive without the Ten Commandments once, for when the Ten Commandments came, guilt revived, and I died. So the Ten Commandments, which were meant to bring life, brought me death. Guilt, taking occasion by the Ten Commandments, deceived me, and by them killed me. For this reason I can say the Ten Commandments are holy and just and good.

Was then that which is good made death to me? God forbid. But guilt, so I could see what it does, worked death in me by that which is good. In this way by the Ten Commandments, I can see that guilt is exceedingly the guilty culprit.

We know that the Ten Commandments are spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under guilt. For what I do I do not allow. What I wish, that I don’t do. What I hate, that I do. If then I do what I prefer not to do, I consent to the Ten Commandments that they are good.

Now then it is no more I that do these things, but guilt that lives in me. I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing, for to choose is available to me, but I have not discovered how to perform that which I prefer. Again I say, the good that I want I don’t do, but the evil I don’t want is what I do. So if I do what I don’t prefer, it is no more I that does it, but guilt that dwells in me.

I find then a rule, that, when I would do good, evil is what I do. I delight in the Ten Commandments in my inner person, but I find another rule in my members warring against the rule of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the rule of guilt which is in my members.

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the Ten Commandments, but with the flesh I serve the rule of guilt.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. For the rule of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the rule of guilt and death.