Christ Life In Us Romans 7:4-8 Is the Law Sin?

Well, good morning. It's a real privilege to be back here this morning and to spend time in the Word of God together this morning. I'm going to try to make sure I throw the word what in often enough to keep you guys awake this morning. No, thanks for introducing that, Jim.

Very, very important verses that we come to this morning, and interesting and challenging as well. Challenges are a lot of our common ways of thinking, common conceptions. And, you know, we really have to understand what Paul's saying in this portion of scripture, because whatever he's just taught, whatever he's just said, it just prompted this question, is the law sin? It really indicates that what he's saying about the law should really challenge our thinking. So lots to get into this morning. I was just enjoying the music there. I like some of those classic songs, and I really enjoyed that. I love that song, Victory in Jesus, ever since I was a kid.

But there's one line in there, and it's just, who knows what I'm talking about, right? Then I repented of my sins, and I thought, I'll take the opportunity to comment on that. I've asked people occasionally, where do you find the phrase, repent of your sins, in the Bible? They say, well, it's gotta be there somewhere, and they go looking.

Never there. The phrase, repent of sins, or even those two words together. Now, your translation there, there are a couple of translations that have inserted the word sin, just, you know, but it's not there in the Greek. Repentance, biblically, is never associated with sin.

Because we don't tend to have a correct understanding of what the word repent means. In the Greek, it literally means to change your mind, a change of thinking or change of mind about something. And so there is perhaps a sense in which we have to have our minds changed about what sin is and the fact that Christ died on the cross for our sins so that we might be saved, but in our common language today, the word repentance carries more the idea of penitence than a change of mind. And so we tend to read into that line or think about that line, well, I've got to feel sorry for my sins and I've got to, you know, express deep remorse and regret over sin in order for God to save me.

And the Lord never instructs that or commands that. He says, no, come to me on the basis of what Jesus has done on the cross and on that basis alone. And, you know, simply recognizing that you need a Savior. Recognize that you need a Savior, and that Jesus Christ is that Savior, and that what He did on the cross was sufficient to satisfy His perfect righteousness and His wrath against sin. And on that basis alone, we can be saved. So, you know, if you, anyway, that's just a quick comment on that song, but wonderful words otherwise.

But let's open with prayer before we get into Romans 7 here. Our Heavenly Father, we love you. We thank you for your love for us. We thank you for your Word that you've given to us. Lord, you didn't have to. in one sense, and in the other sense, your love for us compelled you to give us the written revelation of your thoughts so that we might know you, so that we might know and understand and come to you and enjoy that deep, personal, intimate fellowship with you that you desire. What an awesome thing to know that You desired that we should know You and fellowship with You while we were still Your enemies, while we were still hostile against You. And You extended Yourself towards us and drew us to Yourself. And so, Lord, we just pray that this morning You would open our eyes to behold and understand the things that You've communicated to us in Your Word, knowing that these things are important. I just pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So Jim's read the verses for us already this morning. We're looking in chapter 7, verses 7 and 8.

And so have your Bibles open there and follow along with me. I actually intentionally or purposefully steer away from putting much of the scripture text on the screen because I find that it helps us to stay in the the text in front of you, whether you do that digitally or on paper. But I just encourage you to follow along with me in your own Bible. For one thing, it'll just help familiarize you with where things are in your own Bible. If you're like me, you just got to be on paper or you'll never find it again.

But see it and interact with the word. in front of you. So we're actually going to step back, as I typically do, and get the big picture in focus because I really think we need to see this. We need to see the big picture that Paul is speaking to here to understand this, you know, these two verses.

Logically, Chapter 7 is flowing out of Chapter 6. That should be obvious enough, but we sometimes get, you know, so focused, narrowly focused as we kind of study through verse by verse, we forget what's come before. And of course, Chapter 6 is built on everything came before that. So we've got to have in mind the big picture of the context here.

