Is the law sin? (Rom 7.7-13)

The Law Is Holy, Righteous, and Good

We saw last Lord's day that Romans 7 is all about the law — God's 613 commandments recorded in the Old Testament, summed up in the Ten Commandments, and captured by Jesus in two great commands: love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as yourself. The word "law" appears in every verse from 1 to 14, and thirty-five times in the whole chapter.

So much of what Paul has said about the law in Romans has been negative. In chapter 3:20 he says no one will be declared righteous by observing the law — rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. In chapter 5:20 he goes further: the law was added so that the trespass might increase. And in chapter 6:14 he declares that we are not under law but under grace. You can imagine someone saying: "Let me get this straight, Paul — the law can't save us, and we don't have to keep it to stay in God's good books. So what's the point? Is the law actually bad?"

Paul answers emphatically in verse 7: "Certainly not!" And even more so in verse 12: "The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good." He is echoing what we sang in Psalm 19 — the law of God is good. The longest psalm in the Bible, Psalm 119, spans 176 verses extolling the perfections and wonders of God's law in every single one of them.

But we must not try to make the law do something it was never designed to do. Paul says to Timothy: "We know that the law is good if one uses it properly" (1 Tim 1:8). If you took your car out to Connemara and tried to do some off-roading across fields strewn with boulders and ditches, you wouldn't get very far. Your car isn't designed for that. It runs perfectly well on paved roads, but if you try to drive it across rough terrain, you will destroy it and endanger your passengers. The law is good — if you use it properly. It was never designed to make us righteous before God. If you try to use it as a stepladder to reach him, you will only crush the life out of yourself under the weight of impossible demands.

So what is the law designed to do? In verses 7–13, Paul defends the law by looking at its rightful purpose in the life of someone before they become a Christian, using his own experience as an illustration. He identifies four functions.

1. The Law Exposes Sin (v. 7)

"I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, 'Do not covet.'" Every human being has some knowledge of right and wrong — Paul established that in chapter 2. Even someone who has never heard the Ten Commandments cannot plead ignorance; the law is hardwired into them because they are made in God's image. Everyone would admit they are not perfect. But they have no idea just how bad they are until the brilliant floodlight of God's law shines into their hearts and exposes every dark corner.

Imagine walking home along a dark lane when a car drives past and splashes a puddle over you. There are no streetlights — you have a nagging suspicion you are not looking your best, probably some mud on your trousers. But when you get home and turn on the bright kitchen light, you realise you are covered in mud from head to toe. It is up your nostrils, in your ears, down your back. How on earth did that happen? It is only when you step into the light that you can see how bad the situation really is. That is what the light of the law does.

Or think of your phone. You have wiped it with an alcohol wipe, scrubbed it until it looks spotless. Then you put it under a microscope — and you discover it is crawling with horrible germs you could not see. They say there are far more germs on your phone than on a toilet seat in a public train station. And those shared bowls of peanuts sitting on the bar? Tests have found around thirty different types of urine on them. It looks fine — until you scrutinise it under the microscope.

That is what the law does. Everyone knows it is wrong to steal, even without hearing the commandment. But put that sin under the microscope of God's law and you see it in all its horrible depth. Stealing is not just an outward act — it comes from a heart that does not trust God to provide, that is resentful because God has given to someone else what you think should be yours, that is greedy for more, that places self at the centre of the universe. It makes an idol of the thing stolen. The law shows that sin goes far deeper than outward actions — into thoughts, desires, and motives.

Paul uses the tenth commandment — "Do not covet" — as his case study precisely because it is the only commandment that deals purely with internal desires. Paul had lived an outwardly blameless life; he says in Philippians 3:6, "As for legalistic righteousness, I was faultless." But as the law shone into his heart, he saw that his sin was much, much deeper than he had ever realised.

2. The Law Provokes Sin (vv. 8, 11)

The law does not merely expose sin like a mirror — it goes deeper, like an X-ray that penetrates right inside. "Sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead" (v. 8). The law actually stimulates us to commit more sin. Because we have a sinful nature, being given an order immediately stirs up a rebellious desire to do the opposite.

Imagine after church today you are told: "You can take any book from the church library — but not the big red one. Under no circumstances is anyone to open the big red book." What is the only book you suddenly want to read? All the others lose their appeal. You might even think: "Nobody tells me which book I can't open." That is what the law does — it provokes sin.

