The Problem of Man
Regarding the Law • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 38:34
0 ratings
· 12 viewsHow can a Law which is holy and righteous and good bring about my death? Paul squarely addresses and resolves this seeming contradiction in Romans 7:!3.
Files
Notes
Transcript
As we have been working through Paul’s exposition in chapter 7 regarding the place and purpose of the Law, he of necessity had to answer the question, “is the Law sin?” After all, we had to be separated from the Law in the manner of of a wife separated by her husband by death. So starting in verse 7, the apostle has been providing, in a sense, a defense of the Law, saying:
What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! Rather, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law. For I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.”
But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, worked out in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the Law sin is dead.
Now I was once alive apart from the Law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died; and this commandment, which was to lead to life, was found to lead to death for me.
For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
And so Paul has explained that far from being sin, the Law is holy and righteous and good. Rather than being sin, the Law outlines holiness, both in whole and in part, it defines in detail the righteousness necessary for a person to merit the favor of a holy God. Instead of being off-base or unjust, it is instead even-handed and fair, both in what it approves and what it abhors, and even to the extent of both its promise and its penalty. Instead of being evil toward us, the Law instead is supremely good toward us, for it shows us the way we may live a life pleasing toward God!
In this, Paul has now sufficiently well established that the Law itself is not sin; but in doing so, he has also said that it has killed him, for example in Romans 7:10 he declared “and this commandment, which was to lead to life, was found to lead to death for me.” And this immediately raises something of an alarm in our minds – a dissonance which seems to say that the Law, rather than being good as Paul has claimed, is somehow instead evil. For how can something that has been so demonstrated to be good, cause not only harm to me, but even my death?
And in truth, this is a question which must be addressed directly and immediately, for we seem to have have before us something of a juxtaposition, the Law as both good and yet also as a cause of death.
And so, rather than passing over this objection and ending this second section with, Rom 7:12, “So, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good”, he instead goes on to resolve even this difficulty for us as he transitions into the third major part of his writing regarding the place and purpose of the Law.
Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by working out my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.
And so, rather than having our framework overshadow our text for today, we instead deal with verse 13 as it stands, being altogether benefited and emboldened in our understanding by what it actually says; for Paul’s immediate response to the question ought to emphasize just how important it is to him that he considers this question to be.
You will notice here first of all, of course, that just as Paul abhorred the idea that we should “continue in sin so that grace may increase” in chapter 6 verse 1, and again the idea that we should “sin because we are not under law but under grace” in verse 15 of that chapter, even so he likewise abhors the idea that the Law - “that which is good”, might have become a cause for death for him. "μὴ γένοιτο”, he declares, such a thing is an impossibility unto itself, it is unthinkable! (This response is, by the way, why so many desire to think of this verse as the start of a new section, which in a sense he is also doing here even as he is culminating this second partition in his discussion regarding the Law.)
He is, in a sense, filling out a portrait he has already sketched out roughly in the preceding verses, finishing the masterpiece with all of the nuance of color necessary for us to truly comprehend what he’s been trying to tell us all along, in a sense saying “I’ve glossed over it, I’ve outlined it, I’ve roughed it in for you, and now at long last you are ready to truly understand our real problem!”
Was our problem the Law? Was the thing that causes death the Law?
If you’ve been paying attention, you will agree with Paul’s assessment that such a thing is abhorrent; and in truth he’s already told us clearly when he originally laid down his proposition in Romans 5:12–14 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the trespass of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.”
There, as he carefully laid down the core principles he’s been interrupting to deal with sin in chapter 6 and the Law in chapter 7, he had already clearly laid down the idea that death came before the Law came, death “reigned from Adam until Moses”.
So we should already have been understanding that the Law, which is truly good, did not become a cause of death for us; Paul is reminding us here that not only had death preceded the coming of the Law, but also that the Law has not worsened or expanded the reign of death.
Here in Romans 7, Paul agrees with and strengthens his statements from chapter 5, “Rather it was sin” which has become a cause of his death here, just as in chapter 5 he had declared death is caused wholly and completely on account of sin.
And in the middle of this, he says something of profound importance to us, “it was sin,” he says, “in order that it might be shown to be sin, by woking out my death through that which is good...”