But chapter 6 of Romans is all about whether or not the believer should allow sin to reign in his life. How does 6.1 begin? A question, right? Just like Jim was pointing out in chapter 7, but chapter 6, verse 1 says, are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

And Paul has just introduced at the end of chapter 5 the fact that grace is now the reigning principle for believers, for Christians, those who are in Christ Jesus. And Paul is explaining grace in chapter 5, and he says in verse 20 of chapter 5 that the more sin increased, the greater grace is shown to be. So grace, by definition, can't be limited by sin, or it wouldn't be grace. If grace had a limitation, if God's grace was limited based on how great our sin was, then it wouldn't be grace, because grace, by definition, is unlimited, unmerited favor.

And so Paul is trying to make that as clear as possible. And I often find this when you're teaching grace, or trying to teach grace, if someone doesn't come back to you, especially if this is new to them, if someone doesn't come back to you with the question, well then, why not just sin all the more? Then they probably haven't understood grace.

And that's why Paul brings this question up, because you've probably heard that a thousand times in his grace ministry. People say, but Paul, what you're saying means that I can sin all I want. I can sin all the more. In fact, the more I sin, the greater God's grace is shown to be. And what that actually indicates is that you're beginning to grasp what grace is. And it raises this question, this issue, well, should we just continue in sin then? Wouldn't that glorify God's grace?

And now, as we talk about this, there's something very important. that Paul points out in Chapter 5, Verse 20 there. And it's going to be very important to see now in Chapter 7, because Paul tells us exactly what caused sin to increase. This is where you should have your Bible open to Chapter 5, Verse 20.

He says, the law came in so that the transgression would increase. And then he adds, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. And that's what raised the question. But we've got to notice that where Paul introduces law. Law came in so that the transgression would increase.

And so with that issue raised, And with understanding that grace abounded where, sorry, really grace super abounded, right, where sin abounded, that brings in the whole reason that Paul's got to answer what he does in chapter 6. Paul has to cut off the false idea that we should live continuously in sin because God's grace will be shown to be greater. And Paul answers that very, very strongly in chapter 6.

In 6.2 he says, And then he goes on to explain how we died to sin. In verse 3 he says, Now we should always be reminded that is not speaking about water baptism.

It's talking about the real baptism, the baptism of the Spirit that happens the moment a person puts their faith in Jesus Christ. The Spirit baptizes or identifies us with Jesus Christ or joins us to Him, identifies us with Him, so that We are, we share in His death and resurrection. We share, we are participants in Jesus' death and in Jesus' resurrection. Since we are identified with Jesus in God's sight, God sees Jesus' death and resurrection as our death and resurrection. Very, very important thing.

And this is what answers to the question of, shall we continue in sin? Shall we go on sinning? And then Paul continues in 6.4 to give us the purpose of that identification, the purpose of being identified with Jesus in his death and resurrection. He says, Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that, this is the purpose, as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. That's the purpose. That's the goal or the aim is that we too might walk in newness of life.

And so the question of whether we should continue in sin is answered by the fact that God has separated us from the power of the sin nature through death so that we could walk in a brand new life free from sin. It's true that the believer may walk in sin, and we all know from experience that we do.

And grace means that God will never go back or take back his gift of eternal life. That's what grace means. He will never, on the basis of your sin, say, no, never mind, forget it. No, grace means that you have His gift of eternal life as a free gift, never to be lost, regardless of whether you sin, but to live in sin is to ignore or reject what God has done for you in His Son, Jesus Christ.

Because the reality is that God has not freed us to sin, but from sin. God has freed us from sin, an amazing new reality that we live in and exist in as Christians. We are freed from the power of sin. We are freed to live in this newness of life that is the life of Christ Jesus.

Our entire life, up to the moment of salvation, up to the moment of new birth, we lived as slaves to sin and to its desires. Sin reigns in us through all of the self hyphen words. We've got self-gratification, we've got self-glorification, self-preservation, self, self, self. Everything is centered around my will, my desires.

And that is what is at the root, my will instead of God's will, what I desire rather than what God desires. And Paul says, that as a believer you may still serve sin, the desires of the flesh, your self-will, pleasing self, but that's not what God intends for you. That's not what He wants or what He desires. He's given you a new life in Christ Jesus, a life that is totally different from our natural life, from the life of the old man. And if we think about that, isn't that what we wanted when we accepted Christ in the first place?

