Is the Law Sin?

Well, good morning. So we're in an interesting section of Paul here. You know, we started off way back a year ago or so in chapter one. We've been marching through this and we got through chapter six, which is just incredible. So now we're into chapter seven. Mike started this last week, actually last two weeks. And we're getting into the nitty gritty So Paul is going to show his struggle. And this is a very personal struggle. I got a new picture, if you track me. I found a new picture on the internet.

Anyway, so is the law a sin? Paul likes to do that. He likes to throw those questions out there. Is the law a sin? If you were a Pharisee, we talked about Jonah, and we talked about Nineveh, and they put on sackcloth and ashes. If someone were to say it's the law of sin, you would just go ballistic. I imagine today if you would ask if the law of Moses, if you asked a rabbi if the law is sin, they would start spinning up.

Anyway, so we're going to see what Paul has to say about this. This is not what Roger has to say about this. This is what Paul has to say and what the Lord has to say. Okay, so I thought, you know, it's good to start off with kind of where we're at and actually some of this is a repeat.

But there's going to be two main characters in chapter 7. First of all, it's very personal for Paul, and we're going to see that shortly, but we're going to see these two issues. The law of Moses, for the most part, in chapter 7, versus man's fallen nature from Adam. We call the sin nature those two are going to be talked about in just various ways and how You know how one?

The effect on the other so you're going to see that a lot over and over and over again, so let's define the sin and unfortunately many times in your bibles you only have You won't have what we call the definite article be won't be there. You just have sin and But if you look in your, if you have access to the text, you'll see that many times the definite article is there and that's a choice that the translators have made. That's one reason I like the Wyss translation. This isn't a, I'm not trying to sell the Wyss translation, but it does bring across the definite article pretty consistently.

So, the sin or the sin nature is Adam's fallen nature. I like what our brother Miles has to say about that. He says a believer is indwelt by two natures, or actually better, two lives. That of the first Adam, and that of the last Adam, Christ. Each life manifests its essential character in its nature. And before a person becomes a believer, he only has the first Adam's nature. He only has Adam's nature, and therefore he only can demonstrate Adam's life. which is unacceptable to God. And that's why Christ came. Why the last Adam came. Okay, the next definition is law. Law with no definite article. Basically, this is the principle of law. It could be any man-made law. Inherent law.

And that's kind of what we see in the first three verses that were read today. That's kind of the law between a man and a woman. Even though God's law talks about that too, that what's in view there is more just a natural law of a man and a woman society's law man-made's law and then we have the law of Moses with the article and this we're going to see quite a bit in the verses that Mike started last week starting in verse 4 all the way through 14 and then starting with 15 there's another one which I haven't studied enough yet to tell you much about but Mike's going to get to teach that so no problem right I'll leave all the tough stuff for him. Anyway, so today we're going to talk a lot about the Mosaic Law versus the Sin Nature.

And then lastly, just to get a grasp on the personal aspect of Chapter 7, And this is Macaulay's counting, I didn't verify his count, but anyway, Paul uses a personal pronoun, I, 30 times, me 12 times, my 4 times, myself 1 time. That's 47 times he refers to himself.

This is a very personal, this is his struggle. He became a believer, and you wouldn't think, the apostle Paul struggled, How can that be? How can the Apostle Paul struggle? But he does. And he shows that. He's written that for our benefit. To show us that. So we're going to see that as we go through here. Okay. So let's look from the previous week. Here's some comments.

What we saw from verses 1-3, which was read, that the law has no jurisdiction over a person who dies. You know, the example is used. If you're evading the police and you crash your car and you go 100 miles an hour and you're going to get all kinds of tickets and you run seven red lights and you Run over cars and you crash into things if you die on impact of that car You won't go to jail you go to the grave, right? So the law has no jurisdiction when you die Death frees you from the law and this is this is going to be a principle that we're going to see over and over that Death frees you from the law So Macaulay says, Paul's whole point is that by the death of the woman's husband, she is free to join another. Not so much, you know, it's funny, when I first became a believer, I thought, boy, this is some great teaching on marriage, verses 1 through 3. Well, that's true, there are some things to take away, but the point is, the death of her husband, she's able to be joined to another, and that's going to be critical in Paul's argument. The woman was put in this freed state, by the death of another, her husband, not of her own actions.

