Free from the Law: Romans 7:7-9 Introduction Last week we finished the first section of chapter 7. o We finished it with a comparison between life in the flesh and life in the spirit. I told you that the rest of chapter 7 o would describe what life in the flesh is like and that chapter 8 would, in turn, describe what it means to live in the spirit. However, before he begins to elaborate o on the whole notion of living in the flesh, Paul first must make one final statement about the law. Up to this point in the book, o Paul has painted the law in a less than favorable light. We have found out that the law o is unable to justify sinners, o that it is closely associated with sin and that, as believers in Jesus Christ, we have been set free from the law. Now Paul takes a moment to defend the integrity of the law. o In the next few verses Paul makes the case that the problem is not with the law but with sin. Sin is, once again, personified in this next section o as a domineering evil tyrant. Sin abuses and exploits the law in order to accomplish its own negative purpose. o It distorts the law and uses the law for a purpose much lower than the purpose for which God has instituted the law. Consider the Garden of Eden. o God established a law in the garden.
The law was that Adam and Eve could not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. o The law was placed there for their own protection, for their good. o It was intended to preserve them. However, the very law that God established o to protect Adam and Eve is what Satan used to plant the seeds of doubt in Adam and Eve s heart o and incite them to violate the law. He suggested to Eve o that God only restricted that particular tree from them because he was keeping o the best for himself. o God was holding some good thing back from Adam and Eve. Satan used the law to encourage the sin. o Paul s point in this passage is that this does not mean that the law, itself, is a bad thing. The law was placed there for a good purpose o and the law, because of its relationship to God, is holy, righteous, and good. Text: Romans 7:7-13 7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. 8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence (Kon-KEW-pi-scents). For without the law sin was dead. 9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. 11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. 12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
13 Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. Exposition 7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. Just like in chapter 6 Paul starts with the question: o What shall we say then? Is the law sin? He follows that with an emphatic answer: o God forbid! No. The question may seem valid to the reader; o indeed, it seemed valid enough for Paul to address it. The main reason is o that we have just spent much of this letter establishing the fact o that the law did not give us power over sin and we have even gone so far as to argue that the law o actually aroused sinful lusts. In the context of all of the negative things o that we have said about the law, it seems reasonable to ask if the law is in league with sin. o If it arouses sin, then isn t it as negative as sin? That s the question. The point of this passage o is to establish the fact that this is not true in any sense. The law came from God o and it is good for the purpose that God established it for. Just because Paul has rejected the law o as a means of salvation does not rob the law of all value.
It has intrinsic value as a teacher of righteousness; o it declares, for the entire world to read, the moral standards of God. It establishes what pleases God o and that is something that anyone who desires to please God needs to know. To quote David Bernard, o The law of Moses reveals the nature, existence, power, and result of sin. o It shows man his sinfulness and his need of salvation, and as such it is an important part o of God s redemptive plan o for humanity. The law explains sin to us. o It gives us the knowledge of what sin is. Without the law o we would not know what kind of actions are sinful. The law teaches us o the wrongness of these sinful acts. Not only that, o the law includes penalties for sin and through those penalties it gives us an understanding o of how dreadfully wrong o certain acts are. Some actions, under the law, demand immediate death. o That is a strong statement of the wrongfulness of those actions. And, because God gave the law to us, o we learn that this is God s standard of right and wrong, not ours. o The law establishes the understanding of a higher moral code. o The law is not subject to human reasoning,
it comes from God. Sin is an affront to God o and the wrongness of it is derived from the character of God. The law, then, teaches us o some important things that we need to know about God. o It details his moral character for us. From the law, we learn about the character of God. Paul says, o I would not have ever known sin if it wasn t for the law. The knowledge of sin o that he is talking about is not just intellectual. He goes on to relate o his knowledge of sin to experience. He knew lust. o He experienced it because the law said, Thou shalt not covet. In other words, Paul said, o I might never have known that it was wrong to strongly desire that which was not mine, o to covet something, if the law had never said to me, Thou shalt not covet. o But once I read it in the law, then I knew that the impulse of my flesh to yearn for that, o which was never to be mine, the desire to covet, o was sin. So I didn t just gain o an abstract knowledge of sin from the law. o I actually experienced sin because of the law.
