THE GOSPEL OF GOD
Meditations in St. Paul's Letter to the Romans
THE BLESSING OF THE LAW

"What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said, 'Do not covet.'”
Romans 7:7.

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PAUL now addresses a problem which his words in verses 5 and 6 could well raise in the mind. In verse 5 he explains that the law of God is the catalyst for the production things in our lives which bring about death. These things are the sin and wrong which the law excites in our lives. The apostle's words are that the law 'bears fruit for death' in our lives, and for this reason we need to be freed from the law by dying with Christ. By dying with Christ when he died, we become free from the law and so are freed from the death the law produces, and free from the condemnation of the law which sentences us to death. 

This raises the question as to whether the law is a good thing. It also may raise the question as to whether the law is evil if it excites us to sin. Paul is addressing these questions now in this next section of chapter 7 of Romans, and in fact he shows us first of all that the law, far from being an evil, is in fact a great blessing, and to be without the law of God active in our lives we would be in a very sad state. This sad state is the position of most people in the world, who live and die, and end up lost and separated from God and all that is good forever.

IS THE LAW SIN?

Paul poses this question. The first thing we can say in answer to this question is that if the law exposes and condemns sin, then it is opposite to sin and therefore can't be sin itself, and can't be evil. It is important to understand this. The law may produce an evil or unpleasant result in our lives, but this is not the fault of the law, and is not because the law is like the devil. The devil tempts us to do wrong. Instead the law exposes what is wrong, and tells us it is wrong, therefore the law is not the problem, and the law is not evil or sinful.

THE BLESSING OF THE LAW

What Paul is speaking about in this section of chapter 7, which goes from verse 7 to verse 12, is the action of the law before we come to Christ, and it is a blessing because it does in the end lead us to seek Christ and find him. This is what the Apostle seeks to share with us here.

The blessing of the law is that it teaches us about sin. It teaches us what sin is. It teaches us the evil of sin. It teaches us the awful danger sin is in our lives. The words of the Apostle are "I would not have known what sin was except through the law". Here the apostle is speaking about the operation of the law on our lives when it is applied by the Holy Spirit.

a. The law in our natural state.

The law is always present, and the law always opposes and exposes sin, but generally people do not appreciate what the law is saying, and are not touched by the message the law is giving, and so they do wrong and fall short of God's standards, and do not feel any wrong in so doing. They are still in danger, but the law is not a blessing to them because they do not really hear its message.

The law has an effect on them as the apostle describes, but it is only negative. Most of the time people in their natural condition fall short of the laws standards all the time but don't realise it, but rather feel themselves to be good because they have not appreciated the real standard the law reveals. But then there are times when the law comes and touches them at a point which rubs up against a particular desire in the life, and then the law aggravates that desire, making the person want to commit it all the more, and far from causing that person to deny the desire, the law seems to activate action to circumvent the law and indulge the desire and still get away with it. Of course we are deceived. We do not get away with it in the long run because we build up sin, which breeds more and more sin, and in the end we face the judgement of God by the law and are condemned.

b. The law applied by the Spirit of God.

As God applied his law to the mind and heart of the apostle, Paul found something dreadful exposed in his life. Paul tells us that the law revealed the true nature of sin. What Paul found is that when the law was applied by the Spirit of God to his life he found that there was something in his life which reacted violently against the will of the law. Paul found that the law excited lust which was in his nature. The word used in our translations, the word covet, means simply lust, and is speaking about all the inordinate desires and powerful desires in us which are contrary to the holiness of God. 

The law exposed these lusts as evil and sinful and wrong and condemned by God, so the first blessing of the law was and is that the law teaches us the true nature of evil and sin, and the truth about what God hates and condemns, and which therefore places us in danger of death, and will produce death unless we are saved from it. This is a blessing which most people do not appreciate. People do not see sin as it truly is in the eyes of God, and so do not see the truth about their actions, and the evil of their actions. Because of this they do not see the result of the way they are living in the eternal destiny their lives are building up.

But Paul points out that the law applied by the Holy Spirit goes further than this. Paul is using the idea of sin here, not just as wrong actions, but as the principle of evil and corruption in our lives, which is the inheritance of all human beings naturally. The blessing of the law in this respect is that because the action of the law exciting lust in us, we are shown what our natures are really like. The problem of the law exciting sin in us is not because the law is evil, but that we have evil hearts. We do not really desire good but we desire evil. We find that there is no part of our nature that is not affected by this corruption. Whatever we do, and wherever we go, this corruption is present. It affects our thoughts, and our feelings, and our thinking, and our willing. The blessing of the law is that it exposes this terrible malady and sickness in the human soul, which is destroying each one of us, and destroying life in our world. The blessing is that the law exposes this sickness and shows us its virulence and destructiveness, and so causes us to seek with earnest desperation to be saved from it.

