7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.
It's true that we need to be delivered from the law.
The law requires us to do things we have absolutely no desire to do. Sinners love sin, darkness and lust - and the law asks us to stop loving those things and instead to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, to love our neighbour as ourselves, to keep the Ten Commandments (which are expanded into the whole of the moral law of God).
Not only does the law required us to do things we don't want to do, but we can't do them. It's not possible for the sinner.
The law requires absolute perfection and nothing less. If we keep 99% of the law, but break 1% of it, we've broken the whole thing. And effort doesn't count for anything. The fact that we tried does not matter.
The law never gives up, never takes a break - it applies 24/7 all 365 days of the year. No time off for good behaviour. No vacation time. No sick days.
And the law crushes the sinner. MacArthur says..... The Law crushes the soul because when the sinner violates the Law, they experience guilt and shame and sorrow and restlessness and pain and futility and doubt and fear and remorse and hopelessness and the sinner has nothing within himself to recover.
The law promises to punish the sinner eternally in hell. There will never be an end. We will never receive enough punishment to cancel out our sin.
The law doesn't help us. It sets the standard but doesn't do a thing to help us keep it.
Once we've broken the law, the law doesn't give us a way to fix it. And the law doesn't forgive us. And it offers us no hope.
Wow, that is bleak.
Since all of that is true - is the law evil? If we need to be delivered from the law, does that mean the law is sin? Never!! In fact, v12 says the law is holy, righteous and good.
It's not the fault of the law that we cannot obey it or that we are guilty of breaking it.
The law reveals God's divine standard to us and allows us to accurately identify our sin - which is our inability to meet that standard. Paul gives us his own testimony of that happening in his life in v7. The law reveals sin, and that's a good thing.
The law doesn't just reveal sin though, in v8 we see that incites it sin (again, like the forbidden fruit). This is good because we begin to see what a disastrous situation we're actually in as we see the reality of sin in our lives.
The law ruins the sinner. We see this in v9. Unbelievers are free to do whatever they want, to live it up, completely unconvicted and with no fear of judgement. Even a superficial understanding of the law allows this to continue. But when the full force of the law is revealed, when we truly see God's righteousness in contrast to our own ugly sin, we are crushed, devastated, completely brought under the conviction of sin. It ruins the sinners security and confidence and drives them to God because they see they are helpless. The law was designed to be the path of life, if we could keep it perfectly, but it destroys us because we cannot keep it (v10)
Sin is so deceitful that it actually convinces us that we can please God on our own merit, that we can earn our salvation. (v11)
The law is holy, righteous and good - it is a perfect reflection of God's holiness.
And the word for believers here is this, look, the Law did its work in your salvation, it revealed sin, it roused sin, it brought you to ruin, it reflected the utter sinfulness of sin and it brought you to the place where you ran to the one who would forgive you because He had paid the price Himself. He had redeemed us from the curse of the Law by being made a curse for us. It drove you to Christ.
But it didn't end there because the Law still has the same kind of work in your sanctification that it had in your salvation. As a believer, the Law continues to do its work.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Romans 7:13
2 comments:
Wow, this is a great post. Really clarifies things regarding the law.
I find this section of Romans quite confusing, so I've really been enjoying studying these passages, it's been so clarifying!
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