The law gave me a personal consciousness o of the fact that I am a sinner. The law defined sin for me, o and it caused me to realize that I am personally guilty of sin in the presence of God. 8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence (Kon-KEW-pi-scents). For without the law sin was dead. In theory, the law, with its death penalty, o should have motivated us not to sin. But Paul says that sin took occasion of the law. o The sin nature in us used the law as an opportunity to encourage sin. It wrought in me o all manner of concupiscence (Kon-KEW-pi-scents). That word means lust or evil desires. o So the law wrought in me evil desires. How does that work? o The law didn t create the evil desires in me, they were already there, they are a part of the sin nature. o The law, however, revealed them to me. It made me aware, not just of the desires, o but of their sinfulness. o And, by accentuating both the desire to sin and the forbidden nature of sin, the law provoked sin. Provoking sin is not the law s purpose o but that is how sin takes advantage of the law. It is the forbidden fruit syndrome o that we have talked about previously. Proverbs 9:17 tells us that stolen water is sweet.
There is something about o the sin nature within us that delights in rebellion. Water that is freely given o is not as sweet as water that was stolen. The prohibition of the law o has the effect of causing the object of the prohibition to become fixed in the imagination. The sin nature uses the prohibition o to make the thing that has been prohibited seem to be better simply by the fact that it has been denied. Again we use the tree o in the Garden of Eden o as an example. The fruit of that tree was, indeed, deadly. o But sin used the fact that it was prohibited to make it seem to be something o that should be desired. It appealed to the senses o because of the prohibition. It looked tasty, it smelled sweet, it had the appearance of a desirable treat. o And all of that was accentuated by the fact that it was forbidden! I must point out o that this increased desire for the prohibited thing is not the law s fault. o Sin has taken advantage of the law. Sin is the culprit here. It is personified in our lives o as the slithering serpent that keeps drawing our attention back to the thing that we are restricted from.
It appeals to us o and takes occasion of the law to make those things, which are sinful, seem to be attractive to us. The idea of taking occasion o has a military connotation. It refers to a beachhead or a starting point for an attack. If you will remember, o way back when we first introduced the sin nature into the discussion of Romans o we spent most of a Sunday morning talking about how that the sin nature provides sin o a foothold in our lives, o a beachhead as it were o or a safe haven from which to launch its attacks against us. When Paul uses this kind of language o he presents sin as the enemy of our soul and that enemy is using the law as the lunching pad o for its attack on us. That is the sense in which sin o takes occasion of the law, it seizes on the commandment that forbids sin and uses it as an instrument to provoke sin. Let me say this before we move on. o This whole discussion reveals to us how Satan works. It is a pattern that we first see o in The Garden of Eden and that we see repeated over and over again. Satan would twist o any commandment of God for our lives in order to cause us to see it as a negative instead of a positive.
God is looking out for us, o he has our best interest at heart but sin twists his admonitions that are intended to preserve us o into attacks that are intended to harm us. Let me give a real world example. o As parents, we love our children and we want to protect them so we caution them against playing in the street. o We do that because the street is a dangerous place to play. But the moment that we make the street o a forbidden place to play, that sin nature, that inherent nature of rebellion, begins to view the street as a desirable place to play. And, even though o we are trying to protect our children, it gets twisted in the mind of the child o so that the child thinks we are trying to keep them away from the best place to play. That is how sin works. o It interprets every commandment of God as taking away my freedom, rather than an attempt to preserve my life. In that way sin generates o resentment against both God and his commandments. It arouses a spirit of rebellion, o which then uses the commandment as an opportunity to express itself. Sin compels us to go play in the road o as a means of asserting ourselves against the perceived wrong that has been done to us. The problem with that o is that the commandment
was never intended to harm us o but the action that we take to defy the commandment causes us more harm than we realize. That s how sin works. o Satan told Eve that God had kept the best for himself. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, o it was not a bad thing, it was the most desirable tree in the garden. And that mean old God has restricted it from you. o And the sin nature, taking occasion of the law, o uses the law to provoke Eve to sin by breaking the very law that was given to protect her. Verse 8 ends with this statement: o For without the law sin was dead. It takes the law to define sin o before sin has any real power. This is an important point o that leads us into the next verse. The sin nature was dormant, o it was ineffective and powerless, without the law. In other words, o not only does the sin nature use the law as an instrument to provoke us to sin, o the law is the only instrument that the sin nature can use. It takes the law to make something a crime. o In the civil realm, for example, no one can be arrested, convicted, and punished for an act o unless some law makes it a crime. Sin is dead o so long as it is without a weapon to use against us.
