WHAT HAS THE LAW DONE FOR YOU LATELY?

Romans 7:7-13
March 5, 1995
Bob Bonner

Several years ago, a lady in the Deep South had a close relationship with her childhood sweetheart. She fell in love with him and they eventually married. Their life together was not perfect, but it was rewarding. There was faithfulness and there were times of joy. This continued for years, until he was suddenly taken from her side by a heart attack.

Not being able to part with him visibly, she decided to have him embalmed, put in a chair, sealed up in an air-tight glass case and placed immediately inside the front door of their large plantation home. Every time she walked through the door, she smiled and said, “Hi John, how are you?” Then she would walk right on up the stairs. Things rolled along as normally as possible month after month. There he sat day after day as she acknowledged his presence with a smile and a friendly wave.

A year or so later she decided to take a lengthy trip to Europe. It was a delightful change of scenery. In fact, while in Europe she met a fine American gentleman who was also vacationing over there. He swept her off her feet. After a whirlwind romance, they got married and honeymooned all over Europe. She said nothing about ol’ John back on the farm.

Finally, they traveled together back to the States. Driving up the winding road to her home, he decided, “This is my moment to lift my bride over the threshold and carry her back into her home…this wonderful place where we’ll live together forever.” He picked her up, bumped the door open with his hip and walked right in. Struck by the shocking sight inside the glass case, he almost dropped his bride on the floor!

“Who’s this!?”

“Well, that is John. He was my old man from---“

“He is history; he’s dead!”

The new husband immediately dug a big hole and buried her former old man in it, glass case and all.

According to Romans 7 and what we looked at last week, this is exactly what Jesus Christ has done! He has become our new husband, our new identity, having put to death the old husband, our new identity. However, without realizing it, many who have committed their lives to Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord, keep digging up the “old man,” greet him every morning and cater to his every sinful whim and wish, as though he was the one that they were supposed to be living for. That this was supposed be what they were to do, as if it were their responsibility. From time to time, many believers totally forget that we have a new identity or new husband. We are the bride of Christ. We are no longer sinners, but saints.

If we really understood and considered it true that we are the bride of Christ, cherished, loved and forever accepted, we would naturally see ourselves differently and live accordingly. We wouldn’t continue to put ourselves back on the performance treadmill or put ourselves back of the performance treadmill or put ourselves back under religious laws so as to earn or maintain God’s approval.

But having said that, what is to be our relationship with all the laws of God that are given in the scripture? That is what Romans 7 is all about. Last week in verses 1-6, we saw that the law no longer has authority or control over our lives as far as earning God’s approval goes. We are approved of by God, not because we obey His laws, but because of what Jesus Christ has done for us.

This week, we want to look at verses 7-13, and understand how the laws of God work on human beings, non-believers and those believers who continue to put themselves foolishly back under the law. Last time, Paul used a hypothetical marriage analogy as an illustration to get his point across. In these verses, Paul becomes very personal and candid about what the law did in his own life, before he met Christ. If you notice in these verses that Paul is writing about his life in the past tense, you will understand why it is that we can know that this was not Paul’s present life experience with Christ.

Paul begins, in the first half of verse 7 with making a point about the Laws of God. In the last section we looked at, because of some of the things that Paul wrote, the readers of this letter could mistakenly come away from that paragraph thinking that Paul was suggesting that the law was worthless or evil. So, Paul comes back in this next paragraph to tell us that the law is not bad. We read, “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? [is it bad, evil and void of purpose? Should we throw it out?] May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law;…”

Once again, it is important to note that Paul is not using in these verses the plural term “sins” but “sin” singular. Paul is not just saying that he wouldn’t know that it was wrong to sin n the sense of stealing or murder, but that he would never really understand the problem of his old sinful nature, this drivenness to be selfish, self-centered and to be pushed to do everything God said not to do, if he had not come face to face with God’s laws. He would have falsely believed, like many do today, that mankind is basically good, when in fact, we are not. We were, as Paul said in Ephesians 2, “the sons of disobedience.”