This is why it is so very hard for people to nail down exactly who Paul is speaking about here in this second section, from verse 7 through verse 13. Is he talking about himself? Is he talking about another person? Is he talking about the unregenerate? Is he talking about the regenerate? Commentaries have spilled vats of ink attempting to address this very question in these verses, such that they all too frequently miss the point of the verses.
All along, I have stated clearly that the great apostle is sharing his own testimony here in chapter 7; that he is talking about himself and his own experiences as he reveals the truth regarding the Law.
To more specifically identify the precise point in life he is speaking of here, he is sharing with us his own awakening to the true nature not only of the Law, but more importantly about his own enslavement to sin. He’s not talking about a regenerated person who has been freed and separated from the Law, but a person “in the flesh” which he had described in Romans 7:5 “For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” In this, he is revealing this most painful position in which a person realizes that not only is the Law holy and righteous and good, but also that they themselves have failed to meet its requirements.
Paul, then, in describing his own experience in being faced with his own condemnation under the Law; helps us realize how impossible it would be to lay a charge at the feet of God by claiming that His holy law was in some way evil, that He had created it only for the purpose of killing us. For the experience of Paul is the experience of all of us as well!
There is a clear and certain universality of experience, which is why we have such a hard time understanding who the “I” is who Paul is speaking of. Is Paul speaking of himself? Yes, he is! But he also speaks of our own experience as well; each and every true believer must likewise come through this same crucible, through this same torment. We must, each one of us, come to realize that the Law is indeed holy, and righteous, and good, and yet at the same time we find ourselves, through the Law, under a sentence of condemnation unto death. This struggle is one which every Christian will relate with!
But you do not need to be a Christian to relate with this, for this does not describe someone who has passed beyond this condemnation, but rather it describes a person feeling the full weight of their own condemnation. A person who the Law has come to, rather than a person who has already, of necessity, died to and passed beyond the reach of the Law.
This Paul describing himself and every other person who is under the conviction of sin, understanding that sin exists within us, that it is alive within us.
For this is something we are truly loathe to admit, even to ourselves.
We far prefer to think that sin is dead, that it has no power over us. We try to cast it as a mere deficiency afflicting some poor, destitute souls – just as we tend to think that although hell exists, it’s population is really rather small, the handful of truly evil people like Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, Emperor Nero, or Ivan the Terrible joining Satan and his grotesque demons.
In other words, we tend to see sin as something that somebody else does, as something that is far removed from us personally.
And nothing could be further from the truth!
Oh, we don’t see it, we don’t feel it. That’s what the apostle has been telling us all along! “I was once alive,” he said in verse 9. Sin seemed dead to me, it had no power over me, it had no sway over me, it had no strength over me. I was moral, I was just, I was educated, I knew every doctrine and every rule, I was blameless before God.
And nothing could be further from the truth. Far from being blameless, Saul of Tarsus was blameworthy, but he didn’t realize it. He was educated by the finest teachers, but foolish in his understanding. He was unjust, but unable to comprehend it. He was immoral, but without the discernment of Christ he was blind to that fact.
Rather than being alive, Saul of Tarsus was dead, but didn’t realize it, he lacked the ability to rightly perceive his own peril.
This isn’t true solely of Saul, the “Pharisee of Pharisees”, but it is universally true of every person born under the sun! And yes, that does include everyone who is listening to me!
And yet, people often do perceive that things are not as they should be; we become aware that injustice exists, that needs exist, that there is in a sense an element of continual decline, that things need to be set aright. And in our flesh, we grasp at straws continually to address them, to bolster and teach a moral living, to educate people so as to lift them up out of their present squalor, we establish clubs and societies, we enact laws, we try to bend public opinion, we get ministers and religion to help spruce things up, we increase the minimum wage, we establish rights to try and guarantee the result.
And yet, although the issues may be masked for a time, all of these attempts never seem to work. Why? Because they are not within God’s plan to fundamentally change the nature of man.
And so God established His Law, and allowed sin to use that holy, righteous, and good Law as a fulcrum, a base of operations to work out even more sin in our lives, indeed to kill us, to work out our death through that which is good.
In other words, we must be clear that it is not the Law which kills, but rather it is sin that kills, and it can and it will use anything available to it – even the holy and righteous and good Law of God – to do so. We must come to the point of realizing the malignancy of sin, if we are to deal with it rightly.
