The Law and Sin! – Romans 7:7-13
by Pastor Lee Hemen
December 10, 2006
There are always those who think they can disprove the Christian faith by regurgitating tired old arguments. You know what I mean. Things like, “Well if God is so powerful, can He make a rock bigger than He can lift?” or what some think is a new one: “If God is so good, why do bad things happen to good people?” Richard Dawkins, a leading atheist, who does not believe in evolution but angrily snipes at Christianity, touts much the same lame argument. He relates in his latest book, “The God Delusion,” that the God of the Old Testament “is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In other words, how could a good God allow bad things to happen? He goes on to identify the central doctrine of the New Testament as atonement for original sin and characterizes this tenet as “vicious, sadomasochistic and repellent.” Basically, Dawkin’s latest book is a 400 page tirade against the belief of any divine being. What Dawkins and others like him fail to see is exactly what Paul wrote against in his letter to the Romans. If you fail to understand the basics of who God is and how He relates to the world, your view of God is messed up.
The Judaisers, those who adhered to Christianity by faith in Jesus yet wanted to retain the theology of works by observing the law, were at odds with what Paul taught: “By grace you are saved, not by works least anyone should boast.” So, like anyone who is resoundingly confronted with the truth, they begin to reason unreasonably. Just as Richard Dawkins and his brethren do, the Judaisers began to argue from a weak position. They ask Paul a stupid question: “Is the law therefore sin?” Paul relates exactly what the law is and what sin is in his answer. Let’s discover out what it means for us today…
READ: Romans 7:7-13
The law of God is commonly divided into three parts: the ceremonial laws, the social laws, and the moral laws. The Jews believed you had to keep all of those laws to become holy. By the time of Paul's ministry, the rabbis had summed up all of the Old Testament law into 613 commandments. But it was almost impossible to keep them all, especially since they had been embellished beyond the intention of God. However, here in these verses, Paul dramatically teaches us that…
I. The Law Reveals Sin (vv. 7-8)!
1. Can the law be sinful? Paul resoundingly retorts, “It can never be!” Some translate it out as “God forbid,” but the wording for this is not found here. For Paul, the law cannot be considered evil under any circumstance. That would be an utter absurdity! In verse 7 he goes on to say he would not have recognized his sin unless the law had revealed it. The Law is not the cause of the act of sin; the ruling nature of sin within an individual is. However, it makes us aware of when we sin by its very quality. Before the law anyone could have said, “Hey, God, You did not tell us that such and such was sin, therefore how can You hold us accountable?” (This argument by the way, would not hold theological water, but there are those who would argue this way anyway.) In fact, some legalists still do! It’s kind of like if there were no red lights telling us when to stop, we would just run intersections when we wanted to. (I know, I know, some do anyway.) Until we were killed or hurt dramatically, we would say, “Hey, no one told us it was dangerous, and besides, there are no signs that say it is!” While this is patently stupid, there are people like this. They think they can do whatever they want, when they want to. After all, God hasn’t told them not too, right? Paul says that oh yes God has. The law He gave, revealed sin for what it was: sin!
EXAMPLE: I can remember getting into a discussion with my father about being in someone else’s field. I declared rather self-righteously, “You never said we could not go into that particular field!” My Dad whacked in the back of the head and declared, “Now you know not to -- because I just told you not to!” I knew better than to argue with him about the injustice of the situation. How could I have known ahead of time? Actually I did, because I knew how my Dad would feel if he found out that we were taking a short cut across someone else’s property without permission. While I could have argued the delusional injustice of it all, I now knew the truth of the matter. It was revealed to me in a rather abrupt way. The same was true for Paul. He knew that the law wasn’t sinful, the law reveals sin!
In fact, after I knew I was not supposed to use that field as a short cut, I had this urge to do so anyway! Why would that happen? It must be the law’s fault, right? No way! This is why Paul related, “But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.” (v. 8) The law identified the problem. Yet it also intensified my sinful self to want to do it anyway! Like Eve who knew better, we are drawn to the fruit of our own desire and we chose to ignore God’s law. And what happens next, according to Paul is devastating to us because…