Hadn't we had enough of living for the desires of the flesh? Hadn't we seen enough of what that resulted in? Hadn't we experienced enough of the emptiness of living for self? We'd experienced enough of the death that sin deals out. And God has provided exactly what we needed and exactly what we really wanted in our hearts, is a new life, a new life in Christ.

So why would we brush all of that aside for the momentary pleasures of sin? Why would we brush aside the new life that we have in Christ to live for self knowing that the result is death, which is separation from Intimacy with God separation from from that fellowship that we are to enjoy with him not separation from him in an ultimate sense We can never lose that the separation from that ongoing fellowship and intimacy that the Lord wants us to enjoy with him. And so Paul goes on through the rest of chapter six to explain how the fact of our death with Christ is translated into practical everyday life, because it's got to get to that point.

It can't just remain as theological theory. How do we get the daily experience of this new life? every moment. It's not enough to know the fact that I'm dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. Paul tells us in 611, we must count on the facts. Even so, consider yourself to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. And that really is the Christian's responsibility every day for the rest of our lives, right? To rest by faith in the fact of our participation, our sharing in Christ's death and resurrection.

This is the, this is actually Romans 6-11, this is the first imperative command in the entire letter to the Romans. So after six and a half chapters of Paul telling us what is true, Paul finally gives us a command and instruction, which tells us that this is what Paul's been aiming at all along. This is where he's been trying to get to, because he doesn't tell us to do anything until we get here. So he's built up all of this doctrine, and now when he gets to this critical point, he says, this is what you need to be resting on by faith. Notice that the command is a command to believe, a command to count on, to reckon by faith. to trust it to be true, to simply trust what is true, what the Word of God says about you as a new creation in Christ Jesus.

And then, for the rest of chapter 6, Paul explains the very practical result of this faith response, his reckoning or counting on the truth. He says that when we reckon ourselves dead to sin, we stop presenting ourselves to sin as our master. When we reckon ourselves to be alive to God, we are presenting ourselves to Him for His service. If you look at chapter 6, verse 14, Paul tells us why we should reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

He says four. So he's explaining. He's giving us verse 11, telling us to count on or reckon on our identification with Christ. And he kind of explains that for a couple verses, and then in verse 14 he says, And that's a really key thought right there.

Paul is telling us that we are free to reckon ourselves dead to sin because of something. We're free to reckon ourselves dead to sin because of the fact that we are not under law but under grace. But what exactly, how does that work? What exactly does being freed from the law do to release us from sins mastery? How is that connected? How is it connected to being free from law, separated from the power of the authority of law, work out in freedom from the power of sin?

This is what we're learning now in chapter 7. This is what Paul has explained to us in chapter 7. But it's important to understand that freedom from the law is what gives us the freedom to count ourselves dead to the power of sin. And we need to know that. Because we have the freedom to count on that fact.

Until we're resurrected, we still have the sin nature dwelling in these bodies. Our sin nature has not changed one little bit. The moment you put faith in Jesus Christ, the sin nature didn't go away. It didn't change. It didn't even begin to change. The sin nature will be with you from now until the moment you are raptured to go home to be with the Lord. And it will not change, ever. Don't expect it to. Expect it to function the same way, always.

And the sin nature in you, in your flesh, is still looking for any and every opportunity to get a foothold. any basis for operation in our lives, anything that can get it started. And every time we submit to law, any law, the legal principle, we give sin that foothold that it's looking for.

So it's critical that we understand the fact that we are freed from the law. Because we cannot count ourselves dead to sin on any other basis. Okay, if we are still under law, then sin still has what it needs to operate. And so we have to understand that we're freed from law if we're going to count ourselves dead to sin. And for the last couple weeks, we've been in chapter seven.

