Sermon Tone Analysis

We’ve often had a conversation in our home about whether a certain action is sinful or not.

As we consider controversial issues that Christians have different opinions about, we first look to see what God has revealed to us about those issues in his Word.

However, even in God’s revelation of his will, we sometimes discern complexities that take some time to unravel.

The relationship between God’s law—his commandments and instructions—and sin is a relationship that is complicated.

For example, in Romans 7:12 we are told that the law is good, holy, and righteous.

However, in verse 6, we are told that, because sin has become so intertwined with the law, we need to be released from the law.

That is why Romans 7 can be a puzzling chapter to understand, because it is dealing with this complicated relationship between God’s law and sin.

In the passage before us, we are told that the law of God has an important role to play in the history of redemption and in the overthrow of sin.

The law of God creates a target for sin, entraps it, and then ultimately triumphs over it.

The Target of the Law

First, the target of the law.

In verse 13, Paul takes up another question about the law.

“Did that which is good, then, bring death to me?”

This is another logical conclusion one might come to.

“Sure, the law is good—it is God’s law after all—but isn’t it functionally evil for us human beings?”

Paul said in verse 9 that he “was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died.”

So, isn’t it better to just do away with the law since it is the weapon sin uses to kill me?

The Enemy’s Weapon

Again, Paul’s response is the emphatic, “By no means!”

Getting rid of the law does not get rid of the problem and would in fact make it worse.

It is not the law of God that should concern us but sin.

And by sin Paul would have us think, not of the collection of all human transgression, but of a dark, mysterious entity that exists in God’s world and has corrupted every part of it, including all humanity.[1]

This Sinis the same thing as the Satan figure.

Paul only mentions that name or title (“the adversary”) of this entity ten times in his writings, but the same figure is clearly in view here.

And Paul is telling us how this dark figure works, the weapon he uses to bring death into God’s good world.

So, Paul tells us, “No, it was not the law that brought death into the world.

The law itself does not kill.

Sin kills.

Yet this Sin has no power of its own.

It has to make use of God’s law to bring about its deadly aims.

In the Old Testament we find this story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den.

Daniel’s enemies, jealous of his promotion within the kingdom, sought a way to take him down, but

They could find no ground or complaint or any faults, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him.

Then these men said, “We shall not find any ground or complaint against this Daniel unless we find it in connection with the law of his God” (Dan 6:4-5).

So, they set Daniel up to have to choose between obeying the law of God or the law of the pagan king.

Were it not for the existence of God’s law, Daniel would not have been in any danger.

But being forced to choose between two competing laws put him in jeopardy.

Daniel was not thrown into the lion’s den because of God’s law but because of his evil adversaries.

This is how Sin works.

It is not the law but sin—again, sin is viewed here as a sinister power, an entity that has a will—it was Sin that “deceived me,” Paul says in verse 11, “and through it (the law) killed me.”

God’s law is not our problem.

Sin is our problem.

And we should hate it more than we hate anything else.

Sin Exposed

We should hate Sin because here we can see how particularly perverse it is.

It has no power of its own.

It has to co-opt God’s good law in order to achieve its devious scheme.[2] Sin is a power, but it is not a competing power, some rival or equal to God and his goodness.

Sin is a cancer, a deadly disease living off the sustenance of God’s good law.

Can anything be done about it?

Can anything be done about this great evil, this power that Paul says in verse 13 produced death in him?

Read on in verse 13 and you’ll notice that there are two purpose statements, two reasons why sin produced death in him through the good law of God.

But these are not Sin’s purposes.

The first purpose is, “in order that sin might be shown to be sin.”

Now Sin is not interested in revealing its particular heinousness.

It is not interested in letting us see how ugly it is.

The purpose stated here is not sin’s purpose but God’s purpose.

God ordained that sin would make use of his good law in this way.

It was one of the primary reasons that God gave his law.

He did so in order for sin to show its true color, to be shown for the evil that it really is.[3]

This power in the world is no friend but is the consummate enemy, making use of God’s good things in order to bring about our destruction.

God gave his law in order to expose sin’s true character.

Sin Enlarged

The second purpose God had for giving his law is stated next.

He did so in order that “through the commandment [sin] might become sinful beyond measure.”

Now this will raise some eyebrows.

To speak of sin becoming “sinful beyond measure” signals that God intended for sin to grow, to increase in some way.

He gave his law, his good law, knowing that sin would feed off it and grow large.

Looking at this statement, we would not be surprised to find some concluding that God himself is evil.

For why would a good God give a law which only seems to enlarge the horrors of sin?

Why would a good God give a law that would serve to feed such a monster called Sin and allow it to grow into such a force?

Why would he do such a thing?

But surely, we can at least suspect that if God is good he is up to something here.

And we’ve already been told back in chapter five that, yes, “the law came in to increase the trespass,” but at the same time, “where sin increased, grace abound all the more” (Rom 5:20).

God has never allowed the horrors of sin to have a field day without flooding the same field of horror with abundant grace.

Yes, God is up to something.

And Paul wants us to know that though Sin has taken advantage of God’s law, it is God who is in control, and the giving of his law is part of his great plan to overthrow Sin once and for all.[4]

God gave his good law in order to lure Sin into one place, allowing it to do its worst in that one concentrated place, so that he could then deal the deathblow to Sin once for all.[5]

Where was that one place?

It is the “I” that Paul speaks of in the following verses.

The Trap of the Law

This “I” is the trap that God, by his law, had set for Sin and its ultimate overthrow.

Common Human Experience

Could there be a simpler word than the word I? With just one letter, it would seem this little word could hardly be misunderstood.

Doesn’t it simply mean “me,” that is, the one who is speaking?

Well, it certainly couldn’t mean “not me.”

There should be no doubt that Paul is saying something about his own experience in this chapter.

Many of us can relate to that experience.

Can’t you relate to verse 19: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing”?

Does that sound familiar to you?

It seems clear to me that Paul intends for us to think of the experience he describes here as representative of others’ experience as well.

The “I” and the “me” in these verses is not just Paul but us as well.

But first we ask, what is the experience here described?

Paul is talking about our complicated relationship with the law of God.

God’s laws—his revealed will, his ways—are good, but Sin feeds off it and ends up brining about death.

No matter who you are, God’s law by itself can only end up producing death in you.

This is certainly true for those who are not Christians, and it is possible that Paul is reflecting in the verses on his pre-Christian days.

Back in verse 5, he speaks of pre-conversion as the time when we were living in the flesh, that is, prior to the time of conversion and its different way of living described in verse 6. Accordingly, verses 7-25 may be referring to the life of the unregenerate introduced in verse 5 while chapter 8 then takes us into the life of the regenerate that is introduced in verse 6.

To be “sold under sin” (v.

14) sure sounds like how Paul describes the non-Christian since in Romans 6:7 he speaks of a Christian as having “been set free from sin.”

On the other hand, there are plenty of arguments in favor of understanding Paul to be speaking of Christian experience in these verses.