II. The Law Kills the Sinner (vv. 9-11)!
1. Paul recognized this fact and wrote that “Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died!” (v. 9) What Paul means is that he was satisfied and self-sufficient before he knew he was in sin! He was content with his self-righteous life. But that was shattered when he realized that the law could never save him: “I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death!” No matter how good Paul thought he was, he could never be good enough to save himself. The law made that plain. He would continually have to offer up sacrifices. He would have to continually hope against hope that he was “good enough” for God to love him. The law was killing Paul spiritually. A person can only go around so long saying, “I’m a sinner! I’m a sinner!” after looking at the law of God. And, Paul relates that “sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death!” (v. 11) He had been lulled into thinking he was righteous as he went about persecuting Christians in his zeal for God. By today's standards, he had his “act together.” But then Paul was confronted with reality: God's holy law. When Paul looked inside of himself he saw the evil that existed there. He knew full well that all the religious things he had been doing could not make him holy, so he threw himself on the only thing that could: Jesus Christ. Paul knew he was dead because of the law. That’s what the law does. The law kills the sinner.
EXAMPLE: The world is full of people like Paul used to be. They think that by doing good things, then they must be good themselves. While outward random acts of kindness can be good in of themselves, the person doing them is not necessarily a good person! They are just acting “good” for the moment. Kind of like Molly our dog when she is caught doing something she should not be doing. She looks up at us like, “Me? You think that I was being bad? Not me! Look at how GOOD I am being right now!” In fact, this is the same faulty argument for those, who do not want to believe in God, use. They think that because people can do random acts of kindness, it inherently means people are good. I wonder how many of them have ever had children of their own? Babies immediately only have one thought in mind and that is themselves! In fact as they grow they will continually only think of themselves first unless adults help them to realize the error of their ways. Until they do, they are maladjusted. When they are made aware of their selfishness, then they either die to themselves or they sin by ignoring what they have learned. Either way, they are made aware and are accountable. This is what the law does. In fact, Paul tells us that the law kills the sinner.
My brother and I were always trying to skirt “the law of the parents.” Not that we were necessarily bad boys, but we could hold our own, so-to-speak. Often we would not even be aware we had done anything wrong, but my mother, knowing our true nature, would often confront us. Then, when we were made aware of our sin, we would be “dead meat.” You know, like when we would track dirty footprints across her newly waxed floor or be covered with raspberry stains from eating all the ripe berries off her vines. We might loudly protest our innocence but we knew we were “dead meat.” In fact, Pau related this final truth in a very graphic way by telling us that…
III. The Law Shows Sin’s Sinfulness (vv. 12-13)!
1. Paul tells us that the law displays three characteristics: It is holy, righteous, and good! Just as God is perfect, His law is as well. As God is holy, so too is His law. As He is righteous, so is His law. As He is good, so is the law of the Lord. But more than that, it is literally equitable, fair, or right. There's nothing wrong or unjust about the law in any way. And, Paul wanted his readers to know this truth. However, we also discover another wonderful truth, namely, that the law promotes blessing! How is it possible that the law, which has caused sin to flourish, could possibly promote good for mankind? Because where sin flourishes or abounds, grace abounds that much more (Romans 5:20)! The law reveals we are sinners in need of a Savior. When we run to Jesus, we find abundant grace. What Paul taught is reflected in David’s Psalm: “The law of the LORD is perfect… The precepts of the LORD are right… The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous.” (Psalm 19:7-9) However Paul shows us that while it convicts us, it is not the law’s fault but our own responsibility. In fact, our willful sin causes our death! The wages of sin is death (6:23)! As Mac Arthur writes, “When the law unmasks our sin, it brings about death by showing us how far short we fall of God's perfect standards.” The law shows sin’s sinfulness.
EXAMPLE: Sometimes I think that I blow life by just waking up in the morning. Have you ever felt this way? You know what I mean? You wake up feeling like an old brown bear rousing from a winter’s hibernation, mean, hungry, and wanting to eat anyone or anything that comes near you. Kick the dog, growl at your spouse, and just walk around with a scowl on. What is a hard reality is the simple fact that God has given me someone that often helps me to see myself as I really am. No, not just my relationship with Jesus or the Holy Spirit living in me, but my wife, Denise, who has put up with me for 31 years! She is often a great barometer of just how mean and ornery I can be. I continually wonder why she allows me to wake up some mornings. I think she is tempered by grace. Whatever the reason, she can help me see just how irritable I can be. When she does, I am convicted to apologize, and to try and live differently. Paul realized that for him, it was the law of God. It showed him sin’s sinfulness. It pointed him to Jesus.
