Romans 7:7-12 "God's Law and Our Sin"

0:58It was awesome. And listen, I know that kids today watch Educational Programming 24-7. I think that's great. I know y'all have a brighter future than I have. I watched Wolverine cut people to ribbons, and I thought that was awesome. But one of the things that was super helpful is that at the beginning of each episode of X-Men, because it had been a week since you'd seen it, you couldn't just stream it whenever you wanted, they had the theme song play, and then this guy came on and he was like, previously on X-Men. And it would remind you what happened. The week before. And I thought that was great because seven days had passed and I'd slept and I didn't remember.

1:37And I think we kind of need that moment this morning. You may have forgotten, we're actually in the middle of the book of Romans. It's been six weeks since we've been in the book for a variety of reasons. So I want to just take a minute and say previously on Romans and talk about where we've been to this point to jar your memory. So Romans 1 through 3, Paul is arguing that the whole world is guilty. Jews and Gentiles, men and women, old people and young people, we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Romans chapter 4, Paul shows us that like Abraham, our forefather in the faith, we are not going to be justified by works, by the things that we do. We're going to be justified by faith in Christ alone. Romans chapter 5, Paul taught that we were all counted guilty in Adam, and through faith we will all be counted righteous in Jesus Christ because of his obedience.

2:38And then Romans 6, Paul responds to the charge that his message leads to the conclusion that if we are saved by grace, then we should just sin as much as we want. More than that, we should sin as much as we can so that God will be able to pour out more grace upon us. Well, Paul responds to that nonsense by asking. How can we who died to sin still live in it? And then we come to Romans 7:1 through 6, where we left off, and Paul wrote that we have died to the law. We've been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

3:25And Paul, being the expert teacher that he is, anticipates the response to that. In verse 7, he asks this question: What then shall we say? That the law is sin? I mean, it kind of seems like he's saying that, doesn't it? That the law is bad, that the law can't save us, we can't be counted righteous by it, that we were dead to it and we've been released from it. It kind of sounds like Paul is saying that the law is bad.

3:56And if Paul is saying that the law is bad, how would that square with the rest of the Bible's teaching about the law? Look on the screen at Psalm 1. Look at what David says as he begins the book of Psalms: Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law, He meditates day and night.

4:33Look what David writes in Psalm 19. The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. Look at Psalm 119. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. So, friends, if Paul is saying that the law is sin, that the law is bad, there is simply no way to square that teaching with the rest of the Bible. The people who say that the Bible is filled with inconsistencies would actually be right.

5:14But the Bible is not filled with inconsistencies, and in fact, Paul is not saying that the law is sin. Look at how he responds to this question. What then shall we say that the law is sin? By no means. That's the third time he said that in the book of Romans in answer to a rhetorical question. Not at all. May it never be. God forbid. By no means is the law sin. So today we're going to see that the problem is not God's law, which is holy and righteous and good.

5:48No, the problem is us. And specifically, the problem is sin, which dwells within us. And so let me give you the outline and show you where we're going today. You can see this. On the screen. First, God's law defines sin. Second, paradoxically, God's law awakens sin. And then, third, God's law condemns sinners. And what that all leads to is this conclusion: because of our sin, God's holy law promises life, but leads to death. So let's take a look now at verse 7, where we'll see that God's law defines sin.

6:37Verse 7: What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet, if it had not been for the law, I 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. Now, if you remember back to Romans chapter 3, Paul wrote these words, take a look, for by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

7:16So, according to Paul, what's the purpose of the law? It's not to justify us. Nobody's going to be declared righteous by trying to keep the law. No, the purpose of the law is to bring knowledge of sin. That's what Paul says right here in verse 7. If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. So, what is sin exactly? If you think back to Romans 3:23, it's a well-known verse. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Sinning is falling short of God's glory.

7:55Or going back to Romans 1, sin is exchanging the worship of God the Creator for created things. If you look at the whole teaching of the Bible, sin is grasping for spiritual and moral autonomy that's rooted in unbelief and rebellion. So, if you think back to the very beginning of the Bible, you see all of this played out in the Garden of Eden. Look at what God does in Genesis chapter 2. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

8:48So, what is God doing here in Genesis 2? He is defining sin. He says, Here is my command, here is my rule, here is my law. Don't eat from this one tree. You can eat from any other tree. You can do anything else, but don't eat from this one tree. So think about this. What's the first thing that you do when you're learning a new board game or you're learning a new sport? Somebody has to explain the rules.