Paul wants us to understand that there are some good things about the Law and it does have an impact upon us Christians today for good. Paul never suggests that we Christians should ignore the Law. And neither does Jesus Christ. Jesus tells us is His Sermon on the Mount that if anyone “disparages the law, changes it or waters it down in any degree whatsoever, he is under the curse of God. The Law, abides forever.” And the Law that He refers to is the spiritual and moral law. Not the ceremonial or civil law that were unique to the Jewish theocracy. We know that because the civil Old Testament laws were no longer practiced by the Jews or Jesus in Jesus day because the theocracy was no longer in existence. Roman civil or governmental law had replaced the Jewish Old Testament civil law. Secondly, the ceremonial laws were fulfilled by Christ and no longer need to be performed. So, in His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is referring to the spiritual truths and moral laws of God as never changing.

What Paul has been trying to get us to do is for us to look at the Law differently. Not as rules to follow, but rather instructions that paint a picture of what our new identity is really like, in Christ; who we are as new creations in Christ, so that we might be able to live as who we are. If you don’t know who you are, how are you to live as a citizen of heaven, or as an ambassador of Christ, or as a child of the king, or as a beloved child of God, then how can you live like a beloved child of God? If we don’t know what one of those looks like, even if we are one, we can’t be it. The lion, the witch and the wardrobe; four kids = 2 kings & 2 queens with a mission. So, the Law, for the believer, mostly is there to help point us in the right direction as how we are to live as born again, beloved children of God, as the bride of Christ. We have never been such before, so now He shows us what we are like and how we are to behave. So the law is not bad!

With the rest of verse 7b, and on down through verse 11, Paul is going to explain how the Law exposes sin and takes the life right out of the person who puts them under the law as a way of earning or maintaining God’s approval. For the Christian who puts themselves back under the law, trying to earn or maintain God’s approval of us because we obey His law, when we do that we are subjected to things that God does not intend for us to experience anymore as His children. When anyone tries to earn God’s approval through obeying laws, the ultimate end is that the law kills something inside that person.

In order to make his point, Paul uses a personal illustration from his own life, before he was saved. This illustration begins with the end of verses 7-11. In speaking about how the law changed his life, Paul writes at the end of verse 7, “On the contrary, I would not have come to know [or personally experience and be able to identify] sin [in my life] 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, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin {is} dead.”

Paul, as a child, like many kids raised in Christian homes, was a good moral boy. As a boy, he was taught the Law of God. Like many of our kids in Sunday School are taught that murder, lying, cheating, stealing, etc. is wrong, Paul knew that as well. As a good little boy, he didn’t lie, he didn’t steal and he didn’t cheat.

Furthermore, like many Christian parents, Paul’s parents not only taught Paul right from wrong but they simultaneously, protected him as a child from sinful opportunities. They probably screened him from foolish and morally corrupt kids by helping him choose his friends. Hence, until he was an adult, Paul was rarely exposed to temptation that would cause him to be lured into breaking the Law of God. He was a good moral boy.

However, we also have to recognize, that to teach an eight year old that certain laws like adultery and coveting is wrong is one thing. For an eight year old to fully understand what adultery or coveting is and to practice it is something else. Hence, as a child, the sin of coveting (which Paul brings up here) wasn’t even an issue with Paul in his early years. As a person he wasn’t even alive or exposed to this type of sinful temptation. He was, in a sense dead to these kind of sins. So, for many years of his life, it was easy for Paul to recognize that he wasn’t just a good moral boy, but also he falsely believed that he had never sinned. Furthermore, he never wanted to sin. He wanted God to be proud of him.

That’s what Paul is referring to in verse 8 when he says, “apart from the Law sin is dead”. He does not mean that he was without the teaching of the Law or that he hadn’t sinned, but that in some areas he had not been exposed to temptation to break the Law of coveting that he had already been taught. Or, if he had broken the Law, he didn’t know where, because he was a “good boy” and for years, he didn’t understand that he had already broken God’s law. Willful sin was not a part of his lifestyle as a young man.

But Paul does go on to tell us that there did come a time, when there was temptation to sin, and when he deliberately sinned, the Law caught him and condemned his conscience. And as a result, it killed him inside. He felt guilty and a failure and dirty. And he didn’t like it so he determined that he would never do it again. But the more he tried to obey the Law, and in particular the law against coveting, the more he failed and felt condemned.

