For when we were in the flesh the passions of sins, which [were] by the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit to death;
Paul has just said that believers died to the law and now belong to the risen Christ. Here he looks back at what life produced before that.
The verse packs a chain into one sentence, and one writer counts the links:
The verse names four things that go together: flesh, law, sins, death. Long ago the law was laid on a people "in the flesh." All it did was stir into action the sin that always lies hidden in the flesh. So the law aroused the "motions" or "passions" of sins, and death followed as God's judgment on all. "Flesh" here is not our bodies, but the fallen nature which has its seat in our present bodies. Every unconverted person is "in the flesh"; that is, the flesh dominates them and characterizes their state.
The writers quote an older translation here: "when we were in the flesh." So where does that leave a believer now?
But what does the apostle mean by the expression, "When we were in the flesh"? He simply refers to a thing of the past — to a condition that no longer holds. Are believers, then, not in the flesh? Scripture emphatically says so. But does this mean that they are not in the body? Certainly not. They are in the body, as to the fact of their existence; but not in the flesh, as to the ground of their standing before God.
The past tense matters. It settles who Paul describes in the rest of the chapter:
This verse determines the character of the teaching that follows. You cannot say, "When we were in the flesh," unless you have been delivered from that state. You could not say, "When we were in London," unless you have left it… People often ask: is this part of chapter 7 the proper experience of a Christian? Certainly not. If it were, it would not have said, "When we were in the flesh." Yet it is, as we shall soon see, the experience through which most, if not all, Christians have passed. Others say it is the experience of the unconverted. That cannot be either, for the unconverted do not delight in the law of God in their inner being (v. 22). It is clearly the experience of a soul made alive, born of God, with a new nature that delights in the law of God in the inner being. But this person is still under law, and has not yet learned what deliverance by death is.
The verse links those passions to the law itself. One writer traces how that worked:
The passions that drove people to sin acted in that nature — the nature of a man living as a child of Adam. They met the barrier of the law. In it they found something that resisted them, and that resistance stirred up the will. The ban itself pointed out the evil which the flesh loved and which the law forbade. So these passions acted in the members to produce fruit which brought in death.
Anyone who has tried to reform himself by rules has felt it:
Has not every awakened conscience verified this in experience? Law laid down as a command upon the soul has not restrained sin: it has stirred up the motions of sins in self-will and rebellion. Man revolts, and sins more when he is sternly commanded to do this, or not to do that. And we also, while in the flesh, thoroughly resented anything imposed on us by force, and were emboldened to rebel.
The law is not just barren. It yields a crop, and the crop is the problem:
The law is barren toward God, but it is not only barren. Fruit there is, but not to God; it is "fruit for death"… We see why the law is fruitless, or worse: it produces the passions of sins — a strange alliance, as it might seem, between sin and law. But it is not alliance, it is opposition, as it must surely be. To the man in the flesh, the holy demands of the law only press claims that contradict the "mind of the flesh," which is enmity against God (Rom. 8:7). The flesh is only chafed and irritated. The law brings its state to light; it does not change it.
The verse looks back so that verse 6 can look forward — from one marriage to another:
We can look back on that condition as the time when sin reigned over us, and when we were married to the old husband… But now we are dead to the law. We are cut off from the yoke of the old husband as completely as death can make us. Now we may serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. Under the control of the new Husband, Christ, we serve in the power of divine love, with which He has filled our hearts.
- State: "In the flesh" is not about having a body. It is the ground a person stands on before God, and every unconverted person stands there.
- Stimulus: The law met that nature but did not tame it. The ban itself pointed out the evil the flesh already loved, and the will rose against it.
- Sins: The law roused those passions, and they worked in our members. It brought the state to light; it did not change it.
- Harvest: There was fruit, but not for God; the man in the flesh bears fruit for death.
- Severed: The past tense carries the good news. That first marriage ended in death, and service now flows from love under a new Husband.
but now we are clear from the law, having died in that in which we were held, so that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of letter.
