Alba 10-17-2021
IS THE LAW SIN? CERTAINLY NOT!
Romans 7:7-13
What if your child or grandchild, only three years of age, would take off on a journey on her own to explore the area around your home. She wouldn't know the dangers that are out there.
If you lived in town, she might blissfully cross a busy street, enter a store in the neighborhood and walk around to see what she could see. How would you react if you caught a glimpse of her as she was walking back from the store?
I think you would be very angry, and very upset. You would probably be in the mood to punish her. Why? Well, she left the house without telling you, she went across the street without you, she went into a public place all alone as a three year old!
She did all this and placed herself in a very dangerous situation! You love her and want to protect her. And want her to know that what she did was very wrong, and that she should NEVER do it again!
She had put herself in great danger, but she did not see it. She had been having a great time. The manager at the store gave her a candy bar, and someone had helped her to cross the street. And she does not understand why you are upset!
You would tell her, “Child, what you did was WRONG!” And she would tell you in her cute little voice, “Well, you never SAID I couldn’t cross the street. You never SAID I couldn’t go to the store alone. Why am I in trouble?”
The rules were not in place. She had not been told of the danger.
And that’s really the point of the Law of God. He gave it to show us just how messed up we really are, and warn us of the danger that sin poses in our lives. The purpose of the Law is to reveal the extent of our sinfulness.
Without an accurate understanding of our sinfulness we won’t have a clear understanding of why we need a Savior. That is what the apostle Paul explains in our text for today. Turn with me to Romans 7:7-13 as I read:
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. 9 I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. 10 And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death.
11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. 12 Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
13 Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.
The question here is, “Is the Law sin?” The answer is clearly “No!”
When God gave the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai it was good, very good. That Law wasn’t something that men made up; it was given by God Himself. The Law itself is holy and right and good because it reflects the character and will of God Himself, who is holy.
So God's Law is good because He is good. But then there is another question one might have. If we’re not under the Law anymore, and the apostle Paul's letter to the Romans makes it clear that we are not, does that make the commandments bad?
Again the answer is “No!” The purpose of the law is to teach us right from wrong, to give us guidelines, and to show sin for what it is. But it is true, it does not save us.
Because the commandments of the Law are limited in what they can do, some might conclude that they’re really not all that important. But Paul rejects that line of reasoning and says the law is holy, righteous, and good.
That's because the commandments God has given are a reflection of His character. They are bound up in His own integrity. They give us a window into the purity of God.
Look at Psalm 119. Verse 127 says, “I love Your commandments more than gold, yes, than fine gold!” Verse 128 says, “Therefore all Your precepts concerning all things I consider to be right; I hate every false way.”
Verse 138 says, “Your testimonies, which You have commanded, are righteous and very faithful.” Verse 151 says, “all Your commandments are truth.” And verse 160 says, “The entirety of Your word is truth.”
God’s Law is righteous. His Law is good in the sense that it’s beneficial and helpful, intended by God to be a source of blessing.
The commandments define sin, but are not sin in or of themselves. It is not the law’s fault that sin has exploited the Law to make it encourage sin in our lives.
One professor explained the function of the law this way, “The law is the light that reveals how dirty the room is, not the broom that sweeps it clean.”
God’s purpose is to use the commandments to make sin recognizable as sin, and to show sin to be utterly sinful. The commandments define exactly what sin is. They shine the light of God’s holiness into human behavior.
Just because the Law doesn’t save or sanctify us doesn’t mean that it is flawed or deficient in some way. It isn’t God’s Law that is flawed, it’s us. The Law is holy and perfect, we are the ones who are messed up.
Paul found that out when the commandment (specifically “Thou shalt not covet”) which was designed to give life through the keeping of it, led to death through the breaking of it.
There came a day when he realized what that commandment meant, and his conscience awoke and moral responsibility came.
He realized that he had broken the commandment, and became convicted of sin and realized he was accountable for his sin.
Prior to that realization, Paul was unaware of how the Law should be guiding his life in the area of coveting. Until he came face to face with that law, he was blissfully unaware.
So Paul is telling us, “Hey, without the Law we would NEVER know what sin is.” Before the Law, people were unaware of their sinful state and separation from God, and so they were unaware that their behavior was wrong, sinful!
Without the Law, Paul would not have known how bad his coveting was. But that led to another problem. The more of the Law that Paul became aware of, the more sin he found himself committing.
That's why he says in verse eight, “But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire.”
You could refer to this as the “Don't touch” theory. If you see a sign that says, “Don't touch”, there is a great temptation to do so.