9:23Somebody has to say, This is allowed and this is not allowed. This is inbounds and this is out of bounds. So imagine if you showed up to the park one day and your friends were playing basketball. And you had never played basketball before and you'd never seen basketball before. And they just hand you the ball and say, here you go, join in. So you tuck the ball under your arm and you start running. And they blow the whistle.

9:53You see them dribbling and so you dribble a few times. You pick it up and you start dribbling again. They blow the whistle. You dribble and then you take six steps and then you shoot it and they blow the whistle because it's not the NBA. And that's not allowed. You'd be so frustrated trying to play that game because no one explained the rules to you. Nobody defined what's allowed and what's not allowed. What is sin and what's not sin? What's inbounds and what's out of bounds. God doesn't do this to us. He did not just create us and then leave us alone to try to figure out what was sin and What wasn't sin through trial and error. From the very beginning, God explained His rules. He gave us His law. He told us what was allowed and what was not allowed. Because otherwise, we would not have known what sin was.

10:49In His mercy, God spelled out exactly what He wanted from us, not just in the Ten Commandments, those most well-known commandments, but in all 613 commandments that God gave to Moses. Paul refers to one of those commandments here in verse 7: You shall not covet. That's an abbreviation of the 10th commandment. I want you to see the full thing. Take a look on the screen. Exodus 20:17: You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.

11:35The tenth commandment reveals that God is not just concerned with our behavior. Now, don't misunderstand me, God is very concerned with our behavior. He commands us not to make idols and not to take his name in vain. He commands us to honor the Sabbath and honor our parents. He commands us not to murder or to steal. Or to commit adultery or to lie, God is definitely concerned with our behavior. But here in the 10th commandment, we see that God is concerned with the attitudes and the motivations of our hearts as well.

12:16This word covet can be translated desire or lust or crave. Desire or lust or crave. So the 10th commandment could read: you shall not desire your neighbor's house. You shall not lust after your neighbor's wife. You shall not crave anything that is your neighbor's. That command is about our attitudes, our motivations, the desires and lusts and cravings of our hearts. God is concerned with coveting. And God is concerned with coveting because it breaks the spirit of his law, which is to love him with everything and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Think about it. When we covet, we're saying in our hearts, I want this thing more than I want God.

13:20This thing is more important to me than God. We're failing to trust God, to love God, to be content with what He has given to us. And when we covet, we're saying in our hearts, I want my neighbor's possessions. I want my neighbor's spouse. I want what my neighbor has. We aren't loving our neighbor, rejoicing in what God has given to them. We are envying our neighbor. We're saying, I want that. I deserve that. I will have that.

14:00But you see, friends, apart from the law, we would not know that that was sin. We wouldn't know which behaviors and attitudes are sinful, which behaviors and attitudes are not loving to God or to our neighbors. God's law defines sin for us, and that is essential to living life in this world. Because of our sin, we cannot live in a world without law, without rules. The problem is that although God's law defines sin for us, it also awakens sin in us. Look at verse 8.

14:47But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin. Lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. So is the law sin? Absolutely not. But sin can take anything and twist it into something evil. And that is exactly what sin does with God's law. It takes God's law, which on its own is holy and righteous and good, and twists it into something unholy and unrighteous and bad.

15:43So Paul reads the tenth commandment, you shall not covet. And Paul confesses that sin seized that opportunity and produced in him all kinds of covetousness. Until he read the commandment, he'd never really pondered his neighbor's house. But then he reads, you shall not covet your neighbor's house, and he begins to think, my neighbor's house is bigger. It's nicer. It's newer. It's more updated. I kind of want his house. Until he read the commandment, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, he never really thought much about his neighbor's wife.

16:40But now he begins to imagine life with her, thinking that that life would be better, more exciting, more fulfilling than the life that he has. Until he read the commandment, he hadn't really noticed his neighbor's animals. But now he sees that his neighbor has more of them. They're stronger, they're in better condition than his animals. And the more Paul thinks about his neighbor, the more he begins to envy his neighbor, to resent his neighbor, to convince himself that God had not treated him fairly. After all, what has Paul's neighbor done for God? Paul has given his entire life to serve God. He's been beaten and thrown in prison. He's nearly died multiple times. Surely he deserves a house like that, a wife like her, animals like those.

