《The Biblical Illustrator – Romans (Ch. 6b~8a)》

3. And it is in this sense only that the law is the occasion of death.

(a) As the man’s remorse broods over the transgression, so sin may take advantage by leading the man to dwell as constantly on the temptation which led to it.

(b) Or it may represent the man to himself as the doomed victim of a law that can never be appeased, and thus, through means of this law, may drive him onward to recklessness.

(c) Or it may soothe him by setting forth the many conformities to honesty, or temperance, or compassion, or courteousness, by which he still continues to do the law honour.

(d) It may even turn his very compunction into a matter of complacency, and persuade him that, in defect of his obedience to the law, he at least gives it the homage of his regret.

4. “For without the law sin is dead” (Romans 7:8)--dead in respect of all power to condemn, and in respect of its inability to stir up the alarms of condemnation: and as to its power of seducing or enslaving you by means of a remorse or terror. And in the next verse Paul is visited with the remembrance of his own former state, when, ignorant as he was of the exceeding breadth of God’s commandment, he looked forward to a life of favour here and of blessedness hereafter, on the strength of his many outward and literal observations. He was thus alive without the law once; and it was not till the commandment came--not till he was made to see what its lofty demands were, and what his wretched deficiencies therefrom, that sin revived in him, and dislodged him from his proud security, and made him see that, instead of a victorious claimant for the rewards of the law, he was the victim of its penalties. This state (see also Romans 7:9) is the prevalent state of the world. Men live in tolerable comfort and security because dead to the terrifying menaces of the law. It is because the sinner is thus without the law that he sees not the danger of his condition. And thus it is that it is so highly important when the Spirit lends His efficacy to the Divine law--when he thereby arouses the careless sinner out of his lethargies, and persuades him to flee for refuge to the hope set before him.

II. The law commended. The apostle having cleared the law from all charge of odiousness, now renders it the positive homage which was due to its real character--as the representation of all moral excellence. If the law be the occasion of death, or of more fell depravity, it is not because of any evil that is in its character, which is holy and just and good (Romans 7:12). This may lead to the solution of a question by which the legal heart of man often feels itself exercised. Why should the law, that is now deposed from its ancient office of minister unto life to that of minister unto death, still be kept up in authority, and obedience to it be as strenuously required? In order that God should will our obedience to the law, it is not necessary to give to it the legal importance and efficacy that it had under the old dispensation. At the outset of our present system, the Spirit of God moving upon chaos educed the loveliest forms of hill and dale and mighty ocean and waving forests, and all that richness of bloom and verdure which serves to dress the landscapes of nature. And it is said that God saw everything to be good. Now there was no legality in this process. The ornaments of a flower, or tree, or the magnificence of outspread scenery, cannot be the offerings by which inanimate matter purchases the smile of the Divinity. The Almighty Artist loves to behold the fair composition that He Himself has made; and wills each of His works to be perfect in its kind. And the same of the moral taste of the Godhead. He loves what is wise and holy and just and mood in the world of mind; and with a far higher affection. And the office of His Spirit is to evolve this beauteous exhibition out of the chaos of ruined humanity. And to forward this process it is not necessary that man be stimulated to exertion by the motives of legalism. All that is necessary is submission to the transforming operations of the Divine Spirit, and willingness to follow His impulses. And must God, ere He can gratify His relish for the higher beauties of morality and of mind, first have to make a bargain about it with His creatures? So, then, though the old relationship between you and the law is dissolved, still it is this very law with the requirements of which you are to busy yourselves in this world; and with the graces and accomplishments of which you must appear invested before Christ at the judgment seat. It was written first on tables of stone, and the process was then that you should fulfil its requisitions as your task, and be paid with heaven as a reward. It is now written by the Holy Ghost on the tablets of your heart; and the process is now that you are made to delight in it after the inward man. With gold you may purchase a privilege or adorn your person. You may not be able to purchase the king’s favour with it; but he may grant you his favour, and when he requires your appearance before him, it is still in gold he may require you to be invested. And thus of the law. It is not by your own righteous conformity thereto that you purchase God’s favour; for this has been already purchased by the pure gold of the Saviour’s righteousness, and is presented to all who believe on Him. But still it is with your own personal righteousness that you must be adorned. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)

The excellence of the law

I. It exposes sin.

1. Its nature.

2. Its existence in the heart.

3. Its activity (Romans 7:7-8).

II. It condemns the sinner.

1. Destroys his self-complacency.

2. Awakens conscience.

3. Pronounces sentence of death (Romans 7:9-10).

III. Demonstrates its own perfection.

1. By the display of its own nature, holy, just, good.

2. By exhibiting the exceeding sinfulness of sin. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Nay, I had not known sin but by the law.--