Paul draws a line between what a believer once was and what he is now. Death has broken the tie to the law, and a new service has begun. Two questions follow. What died? And what takes the place of the old duty?
Chapter 6 dealt with sin's mastery; this verse turns to the law's claim, and the same death answers both.
Another contrast meets us in verse 6: "while we were living in the flesh … But now." Having died with Christ, we are not only dead to sin, as chapter 6 presses home, but dead also to the law and so delivered from it. So we can now serve God in a completely new way. We not only do new things, but we do those new things in a new spirit.
An older English translation made it sound as if the law itself had died. The correction decides what service now looks like.
It is not that the "law" has died, as the King James Version wrongly translates, but that we have died. It should read, "having died in that in which we were held." The result is that we no longer serve God under a sense of legal obligation — that we must do this or that so God will be favourable to us. That would be "the oldness of the letter," which said, "Do this, and you will live."
The version above reads the same way: we died. But why could the law not die, and what set us free?
But notice: the same thing frees us from the law as frees us from the bondage of sin — the death of Jesus Christ. The law is not dead. How could it be? Whatever God gives cannot die.
Paul has just used marriage as his picture: death ends the bond. Here he turns the picture around.
It is certain that one cannot be under the authority of two husbands at once. One excludes the other. The law and the risen Christ cannot share authority over the soul. But in our case the law does not lose its force (that is, its rights over us) by its dying, but by our dying. It reigns over us only while we live.
Freedom from the law is never freedom from obedience. The verse gives the purpose of the release: "so that we serve."
The law is a ministry of death, and we died in the thing that held us. But this is how we found Christ, who has died, and died under the curse of the law. So we are set free in a new resurrection life — still to serve, for Christ our Lord has served and still serves. Would we want to be set free from that? No. We are freed to serve in newness of spirit, serving with joy of soul, no longer in the old drudgery and shallowness of the letter, pressed from the outside on unwilling hearts.
Two ways of serving stand side by side. One rests on enforcement; the other on a link to a living Person.
But to what purpose? It is that he should now serve God, not in the oldness of the letter, but in newness of spirit. That is, not as a matter of legal enforcement, but with holy, blessed liberty and delight, as one joined to the risen Christ and controlled by His holy love.
Where does the power for that service come from?
But now, since the death of Christ, believers are free from the bond with the law. They are in a bond with the risen Christ. In that bond the Spirit of God is the energy of service — a service acceptable to God. Serving in this way by the Spirit, they serve in newness of spirit. Their minds are no longer in rebellion against the authority of God; their hearts are in subjection to His grace.
It shows up in how a believer meets an ordinary disappointment.
For instance, if we plan a picnic, and a fearful storm comes on so that we cannot go, we accept the situation. We do not storm and rage and worry ourselves about it, but quietly accept the circumstances. Our will was to go, but there was another Will that we should not go, and the Higher Will is best. I subject my will to His and there is but one, for the will in me matches the will above. When it is like this with me I am walking in the steps of Jesus Christ. This is serving in newness of spirit.
- Death, not repeal. The law did not die; the believer died. God's standard stands, but its claim ends with the life of the one it governed.
- One husband. The law and the risen Christ cannot both rule a soul at once. Death ends the first bond and opens the way for a new one.
- Freed to serve. The release has a purpose. We are not freed from serving; we are freed to serve in a new way.
- New power. The Spirit of God is the energy behind that service. Rebellion gives way to a heart in subjection to grace.
- New spirit. The old written code presses duty on unwilling hearts. The new way of the Spirit is obedience out of delight — seen when my will matches His today.
What shall we say then? [is] the law sin? Far be the thought. But I had not known sin, unless by law for I had not had conscience also of lust unless the law had said, Thou shalt not lust;
The law stirs up sinful passions in us — so is the law itself evil? Paul answers by pointing to the one commandment that reaches past behaviour and into the heart.