17:39Can you relate to that? The very presence of a law awakens something inside of us. It makes no sense, but we all know it's true. You tell us to do something like keep off. And that's the very thing that is now irresistible to us. This dog had never considered climbing on top of a sign until he read the words, keep off. He doesn't even have opposable thumbs. But he said to himself, I've got to get up there because the sign said to not to.

18:27Sin is so evil that it can take something like God's law, God's holy and righteous and good law, and pervert it into something that is an occasion for sin. You see, God's law does not keep us from sinning. In a twisted way, God's law actually awakens sin inside of us. It provokes us to sin. That is why more laws are never the answer, because laws cannot keep us from sinning. We know this from the Pharisees, and we know this from our own experience.

19:11So take the Pharisees, for example. God's law says, honor the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That is what God commands. Honor the Sabbath, keep it holy, set apart 24 hours in your week for rest and for worship. That's what God's law commands. But what happens to the Pharisees is that they read this and the law actually provokes them. Something inside of them says, I don't like that. I don't like being limited in that way. I don't like God telling me when I can and can't work, what I can and can't do one day a week. And so they find themselves breaking the Sabbath in all kinds of ways. So they said, you know what we need? We need more laws. We need more commands to keep us from breaking the Sabbath. And so they created what came to be known as fence laws. And they were called fence laws because they built a fence around the Word of God.

20:18So the fence laws for the Sabbath were things like, you can only carry so many pounds, and after that, you're breaking the Sabbath by working. You can only travel so far, and if you walk further than that, you're breaking the Sabbath and God's command not to travel. They very carefully defined what entailed cooking because God said, don't kindle a fire on the Sabbath. Keep in mind, they're not just turning on a stove. They're not just turning on an oven. They're actually having to build a fire. And so they carefully defined what is cooking. In fact, modern Orthodox Jews, they're not allowed to flip on light switches. Or any kind of a switch on the Sabbath, and they're not allowed to cook. So, the fence law, what do they do? They turn on the crock pot on Friday and they put the food in there. They didn't touch a switch on Saturday, they didn't cook on Saturday, they just ate the magical food that was there in the crock pot.

21:24Here's the thing about fences: you can go over them, under them, or around them. And I know that very well because I grew up in the 90s. And I want you to prepare yourselves for this. My parents let me play outside, unsupervised. And here I stand before you today to tell the tale. When I wanted to go to my friend's house, I wasn't going to use the sidewalk, that would take forever. No, I just went over, under, and around my neighbor's fences. The very presence of the fences offended something in my young manhood. Like, I dare you to defy me. So, I did. I went under, over, and around them. And, friends, the same thing happens when we try to build fences around God's law.

22:25They don't keep us from sinning, they challenge us. To get more creative with our sin. That's why all the rules that you make for yourself or that you and your friends make for each other in your accountability groups don't work. Extra rules don't keep us from sinning. They challenge us to get more creative with our sin. So here's how Paul says it in Scripture: He's talking about man-made rules like: do not taste, do not touch, do not handle. Look what he says: These rules have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. Look at those words. Man-made rules are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. If even God's law awakens sin in us, why would we think that man-made rules wouldn't awaken sin in us?

23:49So, God's law is not sin. God's law defines sin for us, but paradoxically, God's law also awakens sin in us. Sin seizes the opportunity through God's command and produces even more sin in us. And that brings us to the heart of the problem. God's law condemns sinners. Look at verse 10. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

24:50Verse 10 is really the climax of this whole section. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. What does Paul mean? Look at Leviticus 18. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules. If a person does them, he shall live by them. I am the Lord. Okay, great. So if we want to live, all we have to do is keep God's statutes and rules. Just obey His law. Simple and The problem, of course, is that we have not done that. We have not kept God's law every day of our lives. Why?

25:40Verse 11 tells us. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it, killed me. Friends, sin deceives us. That's what happened in the Garden of Eden, and that's what's been happening ever since. In Genesis 2, the serpent told Adam and Eve that if they ate from the tree that God commanded them not to eat from, they wouldn't die. And not only would they not die, they would become like God, knowing good and evil.