She didn't slip him a mickey. She didn't bop him over the head with a frozen lamb thing there or whatever. You know, like some of those detective series. You know, he died. And that's the point. He died. He did nothing to do that. And that's going to be critical. Because Schaefer points out, the sacrificial death of Christ was the ending of the reign of law.

And that's wonderful news for the believer. Which law is likened to the first husband? So there's some points from last week So let's look at here's a review. I'm gonna use the the block diagram approach Courtney loves this I know this is this is the engineering 101 in Scripture. Okay, here we go.

My brethren You were made to die to the law Wonderful news. That's a that's an event that Aorist tense, passive voice, you didn't have to do anything. You were made to die to the law. Or maybe better, you were separated from the law. God did that out of his marvelous grace. Through, how did that happen? Through the body of Christ. So that you might And here's the whole reason. You might be joined to another. And that's the whole reason for that first three verses that kind of show you that picture. He wants to join you to another. He doesn't want you to be involved in the law anymore. He wants to join you to another.

To Him, Christ, who was raised from the dead. In order that we, the believer, might bear fruit for God. Christ's death on the cross separated us from the law and joined us to Christ. Just wonderful news. We start out in chapter 6 with this wonderful news that we've died. We've died. We've died with Christ. We've been buried with Christ. We rose with Christ.

Now, this is some more information that Paul wants to tell us about the believer's relationship to God's holy law. And it's holy. And because it's so holy and righteous and just, That's going to cause confusion apparently and Paul wanted to make sure there wasn't confusion in that area.

So verse 5. I didn't review verse 6 and maybe I'll try that next week and Mike pointed out we didn't do a really good job in 6. So anyway, so here's 5. For when we were, and this is a continuous action, past so Paul you know what Paul does here by the verb tenses he kind of shows This is where I was at I was struggling struggling struggling and he's going to show us how he moved from that struggle struggle struggle in the past To a point where he said I'm free.

I'm free to walk in Christ Okay, so he said so this is where he's talking about his past Let's see here, okay For when we were a continuous action of the past in the flesh, and the flesh can be thought of as all we were in the old man or all we were in Adam, the passions of the sin nature, which is going to be the subject of this sentence, the passion of the sin nature were doing something. So our passions of the sin nature were continually active in the past. And that's what's called the imperfect tense. And it's middle voice, so it's Paul was involved in those actions. He was involved in these passions of his sin nature.

We're working or arousing, we're aroused by the law. So here you have this holy law, this holy law, and you might guess that. God's holy law, what's it going to do? We read scripture. That's for alongside of your actions and what happens you you feel guilty you feel It has it has its result so the passions of the sin nature Were aroused in us through the law So that they stimulated that these passions were stimulated by the law or aroused by the law The law is a catalyst you can follow the catalyst it stirs up it incites the sin nature and It's you know, it stimulates that the law is holy righteous and just so it's not it's not affected even though it stimulates sin It it's not affected by that. It's not it can't become sinful and that's going to be a key point, too We're going to see so as to bear fruit to death or separation Okay, so that's that's that's first five okay, so the here's where we're going so I This week and through the next two weeks. We're going to cover 7 through 4 through 13 So here's an overview once again. I rely upon Macaulay just he's just outstanding in this area He divides it into into four four sections The law God's holy law is a teacher verse 7 and he says we're going to see in a minute here I have come to know the sin nature.

He's going to talk about that that so it taught him I've come to know the sin nature and It's an agitator. The commandment, God's commandment in the law produced covening in me. And then the law is a terminator. Every time I see that word, I think of the movie, The Terminator. Well, this is pretty cool what it says here. It terminates alright. Listen to this. When the commandment came, Paul says, I died. It resulted in death for me. It killed me. The law is a terminator.

Just like in the movie. the law is a revealer in 13 through the commandment the sin nature will become utterly sinful and you notice that 12 is not listed in here and that's the verse that we're going to cover as well but that's the one about the law being holy and righteous and just so so there's a there's a outline of 7 through 13 the law is a teacher it's an agitator it's a terminator it's a revealer Okay, today's verses. So I'll just read them again. What shall we say then?

Is the law sin? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. For I would not know 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 That's it. That's it. If the very last part is very interesting there Sin is dead can sin be dead Hold that thought Okay, so let's go let's start here What shall we say then so, you know Paul has used this before many times or what then will we say?