Revelation of sin by the law

Sin lies concealed in man, however fair and refined he may appear to the world, just as even in ice there exists hundreds of degrees of latent heat. The argument is that the law brings to light sin, and is not its parent nor in any sense responsible for its existence, as it is not its physician nor capable of removing its guilt and remedying its effects (chap. 3:20). The law does not in any sense create or cause sin by exerting any deleterious influence, as the frost, by withdrawing the heat from water, freezes it. Nay, the function of the law is to reveal and expose sin, as the office of the sun is to bring to light the dust and dirt which existed, but escaped notice before its rays entered the apartment. (C. Neil, M. A.)

The mercifulness of the law in the revelation of sin

Just as a mirror is not an enemy to the ugly man, because it shows him his very self in all his ugliness, and just as a medical man is not an enemy to the sick man, because he shows him his sickness, for the medical man is not the cause of the sickness nor is the mirror the cause of the ugliness, so God is not the cause of the sickness of our sin or its ugliness, because He shows it to us in the mirror of His Word and by the Physician Christ, who came to show us our sins and to heal them for us. (T. H. Leary, D. C. L.)

Sin aroused by the law

A contented citizen of Milan, who had never passed beyond its walls during the course of sixty years, being ordered by the governor not to stir beyond its gates, became immediately miserable, and felt so powerful an inclination to do that which he had so long contentedly neglected, that on his application for a release from this restraint being refused, he became quite melancholy, and at last died of grief. How well this illustrates the apostle’s confession that he had not known lust, unless the law had said unto him, “Thou shalt not covet!” “Sin,” saith he, “taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.” Evil often sleeps in the soul, until the holy command of God is discovered, and then the enmity of the carnal mind rouses itself to oppose in every way the will of God. “Without the law,” says Paul, “sin was dead.” How vain to hope for salvation from the law, when through the perversity of sin it provokes our evil hearts to rebellion, and works in us neither repentance nor love. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The conviction of sin

I. What it includes.

1. Knowledge of sin.

2. Consciousness of it.

3. Sense of its demerit and punishment.

II. How it is produced--by the law, which--

1. Detects;

2. Exposes;

3. Condemns it. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

Paul’s early experience

In this picture of his inner life Paul gives us, without intending it, a very high idea of the purity of his life as a child and a young man. He might, when confronted with the nine commandments, have to the letter claimed for himself the verdict, Not guilty, like the young man who said to Jesus, “All these things have I kept from my youth up.” But the tenth commandment cut short all this self-righteousness, and under this ray of the Divine holiness he was compelled to pass sentence of condemnation. Thus there was wrought in him, Pharisee though he was, without his suspecting it, a profound separation from ordinary Pharisaism, and a moral preparation which was to lead him to Christ and His righteousness. To this so mournful discovery was added ( δε Romans 7:8) by and by a second and more painful experience. (Prof. Godet.)

Sin taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence.

Sin and its work in relation to the law

I. Sin. Indwelling sin; depravity inherent in fallen humanity, personified as something living and intelligent.

II. Its occasion--the law, which shows it in its true character. Sin is in its nature opposition to God and His law (Romans 8:7). The presence of the law, therefore, is the occasion for sin to act. It is to sin as water to hydrophobia. Corruption arouses itself to resist the law which opposes it. Sick men and children often desire what is forbidden, because it is so. The law and sin act on each other as an acid and an alkali. The effect of the contact is like the effervescence of the mixture.

III. Its work.

1. “Wrought,” produced, called into operation. Sin is an active principle stirring up evil thoughts, etc. Its nature is to foam against the law as water against a barrier.

2. “In me.” Sin’s activity viewed as internal, not external.

3. “All manner”--both as to kind and degree. The heart is like a neglected garden full of all sorts of weeds. Lust may shrink into a dwarf or swell into a giant. Covetousness and lust are hydras, monsters with many heads.

4. “Of concupiscence.” Inordinate sinful desire. From sin springs lust, as the stream from the fountain. Evil desire not restrained brings forth sin in the act (James 1:15). Already in the heart it is excited by the law which forbids it. Weeds seeming dead in winter shoot up in the warmth of spring. Vipers torpid in the cold are excited to life and action by the fire. Like a revived viper, sin hisses against the law which disturbs it. (T. Robinson, D. D.)

