Here’s what happens to people from time to time. They realise they have a problem with a particular sin or sins, so they decide to do something about it. They read something like Romans 6, that we read last week and they decide that from now on they’ll be slaves of righteousness. Whenever they feel tempted to disobey God they’ll resist. They remember God’s promise to provide a way of escape and they resolve to ask him to provide it next time they’re tempted. Yet the next time they somehow forget to ask for that way out. They fall into the same thing they’ve been doing for years. And they can’t understand it. It’s like they have a split personality. It’s like there’s a war going on in their brain. One moment they’re winning the war and the next they’re failing. I wonder is that how you feel sometimes? It’s certainly how Paul felt, often. It’s a major reason why he puts such an emphasis on the importance of grace for the Christian. He’s very much aware of how often we fail to live up to our hopes and aspirations to Godliness.
The great problem he’s found with using the law as the means to righteousness is that inevitably it leads to death, not life. This is what he concludes in 7:5: "Our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death." You see, the law can never help us. On the contrary, turning to the law only gives an opportunity to our sinful natures to rebel and that rebellion then leads to death. Only living under grace can lead to life.
Is there something wrong with the law?
But then that conclusion leads him to ask whether there’s something wrong with the law. Did God make a mistake perhaps? Or was this just a bad joke by God on us humans? He says: "What then should we say? That the law is sin?" This is a real possibility given what we’ve concluded about the law so far. Is that why we need to escape from its power? Is that why we’re told not to rely on it? Because it just provides our sinful natures with a reason to rebel once again? His answer is "By no means!" It’s not the law that’s the problem. The problem isn’t the law but our own sinfulness.
Why is the law a problem for me?
So why is the law a problem for me? Why has he spent so much time telling us to forget the law and concentrate on grace? Well, he says, the law is a problem for me because it’s the law that brings out and shows up my sinfulness.
Now we saw in Romans 5:13 that sin has been in the world even before the law was given, but it wasn’t seen to be sin until people had God’s law before them to highlight their failings. He takes the example of covetousness. He probably chooses this for a couple of reasons. First because it’s one sin that everyone falls into from time to time. Whether it’s wanting to keep up with the Jones or envying someone else’s abilities or possessions or relationships, or simply wishing you could have the latest household appliance, everyone experiences covetousness at one level or another. But covetousness wasn’t really a problem for us until we were told that it was wrong. But as soon as the law was given, sin began to produce all sorts of desires in the human heart.
It might be that Paul is thinking here of the covetousness that was at the root of the first sin, by Adam and Eve. If you remember back to Genesis 3, the devil pointed out to Eve that the tree was good for food, was a delight to the eyes and was desired to make one wise. It would make them like God. But it was even more subtle than that. The mechanism that the devil used to tempt them was to distort the commandment of God. To make it sound like God’s commandment was meant to limit their freedom. We talked about this last week didn’t we? The devil’s method was to provoke in them a desire to rebel against God’s rightful authority; to convince them they needed to throw off the shackles of his authoritarian rule; to assert their right to choose what was good for them, what would please them. Never mind that God had provided everything they could ever need. Never mind that God had provided them with the tree of life that fruits all year round. This commandment of God was there to rebel against. And they fell for it.
Now can you see that if there had been no commandment not to eat of the fruit of that tree there would have been no point Satan tempting them. Nor would there have been any power in the temptation. The power of temptation comes from the idea that God’s law somehow limits us.
So the coming of the law is the means by which sin is roused in me, the trigger for my rebellious character to rise up. And so, paradoxically, the law that was given, apparently, to bring life, actually brings death. This is the paradox of every religious system that seeks to instruct us in the way to righteousness, the way to God. In the end, our fallen human nature prevents us from doing what is required, no matter how good the law may be. In the end, as we read in v11, sin will deceive us. It’ll tell us that following our religious system will bring us salvation, or happiness, to closeness to God. It’ll tell us that if we just do the right thing, God will owe us; that our obedience will put God under obligation to us. This was Job’s mistake. We’ll be studying Job and the problem of suffering at the end of July, and we’ll discover then that one of Job’s problems was that he thought that his righteousness put God under an obligation to look after him. Well, you’ll have to be here to hear how that dilemma resolves itself in the story of Job. But what we discover in our own experience is that at the very moment that we reach out to grasp what we’re seeking, to reach the level of righteousness we desire, sin will trip us up. It’ll make us fail the very commandment we’re seeking to follow, with the result that instead of life we’ll reap death.
