Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Romans 7:13
Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.
The law is not sin. Paul made that very clear in the passage we studied yesterday, informing us that the law is given to drag sin out into the open. It reveals sin, provokes sin, and brings us under a sentence of death to dramatize our helplessness. So then, someone might well ask, is the law a bringer of death? Again Paul’s answer rings out: “Certainly not!” And then, at last, he states in crystal-clear terms just what the law is designed to do.
Sin is the bringer of death, Paul declares, but it does that foul work “through what is good,” namely, the law. But God placed His law strategically so that sin, “taking opportunity by the commandment” (7:8), might reveal itself, that “it might appear sin.” In other words, as we have said, God gave His law to show sinners that they are sinners. In the presence of a clear-cut standard, sin cannot hide away, for a violation is a violation. The law is something like a light that shines on our sin so that we might see the ugly shadows dancing on the walls. It is something like a magnifying glass that brings our sin, which we think of as so minuscule, into terrifying enlargement. To use a Biblical image, the law is something like a mirror, which, when we look into it, shows us ourselves as we really are (James 1:22–25). All of these analogies have to do with seeing, with coming to a new understanding of the truth about ourselves. The law helps us see what we do not wish to see—that we are “exceedingly sinful,” rebels against God.
But God has a grander goal in this process. Though Paul does not spell it out here, he does so in Galatians 3. After noting that “if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law” (v. 21b), he goes on to write that “the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (v. 24). In other words, God gave the law that we might see our helplessness and flee to Christ. Dr. James M. Boice puts it this way: “It is only when the law has exposed our true nature to us, showing how bad we are, that we become open to the Gospel.”
The law is not sin, and neither is it death. It is God’s instrument to arouse sin and bring us under a sentence of death, that through Christ we might be freed of sin and delivered to life. God’s ways are mysterious, but they are always good, and His giving of the law is no less so.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Choose a portion of Scripture you have neglected and read it this week, noting the commands and applying them to yourself. If you come to see sin in yourself that you did not know was there, look to Christ for grace to overcome it. Make Scripture study and application a regular habit, that God’s Word might expose your heart’s rebellions.
For Further Study
- Psalm 119:105
- Romans 3:20