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 meaning of this section of Romans is laden with controversy. Is this an autobiographical account of Paul’s futile struggle to do what is right? If so, is Paul recounting his experiences as a morally awakened, but as yet unconverted man, or is he relating the internal conflicts of a spiritually quickened but still immature Paul? Is Paul writing about the general experience of the Christian; if so, then does he have in mind the regenerate or unregenerate? Perhaps he is thinking about the Jews. It is possible that the reader should understand Paul’s use of the first person as a dramatic portrayal of a pious Israelite (representative of Israel) who cannot fulfill the righteous demands of the Sinaic covenant. “First-century Jews were taught to think of themselves as having taken part in the historical experiences of Israel (as in the Passover ritual). Paul may then be describing in these verses, not his own personal experience, but the experience of the Jewish people corporately. What Paul would then be saying is that the giving of the law of Moses to Israel meant for them not life (as some rabbis taught) but death; for the law of Moses, by stimulating sin, ‘brought wrath’, making more clear than ever the Jews’ distance from God” (Douglas Moo, The New Bible Commentary: Romans 7.7-12). Whatever view one takes of Paul’s use of the first person (ego), it must be kept in mind that the primary subject of this portion of Paul’s letter concerns the Mosaic law. The contemporary reader frequently asks a different question than Paul is answering. Paul continues to address the issue of the law given at Sinai. The keeping of the law was central to the doctrine of salvation in Judaism and Paul is disputing this claim. Every Jew has broken the law (2.27) and no one may rightly claim to be justified by the very law (3.20) that brings about God’s wrath (4.15). Moreover, the believer is not subject to the law (6.14) because he has died to it (7.5). If all this is true, then Paul’s questions about the goodness of the law are germane to his argument. So what purpose does the law serve? If it is not sinful, then what good is it?
THE LAW IS GOOD
Paul continues to demonstrate the weakness of the Mosaic law and the power of the new life in Christ. He is not illustrating that the Sinaic covenant has the power to produce sin in him. Neither is he suggesting that Christians do not struggle with sin (cp. 1 Corinthians 3.1; Galatians 5.17; Philippians 3.12-14); that is not his present point. As in chapters 5 and 6, where Paul contrasted justification and sanctification, so now in chapters 7 and 8, he contrasts life under the law with life under the Spirit. A myopic reading of Romans 7 will lead to a misunderstanding of what Paul is trying to say: namely, that sin always yields to the authority of the Spirit (8.2-11; cp. Galatians 5.18, 22-25; Ephesians 2.2-5; 6.11-13; 2 Timothy 2.19). Still, the law is good and it was given at Sinai for the purpose of demonstrating the sinfulness of sin (8.13). It is the law that allows one to know what sin is. Paul is not suggesting that it is just the Israelites who know right from wrong; he has already shown that the Gentiles, who do not have the law, have an internal moral sense that governs their behavior (2.14-15; 5.12-14). Indeed, it is true of all people in every age; even the antediluvians (those living before the Genesis’ flood) were rightly judged for their evil deeds. But the niggling of one’s conscience or the self-condemnation of one’s moral sensibilities is different from knowing that one’s sin is a capital offense committed against the holy character of God. Paul illustrates his point by directing the reader’s attention to the last commandment: You shall not covet. This is the commandment that governs the intent of one’s heart (cp. Matthew 5.21-24) and by which the other commandments may be interpreted. The character of the sinful heart is revealed against the backdrop of the Mosaic law that exposes sin as it reveals the righteous demands of a holy God. The Mosaic law is more than a simple definition of God’s prohibitions.
The context, in which Paul stresses that the law reveals sin to be “sin” and renders sin “utterly sinful” (v. 13), suggests a stronger nuance: that through the law “I” come to “understand” or “recognize” the real nature and power of sin. The law, by branding “sin” as transgression (cf. 4:15; 5:13-14) and bringing wrath and death (4:15; 7:8-11, 13), unmasks sin in its true colors. But we should probably go further, and conceive this “understanding” of sin not in a purely noetic way but in terms of actual experience: through the law, “I” have come to experience sin for what it really is. Through the law sin “worked in me” all kinds of sinful desires (v. 8), and through the law sin “came to life” and brought death (vv. 9-11). It is through this actual experience of sin, then, that “I” come to understand the real “sinfulness” of sin. (Douglas Moo, Romans, 433-34)
As in a war, sin, like the enemy, attempts to gain a beachhead in a person’s life. The law serves as a vehicle for sin’s advancement. The law itself is not the genesis of sin, nor is it sinful. The flesh takes advantage of the inherent sinful nature to produce sin and the law exposes it. Every child of Adam has a defiant streak within him. The instant one hears of a prohibition is the very moment his rebellious heart flies into action. There is an innate and obdurate resistance in the heart of every individual to God’s righteous requirements. This inborn mulishness is evident from childhood. If you tell your son he must play in the backyard, you know at some point he is going to climb over the fence, if for no other reason than his imagination is piqued about what lies beyond this “artificially” imposed restriction. The purpose of the law is not to secure one’s salvation but to establish one’s guilt. Paul writes: Apart from the law, sin lies dead. That is, before Israel received the Mosaic law at Sinai, sin was not publicly exposed through the posting of the divine prohibitions. For example, one might be utterly unaware that the failure to observe the Sabbath was a sin. Certainly, sin existed and God judged sinners for their misdeeds, but once he made his moral will known to the Israelites, the effect of the law was to bring about an acute awareness of God’s disapproval of all infractions of his revealed will.