We're talking about our freedom from the law. And last week, I used the illustration, you might remember my astronaut, and we talked about being untethered from the law. And I talked about my irrational fear of being, you know, floating out in space separated from my spacecraft and not being able to get back. Right? Untethered. And I use that illustration because that's the way we tend to feel about being separated from the law.

We want to keep a tether. We want to keep something, some little connection between us and the law, just a little bit of law that keeps us really under a system of law. And we do that because we feel the law is the only thing that can keep sin under control. That's what we often really believe deep in our hearts is that I've got to have some law to keep sin under control, to keep me from from going off the deep end.

But Paul is explaining that it's exactly the opposite. It's exactly the opposite. Law doesn't restrain sin. Law stimulates sin. In verse 5, he talks about the sinful passions are aroused by the law. So law is the very thing that gives the sin nature the basis of operation, the base of operation that it needs.

The word aroused actually isn't in the Greek. It actually says, the sinful passions were by the law or by means of the law. And that word there, by means of or through is dia. It means the channel of an act. the means by which something does what it does. In other words, without the law, the sin nature couldn't even get going.

And that's quite a claim. Do we really believe that? Do we believe that that's true? Look at the end of verse 8. This is what Jim drew our attention to this morning. The end of chapter 7, verse 8, Paul says, apart from the law, sin is dead. That's a very, very powerful statement. Very concise, very loaded, very powerful.

Dead, and we have to understand, whenever you see death, you've got to ask, what does it mean in this context? Because death simply means separation, which is a very basic word. And so what sense is it being used here? In this context, dead means cut off from the energizing power or the thing that energizes.

It's like the electric battery in Erika's Tesla. Who else owns a Tesla? Without the battery, you're not going anywhere. Okay? Without the battery, you're not going anywhere. Take out the battery and your car is dead. Okay? That's the idea here. Without the law, sin is dead. It can't move. It can't get going. It can't get activated.

1 Corinthians 15.56. very important verse that I always come back to. It says, the power of sin is the law. And that word there, power, is dunamis. And we hear that all the time. Pastors love to bring it up and talk about it because we get our word dynamite from it. But the word means ability. The word dunamis means ability. So if we read 1 Corinthians 15, 56, we see the ability of sin is law. In other words, without law, sin is without ability. Without law, sin's got no battery under the hood. It's dead. It's not going anywhere. Can't do anything.

And we have a hard time understanding that really because we have a very basic and kind of fundamental misunderstanding of sin. We think of sin as doing bad things, do we not? That's a pretty, if you ask a kid, what is sin? Bad things, right? But that's not really it. That's not really fundamentally what sin is. The Bible is very clear that even human good is also sin.

Who can recall Isaiah 64.6, right? All our righteous deeds or righteousnesses are as filthy rags. The good things that we do are as filthy rags.

I also appreciate Psalm 143 verse 2. It says, for in your sight no man living is righteous. In whose sight? In God's sight. In man's sight, you may be such a righteous dude, but in God's sight, filthy rags. Your righteousness is filthy rags, unacceptable and corrupt.

So we should really think of sin as anything that is sourced in my will rather than God's will. That, I think, is a better and more helpful definition of sin in us. And it's a very different way to look at sin. Fundamentally, sin is self-will, what I desire. And when we understand sin that way, we can understand, or we can begin to understand a little bit better, why law gets sin going.

Law gives the self-will something to push off of. I was telling Jim this morning, we had this little conversation. It's like the starting block that sprinters use. It gives us in nature something to push off of, something to get going. When any law comes to you and says, do this or don't do that, we look at it and we can respond one of two ways, either I will or I will not.

But what's the same either way? I will. It's self-will. However you respond to law, it's in terms of self and self-will. Whether we respond positively to law or negatively, self-will is at the root of it. Self is always asking, what's in it for me? I'll go either way on this law, but what's in it for me? That's the ultimate, that's the real thing that's driving your decision on which way you're going to go on a law. Which way is going to end up better for me?

And the sin nature only needs one little law to get this footing. But, if I'm dead to the law, if I'm entirely separated from the law, then there's nothing to get self-will going. And that's why, apart from law, sin is dead. So that's the one side of being untethered from the law.