The apostle's "By no means!" rests on a distinction between exposing evil and producing it. One writer draws it out with three everyday pictures:
As the apostle teaches us, "the law came in to increase the trespass" (Romans 5:20). This shows the real purpose of the law. It came in alongside to set out the exceeding sinfulness of sin. It was, in a sense, like a perfect mirror let down from heaven to show a man his moral disorder. If I stand before a mirror with my hair in disarray, it shows me the disorder, but it does not set it right. What is more, the mirror does not create the evil it points out. It neither creates nor removes. It only reveals. So it is with the law. It does not create the evil in man's heart, and it does not remove it. But it reveals it with perfect accuracy.
Paul picks the last commandment, and the choice is deliberate. His subject is not the record of wrong deeds but the state of the person who does them.
The law brings the full knowledge of sin, the apostle said in Romans 3. So here, whether from the outside or in the inner consciousness, the law is the means of discovering it. This is not from any defect in the law but from the sinfulness of sin. Paul pictures sin here as an enemy seizing a point from which to attack a man. But here the apostle is not proving guilty acts. He is proving an alien rebellious nature. So he singles out the last commandment, which forbids covetousness or lust. It is the one best fitted to convict of sin, not just of sins.
Natural conscience can register a crime. It takes the commandment to register a craving.
If he had murdered, he would have known the fact; his natural conscience would have taken notice of it. But we are not dealing with sins now, but with sin. I would not have known that unless the law had treated its first movements as evil. Many have committed no crimes. They have not murdered, stolen, or committed adultery. But who has never lusted? Anyone who claims he never has is saying, I am not a child of Adam at all. And notice here how great the error is of those who hold that lust is not sin if it is not consented to. The object here is to detect the evil nature by its first motion — lust. Not what we have done, but what we are.
The fault lies in us, not in the tool. And the prohibition does not quiet the desire; it rouses it.
The law is spiritual. It is of God, and from God. The point is that we are sin. The tool is good, but the wood is rotten. The law said, "You shall not covet." That is, you shall not have a grasping, acquiring desire. But the moment the command went out not to wish for a particular thing, it stirred up the bad nature to long for the very thing forbidden. A child told not to look into the basket wants to at once. Poor, weak, sinful human nature is the same. When the law of God tells it not to covet, it at once begins to long. It is not that the commandment makes the child naughty; the fact of the prohibition proves what the child is.
The style of the chapter changes at this verse.
Notice the change of the pronoun "we" to "I." This little word "I" appears about thirty times in verses 7-25. This brings us onto the ground of personal experience. We must discover and learn it by experience. The Apostle personifies this experience and speaks in the first person. He describes how a believer learns the lessons about the law: it cannot help a justified believer, but only makes him a wretched man.
Since the law only exposes covetousness, the cure has to come from elsewhere:
We cannot get rid of this covetous attitude unless the Lord Jesus works in our hearts by new birth. He makes us willing to judge our motives and to seek to live by wholehearted faith. Then we shall stop envying others. We shall know how to "rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep" (Romans 12:15) without selfishness. And this is not because the law commands us not to covet, but because the grace of God is working in our hearts.
- Mirror. The law shows the disorder without creating it and without setting it right — so no blame attaches to the law.
- Root. Paul picks the last commandment because it exposes sin in the nature, not just wrong deeds on the record.
- Craving. The desire itself is the evil; the ban does not calm it but wakes it, proving what the heart already is.
- Personal. The "I" running through the rest of the chapter shows this must be learned by experience, not just agreed to.
- Remedy. Only new birth and grace can change what the commandment exposes.
but sin, getting a point of attack by the commandment, wrought in me every lust; for without law sin [was] dead.
The trouble was never the commandment, but something already inside Paul that used it as an opening. That raises two questions: how a holy command stirs up the very desire it forbids, and what it means that sin was "dead" before the law came.
The law gets blamed for what sin did with it.
Yet it was sin and not law that caused the mischief, as verse 8 states. Sin did disguise itself a little: it sprang into activity the moment it met the law's definite prohibition. The very fact that we were told not to do a thing provoked us to do it!
Sin needs ground to attack from. The command against covetousness gave it the best ground, because that command reaches past outward acts to the wanting itself.