26:19That is how sin deceives us. It tells us that it won't hurt us, and in fact, it will be good for us. Sin says you will have a better outcome in your life from disobeying God's Word than from obeying God's Word. Sin deceives us into thinking that breaking God's law is the way to freedom and peace and joy and life. But it's a lie. Sin doesn't lead to freedom, it leads to bondage. It doesn't lead to peace. It leads to conflict.

27:05It doesn't lead to joy. It leads to sorrow. And it doesn't lead to life. It leads to death. That's what Paul taught in Romans 6. Sin deceives us and kills us. The wages of sin is death. So God promises life to all who keep his law. But sin takes an opportunity through the commandment. It deceives us and it kills us. So the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. Is God's law to blame? Absolutely not. As Paul says in verse 12, so the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Like we saw with Paul, or David rather, earlier, Psalm 19, the law of the Lord is perfect. God's law is not to blame. We are to blame. And more specifically, sin inside of us is to blame. God's law awakened sin inside of us. Sin deceived us, and sin killed us. And God's law condemns sinners. Look at how James sums it up in James chapter 2.

28:30For whoever keeps the whole law, but fails in one point, has become guilty of all of it. For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery, but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So, whether we have broken just one of God's laws one time, or we have broken all of God's laws a million times each, we stand condemned. If we keep the whole law but fail in one point, we are guilty of all of it, because it is all one law given by the one true God.

29:27So, the question is: if God's law condemns sinners and we are sinners, we can understand why God calls the law holy and righteous, why Paul calls the law holy and righteous. But how can it be called good? Look at Romans 3:19. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be accountable to God. So look at those words. Every mouth stopped. All our excuses eliminated. All of our protests silenced. The law holds every person accountable before God.

30:14God says, this is my law. This is my standard. You did not meet it, and the penalty is death. God's law condemns sinners. But friends, God is slow to anger. He is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love. He does not delight in the death of the wicked, and that includes people like you and me. He delights to show mercy and to pour out grace on undeserving sinners. So look at what Paul says in Galatians 3.24.

30:55He says, Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith. God's law is quite obviously holy and righteous because it tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is a straight edge by which we can see how crooked we really are. It is the mirror in which we see how filthy we really are. But, friends, God's law is good because it ultimately is a tutor that leads us to Jesus Christ. And that is very good.

31:42So friends, if you are hoping to be declared righteous by God because you try hard to keep his law, you will not be declared righteous. God's standard is not, did you try hard to keep my commandments? His standard is, be holy because I am holy. If you are hoping to be declared righteous because in your own eyes you are better than most people, you will not be declared righteous. Because God's standard is not, are you better than most people?

32:25His standard is, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. You will only be declared righteous through faith in Jesus Christ. He came to live a sinless life of full and complete obedience to every one of God's commands, fulfilling all of them perfectly. He came to offer himself, laying down his life willingly in your place on the cross. He came To rise from the dead, defeating the consequence of sin, death, so that all who trust in him would be declared righteous by faith in him.

33:14Friends, because of our sin, God's holy law promises life, but it leads to death. But God's law is also a tutor that leads us to Jesus Christ, the one who spoke these words to Martha and who speaks these words to you and me today. Look at what he said. Jesus said to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

34:02Do you believe this? My friend, do you believe that? Do you believe that the only way you can be declared righteous is through faith in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection? The one who kept the law, so that through faith in him, you would be looked at by God as though you have kept it perfectly every day of your life. Do you believe that? This. I hope that you do. And if not, I hope that you will.

34:37Let's pray. Father, every time we read your word, we get a clear picture of just how short we fall of your perfect and righteous standard. Every time we read your word, we are reminded that we are not enough, that our efforts are not enough, our works are not enough, our resolutions are not enough. You demand perfection, and we have not been perfect. And so I pray for every Christian here that they would look afresh upon Jesus this morning, the one who kept the law for them.

36:00The one who ensures that when you look at them, you don't see a filthy sinner. You see the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Oh, God, would you give us faith to believe that today? And God, for every person here who is not yet a Christian, for those who have spent their whole life trying to justify themselves before you and before others, even before themselves, I pray that they would see the impossibility of that and that they would trust in Jesus this morning. Would you grant them faith and repentance?

36:52God, we thank you for your word, which cuts to the heart and speaks the truth. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.