I? And it has this Greek combination, tisoun, I think it's pronounced. And it appears in the following places there, chapter 3, chapter 4, and chapter 6, two times that we kind of highlighted a lot. in 7, which we're studying now, in 8, in 9, and in 11. So it appears there. And it's a kind of a flag to raise a question, which Paul is going to talk about and advance his argument. Tis un.

So what Paul's saying, he says, what shall we say then? Let me see. A second question arises. The first question is, what shall we say then? The second question is, is the law a sin? Wow, what a question. And apparently some, you know, he felt he had to answer that question. He felt some might have taken that away. And I think they possibly, if you look back to what we just covered in verses 4 and 5, there are two statements. The first one is, you are made to die to the law. To the body of Christ.

Well, some might say well that means I needed to be separated because the law might hurt me it might You know, it could be sinful. No, that's the wrong answer. And then the other thing is well the law can stimulate pad Wrong passions, isn't that a bad thing? So is the law really good and he's going to answer that question as we go through this whole discussion. I So just some background on that.

We know we saw in chapter 6 that we died to sin. And we just saw in 7.4 that we died to the law. We saw the sinful passions were aroused by the law. And then we're going to see in 7.12, which I referred to several times so far, so then the law is holy, the commandment is holy, righteous and good. So Paul's immediate answer is May it never be away with the thought God forbid that can't possibly be and that's his answer that he's given You know to other questions that he was questions back along that line in chapter 6 we saw that The question was asked of him. Are we to consent are we to continue in sin? So the grace may increase and he answered the same thing God forbid away with that thought it can't possibly be so he kind of gives his His immediate response, then he follows it by the middle part of this verse 7 with a more in-depth answer. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. So here comes that idea of law being a teacher, right? He's going to come to understanding through the law.

On the contrary, a strong contrast, So I like what McCauley did here. You can go online. If you're interested in Chet McCauley, you can go on and look at his website. But he'll do this occasion. He will give an expanded translation. I thought this really helped a lot because it focused on the fact that this is a personal struggle for Paul. So you could translate that section there in the B part.

I would not have come to know thee, thee sin nature, and added in me. So it's... He's talking about the sin nature of himself. It's not some arbitrary. I'm talking about the sin nature arbitrarily It's my sin nature. It's the thing that's going inside of me. It's what's causing me to sin It's what's causing me to have these sinful passions So it's very personalized and he actually uses that in me in verse 8 So I think Macaulay kind of looked at that and said hey We can understand this first part of 7 better by putting in me in there So I would not have come to know the sin nature in me is the idea here. So the no here, there's actually two no's that are going to show up. Gnosko is the first one. The no of experience to recognize. He wouldn't recognize sin except through the law. And Weiss brings this across and he kind of confirms that in me.

It was through the law that I came to know the sin nature in my experience. or literally, I interacted with it. So this is not some theoretical sin nature, it's my sin nature that is causing me to sin. So Paul tells us there came a point in his Christian life when he realized that he had a sin nature.

I almost think that's such a key point, and I don't know how your Christian will walk, but for me, that was a huge step when I realized it was a huge step on my salvation I realized I was a sinner and it was a huge step when I realized I had a sin nature so those two things one is for your salvation that you're a sinner I can remember I was driving I was in in Harrogate England driving on the on the motorway and I was listening to tapes from the US from a church in San Jose and all of a sudden I said I'm a sinner. Wow, I'm a sinner. Wow, and that changed everything. At that point, I was ready to accept Christ. And then, here's probably phase two, down the road, I'm talking with Hal Malloy, I'm not sure where it was, and he says, and he showed me from moment six, you have a sin nature. I have a sin nature? Wow! So those are huge changes for me. Hopefully that has been your case, or maybe if it hasn't been, we're studying the right section of Scripture. Okay. This happened by means of the law. What's interesting is, here we see the contrast, as I was sharing my own personal testimony, but Paul has a personal testimony.

From Philippians we see that When he was a Pharisee of Pharisees, before he was a believer, before the Damascus Road experience, he thought he was pretty good. And this reminds me of Bob's, I hope I have this right, the airplane trip with this Jewish gentleman. And he, the Jewish gentleman, I remember Bob, he claimed he kept the law. Well, Paul says he was the same kind of Jewish guy. He says, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.