But we don't want to ignore the other side. Look at chapter 7, verse 4. Not only have we been separated from the rule of law, we've been joined to another, the Lord Jesus Christ. So we have to understand that there are two sides of this. God has not just, you know, untethered us from law to float aimlessly. No, you've been joined to another.

You've been separated from the law so that you might be joined to another, the Lord Jesus Christ, so that he might live in us, that he might produce his righteous life through us. But notice in verse four that Paul doesn't refer to Jesus as the Lord Jesus.

What does he call him? Okay? to him who was raised from the dead. Now, we know that that's Jesus, because who else would that be? But why does he call him the one who was raised from the dead? Paul is very purposefully drawing our attention to something specific about the Lord Jesus.

Because only one man has ever been resurrected from the dead. Now, if you're a little bit familiar with the Bible and you hear me say it, you're thinking, no, what about Lazarus? No. There were many people who were, we could say, resuscitated from the dead, but no one has been resurrected up until Jesus' resurrection. Everybody else died again. But Jesus was resurrected in a new resurrection body, never to die again.

But the resurrection proves something very, very important about Jesus. Very important. And there's a reason that Jesus is the only one who was ever resurrected. The only person who ever could be resurrected. It proves, the resurrection proves that Jesus is not like any other man.

God the Father raised Jesus from the dead because of the kind of man that Jesus is. I was going to say was, but the kind of man that Jesus is, because he is unchanging. What kind of man is Jesus? He's a man who is perfectly submitted to the will of God the Father, as we talked about a little bit in Sunday School. It's been a recurring theme lately around here.

Jesus was always submitted to the will of the Father. In fact, we sang that this morning. In We Worship Thee, the first song we sang, as Lamb of God, thy path we view, the Father's will thy whole delight. And sometimes when we think, if I just say that Jesus only did the will of God the Father, we think, wow, he really just knuckled under, he really just, against his will, he did the will of the Father. No, the will of the Father was Jesus' delight.

It was his delight to always and only do the Father's will, because it was in his nature to do that. A thing, a being, a person, even an animal, is satisfied when they're, living according to their nature. And so Jesus doing the will of God the Father was perfectly natural and delightful to him. It's what he enjoyed, it's what he wanted, it's what he desired. He wasn't having to be forced against his will to do this. His will was to do the will of God the Father.

And Jesus' death on the cross, we have to understand, was the ultimate expression of that submission to the Father's will. Philippians 2 verse 8 says, talking about Jesus being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So Jesus as a man submitted to the Father all the way through his earthly life.

He never operated on the basis of his own will, but the cross was the ultimate test of that character, of that nature. The cross proved that Jesus' submission to the Father had no limit. His submission to the Father was absolute. He wouldn't hold anything back from God the Father, not even his own life. So his submission to God the Father to do the Father's will was absolute, and the cross proved that.

And that goes to prove that Jesus has a nature that is totally different from the rest of mankind. While all the rest of us serve self-will, Jesus does not. Jesus always willingly does the will of the Father. And God the Father can honor that. And He did. He honored that by raising Jesus from the dead. And so if the cross is the proof of Jesus' submission to the will of God the Father, the resurrection is the proof of the Father's acceptance of the man Jesus Christ.

In Christ Jesus, God the Father has found his acceptable man, the kind of man that he could never find apart from Jesus, because all the rest of us had Adam's nature. All the rest of us were self-willed, self-centered, but in Jesus Christ, God the Father found the acceptable man, and he is and always will be the only acceptable man. So when Paul points out that we've been joined to the one who was raised from the dead, He's pointing out that we've been joined to the only man who has the kind of nature that is acceptable to God. That is the only way that we can share in or enjoy the benefits of that being made acceptable to God in Christ Jesus.

We will never of ourselves be acceptable to God, but in union with Christ Jesus, sharing His nature, we are acceptable to God the Father. And so as we walk by faith in the fact that we've been joined or united to Christ, Jesus is actively living out that acceptable life, that life that is pleasing to God the Father, that totally selfless life.