The law irritates sin

A rock, flung into the bed of some headlong stream, would not arrest the stream, but only cause it, which ran swiftly yet silently before, now furiously to foam and fret round the obstacle which it found in its path. (Abp. Trench.)

Restraint quickens

The child is often most strongly tempted to open gates which have been specially interdicted. If nothing had been said about them, probably he would not have cared to open them.

The law rouses sin

Sin full-grown defies law because it is a law: resists restraint because it is restraint; contests authority with God because He is God. Says Cain, as depicted by Lord Byron in colloquy with Lucifer: “I bend to neither God nor thee.” Lord Byron knew whereof he affirmed. That is the legitimate heroism of sin. Sin runs to passion: passion to tumult in character: and a tumultuous character tends to tempests and explosions, which scorn secrecies and disguises. Then the whole man comes to light. He sees himself, and others see him, as he is in God’s sight. Those solemn imperatives and their awful responses: “Thou shalt not”--“I will”; “Thou shalt”--“I will not”--make up, then, all that the man knows of intercourse With God. This is sin, in the ultimate and finished type of it. This it what it grows to in every sinner, if unchecked by the grace of God. Every man unredeemed becomes a demon in eternity. (Austin Phelps.)

For without the law sin was dead.--

Unawakened

I. Without the law--in its application to the conscience, or in the knowledge of its spirituality and extent. It is easy to have the law and yet to be without it, which is the case of most. An unawakened man has the law in his hand; he reads it: an awakened man has it in his conscience; he feels it: a regenerate man has it in his heart; he loves it.

II. Sin was dead--

1. As to any consciousness of its existence.

2. Comparatively as to its activity.

3. As to any knowledge of its true character as opposed to God’s law.

The strong man armed keeps his house and goods in peace. The heart’s opposition to the law only bound by its presence. Sin dead, and put to death, two different things; it is dead in the unawakened, but put to death in the believer. Sin never has more power over a man than when dead in him, is never less dead than when it appears or is felt to be so. It has to be aroused into life before it is actually put to death. Dead in the soul, it shows that the soul is dead in sin. Sin was alive in the Publican, but dead in the Pharisee (Luke 18:10-14). It must be roused to life and slain here, or live forever hereafter. (T. Robinson, D. D.)

For I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.--

The sinner without and under the law

I. Without the law.

1. Alive.

2. But sin is dead.

II. Under the law.

1. Dead.

2. But sin lives.

III. The rationale of the change.

1. A change not of moral condition but of moral consciousness.

2. Effected by the revelation of the law. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Paul without and under the law

I thought all was well with me. Was I not a Hebrew of the Hebrews? Was I not a Pharisee? Was I not strict and zealous? But all that time I was in reality “without the law.” I knew it then in the letter only, not in its spirit and power. But “when the commandment came,” when it was brought home to my conscience, when my eyes were opened, then, “sin revived,” gained a new vitality, sprang into life as a serpent that had been frozen and was thawed. I felt it in all its power; I knew it in its guilt and condemnation; I was as one who had received a death blow; I despaired, my heart died within me. (F. Bourdillon.)

Conscience quickened by the law

1. Paul had lived with a conscience, but one that was not rightly instructed. He had kept his conscience on his side, though he was living wickedly. But there came a time of revelation in which his conscience took sides against him. And the result was that right before him rose his whole lifetime of sin, by which, as it rushed upon him, he was swept away slain. “I used, before I knew what God’s true light was, to be active and complacent; but when that spiritual law was revealed to me, all my life seemed like the unfolding of a voluminous history of transgression. And I fell down before the vision as one dead.”

2. The difference between a man when his conscience is energised and when his conscience is torpid is a difference as great as that between a man that is dead and a man that is alive and excited to the utmost tension of endeavour.

3. Excitement is itself a matter of prejudice; but no one objects if it is the excitement of enterprise; if it is physical or civic excitement. When it becomes moral, then men begin to fear wild fires and fanaticisms.

4. Now excitement is only another name for vitality. Stones have no excitability. The vegetables rank higher, because they are susceptible of excitement, although they cannot develop it themselves. An animal ranks higher than a vegetable, because it has the power of receiving and developing excitability. Man is the highest; the capacity of excitability marks his position in the scale of being.

5. Now, when excitement is out of all proportion to the importance of the objects presented, or the motive powers, then there is an impropriety in it; and this prejudice against it has arisen from its abuse. There have been moral excitements that are disastrous; but these are effects of a prior cause, namely, absence of wholesome excitement before. You will find frequently where Churches are dead that there will come a period of fanatical revival influence. It is reaction, the violent attempt of life to reinstate itself. But at its worst this is far better than death.