I'm blameless. I know the law. I keep the law. I'm good. But now Paul says, wait a minute. I looked at the law and it says, you shall not covet. And I covet it. I covet it. And we're going to see, you know, coveting is pretty, that's just a desire. Do you desire, you know, it's pretty easy to desire other things, you know. And you think, well, that's not too bad. I wouldn't mind having one of those. Or, well, maybe I'd like to take one of those, you know. Kind of getting off the thing here. Okay. Okay, so this is the C part.

So the C part, I kind of, If you're following me carefully, I went to a different translation for the C part. I went to the Weiss translation. And I did it because I wanted you to have the idea of the desire in there. So the C part of this, For I had not come to know evil desires, except the law kept on saying, You shall not desire evil. And so I added the in me part. It's the evil desire within me. Or you could say coveting. And this no is the no of oida, the idea of natural awareness, intuitive knowledge. And it's in this very unusual tense, pluperfect.

And it's the idea of past completed action. So Paul's talking about his past again, performed in the past. But now we're going to see, as we go on and look at Paul's writing, he's going to eventually walk in the spirit. He's going to move on from this struggle to walk in the spirit. So this evil desire, for I had not known evil desires, and evil desires is the idea of, it can be translated lust, covet, it may be translated lust, and one of the important passages is that, I say this, walk in the spirit and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh, or the desires of the flesh.

Except that, you know, that changed. That changed and this is how it changed so the law so when he says the law here if you look at what he's quoting he's quoting that the Other of the Ten Commandments. He's holding number ten. The Tenth Commandment is what he's quoting so that he said in this Tenth Commandment kept on saying to me and it's the idea of God's Word is picture here is speaking to him in pastime and Here's the Tenth Commandment You shall not covet your neighbor's house, your neighbor's wife, his male servant, his female servant, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

So that, and if you think about that, I really liked what McCauley had to say about this. If you think about this commandment, and I actually, I printed out the Ten Commandments, and you start looking through the Ten Commandments, and this one, the Tenth Commandment is kind of a special one, because it addresses how we think, what we think. God's not just interested in what we do, but what we think.

So you say, God says, you shall not desire. That's something I think. That's within me. You can't see desire. I guess you could see desire maybe, but you're thinking that desire. Most of the commandments are, you shall not murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, you shall know the God before you. They're all in terms of actions. Whereas this commandment is in terms of of a mental thing. So it's in your mental mind.

And that seemed to be the one that put Paul over the top, so to speak. He said, I have this in nature, basically. So Merriman says, Paul is saying, I have not naturally known the specifics of coveting, except the law says you shall not covet. So Paul was involved in this coveting. He realized he was a coveter. It was a desire of evil things.

So now on to verse 8. So I'm going to cover this part. I'm going to cover the but sin produced in me coveting of every kind first. That's the main thrust of this verse. But sin produced in me coveting of every kind. And then you have two modifying statements which we'll cover at the end here. So the central thought is, but thee, thee sin nature produced in me covening of every kind.

So here's the result of God's holy law about covening impacting his life. It produced in him covening. He didn't say, well, then I shouldn't covet. I'm going to stop coveting. No, it had the opposite effect. And we talk about, many examples are given, you know, especially with your children. You say, okay, Johnny or Sally or Susie, I baked this nice cake. We're going to save it for supper tonight. Don't you have any of that cake?

Don't you even come near it? Don't you touch it? Don't even lick it. Don't put your finger on it. I mean, what happens? If you're a parent, you know what happens. You better lock that cake up. Because somehow, establishing that rule just incites our fallen nature, Christian or not. Okay, the sin nature is a subject here. And the main verb is, the sin nature produced in me.

It produced, it caused, it's the eye to bring about, translated in Romans 4.15. So the sin nature is the author of coveting or lusting. That's the driver, our sin nature. So when you come to realize you have a sin nature, you figured out part of the puzzle, right? And so, you know, So we go back to Romans 6. Reckon yourself dead to sin. Dead to the sin nature. Lord, I'm dead to that.

I don't have to go there. I remember how I'm either talking or... I'm sorry I bring up how so many times, but it's just such a wonderful help to me. Just talking with me. He says, well, Roger, you know what I do sometimes when I get that urge to do something that I shouldn't do? I say, you know, I'm dead to that. I've died to that. And you have. You have died to that. So this is Paul's struggle right here.