The words of the Law, at that point, became alive to Paul. He knew sin in his life. That’s what his point was when he said, “I would not have come to know sin except through the Law;” If he hadn’t understood the law in the first place, then he would never have recognized that his deliberate choice to do wrong, was in fact wrong.

Now to make this even clearer, Paul gives us a glimpse into his own personal life. He tells us about his struggle with the sin of coveting. As a young man wanting to make his mark on the world, as a Pharisee, Paul struggled with selfish ambition. There are even hints in the book of Acts, that as a young Christian, he at first struggled with this same selfish ambition.

For Paul, 9 of the 10 commandments were not really even an issue with Him. Things like adultery didn’t phase him because he wasn’t married, at least that is the best information we can gather from the historical record. But it was the 10^th Commandment that was his downfall, the law against coveting.

Paul like many Pharisees was a proud man. The one thing Paul wanted, like most proud men and Pharisees, was a position of power and fame. All he thought about was being the top Jewish authority in the land. He was ambitious to gain power, wealth, and fortune from being a top dog in religious circles. And whenever a man like this finds others with fame and power greater than his and all that goes with it, he covets their abilities and position.

With the 10^th commandment staring Paul in the face, he couldn’t help but see that his jealousy and coveting were wrong. Try as hard as he could, Paul could not get over his jealousy of others. In fact, I believe that this was the very sin that brought Paul to his knees. He watched Jesus, a man of his own peer group and age, become a man of power and have a following that Paul could never gain. As a result Paul coveted what Christ had. It may even have motivated him to try and get rid of Christ, along with all of Christ’s followers. Then as Paul stood by and watched Stephen get stoned, one whom some say was also a peer of Paul’s and grew up in Paul’s home town, Paul saw something that he coveted in Stephen. Not just Stephen’s following, but other things, like Stephen’s confidence and peace and how others loved Stephen. Something that Paul really wanted, but he knew he didn’t have, was the love and approval of others, not even like Stephen who was being stoned. Paul coveted what these other leaders possessed.

Even after Paul became a believer, it’s interesting to read about how Paul’s initial attempts to reach out to his Jewish brethren from the basis of his prideful position of having been a powerful Pharisee, and an appointee of the Sanhedrin, even from this prideful position failed to reach others for Christ. In fact he caused more problems for the body of Christ, the early church, when he tried to serve from this prideful position. He was almost killed for proclaiming Jesus to his old Jewish friend by these very same friends. These were people with whom he had worked for years. If his new Christian friends had not grabbed Paul, hid him and then snuck him out of town in the middle of the night, Paul wouldn’t have lived as long as he did.

As Paul first attempts to reach his Jewish brethren for Christ failed, God succeeded in bringing down Paul’s pride and taught Paul what it meant to be a servant and how Paul had to learn to depend upon the Lord if he was ever going to accomplish anything for Christ. When Jesus showed Paul his new identity in Christ, Paul put his old covetous and ambitious self serving ways. Paul was delivered.

Paul want us to better understand, in verse 8, how the laws of God worked on him, so he tells us here, that once the Law showed him his sin of coveting in one area, then everywhere he looked in his life, this law of coveting was made alive. Paul says in verse 8, that when he understood the commandment about coveting, it “produced more coveting of every kind.” Everywhere Paul turned, he found himself pushed or driven to covet. Even if he didn’t want to covet, he couldn’t stop it.

What this law of “do not covet” did to Paul reminds me of a problem that a well known hotel on Galveston Island in Texas faced. The Flagship Hotel was once one of the nicest hotels situated on the Gulf of Mexico about 40’ above the water. All the rooms of the hotel had an ocean view. On the first floor it had one of the finest restaurants around. It was the place to take that someone special out on a date. The dining room was one of the most beautifully decorated and peaceful settings around as it overlooked the gulf. The entire restaurant was surrounded by these tall plate glass windows that cost several thousand dollars apiece.

One even, one of their hotel guest upstairs went out to his balcony, saw the water below and said, “Man, what a great place to fish. I’ve got to get my rod and reel!” He put his gear together, hung huge lead sinkers on his lines and then cast them out into the water. No problem so far. The problem came when he went to reel in the lines.