For this is the purpose of the Law. That’s why sin is allowed to abuse the Law of God, so that sin “might be shown to be sin.”
If God were to simply say, “this is sin, don’t do it” and never allow it to come to us, we would never understand just how abusive sin is toward a God who is Himself holy, and righteous, and good.
You see, a natural man not under the conviction of the Holy Spirit has a certain blindness to sin, being incapable of recognizing sin for what it is. His conscience is seared such that though he is disfigured and grotesque in the sight of holy God, he is deluded into thinking himself to be clean. He doesn’t realize that it has been seared and is no longer capable of rightly sensing his malady.
And it is sin which so injures us by taking from us the capacity to know we are injured! It has deceived us into thinking that we are rich, when we are but paupers. It “eats at a man’s soul,” wrote Charles Spurgeon of this deception, “and makes a man contented in his chains.”
And so, deluded by sin and under the reign and rule of sin, the sinner mistakes his sinfulness for righteousness, never realizing the awful truth of the matter, never realizing he stands condemned, never realizing his rebellion against God.
And so, into this delusion, God sent the Law, a Law which was certain to be abused and twisted by sin, a Law sent as a tutor to hold custody of all under sin’s grasp, something good for us in that through the Law God may provide us the instruction of just what sin is.
For until we understand the sinfulness of sin, we can never rightly understand our need for a Savior.
So by Sin then twisting that which is good and right and true in order to work out my death in me – or, to say it another way, to remove the scree and debris away from the hard and certain truth of my condemnation, God has now ensured that I may then perceive and understand both my sin and its eternally damning cost to me.
For nothing less than such a revelation by God is able to bring me under conviction, to demonstrate my need for repentance. In John 16, Jesus declared that it is the place of the Holy Spirit to bring us this conviction, saying in verse 8, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment”. It is the Holy Spirit which causes this Law to come to us, as Paul has described. Did Saul of Tarsus need to be taught the Law? Absolutely! As a young child, he would have been taught the Law by his parents as they prepared him for when they felt that he would mature to the point of manhood and then be responsible for keeping it, likely around the age of 12. He went to Jerusalem and studied the Law there. He was delivered over to be taught by Gamaliel, the foremost teacher of the Law, he was a “pharisee of pharisees”, he knew the law in and out, frontwards and backwards and sidewards.
All of these things merely prepared him for the moment the Law came to him, when the Holy Spirit took that head-knowledge, and brought Saul of Tarsus under an intense, personal conviction, that he finally realized the full and terrifying truth of “you shall not covet”, and how that applied so very personally to him.
And just like the apostle, who had at this time, when the Law came to him, not yet put his faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we, too, must come under this same horrid conviction of sin, this same tormented state in which we realize that we stand naked and dirty and grotesque, condemned by the thrice-holy God who made the world and all things in it, realizing that in myself, in my actions, there is no good thing – that sin, on account of its malignant desire to consume and control me, has such a hold on me that it even subverts the holy Law of God, something which is entirely good and holy itself, that sin is ever working in me for evil – to perpetuate evil in me, and to work ever more evil through me.
Can keeping the Law save us? No, not even close. Sin uses the Law, it is in a sense more powerful than the Law, and it will keep using the Law to actively deceive us into thinking that we can make ourselves acceptable to God on our own.
To continue this thinking is to deny the purpose and place of the Law, which is expressly meant to reveal to us the utter sinfulness of sin. The Law was never meant to be a means of salvation, but it does put our need of salvation at the center of the stage. It puts on display for us the essential problem of man, namely sin.
Thank God for His Law! We need it, it is essential to the gospel! But by no means does it provide that salvation itself! For as long as we remain under the Law, as a wife is under the authority of her husband, sin will continue to use that Law toward its own disastrous end, using and abusing the Law for the purpose of our death!
Our only escape from this death is to be made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, to be united and joined to Him who was raised from the dead.
Praise be to God, who has provided this way of escape for all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with faith like that of Abraham, confessing Him as Lord, believing that God has raised Him from the dead, who made us who are in Christ to die to the Law and be joined to Christ Jesus!
Let us pray!