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Here's what happens to people from time to time.
They realise they have a problem with a particular sin or
sins, so they decide to do something about it. They read
something like Romans 6, that we read last week and they
decide that from now on they'll be slaves of
righteousness. Whenever they feel tempted to disobey God
they'll resist. They remember God's promise to provide a
way of escape and they resolve to ask him to provide it
next time they're tempted. Yet the next time they somehow
forget to ask for that way out. They fall into the same
thing they've been doing for years. And they can't
understand it. It's like they have a split personality.
It's like there's a war going on in their brain. One
moment they're winning the war and the next they're
failing. I wonder is that how you feel sometimes? It's
certainly how Paul felt, often. It's a major reason why
he puts such an emphasis on the importance of grace for
the Christian. He's very much aware of how often we fail
to live up to our hopes and aspirations to Godliness. |
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The great problem he's found with using the law
as the means to righteousness is that inevitably it leads
to death, not life. This is what he concludes in 7:5:
"Our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at
work in our members to bear fruit for death." You
see, the law can never help us. On the contrary, turning
to the law only gives an opportunity to our sinful
natures to rebel and that rebellion then leads to death.
Only living under grace can lead to life. |
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Is there something wrong with the law? |
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But then that conclusion leads him to ask
whether there's something wrong with the law. Did God
make a mistake perhaps? Or was this just a bad joke by
God on us humans? He says: "What then should we say?
That the law is sin?" This is a real possibility
given what we've concluded about the law so far. Is that
why we need to escape from its power? Is that why we're
told not to rely on it? Because it just provides our
sinful natures with a reason to rebel once again? His
answer is "By no means!" It's not the law
that's the problem. The problem isn't the law but our own
sinfulness. |
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Why is the law a problem for me? |
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So why is the law a problem for me? Why has he
spent so much time telling us to forget the law and
concentrate on grace? Well, he says, the law is a problem
for me because it's the law that brings out and shows up
my sinfulness. |
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Now we saw in Romans 5:13 that sin has been in
the world even before the law was given, but it wasn't
seen to be sin until people had God's law before them to
highlight their failings. He takes the example of
covetousness. He probably chooses this for a couple of
reasons. First because it's one sin that everyone falls
into from time to time. Whether it's wanting to keep up
with the Jones or envying someone else's abilities or
possessions or relationships, or simply wishing you could
have the latest household appliance, everyone experiences
covetousness at one level or another. But covetousness
wasn't really a problem for us until we were told that it
was wrong. But as soon as the law was given, sin began to
produce all sorts of desires in the human heart. |
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It might be that Paul is thinking here of the
covetousness that was at the root of the first sin, by
Adam and Eve. If you remember back to Genesis 3, the
devil pointed out to Eve that the tree was good for food,
was a delight to the eyes and was desired to make one
wise. It would make them like God. But it was even more
subtle than that. The mechanism that the devil used to
tempt them was to distort the commandment of God. To make
it sound like God's commandment was meant to limit their
freedom. We talked about this last week didn't we? The
devil's method was to provoke in them a desire to rebel
against God's rightful authority; to convince them they
needed to throw off the shackles of his authoritarian
rule; to assert their right to choose what was good for
them, what would please them. Never mind that God had
provided everything they could ever need. Never mind that
God had provided them with the tree of life that fruits
all year round. This commandment of God was there to
rebel against. And they fell for it. |
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Now can you see that if there had been no
commandment not to eat of the fruit of that tree there
would have been no point Satan tempting them. Nor would
there have been any power in the temptation. The power of
temptation comes from the idea that God's law somehow
limits us. |
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So the coming of the law is the means by which
sin is roused in me, the trigger for my rebellious
character to rise up. And so, paradoxically, the law that
was given, apparently, to bring life, actually brings
death. This is the paradox of every religious system that
seeks to instruct us in the way to righteousness, the way
to God. In the end, our fallen human nature prevents us
from doing what is required, no matter how good the law
may be. In the end, as we read in v11, sin will deceive
us. It'll tell us that following our religious system
will bring us salvation, or happiness, to closeness to
God. It'll tell us that if we just do the right thing,
God will owe us; that our obedience will put God under
obligation to us. This was Job's mistake. We'll be
studying Job and the problem of suffering at the end of
July, and we'll discover then that one of Job's problems
was that he thought that his righteousness put God under
an obligation to look after him. Well, you'll have to be
here to hear how that dilemma resolves itself in the
story of Job. But what we discover in our own experience
is that at the very moment that we reach out to grasp
what we're seeking, to reach the level of righteousness
we desire, sin will trip us up. It'll make us fail the
very commandment we're seeking to follow, with the result
that instead of life we'll reap death. |
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So then, why did God give us the law in the
first place. If the law itself is good, as we're told by