The blessing of the law is that it makes a true and complete diagnosis of the human problem, and so knowing the truth, we can seek the right and effective treatment for the problem, which is the salvation and new life in Christ. The law does not only make a right diagnosis of the problem, but also shows what an awful and fatal disease this corruption of our nature is.

FACING THE PROBLEM EXPOSED BY THE LAW

The great curse in our world today is that this blessing is just not known. People do not accept that human nature is not good at heart but rather bad at heart. Because of this there is no real remedy to the ills in our society.

The government is constantly having to face the cycle of problems which blight our society. Money is poured into various schemes to solve the problems, but the results never materialise. In Britain the government has been pouring money in the health service and into education. This has been held up to be the answer to the low performance in education, and the poor performance of the health service. No one can say that these things do not need more money, but the problem is not really here as again and again is found. The problem is in human nature. The money is not used as well as it should because of human corruption and failings. Greed in human nature means that more and more of the money goes to increase creature comforts for people working in the system, and more and more money is wasted because of bad management and vested interests. The system fails because of human self interest and human pride and human lack of willingness to really give and sacrifice for others. Because people can't be trusted the system is burdened by rules and regulations which hamper the ability to make decisions at ground level which would be best. Money is wasted because the rules and regulations make people ask for more than they need, because if they don't they know that when they really need more they won't get it. 

The problem is in the corruption of human nature, and this is true in the break down of human relations, and in the way people destroy their lives in so many ways because of the lusts within them that they are unable to control.

What is so tragic is that within the church the sinfulness and corruption of human nature is more often than not denied, or watered down. Preachers and teachers within the church do not teach this biblical truth because they don't believe it, and so the remedy of the Gospel of salvation in Christ is not understood and not preached in its fulness. 

It is only when we see the true nature of the problem of sin in our lives that we will seek the remedy God has given which gives healing and new life. If we have a superficial view of sin, then we will only seek a superficial answer. If we have a view of sin which thinks it is only a little problem, then we shall find the remedy of God in the work of Christ for us offensive, and even immoral, and this is because we have not seen what sin is and how it has caused and is causing death in our lives, and so feel that something less drastic and less offensive to our fallen state will do.

THE LAW APPLIED IS THE BLESSING WE NEED.

Before Paul met the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus road he felt himself to be good and righteous. As he tells us in his letter to the Philippians he could truly say according to the interpretation of the law of God taught among the Jews he was blameless. He felt himself to be right in God's sight and accepted by God. He did not know that he was a sinner in the eyes of God, and judged by the true holy law of God, and under the sentence of death and hell. He was going blindly on to eternal loss, and did not know it. In his blindness he was committing grievous sins by persecuting and killing the true people of God, because he thought that they were rejected by God. He was blind and in misery and did not know it.

Then the law of God was applied by the Lord Jesus when Jesus met him as he journeyed to Damascus. In a blinding moment he saw the holiness of God's law as he had never done before. He saw the glory and holiness of Jesus as the Son of God. He saw that all his supposed righteous actions were really great and evil sins. As he left that vision and went blind on to Damascus, the Spirit continued to work in his life. He found a great battle waging as all that he had been and believed in reacted violently against what the Spirit was revealing of the true holiness and nature of God and his law. This application of the law brought all sorts of lust against the truth, but he saw this lust for the first time as it was exposed so vividly to him as vile and that which killed his soul.

The law was a blessing. It led him to Christ, so that when Ananias came to him, he was ready to submit to Christ. He had been praying and supplicating before God. This is what the work of grace such as Paul experienced as the law was applied to his soul. It drove him to prayer. His prayer was answered as the wonder of the salvation found in the blood of Christ shed for him dawned upon his soul.

The law increased all sorts of violent lust in his heart, but it taught him the evil of his heart thereby, and so he was able to see his need, and he now sought Christ as the only salvation of his sin sick soul. The law brought great blessing in this strange way in the goodness and grace of God.

CONCLUSION

What is needed today and every day is the strange and terrible work of the Spirit of God which applies the law of God to the souls of human beings, so that in the terrible lust that is excited people see what they are really like; what danger they are in, and the death that awaits them; and so open their hearts to the Spirit as he reveals Jesus to them as a perfect and gracious Saviour that gives them complete salvation.