Sin is here pictured as the enemy seizing a point from which to attack man. But here the apostle is proving not guilty acts but an alien, rebellious nature. So he singles out the last commandment: the prohibition of covetousness or lust. It is the one best fitted to convict of sin, not merely of sins. And how true this is! Who does not know the irritation produced by a restraint on the will? So all kinds of lust are stirred up, for apart from the law sin lies dead.
Notice the order in the verse: sin is the actor, and covetousness is what it produces. James puts it the other way round, and the two fit together.
James 1:15: "desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin." Paul said the reverse, in the letter to the Romans (Rom. 7:8), that it is sin which produces every kind of lust. The difference is this. Paul keeps to the spiritual principles, while James looks at their effects. The one completes the other. The sin that is in the nature produces the lust (Rom. 7); and the lust produces the sin in the man's conduct (James 1).
Dead here does not mean absent. It means unfelt and undetected — a nature the man never suspected he had.
Apart from the law I was unconscious of the existence of sin — that is, of my sinful nature. There were sins: my conscience told me that. But of the sin bred into me I was unconscious until the law came. Apart from the law, sin was dead. Then the law appeared. It rebuked and condemned even the desire for sin, or the tendency towards it. I was amazed to discover that I had a nature that leaned towards sin, even apart from the question of my outward acts. The very forbidding of it only made me conscious that it was there.
Some make "sin dead in me" a goal to chase. But the verse describes that state before the law ever woke the conscience.
Thousands of Christians today strain every nerve to reach a condition described as "the clean heart," which for them means "sin dead" in them. But from Romans 7:8 this is, before God, an unconverted state. "Apart from the law sin lies dead." That is, before the commandment spoke aloud to the conscience, there was no awareness of its living energy as an evil thing.
If a prohibition only stirs the thing it forbids, law was never the cure. A drawer in an ordinary room shows why.
Suppose I had a drawer in this table with something in it. If I said, "Nobody is to know what is in there," plenty of heads in this room would want to know at once. Law gives no life, no power, no object, but it provokes the lust, is the occasion of sin, and fastens my guilt on me. Christ gives me an object, and life, and power, and delivers me from everything that was against me.
- Foothold. Sin does not come from the commandment. It seizes the commandment as a foothold, so the fault lies with the attacker, not with the ground it attacked from.
- Root. Paul and James run in opposite directions: sin in the nature produces the lust, and the lust then produces sin in the conduct.
- Dormant. "Sin lies dead" apart from law means asleep and unnoticed. A man may look blameless while a whole nature sits undetected underneath.
- Exposed. Paul singles out the command against covetousness because it condemns the desire, not just the deed. It proves a rebellious nature, not a list of offences.
- Delivered. Law can name the evil and pin the guilt. It gives no life, no power, no object; those come only through Christ.
But *I* was alive without law once; but the commandment having come, sin revived, but *I* died.
Paul clears the law of blame and tells his own story instead: he felt fine, then a commandment came, then he collapsed. The rest of the chapter answers the questions this raises — how he was "alive" before, why a holy command stirs sin up, and in what sense he died.
Before the commandment came, the man was not innocent. He simply did not know what was already inside him:
"I was once alive apart from the law" — these words describe the time before the authoritative voice of God's holy demands and righteous threats had crossed his conscience. He was completely unaware of the sin inside him, a living and unstoppable energy of evil. He was like a swimmer drifting along with the current, half asleep. He cannot feel its force while he floats with it, because for the moment he is completely identified with it.
That same confidence still answers questions about salvation:
You never met a person, before God made him alive, who did not think he was alive and able to act and live. Ask a natural man, "Are you saved?" He will reply, "I do not know; I hope so. I attend my place of worship, I am doing the best I can, and I hope I shall be in heaven at last."
Some commands a man can claim to have kept. One reaches deeper:
If the law only said, "You shall not steal," many a man could take the place of being righteous. But it says, "You shall not covet," and that catches every man out. Paul says, "I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died." He found out that the law took account of something deeper than the outward act.