Conclusion:
The law for Paul revealed sin for what it was, how it utterly killed the sinner, and it’s sinfulness.
by Pastor Lee Hemen
December 10, 2006
There are always those who think they can disprove the Christian faith by regurgitating tired old arguments. You know what I mean. Things like, “Well if God is so powerful, can He make a rock bigger than He can lift?” or what some think is a new one: “If God is so good, why do bad things happen to good people?” Richard Dawkins, a leading atheist, who does not believe in evolution but angrily snipes at Christianity, touts much the same lame argument. He relates in his latest book, “The God Delusion,” that the God of the Old Testament “is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In other words, how could a good God allow bad things to happen? He goes on to identify the central doctrine of the New Testament as atonement for original sin and characterizes this tenet as “vicious, sadomasochistic and repellent.” Basically, Dawkin’s latest book is a 400 page tirade against the belief of any divine being. What Dawkins and others like him fail to see is exactly what Paul wrote against in his letter to the Romans. If you fail to understand the basics of who God is and how He relates to the world, your view of God is messed up.
The Judaisers, those who adhered to Christianity by faith in Jesus yet wanted to retain the theology of works by observing the law, were at odds with what Paul taught: “By grace you are saved, not by works least anyone should boast.” So, like anyone who is resoundingly confronted with the truth, they begin to reason unreasonably. Just as Richard Dawkins and his brethren do, the Judaisers began to argue from a weak position. They ask Paul a stupid question: “Is the law therefore sin?” Paul relates exactly what the law is and what sin is in his answer. Let’s discover out what it means for us today…
READ: Romans 7:7-13
The law of God is commonly divided into three parts: the ceremonial laws, the social laws, and the moral laws. The Jews believed you had to keep all of those laws to become holy. By the time of Paul's ministry, the rabbis had summed up all of the Old Testament law into 613 commandments. But it was almost impossible to keep them all, especially since they had been embellished beyond the intention of God. However, here in these verses, Paul dramatically teaches us that…
I. The Law Reveals Sin (vv. 7-8)!
1. Can the law be sinful? Paul resoundingly retorts, “It can never be!” Some translate it out as “God forbid,” but the wording for this is not found here. For Paul, the law cannot be considered evil under any circumstance. That would be an utter absurdity! In verse 7 he goes on to say he would not have recognized his sin unless the law had revealed it. The Law is not the cause of the act of sin; the ruling nature of sin within an individual is. However, it makes us aware of when we sin by its very quality. Before the law anyone could have said, “Hey, God, You did not tell us that such and such was sin, therefore how can You hold us accountable?” (This argument by the way, would not hold theological water, but there are those who would argue this way anyway.) In fact, some legalists still do! It’s kind of like if there were no red lights telling us when to stop, we would just run intersections when we wanted to. (I know, I know, some do anyway.) Until we were killed or hurt dramatically, we would say, “Hey, no one told us it was dangerous, and besides, there are no signs that say it is!” While this is patently stupid, there are people like this. They think they can do whatever they want, when they want to. After all, God hasn’t told them not too, right? Paul says that oh yes God has. The law He gave, revealed sin for what it was: sin!
EXAMPLE: I can remember getting into a discussion with my father about being in someone else’s field. I declared rather self-righteously, “You never said we could not go into that particular field!” My Dad whacked in the back of the head and declared, “Now you know not to -- because I just told you not to!” I knew better than to argue with him about the injustice of the situation. How could I have known ahead of time? Actually I did, because I knew how my Dad would feel if he found out that we were taking a short cut across someone else’s property without permission. While I could have argued the delusional injustice of it all, I now knew the truth of the matter. It was revealed to me in a rather abrupt way. The same was true for Paul. He knew that the law wasn’t sinful, the law reveals sin!
In fact, after I knew I was not supposed to use that field as a short cut, I had this urge to do so anyway! Why would that happen? It must be the law’s fault, right? No way! This is why Paul related, “But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire.” (v. 8) The law identified the problem. Yet it also intensified my sinful self to want to do it anyway! Like Eve who knew better, we are drawn to the fruit of our own desire and we chose to ignore God’s law. And what happens next, according to Paul is devastating to us because…
