Romans – A Treatise
Chapter Seven
ARE WE UNDER LAW OR GRACE?
Scripture Reading: verses 7-14
WHAT SHALL WE SAY THEN? IS THE LAW SIN? GOD FORBID. NAY, I HAD NOT KNOWN SIN, BUT BY THE LAW: FOR I HAD NOT KNOWN LUST, EXCEPT THE LAW HAD SAID, THOU SHALT NOT COVET. BUT SIN, TAKING OCCASION BY THE COMMANDMENT, WROUGHT IN ME ALL MANNER OF CONCUPISCENCE. FOR WITHOUT THE LAW SIN WAS DEAD. FOR I WAS ALIVE WITHOUT THE LAW ONCE: BUT WHEN THE COMMANDMENT COME, SIN REVIVED, AND I DIED. AND THE COMMANDMENT, WHICH WAS ORDAINED TO LIFE, I FOUND TO BE UNTO DEATH. FOR SIN, TAKING OCCASION BY THE COMMANDMENT, DECEIVED ME, AND BY IT SLEW ME. WHEREFORE THE LAW IS HOLY, AND THE COMMANDMENT HOLY, AND JUST, AND GOOD. WAS THEN THAT WHICH IS GOOD MADE DEATH UNTO ME? GOD FORBID. BUT SIN, THAT IT MIGHT APPEAR SIN, WORKING DEATH IN ME BY THAT WHICH IS GOOD; THAT SIN BY THE COMMANDMENT MIGHT BECOME EXCEEDING SINFUL. FOR WE KNOW THAT THE LAW IS SPIRITUAL: BUT I AM CARNAL, SOLD UNDER SIN.
The truths presented in these verses may seem somewhat complicated and difficult to understand. However, we must remember we are listening to a legal argument which goes logically to the root of every moral question in defense of the grace of God on behalf of a guilty sinner. Little wonder Paul, brilliant attorney for the defense, leaves no stone unturned in this lawyer’s brief, in order that, when he has completed his argument, every opposing voice might be silent and the challenge sent out: Who is he that condemneth? It is an unanswered challenge.
The question now before us is the incorrigible nature of what Paul has called “our old man,” or the man after the flesh. It is the capital “I” in the unregenerate state. as descended from Adam, it is what we were before the new birth took place and the power of the Spirit of God was introduced into our lives. Man in his unregenerate state was under law; God placed him under law to bring him fully to the realization he was a sinner, every fibre in his unregenerate moral being responding to his impulse toward sin. The holy, just, and good law was given in order that each of us, descended from Adam, might be brought to realize, not that we were dead in trespasses and sins, but that we were alive in them. It is along this line of argument that Paul says in the seventh verse: “I had not known sin but by the law: I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Remember this: the law of Moses set forth the full range of the moral requirements to be rendered by the creature toward the Creator. It began with the worship of the Lord his God and ran the full gamut of human impulse down to the last point, “thou shalt not covet.” It covered morally the entire range of human behavior, and in that sense the law has never been set aside; we can still say that by the law is the knowledge of sin. When the law of Moses is laid alongside a human life, it is always true that in one point or another we find the human life inconsistent, crooked, and sinful.
But Paul raises another question in verse 8: “For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” This reasoning may seem complicated, yet, if read carefully, there is simplicity. When Paul says, “without the law sin was dead,” he is simply indicating what he says in Ephesians 2, referring to the Gentiles who were never under law. They were “dead in trespasses and sins.” In other words, they were going on with evil without fully realizing how sinful their conduct was. We have the same thing in our own civilized society. There are many people, for instance, who have formed the habit of blaspheming. If questioned, they simply say nothing was meant by it. With them it is a dead issue. They are none the less guilty, because they are taking the name of God in vain. When the law is brought to bear on them, “thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” then sin becomes a living practice. In other words, they now do it consciously; they have been warned of its evil. So Paul says, “when the commandment came sin revived.” It became a positive, active practice, and the human conscience was well aware of it. In other words, it is the distinction between being dead in sins and being alive and active in them. It is to the Gentiles in idolatrous Ephesus that Paul writes, “Ye were dead in trespasses and sins.” They had never been under law. But God’s testimony reached them, and after that sin became a living, active principle which they pursued in a positive way. The Lord Jesus points out the same thing in John 15 where He is dis-cussing those that persecute His own followers. He says:
But all these things will they do unto you for My Name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. (verses 21, 22)
When the light of God shines on the human spirit, whether that light reaches a person in the words of the law of Moses or in any other testimony the Lord is pleased to use, such testimony immediately makes him conscious of evil-doing, and he is doubly responsible thereafter for every step he takes.
Referring to Paul himself, or rather to Saul of Tarsus (his unregenerate name), he was a law keeper, meticulously observing every requirement of the law, or at least he thought he did, until one item of the law reached his conscience. He touches on it here.
It was the requirement, “thou shalt not covet.” It was that which showed-up Saul, revealing that he had an evil heart and his practice was evil. It made him conscious of sin, not as a dead thing, but as a living principle in his life. So he says in verse 10: “The commandment, which was ordained to life I found to be unto death.” He thought he was justifying himself by keeping the law, but as an offender in one point, he was guilty of all. He found the very thing, the very principle of law-keeping by which he had been living, was the same principle that brought about his condemnation. Now the question arises: Is the law to blame? Paul says, God forbid; for the law is holy and just and good, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. The object for which the law was given was to make us all conscious we are sinners, and to bring us to Christ, for “the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” The law is spiritual, I am carnal. The law is holy, I am unholy. The law is good, I am evil. The law is just, I am unrighteous. Where then shall I find justification? Not in the law, but in Christ who died for me and rose again.