Produced in me covening of every kind, so more on that. Covening is the idea of craving, lusting, this is the noun form here. Every kind, it means all, none excluded. Every kind, that's what Jim kind of picked up on. So we surrender, so it brought about in me every kind of evil craving.

And then here are the two modifying statements which we're going to cover. So that verb is modified by these two statements. Taking opportunity through the commandment. And for apart from the law, sin is dead. So they modify the idea of this produced covering in me. Taking opportunity is the first one. Sin nature is action.

So taking here is the idea of have taken, lay hold of. And opportunity is kind of a cool word. I guess this comes, I've heard people talk about this, but if you look in the Greek lexicons and stuff, you'll see that it's this particular Greek word that is the idea of a starting point or a base of operations. So if you're into, you know, if you have your sons and you want to get your bases right and you get your guys and you're going around, here's my base here and here's your base there. Paul's point, this is a base of operation. There's a base of operation in view here. So what's the base of operation?

The launching pad, this was a launching pad for the sin nature. And the launching pad is going to be God's holy law. Because it comes up against our sin nature and says, no, that's not right. Through by means of the commandment. In this case, the 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet. So it was the sin nature Taking a base of operations or a starting point through the commandment The commandment pushes us in nature into operation just like this Paul said all of a sudden I Just went ballistic on coveting. I just cut him.

He just went wild and then the last part for apart from the law sin is dead and So here, for, expresses a reason for, or it could be what happened before. For is in the sense of because. Apart from, separated from. So we see that apart from the law, apart from, getting a little confused here.

Okay, so what this is pointing out is that apart from, The law is the power source, if you will. What this is trying to bring across is that apart from the law says, if the law isn't there, there's no power source. That's what's trying to be conveyed. The law is a power source for sin. And the law has no definite article here, so it's a principle. So now here's the last interesting part. For apart from the law, sin is dead. So sin is dead. No article. So sin is dead.

But sin is never dead, right? Satan's still alive, right? Sin is an active principle in the universe. Satan's still there doing his thing, right? He's one of the three opponents of the Christian. And many verses show us that sin is alive. Be sure your sins will find you out. Sin is crouching at the door in Genesis there. Without the commandment of God, sin is not realized and everything is irrelevant. So that's why God had to bring along His holy and righteous law to show us that sin is truly sinful. And I think about the fact that people say, well, how about the people that don't know, haven't read the scripture, haven't read the Bible. We covered this back in chapter 2 many months ago.

It talks about they, speaking of the Gentile, they show the works of the law their consciousness bearing them witness. So man has the works of God's law in their heart. So that comes up against them. That's why even unbelievers are guilty about some things. They feel guilty. There are certain things that are wrong across all mankind because the work of God's law, it's not that the law is written in their hearts, it's just the work of the law is written in their hearts.

Conclusion. So this is kind of a paraphrase here of the statement. Without the law, sin as a principle is dead. God is so gracious in giving us his law. Without his law, we would never recognize sin. And that's so important. Without God's law, we would never recognize sin. OK, lastly, final thoughts. And this is from Merriman.

The commandment, and this kind of summarizes maybe earlier in the talk here, the commandment not only made evil known, but it made Paul's awareness of the force of evil within him. So he not only recognized it was wrong, he recognized that the evil wasn't just out there in the ether, it was inside of him, the enemies within, right?

Secondly, it made him to interact, the law made him to interact with the sin nature. which wasn't very pleasant. Paul is warning us about the subtlety of the sin nature. The law conflicts with the inner evil desire. And lastly, the inner evil desire became known to Paul through his coveting, which was in violation of the commandment.

So we have a lot more to go here in the coming weeks. We're going to delve into the rest of this. This is this long, kind of protracted struggle Paul's going to go through in Romans 7. But at the very end, he's going to have his hallelujah moment. And we'll save that for another day. So let's close.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have. Thank you that you showed us your Paul showed us through you, through him, his struggle with his sin nature, with his fallen nature from Adam, how he struggled to live the Christian life, and he saw that your commandments only condemned him, made him covet even more, and we know that's not just a thing that happens to Paul, it happens to all of us, Lord. We pray we would learn the lessons through Romans 7 that you have for us. In Christ's name, Amen.