But just to check our thinking there, how often do we actually do that? How often when we come up against some trial or some difficulty or some challenge, even, honestly, even some slight discomfort, okay, how often is our first thought, well, what does God want? Or what is God doing in this? Or isn't our first thought usually, what do I want in this situation, this scenario? What do I want? And what kind of outcome am I gonna try to work out here and aim for? That's typically the way we offer.

That's the old nature. That's our self-centered, self-willed nature. But as we walk by faith in who Jesus is and what he can do and the life that he can live, he will live out a totally different, totally other kind of life in us. So if we're ever going to learn our need for this life of Christ in us, we're going to have to learn to recognize self, will, and ourself. And that takes a long time.

I was thinking, what is that like? And I thought, you know, that's kind of like a Canadian learning to hear his own accent. It takes a long time. I kid you not, when I came down here, I didn't realize that I use the word A a lot. Michael probably recognized that the first time I talked to him on the phone.

You know, we don't hear it. It's just totally natural to us. It's just the way we are. And it's the same thing with the sin nature. We don't realize even what is sin. We don't realize how much self-will is dominating us, but it's constant. And so, as to push the analogy a little bit farther, further, farther? See, I don't even know.

The longer I hang out with a bunch of Americans, the more I notice how differently I say things, okay? In the same way, the more we hang out with the Lord Jesus Christ in his word, the more we begin to realize how different he is, how fundamentally different he is.

And that's how we come to see what we're made of and our need for His life. So those are the two sides of the cross. We've been separated from the rule of law, which is the very thing that gave our sin nature its base of operation. And on the other side, we've been joined to Jesus Christ, who is the source of an entirely new kind of life, a life perfectly acceptable to the Father, a life that's perfectly submitted to the will of the Father. That was all review, by the way, so bye. This. raises an important question that Paul needs to answer. This gets us to what is Paul getting at in these verses in chapter 7. It says, what shall we say then?

Is the law sin? Okay, because sometimes, you know, we teach about this. We say that the believers are not under law, we've died to the law, and people think that we're teaching that the law is a bad thing. And how much more so when Paul begins to explain in verse 5 that the sinful desires of the flesh are by the law. Okay, or by means of the law, we think, my goodness, I see what happens when the law is applied to a person, how the sin nature is activated.

Well, there must be a problem with the law. There must be something wrong with the law, and that's wrong. The law is not the problem. Paul's response to that question that he poses himself is the strongest Greek negation, the same one he used at the beginning of chapter six, may genoita, may it never be. In other words, it's impossible. Impossible. The law can't be unrighteous. Why not?

Because the law came from God himself. Now, I believe that in verse 7 and 8 here, Paul's referring to the Mosaic Law. Now we know, as I talked about last week, we know this from chapter 2, verses 14 and 15, that even when the Gentiles who don't have the law do the things of the law, they prove that they operate under a principle of law, And we know that the sin nature will use the principle of law to produce sin, wherever that law is originating. And so the Christian must be dead to the whole principle of law, not just the 613 commands of the Mosaic law in the Old Testament. But here, I think Paul is making a specific reference to the Old Testament law, and there's a reason for that.

Men's laws have a certain God-awareness, as Paul says in chapter 2, a certain awareness of God's righteousness and his righteous standard, but man's laws are muddled and contradictory. Anyone studied law? Often confusing good with evil and evil with good, right?

But the law of God, which was revealed from the top of Mount Sinai with fire and smoke and thunder and lightning, flawless. Deuteronomy 4 verse 8 says, or what great nation is there, this is God speaking, what great nation is there who has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today? Hey, God's law given to Israel is perfect, flawless, and righteous. And from that day, that Israel submitted to that law, put themselves under it for the next 1,400-ish years, God's law proved something very important. What is that?