The fault is not in the law. A restraint on the will stirs up the very thing it forbids:
Law is the means of discovering sin, not from any defect in law but from the sinfulness of sin… And how true this is! Who does not know the irritation that a restraint on the will produces?… It never did and never can improve the flesh. Instead it provokes the flesh by the restraint it applies. What we really need is a new nature and an object that transforms us. The law neither gives the one nor reveals the other. Grace does both, through Christ our Lord.
The verse ends with two results, and both belong to the law's work:
First, it stirred up sin into action. It drew a line and forbade us to step over it. Sin promptly stirred us up to transgress by stepping over it. Second, faced with this crossing of the line, the law solemnly passed the death sentence on us. True, the law set life before us, saying, "Do this, and you will live." Yet in fact all it ever did was condemn us to death, because we completely failed to do what it commanded.
The man also finds he cannot control what the law has stirred up. And this death is not the same thing as being crucified with Christ:
Let the law forbid my self-will, and I see sin come alive in bold and bitter rebellion, and I find in myself no power to control it after all… "I died." This is a vivid description of what the apostle went through. It is an experience that must come before real deliverance. He is not speaking here of "death with Christ," which is a legal fact true of every believer. He is speaking of what the soul goes through.
Commentators differ over how much of this is Paul's own history. One writer calls it his experience. Another takes the "I" to stand for every person:
Paul does not mean to indicate a state he himself had been in. It is a great principle which he demonstrates by personifying it, as he says elsewhere, "these things I have applied to myself and Apollos as a figure." That does not designate any individual — it is every man.
The death in this verse is what frees a believer from the law's claim:
The law killed him. It could do no more with him. So, he says, he was dead to it, because it had no further claim on him after it had killed him. It could not follow him beyond death into the risen place he had entered in Christ — into the new creation.
- Alive — before the commandment comes, a person feels no burden and thinks he is doing fine. That is not innocence. He simply cannot see the sin already in him.
- Commandment — "You shall not covet" reaches past the outward act to the desire. After that, no one can claim to be righteous.
- Came alive — the restraint provokes the flesh instead of improving it. What we need is a new nature and a new object, and grace gives both through Christ.
- Died — the law that promised life passed the death sentence instead. It stirred sin up, then condemned it.
- Free — once the law has killed a man, it has no further claim on him. It cannot follow him into the risen place he has in Christ.
And the commandment, which [was] for life, was found, [as] to me, itself [to be] unto death
The law came with a promise attached: obey, and you will live. But Paul says the rule meant to give him life handed him a death sentence instead. So where did the fault lie — in God's law, or in the man?
One writer weighs the wording, and notes that the older phrase "ordained to life" says more than the original does:
Strange as this may sound — and the apostle admits it must sound strange, since the law spoken of is the law of God, "holy and righteous and good" — it fits the rest of Scripture. "The power of sin is the law." "The commandment which was unto life" — "ordained" is not in the original, and is too strong; better to say "was proposed" — "I found to be unto death."
Life was offered on terms — earned, not given:
Life is brought in, but not as a gift. It comes from man meeting his responsibility. "Do this, and you will live." Life was to be had as the result of doing what the law required. But man was a sinner, and, if he knew himself, he could only say, "the law, which was for life, I found to be death."
If the outcome was death, who is at fault? One writer answers with a picture from a workshop:
In the law, life was proposed to man as the result of obedience. Yet the commandment that promised life turned out to be death. The law could not make people obey its demands, because it was "weakened by the flesh." This does not discredit the law, which was "holy and righteous and good." The fact is that nothing good dwells in the flesh, so the flesh is hopeless material for the law to work on. Give a sculptor first-class tools and a fine block of marble, and if the result is a mess, the critics rightly blame the sculptor. Give him a heap of dry sand to work on, and they clear him of all blame.
Paul does not say the commandment is death in theory. He says he found it so. One writer traces what happens when a person who wants holiness turns to the law to get it:
The moment a soul is born of God, all this changes. Why, he says, how can this be — I have a nature that wants the very thing God forbids? He turns to the word of God's law, and he dies to all hope of being in the flesh what he thought he was. "And I died." Yes, now comes the hard death of the old "I". He longs for holiness and turns to the commandments that promised life — the one who does them shall live by them — but he finds they bring death. He finds that sin is the master, and uses the very commandment to kill him.
