Sermon Tone Analysis

(ESV)

Theme: The History and Experience of Jews Under the Law

In 7:1–6 Paul teaches that people must be released from the bondage of the Mosaic law in order to be joined to Christ because life under the law brings forth only sin and death.

This section brings to a climax the negative assessment of the law that is such a persistent motif in and thereby also raises with renewed urgency perhaps the most serious theological issue with which Paul (and early Christianity generally) had to grapple: How can God’s law have become so negative a force in the history of salvation?

How could the law be both “good” and an instrument of sin and death?

The law, Paul affirms, is “God’s law” (v.

22) and is “good” (vv.

12, 17), “holy” (v.

12), “just” (v.

12), and “spiritual” (v.

14).

How, then, could the law come to have so deleterious an effect?

How could the good law of God “work wrath” (4:15), “increase the trespass” (5:20), and “arouse sinful passions” (7:5)?

This Paul seeks to explain in 7:7–25, pointing to sin as the culprit that has used the law as a “bridgehead” to produce more sin and death (7:7–12) and to the individual “carnal” person, whose own weakness and internal division allows sin to gain the mastery, despite the “goodness” of the law (7:13–25).

, therefore, has two specific purposes: to vindicate the law from any suggestion that it is, in itself, “sinful” or evil; and to show how, despite this, the law has come to be a negative force in the history of salvation.

The main line of development proceeds from 7:6b—“serving in newness of Spirit”—to chap.

8, with its focus on the Spirit in the new age.

In labeling 7:7–25 a parenthesis, we must also stress that we mean by this not that 7:7–25 is an unimportant aside but that it is a detour from the main road of Paul’s argument.

No one could dispute the importance of 7:7–25 for Paul’s theology of the law and of human nature.

In labeling 7:7–25 a parenthesis, we must also stress that we mean by this not that 7:7–25 is an unimportant aside but that it is a detour from the main road of Paul’s argument.

No one could dispute the importance of 7:7–25 for Paul’s theology of the law and of human nature.

Moo, D. J. (1996).

The Epistle to the Romans (p.

424).

Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.

B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Paul is expressing his own former experience - along with the Jews - in the struggle with sin through the power of the law, and is paradigmatic to the human race.

He is reflecting back on his pre-Christian days as he considers his experience with the Law.

Though the law of Moses is in no way to be viewed as something sinful, it does serve the purpose of making us painfully conscious of our sin.

By way of example, Paul speaks of the devastating effect on his own life of the last of the Ten Commandments, “You must not covet” (7:7–11; ; ).

(It is significant that, of all the Ten Commandments, Paul highlights the one that focuses on inner attitudes—in this case, attitudes of greed—and not simply on overt acts.)

If it weren’t for the law of Moses that spells out this commandment, he would never have recognized the full depths of this selfish and illicit tendency in his own life.

But once recognized, the desire to covet was further aroused and reinforced by the constant reminder of the law not to do it.

In other words, the law had the perverse effect of stimulating the very sin it banned.

As long as Paul remained oblivious to the command, his sense of sin and guilt lay dormant; but once he became aware of the law’s demands, sinful desires—and with them, guilt—sprang to life, and he knew himself to be a condemned man.

So the very law that he had assumed to be the way to life, in reality, proved to be the sentence of death.

Such is the perverse effect of decrees that prohibit immoral actions—or rather, such is the strange response of immoral human nature to them.

(Compare the effect of a “No Smoking” sign on habitual smokers who may have forgotten, until they see it, how much they want to smoke; Bruce 1985: 140.)

This propensity is precisely why legislation can never produce truly virtuous living.

Human nature being what it is, no legal code has the power to produce a truly virtuous life.

Real goodness, then, cannot be legislated; it has to arise from a deeper motivation within.

Mohrlang, R., Gerald L. Borchert.

(2007).

Cornerstone biblical commentary, Vol 14: Romans and Galatians (pp.

117–118).

Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

I.

The Vindication of the Law: a narrative to show how sin has used the law to bring death (7-12)

7 What then shall we say?

That the law is sin?

By no means!

Yet if it had not been for the law, I [Paul in solidarity with Israel] would not have known sin.

For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

The law, by branding “sin” as transgression (cf.

4:15; 5:13–14) and bringing wrath and death (4:15; 7:8–11, 13), unmasks sin in its true colors.

But we should probably go further, and conceive this “understanding” of sin not in a purely noetic way but in terms of actual experience: through the law, “I” have come to experience sin for what it really is.

Through the law sin “worked in me” all kinds of sinful desires (v.

8), and through the law sin “came to life” and brought death (vv.

9–11).

It is through this actual experience of sin, then, that “I” come to understand the real “sinfulness” of sin.

Moo, D. J. (1996).

The Epistle to the Romans (pp.

433–434).

Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.

B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Paul deliberately chose the last commandment as an example.

That particular commandment was unique among the laws in the decalogue, and it obviously had a significant effect on Paul himself.

The tenth commandment focuses entirely on our inward nature.

At a superficial level, we may claim to have lived up to the first nine, but the last commandment exposes our intentions with shameful clarity.

Paul claims that no sooner had he discovered that commandment than “every kind of covetous desire” (7:8) assaulted him.

His “sinful passions” (7:5) suddenly became clear.

Barton, B. B., Veerman, D., & Wilson, N. S. (1992).

Romans (p.

136).

Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers.

8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

For apart from the law, sin lies dead [this last sentence initiates a sequence of clauses (8b-10a) in which Paul explains the way law became occasion for sin].

The law is not “sin,” nor the originator of sin, but the occasion or operating base that sin has used to accomplish its evil and deadly purpose.

Paul again personifies sin, picturing it as a “power” that works actively and purposefully (cf.

).

Israel, confronted in God’s law with limitations imposed by its rightful sovereign, was stimulated by that very limitation to rebellion.

It was only after the Israelites had heard the commandment not to make any idols for themselves () that they had Aaron fashion a golden calf for them to worship ().

That sin was “dead” does not mean that it did not exist but that it was not as “active” or “powerful” before the law as after.

Moo, D. J. (1996).

The Epistle to the Romans (p.

437).

Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.

B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

this clause will depict the situation of Israel before the giving of the law at Sinai—when sins were not yet “being reckoned”

Moo, D. J. (1996).

The Epistle to the Romans (p.

437).

Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.

B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

“I died” will describe that situation according to which the law, by turning “sin” into “transgression,” confirms, personalizes, and radicalizes the spiritual death in which all find themselves since Adam.

Israel, in this sense, “died” when the law was given to it.

Moo, D. J. (1996).

The Epistle to the Romans (p.

438).

Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.

B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

Probably Paul thinks of the way that the “promise of life” held out by the law “deceived” Israel into thinking that it could attain life through it.

But the attempts of Israel to find life through the law brought only death—not because obeying the law itself is sinful, or worthy of death, but because the law could not be fulfilled.

This is the burden of vv.

14–25: that the Jews found themselves under the “law of sin” because, while honoring the law, they could not practice it.

So sin, through the law, “killed” Israel.

But although this happened in accordance with the intention of God (cf.

5:20 and ), the ultimate intention this served was positive: that, being “bound under sin,” Israel might learn to look to God and his promise of a Messiah for life and salvation.