Now imagine: You are sitting by the window of this first floor restaurant, enjoying a wonderful romantic sunset dinner with your sweetheart and BOOM! Out of nowhere either this big fish and or the sinkers caught by the driving winds off the gulf, get blown right through the plate glass window at your table!

The management thought, “That’s not a good idea to have fish and lead weights come crashing through our windows so we better put up signs in each of our rooms that read, ‘Positively NO fishing from the balcony.’” But as soon as they put up that “law”, guess what? The hotel guest just had to try fishing off their balconies and there was a rash of plate glass windows being broken in the restaurant below.

Finally, the management wised up and removed the “no fishing signs”, and guess what? Nobody ever thought about fishing from the balconies anymore.

That no fishing law aroused sin in the hotel guests the same way that God’s law, “don’t covet” identified a weakness in Paul’s life of coveting and aroused him to covet even more. But you remove the law and people don’t see their wrong or think of doing what comes naturally, wrong.

Why does that happen? Because there is a thing called sin, or as we will see later called “the flesh”, that each of us is born with. This sin is this passion go ignore God and to be in control of our own lives. It is this rebellious attitude that demands that we find our significance and importance from somewhere else than God. When we are told we can’t do something or when we are told we must do something, the sin inside us screams, “No way! Nobody is telling me what to do.” And we disobey. Why? Because we want to prove our value and worth, our significance by our ability to control our lives, our circumstances or others lives. We think that when we can do that, we will earn the respect and approval of others.

But as Paul told us back in verse 6, when we put our trust in Jesus Christ, we have been released from that control of sin in our lives. We no longer need the approval of others to feel important when we know that because of Jesus, we have been fully approved by God and have been given the very worth that Christ possessed before God. God loves us and He is worthy to be followed.

But until Paul came to Christ, later after having grown up under the law, he couldn’t find freedom from doing what he knew to be wrong. Try as hard as he could, Paul couldn’t quit coveting or doing what he knew was wrong and no longer wanted to do. He was enslaved to doing what was wrong and it was killing him internally. He was being condemned daily by the Law against coveting.

That’s why Paul continues to tell us in verses 9-11, “And I was once alive apart from the Law;” He is saying that there once was a time that he was living in a state of blissful indifference to the demands of the law because he was ignorant of them. “…but when the commandment came, sin became alive, [it was aroused or stirred up, verse 4] and I died; and this commandment, which was to result in life [in the future], proved to result in death for me [right then];”

Because of what the law proved to Paul about his nature, that he was a sinner, it made it impossible for him to miss the truth that he was a sinner and he couldn’t quit sinning on his own, this lead to frustration in Paul’s life. His joy was gone, he died inside. Later it would result in Paul putting his trust in Jesus Christ as his Savior and his deliverer from this controlling power of sin and bring him life. But until then he was miserable.

He continues in verse 11, “for sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.” What does Paul mean that “sin deceived me”? Before Paul came to Christ, he was controlled by his sin nature. That was who he was, a sinner. And when the law was put in his face that said, “I bet you can’t keep from coveting”, Paul’s sin or his nature as a sinner said, “You want to bet?” And as a result of this deception of believing he could prove himself not to be what he was, a sinner, Paul finally came to his wits end and had to admit, “Man, I am nothing but a sinner.” And that is hard for all of us to admit.

So then is what happened to Paul, that he became a sinner, the Law’s fault? Is the law, therefore something evil and wicked? No. In these last two verses, verses 12-13, Paul summarizes what he has said thus far about the law in these proclamations about the Law. He writes, “So the, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” Paul makes three claims about the all of God’s laws and instructions. First, he says that it is holy.

And what he means by holy is that God has taken His Word, The Bible, and he has set it apart as something unique and special. It is different than any other human writing we can ever find. In fact it is not human. It is supernatural. It is holy. And therefore, it is not to be tampered with or changed in any way. It is not to be studied out of its context and made to say what any ‘ol cult wants it to say. To tamper with the word of God brings a curse. A sit is stated in book of Revelation the last chapter, “He who adds to these words or takes away from the,…the curse of God be upon his head.” Pretty strong statement!