Some keep the law as their rule, yet assume its sentence does not fall on them:
If you call yourself under law without admitting that you are condemned, you weaken the authority of the law. Some Christians say: "I am saved by grace. I am not under the law except for my conduct. No doubt I fail in it, but God is merciful." That is not the question. The law condemns. You have sinned, and you are cursed… "Do this and live" became death. It showed God's demands to a sinful nature whose will rejected them, and to a conscience that could only accept the just condemnation.
Another writer asks what rule should shape a believer's daily life:
He may follow the law as carefully as he likes, but the result will be that the commandment that promised life is "found to be death." … A child and a servant both owe obedience to the head of the house. But the child's obedience should flow from his position as a child, and the servant's from his position as a servant… Our relationship with God is settled by our having received the Spirit of adoption, and our rule of life is therefore Christ.
God's promise of life came first, and it still stands:
Do and live, it said to the sinner of Adam's race. But the sinner could not do it, so the holy law of God could only condemn him… If a law had been given that could give life, "then righteousness would indeed be by the law." But before the law, yes, "before the ages of time," God had promised life for man. That promise is in Christ Jesus, so He had to come where we were, to free us from sin and death and give us life in Him. The law said, Do and live. The Lord Jesus, when we could do nothing, died that we might live.
- Life proposed. The commandment set life before man on the terms "do this and live" — life earned by obedience, not given as a gift.
- Life tested. The offer was made to a sinner, so it could only expose him; the law is holy, but flesh is hopeless material for it to work on.
- Life denied. "I found" marks a personal discovery. The person who goes to the commandment for holiness dies to all hope of good in himself.
- Life not smuggled back. Saying you are under the law only "for conduct" empties its sentence. For the believer the rule is Christ — a child's obedience, not a servant's.
- Life given. The commandment offered life but could not supply it. Christ died to secure it — the promise of life stands in Him.
for sin, getting a point of attack by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew [me].
The commandment that promised life had brought death instead. Now Paul names the real culprit. Sin used the commandment as its weapon. That raises two questions. How can a good law kill? And what was the lie?
Everything turns on who acts. The commandment did not deceive Paul. Sin did, and it used the commandment as its opening.
The commandment said, "Do this, and you will live." In my case I found that it brought death, not life. "For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me." Notice again that sin here acts like a person. It is a monstrous, deceitful enemy, and it deals my death-blow by the commandment.
So the law carries no blame. The fault lies in what sin is.
So the apostle takes pains to relieve the law of all blame. Far from being at fault, it was the excellence of the law that was so deadly to the sinner. It knows no mercy. It cannot soften its terms or its punishment... The law brings sin to light. That is not because of any defect in the law, but because of the sinfulness of sin. Here sin appears as an enemy seizing a point from which to attack a man.
The lie is not that the law is bad. The lie is my confidence that I can keep it.
Sin first deceives, and then destroys. But the law is here its instrument of deception. The human heart is self-righteous by nature. Any Christian who has felt even a little of its deceitful working knows what this means. "All that the Lord has spoken we will do" (Ex. 19:8) was the unhesitating reply of the natural heart when the covenant of works was first offered for its acceptance... So sin deceived them.
Darby names what is really under discussion, and puts the deception in the first person.
We must remember that the apostle is not dealing with sins here, but with sin... I took up the law, thinking I had power to be good and righteous by it: sin took advantage of that to deceive me and bring me into death by the commandment.
This death happens in the conscience. The law reaches past what a man does and touches what he wants.
The law had condemned me not only where I did evil, but where I desired or was inclined to do evil. Apart from the law I was unaware that sin existed — that is, my sinful nature. There were sins: my conscience told me that. But of the sin bred into me I was unaware until the law came... The very forbidding of it only made me conscious that it was there. So the law, having found me out, held its stern sentence of death over my conscience.