God's word, what is good about it? |
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What is Good about the law? |
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In v13 we discover that the law has one
significant and vital purpose. It's good and right
purpose is to show up sin for what it is. To show that
our sinfulness is utterly sinful. |
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You see what happens is this: we're going along
perfectly happily, without a worry in the world. then
someone comes along and tells us we can't do something,
or we can't have something that we want. And how do we
respond? Our shackles rise. We suddenly want that thing
more than anything. We start to think of ways to get
around the limitation of the law. Maybe we even begin to
plot how to do it or have it. Let's face it, that sort of
response happens at the human level, let alone at the
level of God's commands, doesn't it? Or are you different
to me? It's the whole basis of reverse psychology isn't
it? Tell someone they can't have something and they'll
immediately decide they want it. |
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But when we're thinking about God's law and our
ability to keep it, there's another dimension to the
goodness of the law. It's still related to what I've just
been saying, but it's the positive side to that negative
picture. And it's this: the law acts in our lives in such
a way that our sinfulness is shown up, our inability to
reach God's standards on our own becomes obvious and
we're driven back to our need for something beyond
ourselves, to our need for Grace. That's where Paul goes
in the next section, where he thinks about the way the
law affects us. |
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How does the law affect me? |
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So how does the law affect me? How does the law
help me to rely on God rather than myself. |
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Now there's been much discussion by theologians
about who Paul is thinking of in these verses from 14-24.
Is he talking about the Jew trying to obey the law? Is he
talking about his own experience prior to becoming a
Christian? Or is it his current experience? Or is he
saying this is the experience of all Christians as they
seek to obey God. Well, we haven't got the time to go
into the various arguments. I can explain some of them to
you later if you're interested, but let me just say that
I believe he's talking about his own experience as an
example of what every Christian experiences as they seek
to live lives as slaves of righteousness. |
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First he explains the problem. The law is
actually a spiritual thing. To truly obey the law
requires me to do so from the inmost heart, from the
spirit. But I'm naturally unspiritual and I live in an
unspiritual body. Elsewhere he describes the natural
person as being dead in their sins. So I have a problem.
I know what I want to do, but I can't do it. In fact what
I find is that over and over again I do the very things I
hate. So what does that prove? |
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The Law is Good |
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Well, it proves that deep down I believe the law
is good. The law affirms the things that I want to do,
and it forbids the things I hate. |
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There is a war within me |
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But it also shows that there's a duality at work
within me. There are two forces warring with each other
within me. In my inmost self I delight in God's law.
God's Spirit who dwells within me has changed the way I
see things. I no longer delight in sin. Rather I delight
in the things the law requires. |
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But at the same time I find that my old sinful
body, the old me, continues to choose sin whenever it
gets a chance. And this is so frustrating. I know what's
right. I want to do it, but the moment I choose the right
thing to do, evil lies close at hand. In fact this is
like a law within me, like the law of gravity. It's as
though I can't choose to do something right without the
possibility of sin being presented to me. It's like my
old self is so warped that whatever I do ends up crooked.
It's like you get out your favourite plane to smooth a
piece of wood and discover that there's a chip in the
blade, so that no matter how hard you try, the wood never
gets any smoother. Or you get out the broom to sweep the
kitchen and discover there's a clump of bristles missing,
so that no matter how much you sweep, there's always a
line of dirt left behind. |
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And you get into this spiral of frustration. You
can hear it coming out as Paul recounts his own
experience. The harder you try, the more you fail. The
more you try to suppress the sinful nature the more it
asserts itself. The more you try to give yourself over to
the slavery of righteousness that we talked about last
week, the more sin takes you captive. And in the end you
feel like screaming, as Paul does: "24Wretched
man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of
death?" |
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And so the law achieves its purpose. It drives
us back to God. And the answer rings out as clearly as
the plea: "25Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ our Lord!" The only answer to the
plight of humanity is this: that Jesus Christ would
rescue us from our own fallenness; that God would give us
his Holy Spirit to dwell within us and enable us to keep
this spiritual law in our inmost hearts, that he might
take our unspiritual bodies and transform them. In fact
that he might give us new bodies and minds that will be
able to serve him as he desires. That's what we'll
discover in 2 weeks time when we look at Romans ch8 and
life in the Spirit. God in his grace has provided a way
that we can be right with him. |
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Only Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit living
within me can rescue me from this body of death. And that
will be an ongoing struggle while ever I live in this old
fallen body. But in the meantime even if my flesh remains
enslaved to sin I'll seek to be a slave to the law of God
in my mind. And with God's help I will conquer. But that
will have to wait until another day. |