THE RELATIONSHIP AMONG SIN, THE LAW AND DEATH
Taken at face value, Paul’s comment, I was once alive apart from the law (7.9), only makes sense if he is speaking about Adam prior to his disobedience. However, it is unlikely that Paul is identifying himself with Adam. It is also unlikely that Paul would think of himself as ever separated from the law, especially in light of his comments in Philippians 3.6, … as to righteousness, under the law blameless. Every righteous Jew would consider himself, from his earliest years, as subject to the law (cp. Luke 18.21). It is most reasonable to take Paul’s meaning as that of the pious Jew who, prior to the reception of the Mosaic law with its commandment, you shall not covet, appeared to be alive. Afterward, however, he recognized that in reality he was dead in his sin.
A person may aspire to live life to the fullest, and by that mean he covets the freedom to do as he pleases. He does not realize that such a pursuit inevitably ends in death. The preacher spoke of such a life long ago: Rejoice, O young man in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment (Ecclesiastes 11.9-10). The sinful passions of those who live in the flesh (cp. 7.5) bear the fruit of death. Sin works death in the heart of the disobedient, and the law, which is good, highlights the magnitude of its sinfulness (cp. 7.13). The law removes any naïve self-deception of presumed innocence. The law exposes one as a sinner and by doing so sentences him to death. This is not the death to sin of which Paul wrote in Romans 6.2 (that is a part of the sanctification process). That is an identification with Christ and his saving death – it frees the believer from his bondage to sin. Here Paul exposes the reader to the effect of the Mosaic law: no one has any self-righteous ground upon which he may stand. The law condemns everyone who violates it!
Still, this is not to say that the Old Testament speaks of the law in a negative way. That is hardly the case. “The notion that the law has life-giving potential is asserted in the OT itself. While God never intended the law to be a means of salvation, the law did come with promises of life for obedience (cf. Lev. 18:5[cf. Rom. 10:5]; Ps. 19:7-10; Ezek. 20:11; Luke 20:28). From these verses, it seems fair to conclude that the law would have given life had it been perfectly obeyed. In this sense the law ‘promises life,’ even though God did not give it with this intention – for he, of course, knew that the power of sin made it impossible for any human being to fulfill the law and so attain the promised life. Thus, although the commandment was ‘unto life,’ this same commandment proved to be a cause of death for Israel” (Moo, p. 439).
THE LAW IS HOLY
The law becomes an instrument used by sin to deceive and kill. Obedience to the law is a good thing; indeed, it is a great ambition, but it remains an unobtainable goal for the man who is deceived by sin. So then the law is given not so much for man to obtain his salvation through complete obedience to its precepts, but that in his failure the Jew might turn to God and his promised redemption in the coming Messiah. It is not the commandment that brings death; sin is the great slayer. Paul has already made it clear that there can be so salvation based on works of the law: But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the prophets bear witness to it – the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith (Romans 3.21-25). This is not a law grounded in works, but a law of faith (3.27). Israel failed when it attempted to find its salvation through obedience to the law and unlike Abraham did not look to God through faith alone (4.4).
Paul began this section (7.7-12) with: What shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! and he comes back to his original premise: So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. The law is the innocent tool that sin conscripts into its service. The Mosaic law has its origin in God and, of course, it must therefore be holy. Although the Jew’s experience with the law resulted in his condemnation, that was not because the law was in any way flawed, but because of resident sin. “Thus, the failure and ‘death’ of Israel should serve to remind all of us that salvation can never be earned by doing the ‘law,’ but only by casting ourselves on the grace and mercy of God in Christ. Augustine says, ‘God commands what we cannot do that we may know what we ought to seek from him.’ And Calvin: ‘In the precepts of the law, God is but the rewarder of perfect righteousness, which all of us lack, and conversely, the severe judge of evil deeds. But in Christ his face shines, full of grace and gentleness, even upon us poor and unworthy sinners.’” (Moo, p. 441).
