Romans - The Gospel of God
Chapter 7 - Free from the Law

A Sinful Nature - Exposed & Demonstrated by the Law vs 7-25
Part 2 - The Power & Deceitful Character of Sin Exposed by the Law vs 7-13

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Romans 7:7-13 (NKJV)

Sin’s Advantage in the Law

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.


Law Cannot Save from Sin

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.

Justifying the Law v 7a
Paul, having asked, ‘What shall we say then? Is the law sin?’ and answered, ‘Certainly not!’ (v 7) goes on to explain why the law is ‘certainly not’ sin. To the Jew the law was absolutely a necessary check on sin. If the law is abandoned how can anyone know how to live a righteous and holy life? Paul will show clearly that apparent outward obedience and conformity to an external law, that is, as he says at verse six, ‘to the oldness of the letter’ is insufficient because we have an inner problem that the law cannot solve or help. Paul, as an unconverted Jew, was a sterling example of conformity to the law outwardly as he informs us at Philippians three verse six: ‘as to righteousness under the law, blameless’, but as to the inward condition of his heart, that was a different story. Indeed, writing to Timothy, as a servant of Christ and one saved by grace, he calls himself ‘the chief’ of sinners as he reflects on the fact that he ‘was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man’, though such, ‘ignorantly in unbelief’ (1 Tim 1 vs 13-15). We are well aware from the gospels of the outward conformity of the Pharisees, of whom Paul was one (Acts 26 v 5; Phil 3 v 5), to the law and yet the inward corruption of their hearts was exposed by Christ Himself (Matt 23 vs 25-28). That is not to suggest that Paul was in the category of the hypocrites who opposed Christ during His ministry for Paul was clearly blindly sincere and ignorantly genuine in his Judaism. So, he describes in these verses, what we may call, a crisis of experience as the conscience is awakened to the reality of sin in the heart in the form of covetousness or wrong desire.

Remember, Paul states at verse five, ‘when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death’, a statement that may seem to imply that there was a fault in the law and the fact that ‘we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter’ (v 6) might also suggest the law is now abandoned. Paul will show both ideas are wrong. There is no fault with God’s law nor will its righteous standard be abandoned! 

So, let’s look at what Paul is saying. First on the personal level and then as to the larger story he reflects. 

Knowing Sin vs 7b-8a
As already noted, he contends that the law itself is ‘certainly not’ sin (v 7), rather it ‘is holy’ and ‘spiritual’ (vs 12, 14) and the commandment, “You shall not covet”, is ‘holy and just and good’ (vs 7, 12, 14). The problem was that the law was the means by which he experimentally learnt (γινώσκω) and fully understood (οἶδα) the power of sin within him (v 7). The law not only exposed the nature of his sin to him, it also exposed him to its power within – ‘sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire’ (v 8) and in so doing it ‘deceived’ him (v 11). Such is the deceptive power of sin, instead of it being restrained and suppressed by the decree and condemnation of the law, the very covetousness forbidden by it, was ignited, fired up and flamed into life! Says Paul, ‘sin revived and I died’ (v 9). Sin in its craftiness, like the serpent did with Eve (2 Cor 11 v 3), deceptively used the law, so to speak, to fulfil its own ends. 

Dying Alive vs 8b-12
Sin was ‘dead’ or dormant or inactive in the absence of the law (v 8) and Paul ‘was alive once without the law’ (V 9). This must mean that while he knew the commandment externally, he had never known its truth and power inwardly as to his conscience. He lived unconsciously and ignorantly of his sin, but then all this reversed for he says, ‘when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death’ (vs 9-10). When the commandment ‘came’ home to his heart with all its convicting power, he ‘died’ to his state of ignorance or unawareness. Sin ‘deceived’ and ‘killed’ him as it took ‘occasion by the commandment’ seizing its ‘opportunity’ to act and destroy him (vs 8, 11). Thus, ‘the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death’ (v 10) confirms what he has already said at verse five: ‘For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death’. Sin, instead of being ‘cowered’ and subdued by the law, was actually ‘aroused’ into action!