There is the story of an Archbishop of the Church of England travelling on an old-fashioned train. He noticed a sign he had never seen before: "Do not spit in the train carriage." He had never in his life thought of spitting in a train carriage — it had never occurred to him. But he says that as soon as he saw that sign, he felt saliva welling up in his mouth, and he leaned over and spat. It was the law telling him he could not do it. Augustine, the great theologian, tells how as a boy he stole pears from an orchard — pears he did not even like, that were not even ripe — simply because a sign said trespassers would be prosecuted. There is something perversely attractive about what is forbidden.

The word Paul uses for "opportunity" in verse 8 is a military term — it means a base for launching an operation. Sin seizes the commandment as a staging post, a springboard for waging war against us. It is like hijacking an enemy tank: sneaking into the enemy base, taking one of their vehicles, and turning its firepower against them. That is what sin does with God's good, holy, righteous law.

There is a striking illustration of this principle in a novel about a boy who must keep his face hidden — he only comes out at night, hood pulled over his head, dark glasses on, because anyone who sees his face tries to kill him. You assume it is because he looks like a monster. But it turns out his face is like the face of an angel, radiating such intense goodness and kindness that normal people are overwhelmed by their own wickedness — and they try to destroy him for how he makes them feel about themselves. Something like that is going on with the law. Its intense holiness draws out the rebellion lurking in our hearts. Paul is very clear: this is not the fault of the law. The law is good. The fault lies entirely in the sinner. It is sin abusing the law.

3. The Law Convicts of Sin (vv. 9–11)

Paul illustrates from his own experience. Before his conversion, he had such a good opinion of himself — "as to legalistic righteousness, blameless." He was "alive apart from the law," convinced he was spiritually healthy. But then the light of the law truly shone into his heart, and he saw how sinful, how unclean, how guilty he was in the sight of God.

Think of those three days of blindness after the Damascus road. Paul is sitting in darkness, unable to eat or drink, his whole world turned upside down, waiting for Ananias to come and restore his sight. What is he doing? He is meditating on the commandments of God. And even though he is physically blind, he can suddenly see more clearly than he has ever seen in his life. He is especially convicted by the tenth commandment — it is not just about outward actions but about his thoughts, his desires, his covetous heart. "The commandment brought death" (v. 10). He was appalled by the depths of his sin.

That is what the law is meant to do — not merely to show us our sin so that we mentally note it and move on, but to convict us, to make us abhor ourselves in dust and ashes. Every person needs to experience this convicting power. If you are not a Christian today, perhaps you think you are "alive apart from the law" — a good person, a decent person, not perfect but certainly good enough for God. What you need more than anything is for the blinding light of God's law to shine into the depths of your heart and show you what you are really like in his sight. That is a painful experience — like being diagnosed with cancer or heart disease. But you need to know what is wrong so that you can receive the cure.

4. The Law Reveals the Extreme Sinfulness of Sin (v. 13)

"In order that sin might be recognised as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful." The fact that sin can take something as pure and holy as God's law and twist it into a weapon of temptation shows just how wicked sin really is. It is like the con artist who turns up at the door of an elderly person and exploits their innocence, their trust, their naivety — using their very goodness as a weapon to steal from them.

Think of what amazing creatures human beings are — the mindless abilities we have, the incredible potential in every single person, these intricate bodies, our complex minds, our appetites and desires and possessions, all wonderful blessings from God. And sin takes every one of those things and dirties them, twists them, perverts them into foul, ugly, hurtful things. That is what sin does with the law, too — so that its utter sinfulness might be seen for what it truly is.

The Cure the Law Prepares Us For

All of this sounds harsh — and it would be cruel if it were just for its own sake, just to make us squirm under the light. But it has a purpose. It is only when we despair of ourselves that we are ready to hear about the cure that comes only in Jesus Christ. It is only when we have been put into the light that we are ready to call on our Saviour to rescue us from the death and hell we deserve.

And that is exactly what Jesus does. Put the life of Jesus Christ under the microscope. Turn the light up to maximum intensity and shine it into every corner of his humanity. You will not find one spasm of lust, anger, greed, or selfishness — not a single word out of place, not a single wrong thought or desire. His performance was flawless. And yet on the cross, Jesus was punished as though he had broken all 613 of God's commands every single day of his life. He took our record and gave us his. That is the gospel — and without the law's painful diagnosis, we would never know how desperately we need it.

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