Secondly Paul tells us that God’s word is righteous. It is the true reflections of God’s character. When we read that God hates idolatry, we can be assured that he means what he says. He still hates idolatry. If He says that we are to “honor our parents”, God means just that. When he says, “sex outside of marriage” is wrong and is counter to His will. He means it. These things reflect his character. He is a God of honor. Jesus honored His heavenly Father. He is a God of permanent commitments and relationships. That’s why he hates divorce and adultery. He doesn’t cheat on us, or dump us as the bride of Christ and sleep around with other brides. He is committed to us. All of His commands are a reflection of His righteous character and will.

Thirdly, Paul says that God’s law is good, meaning beneficial to those who receive it and obey it. God’s law benefits all who obey it. But in this chapter the benefit of the Law that Paul has in mind is that when we try to keep it and learn that we can’t keep it, it proves to the sinner that he or she needs a savior or a deliverer from the control of the sin that is controlling one’s life. We need someone else’s power to find freedom from sin.

The law is the best friend we have because it tells us the truth about ourselves and leads us to Jesus, in whom we find freedom from the clutches of harmful habits and sinful lifestyles that are destroying us.

Paul continues to tell us in verse 12, “Therefore did that which is good become [a cause of] death for me? [Did the law put me to death spiritually?] May it never be! [What, pray tell, put me to death then. Who is responsible?] Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin effecting my death through that which is good, that through the commandment sin might become utterly [excessively, unbelievably] sinful.”

Because if it took the light of the law, shining on my wicked heart for me to see my true nature apart from Christ, the Law has been my friend.

There are several applications that we can make from Paul’s personal testimony about how the law affects our lives. We learn from Paul’s life that the Law only exposes our sin nature. It defines sin. It does nothing to deliver us from sin. So don’t keep putting yourself under the law or attempting in your own human or fleshly strength or to will yourself to be as good as you think God want you to be. You keep trying that and you will go nuts. Instead, remember what Romans 6 has taught us: that in Christ, we are already considered good before God. And when it comes to living righteously, don’t turn to the Law, but by faith moment by moment realize Christ is there, in you, to live his life out through you and to enable you to live as who you are. Moment by moment believe that and you will see it become reality.

Placing one’s focus upon laws of “do’s” and “don’ts” leads one into the trap of performance, rather than into an intimate relationship with the living God. You never win when you are in the trap of performance. You either become depressed because you fail to live up to standards, or you become arrogant because you see yourself as better than others because you are living what you think to be a more holy life than your spouse, parents, neighbors or other fellow Christians.

Instead of placing our focus upon trying to live good lives, we need to place our focus upon our acceptance before God, based on our new identity in Christ, leading us to freedom from the control of the Law’s dos and don’ts, freedom from the fear of failure, freedom from having to personally keep trying to perform in such a way that God and others will approve of you. Our only approval from God comes through who Jesus made us to be in Christ and that is enough.

Jesus did not come to put us under legalism. Jesus did not come to further religion or to start another religion. Jesus came to give us a relationship with Himself as well as an eternal relationship with God the Father. I firmly believe that God hates religion. Instead, God wants each of us to enjoy an intimate relationship with Him that will be with us throughout each day. He wants us to know that we are never alone, no matter how bad things get at the office or at home. He cares and He enables us to live as He has called us to, right in the midst of a hostile world. He wants us to know who we are and how we are to live as new creations in Christ. And every instruction He gave us points back to who we already are, so that we might understand who we are, believe it is true and live accordingly.

Father, thank you that we don’t have to live up to the law any more in order to earn your approval. Thank you for giving us Your laws to show us how utterly sinful we were apart from Christ. Your Law, O Lord, proved to us we needed Jesus for our Savior. Today we thank you for your laws as they show us who we are in You. They help us better identify what is the behavior of a child of God. They help us to understand what our new identity is like. We are not thieves. We are not liars. We are not slanderers. We are not these things, because we are Your children. Our mission, we choose to put away our old sinful lifestyles and live as who we are today, new creatures in Christ. Thanks for your super natural enablement to live as who we are in Christ.

back to top