An everyday example shows why a ban stirs up the very thing it forbids:
Suppose someone says, "I am going to do such and such a thing," and I say, "Oh, don't do that." When self-will is at work, he wants to do it all the more, at once. It is useless to try to fight sin this way.
This outcome was no accident and no defeat for God. He intended it, to expose sin for what it is.
Good as the law was, the stirrings of sin came by the law. "Sin," says the apostle, "seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me." And this was the foreknown and intended effect: "It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure."
This experience is a stage to pass through, not a place to stay.
Romans 7:7-23 looks back at a wholesome but painful discipline, a stage the soul passes through. The soul wants what is good, because it is converted. But it learned its complete powerlessness, because it was under law and had not yet accepted the sentence of death. Now it bows to that in experience. By faith it sees itself set free, according to the meaning of Christ's death in His resurrection.
- Sin acts — sin, not the law, does the deceiving here. It works like an enemy that first deceives and then destroys.
- The lie — that I can gain life by my own performance. "All that the Lord has spoken we will do" is the deception in one sentence.
- The death — the commandment reached my desires, not just my deeds. It held its sentence of death over my conscience.
- Law cleared — the commandment said, "Do this, and you will live." It brought death only because a sinner met it. The fault is all mine.
- The purpose — God meant sin to show itself as sin and to become sinful beyond measure. The soul that learns its own powerlessness is then brought to freedom in Christ.
So that the law indeed [is] holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.
Paul has just said that a commandment meant to give life ended up bringing death (v. 10), so a reader could blame God's law for it. Verse 12 is his verdict on that charge, and it clears the law of all fault.
If the law is cleared, someone else must take the blame:
Given how things stand, no blame of any kind attaches to the law. It is "holy, and just, and good." Sin, not the law, is the culprit. Sin worked death, though the law pronounced the sentence of death. Sin was already at work before the law came. But as soon as it came, sin had no excuse, and its defiance became outrageous.
Paul does not just say the law is fine. He stacks up qualities, and each one says something specific. (Where the ESV has "righteous," the older translations these writers quote read "just.")
Holy, it rejects evil outright. Just, it punishes only the sinner, so no one can question its justice. Good, it calls for love, which "is the fulfilling of the law." Can something good then be the means of my death? No. We cannot brush sin aside like that and blame the law for what sin has done.
Behind the law's hard effects, one writer finds love at work:
Even in the giving of the law, love reigns — however disastrous its first effects on people may be. The law itself is the servant of grace.
If the law were less good, it might have gone easier on us. Its goodness is not a comfort to a sinner but the reason for his sentence:
It makes no allowance for weakness, and it knows nothing of sincere but imperfect obedience. If it did, it would not be what it is — "holy, just, and good." The sinner cannot get life by the law for one reason: the law is what it is. If he could get life by it, either the law would not be perfect, or he would not be a sinner.
Why did a perfect standard produce such a wreck? Because of what it was applied to:
This statement of Scripture casts no discredit on the law, which was "holy, just, and good." The fact is that in the flesh there dwells "no good thing." So the flesh is hopeless material for the law to work on. Suppose a sculptor has first-class tools and an excellent block of marble to work on. If the result is a hopeless mess, the critics would rightly blame him. But if he only has a heap of dry sand to show his skill on, they would clear him of all blame. In that case the failure is all in the material and not in the sculptor.
Admitting the law is good does not make a person able to keep it. That is the discovery running through the rest of the chapter:
Sin becomes utterly sinful only through the law, which works every kind of wrong desire in me. So the law by itself has no sanctifying power. It cannot make me holy. Is the law not good then? Yes, it is holy, just, and good. But I, as a person in the flesh, am not subject to it.
That lesson lands on the person, not the law:
The law is all right, but I am all wrong. It is a healthy and necessary lesson to learn.
Does calling the law good put a Christian under it? One writer answers with a picture from the courtroom:
Some of our judges have cited Roman law in their judgments, because everyone admits its excellence. But who imagines that these judges held Roman law to be binding in our country? If God lays down principles in the law, they must be perfect, and Paul quotes them as such. A judge who refers to Roman law does not make it the law of this land. In the same way, Paul's quoting the law does not prove that we are under the law of the Ten Commandments.