o And the only weapon that it can use is the law. This statement establishes an important truth. o We are all born with a sin nature. We are all guilty because of Adam o and we are all under the curse of sin. But Paul makes it plain o that the sin nature has no power to provoke sin in us without an awareness of the law. The law is the weapon o that sin uses to harm us and until we have an awareness of the law, sin is effectively dead. This is the premise o that leads theologians to establish an argument for an age of accountability. A child may be born with a sin nature o that rebels against authority but the child is not accountable for sin until they have developed an awareness of the law. There is a threshold, o somewhere in the developmental life of a person, where they become aware of the law, o they become aware that it is wrong to violate that law, o and at that point sin springs to life and uses the law to provoke rebellion. The result is sin. One might say, then why do we teach kids right from wrong? o If ignorance of the law, in effect, defangs the sin nature then why teach it? The answer is simple, o the law is written on your conscience. There is an innate human o awareness of right and wrong that does not have to be taught
o and even without any moral instruction at some point in our development o we cross a threshold where we know the difference between right and wrong o and at that point we become personally accountable for our actions. Sin springs to life and entraps us. o That is exactly what verse 9 details for us: 9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. Paul uses the voice of the first person in this statement. o It is a personal statement. Paul says that o before the principles of the law became effective in his life he was alive, without the law. This notion of alive speaks of spiritual life. o It is a statement of innocence before God. Sin results in death but the gift of God is life. So Paul says, o there was a time in my life when I was spiritually alive, before the law became o effective in my life. But then the knowledge of the law entered my life, o the commandment came, and with the commandment came the compulsion to rebel against it. When that happened sin revived, and I died. The weight of this statement o is found in its support for the principle given in the previous verse. Paul was spiritually alive,
o or innocent of sin, before he became aware of the law. o He had no consciousness of sin and no condemnation for sin. This doesn t mean he didn t do anything wrong. o Children rebel against authority before they ever even realize what authority is. o That is the sin nature in us. However, Paul is saying o he was innocent of those actions. There was no condemnation for that rebellion, o as long as he was not aware of the law. However, when he became aware of the law, o sin sprang to life. When sin sprang to life, o he died spiritually. He was no longer innocent of sin. When he learned principles of law, o the sin nature caused him to violate law, and so he came under condemnation. o He was guilty of sin. This is where the idea o of an age of accountability comes from. It is not necessarily an age, o as much as it is a developed awareness. Every child is born with a sin nature and an ignorance of the law. As long as they are ignorant of the law, o they are innocent in the eyes of God. However, when they become aware of the law, as it pertains to God, they lose their innocence and become guilty o of transgressing the law. When they are innocent they are alive o and when they become guilty they became spiritually dead. When they are alive, o without the law, the sin nature lies dormant
Close within them. o It is a killer without a weapon. But at the moment o that the consciousness of the law enters the picture, o the sin nature is empowered, it now has an effective weapon to produce spiritual death o and it uses the law to end the age of innocence and bring the subject o under the condemnation o of the law of God which results in spiritual death. There is a second principle here o that demonstrates that spiritual life and spiritual death are directly related to sin. Spiritual life thrives o when sin is dead but when sin is revived spiritual life dies. This underscores the statements of chapter 6. o A believer cannot continue in sin and maintain spiritual life. To enter back into a life of sin o is to allow the power of sin to be revived in our lives and that causes us o to become spiritually dead. The thrust of this passage, o which we ve only partially covered this morning, is to cause us to recognize the sinfulness of sin. o The law is not the culprit in our lives, sin is. As long as we point our finger at the law o and see it as the culprit in our lives, we can not deal with the real issue
that needs to be dealt with o in order for us to experience salvation. The real issue is our own sinfulness. o We are all sinners and we have all fallen short of the glory of God. Until we recognize that, o there is no hope of personal salvation. We must recognize our own sinfulness o and the fact that we cannot save ourselves. We need a savior. We need grace in our lives. We need God to save us!