You see, once the law of God comes into our lives it arouses sin, it activates sin, it creates a surge of rebellion in our hearts. The rebellion has been there all along, and through the Law we discover it in our hearts.
I heard about a museum that had a don't touch sign on a particular item. But it didn't work. People seem determined to disobey the sign.
Then someone came up with an idea. Instead of “Don't touch”, they put up a sign that said, “Be sure to wash hands after touching.” It stopped the offenders immediately.
The commandment caused Paul to see how dirty he was and led him to the place where he recognized that he was guilty and dead spiritually. So he says in verse nine, “when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.”
The law doesn’t save us. It doesn’t draw us closer to God. It doesn’t fix our problems. The law leaves us in a state of death and despair.
Verse ten says, “And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death.” The Law itself is not bad, not sinful, but what the Law does is, it reveals sin and shows it has consequences.
A doctor and a lawyer were together at a party. Their conversation was constantly interrupted by people describing their ailments and asking the doctor for free medical advice.
After an hour of this, the exasperated doctor asked the lawyer, "What do you do to stop people from asking you for legal advice when you're out of the office?"
The lawyer replied "I give it to them, and then I send them a bill." The doctor was shocked, but agreed to give it a try.
The next day, still feeling slightly guilty, the doctor prepares the bills. When he goes to place them in his mailbox, he finds a bill... from the lawyer.
Here's the truth, if you deal with the law in any way, there are consequences. And there is a consequence of God's Law.
Theoretically, perfect obedience to the Law could bring eternal life, and with it happiness and holiness.
But no one but Jesus Christ has, or could, ever fully obey it. Concerning Jesus, Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
And in Matthew 5:17 Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” And because He fulfilled the Law, we can be counted righteous in Him.
The law does exactly what God intends it to do, and that purpose is good. The fact that the law reveals sin and arouses sin in the sinner does not make the law wicked.
When a person is rightly convicted and sentenced for murder, there is no fault in the law, or with those responsible for upholding it. The fault is with the one who broke the law.
The problem is the deceitfulness of sin. As someone has said, “If you hang around the creek long enough, you’re eventually going to slide in.” Paul says in verse 11 “For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.”
Sin deceives and according to James 1:15 there are further consequences. It says, “when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
To use again the analogy of the murder trial, it is not the law against murder, but the committing of murder that merits punishment. The law itself is good; it is the breaking of it that is evil.
And so much more is God’s law good, and so much more evil is the breaking of it.
So verse 13 tells us that it is not the Law that condemns us. It is our own sin that does it. However, the Law is essential because it unmasks sin’s deadly deception.
It brings this deception to light in our lives. It makes our sin very personal, and we see where it has claim in our life and actions.
It is not the law that is the cause of spiritual death but rather it is sin.
The commandment simply makes it plain to us what our situation is: we are sinners and deserve condemnation.
It also reveals our need for a Savior, our need for Jesus, who died on that cross to take the penalty we deserve so we could be forgiven. It is in Jesus' righteousness that we stand before God, not in our own.
The law is good, but we are not. Sadly we are unable to keep even the Ten Commandments (much less the other many commandments of God) well enough to make it to heaven on our own.
We would be like a five year old boy taking a college entrance exam for Harvard University. Unless that boy is a certified genius, he’d flunk the exam.
Now it’s not the exam’s fault that the boy doesn’t pass; the exam is simply doing what college entrance exams are supposed to do.
But the exam itself doesn’t provide the five year old any way to get to the point where he can pass the exam. Only a good school can help that five year old grow into the kind of person who can pass the entrance exam.
So the point here is: The law only exposes sin, but it doesn’t give us any power to overcome sin.
The Law has no power to save and the Law has no power to sanctify.
It is Jesus Christ who can save. He is our Savior!
It is Jesus Christ who can sanctify. He is our Sanctifier!
Is the Law sin? No!
What does it do? It makes us aware of our need for a Savior!
CONCLUSION:
The little girl who went wandering off without supervision was like the world was BEFORE the law. There was sin and wrong in the world, but many simply did not know it was sin or wrong!
The Law reveals, it illuminates sin. Like a straightedge, when we compare ourselves to it, we see how crooked we are. Or like a carpenter's plum line. It shows whether or not we are off kilter.
Or, like a mirror, the Law shows us what we’re really like.
James 1:23-24: “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” (NIV)
An old Chinese proverb says: “To an ugly man, every mirror is an enemy.” The mirror is not the problem; it’s my ugly mug.
The Law is the mirror that shows us how sinful we really are.
Even back in Romans 3:20 it says: “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.”
It is also through the Law that we become conscious of our need for Jesus.