I. Rational moral excitement leads men to apply to their life and conduct the only true standard, namely, that of night and wrong, upon a revealed ground.

1. Ordinarily, men judge their conduct by lower standards. Most men judge of what they are by the relations of their conduct to pleasure and pain, profit and loss; that is, by the law of interest. But if that is all, how mean it is! Men are apt to measure themselves as they stand related to favour. That is, they make others’ opinions of them the mirror in which to look upon their own faces. Now, it is true that a man’s reputation is apt to follow closely upon his character, but there is an interval between that men skip. Men measure themselves by the law of influence, and by ambitious aspirations. Then public sentiment, fashions, customs, the laws of the community, are employed by men to give themselves a conception of what they are.

2. Now not one of these measurings is adequate. No man knows what he is that has only measured himself by them. A man desires to know what he is as a man, and he calls in his tailor. He only judges him as a man with clothes. He calls in his shoemaker. He only judges him with relation to shoes. He calls in the surgeon and the physician, and they, having examined him in every part, pronounce him sound and healthy. Is there nothing more? Yes, there are mental organs. Then call in the psychologist. Has the man yet come to a knowledge of what he is? Is there nothing to be conceived of as moral principle? Is there nothing called manhood, in distinction from the animal organism, etc.?

3. We need to go higher before we can consider this case settled. It must be submitted to the chief justice sitting in the court of the soul. Conscience calls in review all these prejudgments; not because they are wrong in themselves, but because they are inadequate. Conscience introduces the laws of God. Men are called to form a judgment of what they are, not so much from what they are to society as from what they are in the sight of God. You never can get this judgment except where conscience has been illuminated by the Divine Spirit. I am only measured when the soul is measured; and only can it be measured when it is put upon the sphere of the eternal world, and upon the law of God. This is the first great element that enters into moral excitability.

II. An increased sensibility of conscience is one of the most important results of general moral excitement.

1. The not using of one’s conscience works lethargy and blindness. But when the conscience is fired by the Divine Spirit, it awakes and glows. You know what it is to have your hand numb; and what it is to have it acutely sensitive. You know what it is to have the eye blurred, and what it is to have it clear. So conscience may exist in a state in which things pass before it, and it does not see them; but lies at the door like a watchdog that is asleep, past which goes the robber into the house and commits his depredations undisturbed. It is a great thing for a man to have a conscience that rouses him up and makes him more and more sensitive; but just as soon as the conscience becomes sensitive, it brings a man’s sins to a more solemn account than before.

2. There are many things that we adjudge to be sinful. A man says, “Profanity or dishonesty is sinful”; but, after all, he has a good natured way of dealing with these things. If men were as good-natured to their enemies as they are to their own sins, there would be much less conflict in the world, a man had a huge rock in his field. He did not want to waste time to remove it; he planted ivy, and roses, and honeysuckles about it, to cover it up; and he invited people to come and see how beautiful it is. A certain part of his farm was low, moist, and disagreeable; and, instead of draining it, he planted mosses, ferns, rhododendrons, etc., there; and now he regards that as one of the handsomest parts of his farm. And men treat their faults so. Here is a man that has a hard and ill temper; but he has planted all about it ivy and roses and honeysuckles. He thinks he is a better man because all his imperfections are hidden from his sight. Here is a man that does not drain his swamps of evil courses, but covers them over with mosses and various plants, and thinks he is better because he is more beauteous in his own eyes. Men lose their conviction of the hatefulness of sins, they get so used to them. But there come times when God makes sin in these respects appear so sinful that they tremble at it. You know how bonds go up. Today they are worth a hundred; tomorrow they are a hundred and five. And then when it is understood that they are going up, they begin to rush; and in the course of a few months they have got up to two or three hundred. When a man is running up values on his sins, they do not go down again. Under the power of an illuminated conscience a man says, first, “Why, sin is sinful!” Next, “It is very sinful!” Next, “It is exceedingly sinful!” Next, “It is damnably sinful!”

3. The next fact of this reviving of the conscience is that it brings into the category of sins a thousand things that before we never have called such. When gold comes into the assay office, they treat it as we do not treat ourselves. It is carefully weighed, and during the process it is worked up to the very last particle. Yea, the very sweepings of the floor are gathered and assayed again. Now men throw in their conduct in bulk, and do not care for the sweepings; and vastly the greatest portion of it comes out without being brought to any test. But it is to the last degree important that there should come periods in which men are obliged to bring into the category of sins those practices which otherwise they would call their faults, or weaknesses.