- Good law. Holy because it rejects evil, just because it strikes only the guilty, good because what it asks for is love.
- Good verdict. The law goes free and sin stands guilty. Sin worked the death, though the law pronounced the sentence.
- Good, so fatal. It condemns because it is perfect. A standard that made room for failure would not be good at all.
- Good tool, ruined material. The sculptor is faultless; the sand is hopeless. In the flesh there dwells no good thing.
- Good, but powerless. A holy law can show a person what he is, but it cannot make him holy — and in the flesh he is not even subject to it.
Did then that which is good become death to me? Far be the thought. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death to me by that which is good; in order that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.
The verse itself calls the law good, so the law is not the villain here. That leaves a harder question. If something good ended in my death, who is to blame — and why would God plan it that way?
The verse refuses to let the law take the blame for what sin has done.
Is that which is good the cause of death? Not at all. Sin is the cause of death, not law. All the law does is show the presence and character of sin. Sin is so bad that it uses what is good to bring death on the conscience. So when the law meets a man who has sinful desires, it shows him not only that sin is there, but how exceedingly sinful it is.
If the law exposes so much, why does it change nothing? Three everyday pictures answer that.
The law came in alongside to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin. It was like a perfect mirror let down from heaven to show a man his own moral disorder. If I present myself, with untidy hair, before a mirror, it shows me the disorder, but does not set it right. If I measure a crooked wall with a perfect plumb-line, it reveals the crookedness, but does not remove it. If I carry a lamp on a dark night, it shows me all the obstacles and unpleasant things in the way, but it does not remove them. And the mirror, the plumb-line and the lamp do not create the evils they point out. They neither create nor remove. They only reveal.
Sin was already there. What the commandment adds is the character of defiance — evil done in the face of a clear prohibition. A homely illustration makes the difference plain.
Sin worked death through what is good — the law — so that sin might be fully shown for what it is, take on its true character, and become exceeding sinful, since it used what is good to bring about death. The evil does not show itself only as evil in itself. It also shows itself as disobedience, because God has forbidden it. So through that ban it becomes exceeding sinful. Sin in man has a strong will; he wills to do what is evil, even when God has forbidden it. Say my child runs out to play instead of doing his tasks. That is a bad habit. But if I forbid him to go out, and he keeps the habit up, it is disobedience as well. By the commandment sin has become exceeding sinful. It shows that in me there were not only evil desires. That self-will which does the evil despite God's ban is there too. It despises God and His word.
The words "in order that" show God intended this result.
If I am put under a law, the better that law, the worse my case. As Scripture says, "Now the law came in to increase the trespass," so that sin "through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure." This was how God convinced man that he had no strength of his own. And in that sense it was mercy. What is more difficult than to convince man of this?
This verse belongs to an experience, not a debate.
Notice the second question in the chapter, in the thirteenth verse… Now mark the reply… "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin." The soul now says, as it were, "The law is all right but I am all wrong." It is a healthy and necessary lesson to learn.
Knowing how sinful sin is does not set anyone free. But it clears the ground.
His mistake was looking to himself. Then came the humbling discovery: he had no power for the good, however much he loved it, and no power against the evil, however honestly he hated it. Everything turns on the question of a Deliverer outside self. Every hope of beating self by himself proves utterly empty.
- Culprit — Sin, not the law, produced the death. The law is good; the blame falls on sin.
- Mirror — Like a mirror, a plumb-line or a lamp, the commandment only reveals. It neither creates the evil nor removes it.
- Verdict — Sin becomes "sinful beyond measure" when it keeps doing evil that God has forbidden. Bad habit turns into open defiance.
- Mercy — God designed the exposure, and it was kindness. It convinces a person of the one thing hardest to admit: he has no strength of his own.
- Deliverer — The lesson ends with "the law is all right but I am all wrong." There the soul stops looking inward and looks outside itself for rescue.