No, your suggestion is pretty much the opposite of the author's point, because you're isolating two verses from everything that surrounds them. All verses must be read **in context**, and so we must begin (at the very least) from the start of chapter 7: > Romans 7:1-6 > **Or do you not know, brothers, for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?** For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. > **Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another,** to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. **But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.** As we continue through the rest of Romans 7 including your verses, it becomes clear that Paul had lived all his life according to 'the Law', but this in itself did not make him good, but only heightened his awareness and condemnation due to sin. And then we must continue to Romans 8 for his logical conclusion: > Romans 8:1-4 > There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. **For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.** ---------- Paul's overall point is that he is writing to a mixture of believers in Rome, and many of them are Jews. And they have disagreements with their Gentile brothers over how best to live. And so in Romans one of his priorities is to make a case to explain that following **the law** is not the means to a good life. The point is not to *excuse* anybody, but rather to point out that all the recipients - Jews and Gentiles - are in largely the same boat, and following the law will not help them live without sin. In order to live without sin, all of them must take hold of the Son of God, who dealt with that sin in the flesh, and enabled Christians to live according to the Spirit instead.