II. The Law Kills the Sinner (vv. 9-11)!
1. Paul recognized this fact and wrote that “Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died!” (v. 9) What Paul means is that he was satisfied and self-sufficient before he knew he was in sin! He was content with his self-righteous life. But that was shattered when he realized that the law could never save him: “I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death!” No matter how good Paul thought he was, he could never be good enough to save himself. The law made that plain. He would continually have to offer up sacrifices. He would have to continually hope against hope that he was “good enough” for God to love him. The law was killing Paul spiritually. A person can only go around so long saying, “I’m a sinner! I’m a sinner!” after looking at the law of God. And, Paul relates that “sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death!” (v. 11) He had been lulled into thinking he was righteous as he went about persecuting Christians in his zeal for God. By today's standards, he had his “act together.” But then Paul was confronted with reality: God's holy law. When Paul looked inside of himself he saw the evil that existed there. He knew full well that all the religious things he had been doing could not make him holy, so he threw himself on the only thing that could: Jesus Christ. Paul knew he was dead because of the law. That’s what the law does. The law kills the sinner.
EXAMPLE: The world is full of people like Paul used to be. They think that by doing good things, then they must be good themselves. While outward random acts of kindness can be good in of themselves, the person doing them is not necessarily a good person! They are just acting “good” for the moment. Kind of like Molly our dog when she is caught doing something she should not be doing. She looks up at us like, “Me? You think that I was being bad? Not me! Look at how GOOD I am being right now!” In fact, this is the same faulty argument for those, who do not want to believe in God, use. They think that because people can do random acts of kindness, it inherently means people are good. I wonder how many of them have ever had children of their own? Babies immediately only have one thought in mind and that is themselves! In fact as they grow they will continually only think of themselves first unless adults help them to realize the error of their ways. Until they do, they are maladjusted. When they are made aware of their selfishness, then they either die to themselves or they sin by ignoring what they have learned. Either way, they are made aware and are accountable. This is what the law does. In fact, Paul tells us that the law kills the sinner.
My brother and I were always trying to skirt “the law of the parents.” Not that we were necessarily bad boys, but we could hold our own, so-to-speak. Often we would not even be aware we had done anything wrong, but my mother, knowing our true nature, would often confront us. Then, when we were made aware of our sin, we would be “dead meat.” You know, like when we would track dirty footprints across her newly waxed floor or be covered with raspberry stains from eating all the ripe berries off her vines. We might loudly protest our innocence but we knew we were “dead meat.” In fact, Pau related this final truth in a very graphic way by telling us that…
III. The Law Shows Sin’s Sinfulness (vv. 12-13)!
1. Paul tells us that the law displays three characteristics: It is holy, righteous, and good! Just as God is perfect, His law is as well. As God is holy, so too is His law. As He is righteous, so is His law. As He is good, so is the law of the Lord. But more than that, it is literally equitable, fair, or right. There's nothing wrong or unjust about the law in any way. And, Paul wanted his readers to know this truth. However, we also discover another wonderful truth, namely, that the law promotes blessing! How is it possible that the law, which has caused sin to flourish, could possibly promote good for mankind? Because where sin flourishes or abounds, grace abounds that much more (Romans 5:20)! The law reveals we are sinners in need of a Savior. When we run to Jesus, we find abundant grace. What Paul taught is reflected in David’s Psalm: “The law of the LORD is perfect… The precepts of the LORD are right… The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous.” (Psalm 19:7-9) However Paul shows us that while it convicts us, it is not the law’s fault but our own responsibility. In fact, our willful sin causes our death! The wages of sin is death (6:23)! As Mac Arthur writes, “When the law unmasks our sin, it brings about death by showing us how far short we fall of God's perfect standards.” The law shows sin’s sinfulness.
EXAMPLE: Sometimes I think that I blow life by just waking up in the morning. Have you ever felt this way? You know what I mean? You wake up feeling like an old brown bear rousing from a winter’s hibernation, mean, hungry, and wanting to eat anyone or anything that comes near you. Kick the dog, growl at your spouse, and just walk around with a scowl on. What is a hard reality is the simple fact that God has given me someone that often helps me to see myself as I really am. No, not just my relationship with Jesus or the Holy Spirit living in me, but my wife, Denise, who has put up with me for 31 years! She is often a great barometer of just how mean and ornery I can be. I continually wonder why she allows me to wake up some mornings. I think she is tempered by grace. Whatever the reason, she can help me see just how irritable I can be. When she does, I am convicted to apologize, and to try and live differently. Paul realized that for him, it was the law of God. It showed him sin’s sinfulness. It pointed him to Jesus.
Conclusion:
The law for Paul revealed sin for what it was, how it utterly killed the sinner, and it’s sinfulness.
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