The law proved that even with a perfect law directly from God, no one can ever live a righteous life pleasing to God. You know, we might be able to make the argument otherwise. Well, Lord, if you'd only given us the perfect law, we would have been able to keep it. Just we didn't have the perfect law, and God says no. The perfect law was revealed publicly from the top of a mountain. And it's in the millions of copies of the law all around the world. The law of Moses is accessible. especially today. But no one can keep it. No one ever has. No one's ever been able to. In Acts 15 verse 10 in the Jerusalem Council, the Apostle Peter calls the law a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear.

He recognized the truth. He recognized one of the things that the law was intended to teach. And so the law is not sin. The law isn't the problem. Man is the problem. Our sin nature is the problem. But in these verses, Paul shows that the problem is deeper than just our inability to keep the law. The law shows a deeper problem that our sin nature is able to use even his perfect law to produce sin, okay?

And Paul gives us a personal example of that in verse 7. And I wanted, now we're in today's verses. Paul is giving a personal example from his own life, and I want you to notice that he puts his finger directly on the issue that's at the heart of sin. Why choose this command to focus on Paul? We'll see in a second. He says, 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 have known about coveting if the law had not said you shall not covet. Paul realizes something in the law of God that is purer and higher than anything you will find in the laws of men. God's law says no coveting. So what is that? Well, it's got to be important because Paul says that he wouldn't even know what sin is if the law had said, do not covet. So understanding coveting helps us understand what sin is. Now, your translation may have the word lust there. Don't let that mislead you. This isn't talking about sexual lust, that kind of thing.

The Greek word Epithumia is a strong desire, a longing, just to set the heart upon something. And of course, this is a quotation from the Old Testament Hebrew. which is, again, just the word for desire, to desire something. And it can be, whether it's a positive or a negative desire, okay? It's just to desire. And this, as we've kind of already talked about, is the most basic thing to our flesh. It's just desire. It's self-will. It's the desire to have. It's the desire to be something. It's the desire to experience something. Just fill in the blank, right? All of this is self-will under the word coveting.

And does the world recognize desire as sin? Does the world recognize this desire to acquire as sin? No way. The world operates under the principle of getting ahead. Everything is about what I can get for myself. It's the American dream, right? And the Canadian dream, for that matter. Everyone in the world, we want to get ahead. I want to get more. I want to have more, do more, be more, be more successful, just get ahead of the other guy, get to the top of the ladder, whatever it is.

But God said that this is living for sin. Okay, it's self-centered rather than God-centered. And Paul's right. If the law didn't tell us that this desire for self-advancement was sin, we'd never have a clue. Because it's pretty much the driving force in all of our lives. And that's a startling fact to face up to. All of this thinking that is so natural to us in just who we are and our makeup is nothing short of sin.

And then Paul gives us the kicker in verse eight. Paul tells us what happens when the sin nature is presented with God's law. And it's actually the reason that God brought in the law in the first place. Not only to show us that we couldn't keep it, but to prove how utterly sinful our nature is. The sin nature is so totally contrary, so totally opposed to God's will, and so completely bent on self-will, that when you place God's perfect law in front of it, It has the ability to use that law as the needed leverage to produce sin.

Now, Paul's going to talk about this for a little while. He's going to state that very clearly in verse 13. But here he's giving us his personal example. Paul says, That's how corrupt the sin nature is. Give the sin nature a perfect righteous law. and the response is sin.

And that word opportunity there is actually a military word. It means a place from which a movement or an attack is made. It's the base of operations. And in the common everyday sense, it really just means the incentive behind some action or the resources used in an undertaking.

And what Paul is saying is that the command, you shall not covet, is the very thing that his sin nature needed in order to activate his self-will. But what does that look like? What goes on in our hearts when that kind of thing happens? Our flesh, the self-life, the sin nature, can take specific commands and do one of two things with them. It's kind of important to see this, right? Because sometimes if we don't respond in the wrong way, we think we're doing okay, but often we're just flip-flopping for the other response.

So when given a law or command, I can either You know, I try to keep it, or to do it, or fulfill it, and in doing so, you know, I fill my mind with the thought and I just can't stop thinking about it. The very thing that I'm not supposed to do or have just grows and grows in my mind, and I just focus on it until I can't take it anymore and I just have to do it. I have to do this thing or that thing.