Now there is no fault in the law, it was doing what it was designed to do. The ‘law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good’ (v 12). The fault is in man for as Paul is showing, no matter how good or righteous and ‘alive’ he considered himself to be before God, the law proved it was otherwise for sin that was inactive in him and of which he was therefore unaware or ignorant of, was activated making him conscience of lust within even though outwardly considered ‘blameless’ (Phil 3:6). When the commandment ‘came’ to him with all the force of its truth and convicting power, it not only awakened him to his sin, but it awakened sin in him. It showed him his sinfulness as he goes on to say: ‘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’ (v 13). 

A Reflected Narrative, Perhaps
What Paul writes about in these verses of the convicting power of the law and deceptive power of sin would certainly and naturally have been realized in Jewish experience as each generation encountered its truth. But, as to the larger narrative reflected in Paul’s words, we are perhaps pointed to the historical experience of his nation who, before Sinai, were ‘without the law’, but to whom it ‘came’ from LORD Himself with the Ten Commandments spoken from the fire of His divine presence on Mount Sinai. There was ‘no law’ from Adam to Moses (Rom 5 vs 13-14), so the descendants of Abraham, who lived under the assurance of God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, also, like all peoples of the earth, lived under the reign of death because of sin. But it was not until Sinai that they began, as a redeemed and unified nation, to live under God’s codified moral law, which, written on the tablets of stone, was the very foundation of His covenant with them as He came to dwell among them. Having received the law, they from that point were under the law as God’s covenant people. As Paul writes at chapter five verse thirteen, ‘until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law’ and at verse twenty, ‘Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound’. It was when Israel received the law that the power and presence of sin in them was realized by them or shown to them. The law defined, exposed and imputed their sin. So, through the law their ignorance and unawareness were removed and they as a people were confronted with and made conscious of their sin and thus the need of repentance, grace and forgiveness. ‘Once’ they were ‘without the law’ before Sinai and then the law ‘came’ at Sinai (vs 8, 9) with the light and consequences it brought. It was those who heard the Ten Commandments spoken by the living God from the mountain (Exo 20) who broke the first two even before Moses had come down from the mountain after the forty days and nights and he, when he came down to the camp, seeing the golden calf and the folly of the people, literally broke the stone tablets of the law in righteous anger. The action of Moses reflecting the transgression of the people and the consequences for the participants in this transgression, was death (Exo 32 vs 1-19, 26-28). 

Presumably, though, at some point in Paul’s unconverted days, like many a Jew, he realized the commandment’s truth for himself as it convicted him of his sinful covetous desires and accordingly condemned him as a result. If this is so, when it was, he does not say. Some suggest it was at or after his bar mitzvah, when he became a son of the law or commandment at age twelve. Others say that the crisis of conviction may have been for him on the Damascus Road as He was confronted with the light of the risen Christ Indeed, it has even been suggested that what Paul describes in verses seven to twenty-five is of himself in a ‘transitional’ state between conversion and the full assurance of deliverance! This, it is argued, was Paul’s situation in those three days of blindness after he met Christ on the road until Ananias visited him in Damascus after which Paul got back his sight, received the Holy Spirit and was baptized (Acts 9 v 8-18).

Exceedingly Sinful v 13
Paul then gives us another of his emphatic negatives at verse thirteen, ‘Certainly not!’ If he has answered the question, ‘Is the law sin?’ (v 7), he now anticipates a further possible inference someone might make from all he’s been saying, ‘Has then what is good become death to me?’ In a summary statement, Paul answers that the law’s purpose with regard to sin is, ‘that it might appear sin’. Therefore sin ‘was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful’ (v 13). Thus, even though sin acts deceitfully and powerfully as it is identified to me by means of God’s commandment and operates within me even as a result of that same law, wrong cannot be attributed to the law for its first purpose is actually to prevent a person from sinning, hence, “You shall not” or “Thou shalt not” (KJV), even as it identifies and exposes sin for what it is. Also, it presented the way of life God requires, as Paul says: ‘And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death’ (v 10). The problem is not the law, but human sinfulness. This Paul will now further explain in verses fourteen to twenty-five.

AJC