Romans 7:7-12 (NIV)
What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.
Paul has been talking about life under the law as a life of sin leading to death. He imagines a debate opponent accusing him of saying that the law itself was sinful, which was far from his actual point.
Paul realized that he had lived two very different lives. His first life, his “BC” life, was lived under the law as a Pharisee. His second life, his “AD” life, was lived by grace through faith in Jesus. It is the dichotomy between these two lives that forms the basis of his remaining arguments on this subject, contained in chapters 7 and 8.
For nearly all of chapter 7, the context is Paul’s life as a Pharisee, a life lived enslaved to the law of Moses. He begins where we all must begin: at the beginning. Before Paul began his study of the law, with its legislative illustration of God’s character and its 613 precise commandments, he was blissfully unaware of how far removed from God’s requirements he had been living. Like most people, then and now, he considered himself to be an upright and moral person, as good as most and better than some.
But when he began to really study the law, he was suddenly confronted with how far he was really falling short. The example he gives is coveting. He was already a very covetous person but, like most people who live in ignorance of God’s requirements, he had no idea that that was a problem. But now that he had read the commandment, he noticed his insistent covetousness every time it rose up, and it rose up all the time.
At that moment, Paul realized how lost he really was. He wasn’t a good and upright person after all, but was now aware that he was sinning, not just once a day, but many times a day. And coveting was just one of his sins that his study of the law uncovered. He found to his great distress that, in his ignorance, he had been running afoul of God’s commands for longer than he could remember.
Paul finishes this look back with the statement that the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. He understood that it was not the law’s fault that he was sinning. The commandment didn’t cause him to start sinning. The light of the law merely shone into his heart and illuminated the sin that was already there, and that realization nearly drove him to despair. He understood that living life as he was living it had already separated him from God, and he felt doomed and hopeless.
Father, I remember when this same realization struck me. Seeing the darkness of my sin against the radiance of Your light and holiness drove me to despair. I could no longer compare myself with others and feel good about the comparison, because I had seen myself in Your light. Thankfully, that was not the end of my journey, but the beginning. That despair opened a path to repentance and restoration that I could never see before, while I was content with how I was living. Thank You, Lord, for Your holy law, Your holy righteousness and Your good commandments that have the potential to drive us to our knees and into Your arms. Amen.