Title: Is The Law Sin?
Intro: This passage can be very tricky and confusing, but it doesn’t need to be. We will work though it slowly, verse by verse, lesson by lesson, and hopefully the Spirit will render this passage much more clearly to our minds at this sermon’s conclusion.
v7 “Is the Law sin?” It seems that Paul is asking a silly and unlikely question, but if we are to understand the question within the context of Paul’s full argument, it actually becomes a very good question.
Look again with me at last week’s passage, particularly verse 5. “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members…”
If the law arouses our sinful passions, then is the law itself sinful? A fair question. To answer it, we must understand how the law serves to arouse our sinful passions. J.I. Packer states the explanation in this way: The God-ordained role of the law in a fallen world is to reveal the nature of human sin.
Paul himself hashes out this conclusion when he goes on to say in the rest of verse seven: I would not have known sin except through the law.
And then Paul offers a more specific example: For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “you shall not covet.”
The law defines what sin is. And once humans know what is right and what it wrong, we, by our fallen nature gravitate to what is wrong.
V8 (read)
Another very interesting statement by Paul. Essentially what Paul says is that once sin knew what God did not want Paul to do, it tempted him to do just that! And Paul goes on to say that apart from the Law, sin was dead, meaning that without the definitions provided by the law, sin’s actually offensiveness to God was not recognized.
V9/10 (read)
This is one of the most personal statements that Paul writes in the entire Bible, which is even more interesting considering is appears in the doctrinal book of Romans, and not in one of Paul’s more personal letters like those he writes to Timothy.
There is a wide variety of English translation to this verse, and it is essential this morning that we fully understand what Paul is saying here. He is being very personal, very transparent when he says, “Look I was alive once too, not spiritually, but in my own estimation, then the law came and I thought that I could achieve righteousness by observing and upholding the law. But what the Law really brought to me was not righteousness, but rather, the full knowledge of my own horrible sinfulness, and I realized, that the law cannot bring life, because it’s power is only to reveal my sin, and that sin is what killed me.”
V12 (read)
Paul’s conclusion:
Therefore, the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
The Law does not do the saving, but it does answer that question that must be answered before anyone will be even remotely interested in being saved. That question: “Saved from what?”
In an day and age when our churches are emphasizing the health and wealth gospel, the church growth movement, and the “exciting world of giving your life to Jesus” we are failing miserably at providing the most pivotal piece of information to the lost.
We need to tell them what they need to be saved from.
We know the answer is that they need to be saved from sin, and wages of sin, which is death. Hell. Eternity without God.
Well, how do we show them their sin?
By showing them God’s Law.