Daily Thoughts from Romans: Killed by the Law (7:7-13)

Daily Thoughts from Romans: Killed by the Law

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.  (Romans 7:7-13 ESV)

If we have to die to the Law in order to be married to Christ and find life, it makes it sound as if Paul is saying the Law is bad.  But the problem is not the law but me.  It is not that I wouldn’t covet something someone else has if there were not Law that said, “Thou shalt not covet,” but rather the Law stands in judgment of my coveting (and every other sinful desire) and reminds me of what I have repressed (Romans 1:18), that God is God, not me, and that I must give Him obedience despite the fact that I don’t trust Him.  It stirs my rebellion and desire to be a law unto myself, to determine for myself what is right and wrong.

Paul could ignore, in a sense, his covetousness until the law pointed it out.  As a good Jew he knew he owed obedience to God as stated in the ten commandments.  And he could keep, it seemed, the first nine that had a more outward behavioral aspect to them.  But the tenth command spoke of the heart only.  And when he could not stop coveting he knew he deserved the death penalty.  The law killed him.

As Paul has already taught, the wages of sin is death and though the Law is righteous and good the sinful heart in me rebels against it and I reside in a state worthy of death.  The Law only makes more evident what a sinner I am and how lost from God I am.  When I see that sin is sinful beyond measure I should feel helpless and hopeless to save myself.  Instead, prior to Christ, I either hide my sin in numerous ways (hypocrisy, rationalization, denial) or openly flaunt it.  The latter is more dangerous and likely to get me shunned, incarcerated or killed.  It is an option normally chosen only by those who feel they have enough power to survive or prevent that.

All this is to say that keeping the law is not the answer to the problem of having the holiness that God requires.  Law-keeping actually makes that impossible.  It works against my real problem, my sin nature.  Of course, having no law does not work either.  I’m a sinner whether there is a law to point it out or not.