That's one way that the law works. But on the other hand, I I keep the command, I do what the law says, but it's out of a desire for self-improvement and self-glorification. So do you see the two sides? On the one hand, I'm trying not to break some law or do something, and I'm just focusing on that and allowing it to... where it just controls my thoughts. Or on the other hand, you know, I submit to some law or some instruction, but I'm doing it out of a desire for self-improvement, self-glorification, even if it's, you know, with the Lord. We think, oh, the Lord will be more pleased with me if I can do this.

And that is what I call the not-Christ-but-I life, in contrast to Galatians, which talks about the not-I-but-Christ life. And so, you know, we'll either you know, try to avoid or not do something and allow it to control us that way, or we will, you know, submit and respond to some law, but it's totally out of the flesh, out of self. And, you know, people go, we all go both ways, depending on a lot of different factors.

But what we don't understand is that it's not just breaking laws that's sin. Even when we're keeping law, it's sin, if it's being done in the flesh, right? And so it's a very common misunderstanding of sin. It's not just, as we say, it's not just human bad that's sin, it's human good as well.

And the flesh will gladly go either way, as long as we feel that it will in some way fulfill our own desires. Now, a moment ago, I said that this response of the flesh to the law is actually the purpose of the law. And we think, Why would God want to do that?

As we looked at earlier, Romans 5.20, the law came in so that the transgression would increase. Why would God do that? Well, God never gave the law so that we could keep it.

He gave his law so that we would see how totally sinful we are. Our sin nature can turn God's perfect law into an opportunity to serve self, and that's a very important lesson for us as Christians. And all of that explains why Paul can conclude verse 8 by saying, apart from the law, sin is dead. Not dead as in non-existent, but dead as in unable to do anything. The law is the power of sin. It gives the sin nature what it needs to control us. And if that's true, if the law is the thing that gives us in nature what it needs to control us, then being dead to the law means that sin's power over us is broken. In other words, it has no more authority over us.

So why is this important to us as Christians? Why is it important to know this and to believe this? Why do we need to understand all this? Why do we need to know that our sin nature uses law to control us? And why do we need to know that we've been separated from the rule of law? And here's the reason why, because without this teaching, Every single one of us would try to live the Christian life on the basis of law, on a law principle, because it's the only way that we know how to operate.

We've never lived under grace until we accepted Christ. We don't understand it. We don't understand how this works. And if we're not taught the truth about our death to the law, and if we're not instructed in grace, then we'll take all the imperative commands of the New Testament, and we'll interpret them through a legal principle.

And then we'll get to work trying to live the Christian life. And what have we done? We've given our sin nature exactly what it needs to activate self-will. So if we respond to the instructions, the imperatives of the New Testament under a legal principle, all we're doing is activating self-will, self-desire, and the sin nature.

The only way that we can possibly live the Christian life is to realize that I can't do it. I realize that I do not have that character. I do not have that in my nature. I don't have the nature to live the Christian life. Jesus is going to have to live it through me. And that's why it always comes back to faith. The Christian life is simply Christ living his life through me as I depend on him to do it. The principle of law says it's up to you. to live up to God's will.

The principle of grace is given to us in Philippians 2.2.13 which says, it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

It's our responsibility to trust Him to do that. And so we have to give up on our effort to live the Christian life. We have to come to the point where we say, Lord, I can't, but I trust that you can. I trust that you've done everything necessary for that life in and through me, moment by moment.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what you've done by grace. We thank you that we do exist and live in this new operating system as Christians, as believers. that we are free from the whole principle of law, and that now when we come to an imperative command about how the Christian life is supposed to function, how we're supposed to operate in this world as believers, we are free to not take that as a legal principle, as something that I must do and I must keep and I must work at, but something that you And only You can and will do in me as I depend on You for it. We just thank You for that grace. We pray, Lord, that You would teach us more and more about it, to depend on You more fully and more consistently. We just thank You and praise You for all that You've done. In Jesus' name, amen.