So then, why did God give us the law in the first place. If the law itself is good, as we’re told by God’s word, what is good about it?
What is Good about the law?
In v13 we discover that the law has one significant and vital purpose. It’s good and right purpose is to show up sin for what it is. To show that our sinfulness is utterly sinful.
You see what happens is this: we’re going along perfectly happily, without a worry in the world. then someone comes along and tells us we can’t do something, or we can’t have something that we want. And how do we respond? Our shackles rise. We suddenly want that thing more than anything. We start to think of ways to get around the limitation of the law. Maybe we even begin to plot how to do it or have it. Let’s face it, that sort of response happens at the human level, let alone at the level of God’s commands, doesn’t it? Or are you different to me? It’s the whole basis of reverse psychology isn’t it? Tell someone they can’t have something and they’ll immediately decide they want it.
But when we’re thinking about God’s law and our ability to keep it, there’s another dimension to the goodness of the law. It’s still related to what I’ve just been saying, but it’s the positive side to that negative picture. And it’s this: the law acts in our lives in such a way that our sinfulness is shown up, our inability to reach God’s standards on our own becomes obvious and we’re driven back to our need for something beyond ourselves, to our need for Grace. That’s where Paul goes in the next section, where he thinks about the way the law affects us.
How does the law affect me?
So how does the law affect me? How does the law help me to rely on God rather than myself.
Now there’s been much discussion by theologians about who Paul is thinking of in these verses from 14-24. Is he talking about the Jew trying to obey the law? Is he talking about his own experience prior to becoming a Christian? Or is it his current experience? Or is he saying this is the experience of all Christians as they seek to obey God. Well, we haven’t got the time to go into the various arguments. I can explain some of them to you later if you’re interested, but let me just say that I believe he’s talking about his own experience as an example of what every Christian experiences as they seek to live lives as slaves of righteousness.
First he explains the problem. The law is actually a spiritual thing. To truly obey the law requires me to do so from the inmost heart, from the spirit. But I’m naturally unspiritual and I live in an unspiritual body. Elsewhere he describes the natural person as being dead in their sins. So I have a problem. I know what I want to do, but I can’t do it. In fact what I find is that over and over again I do the very things I hate. So what does that prove?
The Law is Good
Well, it proves that deep down I believe the law is good. The law affirms the things that I want to do, and it forbids the things I hate.
There is a war within me
But it also shows that there’s a duality at work within me. There are two forces warring with each other within me. In my inmost self I delight in God’s law. God’s Spirit who dwells within me has changed the way I see things. I no longer delight in sin. Rather I delight in the things the law requires.
But at the same time I find that my old sinful body, the old me, continues to choose sin whenever it gets a chance. And this is so frustrating. I know what’s right. I want to do it, but the moment I choose the right thing to do, evil lies close at hand. In fact this is like a law within me, like the law of gravity. It’s as though I can’t choose to do something right without the possibility of sin being presented to me. It’s like my old self is so warped that whatever I do ends up crooked. It’s like you get out your favourite plane to smooth a piece of wood and discover that there’s a chip in the blade, so that no matter how hard you try, the wood never gets any smoother. Or you get out the broom to sweep the kitchen and discover there’s a clump of bristles missing, so that no matter how much you sweep, there’s always a line of dirt left behind.
And you get into this spiral of frustration. You can hear it coming out as Paul recounts his own experience. The harder you try, the more you fail. The more you try to suppress the sinful nature the more it asserts itself. The more you try to give yourself over to the slavery of righteousness that we talked about last week, the more sin takes you captive. And in the end you feel like screaming, as Paul does: "24Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"
And so the law achieves its purpose. It drives us back to God. And the answer rings out as clearly as the plea: "25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" The only answer to the plight of humanity is this: that Jesus Christ would rescue us from our own fallenness; that God would give us his Holy Spirit to dwell within us and enable us to keep this spiritual law in our inmost hearts, that he might take our unspiritual bodies and transform them. In fact that he might give us new bodies and minds that will be able to serve him as he desires. That’s what we’ll discover in 2 weeks time when we look at Romans ch8 and life in the Spirit. God in his grace has provided a way that we can be right with him.
Only Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit living within me can rescue me from this body of death. And that will be an ongoing struggle while ever I live in this old fallen body. But in the meantime even if my flesh remains enslaved to sin I’ll seek to be a slave to the law of God in my mind. And with God’s help I will conquer. But that will have to wait until another day.
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