R.C. Sproul (0:00)

Think back to your pre Christian days. Were you really overburdened by a sense of sin and guilt? Not until the Holy Ghost brought his conviction on you, quickened your conscience, made you alive to the law, that you feel for the first time in your life the weight of your guilt.

Nathan W. Bingham (0:30)

What is the purpose of the law? And what did the Apostle Paul mean when he said in Romans 7, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin? I'm glad you're with us for this Sunday edition of Renewing youg Mind as we continue our time with R.C. sproul in Romans, chapter 7. Each Lord's Day we feature the preaching ministry of Dr. Sproul, and his sermons through books of the Bible became the foundation for his expositional Commentary series as we're spending a few weeks in Romans. When you give a donation at Renewing in support of this, daily outreach will send you his hardcover commentary on Romans as our way of saying thank you. But respond before midnight as this offer ends in just a few hours. Well, to consider the relationship between the law, sin and the Christian, here's R.C. sproul.

R.C. Sproul (1:27)

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law, for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet but sin. Taking opportunity by the commandment produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law, sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin taking occasion by the commandment deceived me and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Throughout this section in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of Romans, where Paul is dealing with the consequences of our justification and that sanctification that is most necessary to follow immediately upon our justification, he sets forth this rather lengthy discussion of the use of the law. And in this section Paul has a series of rhetorical questions where he asks the question, and then he responds with great strength in indicating, as I said before, his abhorrence at the idea of of misconceptions that might follow from the things that he is teaching. And so we see that again in verse seven when he says, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. Again, that emphatic response that indicates not only the negative but the abhorrence of the thought that just because the law may provoke within us and stir up hostile feelings towards God's righteous law, that by the hearing of the law and the understanding of the law, we may be provoked to greater sinning than we would had we not known the law. We can't come to the conclusion that therefore there's something wrong with the law, that therefore the law itself is evil or the law itself is sin. And Paul is saying, we need to keep in front of our eyes here a clear distinction between the righteousness of the law and the sinfulness of our response to that law. It's not the law that is the culprit here. It is our fallen corruption. Is the law sin by no means. God forbid. Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet. Therefore, the point that Paul is making again is the revelatory character of the law of God, that the law of God, as we pointed out the last time, is that mirror by which we not only see the glory and radiance of God's perfection, but when we see ourselves against that backdrop, we see ourselves, warts and all. The law is not sin, but the law makes known to us our sin. Paul said, I wouldn't even have known that covetousness was a sin until the law said, thou shalt not covet. Now again, dearly Beloved, before we come to the Gospel, before we go on our faces before Christ begging for the mercy of God. This will never happen until God, the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin. And the instrument that the Spirit uses again and again in Church history to bring us to the cross is the revelation of law. We are at ease in Zion. We have made ourselves inured to the power of the law to. The pagan walks around out there virtually oblivious to the radical disobedience that he exhibits every hour of his life. Oh, he may be willing to admit that he's not perfect, that nobody's perfect, but he doesn't feel the weight of that. Let's just take it for granted. We're doing what comes naturally. To err is human, to forgive is divine. And so the fact that we covet, the fact that we lust is no major matter. We're comfortable in our sin. In fact, the image that Paul uses again and again is the image of somebody who's dead, spiritually dead, dead to any awareness, the gravity of sin. The world has lost its fear of God. There is no sense of judgment. This is the state of people's minds that Paul is describing here. I wouldn't have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet, but sin taking opportunity in the commandment produced in me all manner of evil desire. Again, it's not the commandment that is at fault, but as soon as I heard the commandment, rather than the commandment turning me from my sin, rather than the commandment restraining me from covetousness, rather my sin in response to the law of God, was stirred to even greater covetousness, even greater sinfulness. Sin took opportunity by the commandment, and it produced in me all manner of evil desire. Now, there's a little phrase here that is described in various different translations in different ways. When Paul speaks of the evil desire that is produced within us by sin, the Latin text uses the word from which the English term concupiscence comes. How many of you have never heard that word before? Concupiscence. Let me see. If you grew up in a Roman Catholic Church, you heard it because one of the great disputes between the reformers of the 16th century and the Roman Church was that Rome, in trying to explain how sin came into the world, originally said that man was created, not evil, but was created with concupiscence. And they defined concupiscence in this manner. That concupiscence is of sin, and it inclines to sin, but in and of itself is not sin. And the Reformers answered that by saying, look, an evil desire that gives birth to evil action is already sin. Now our sinful deeds flow out of our sinful desires, and so we cannot excuse those evil desires as being less than sin. The Latin translation is, as I said, concupiscence. And in the Greek, the word there is epithumia, and there's the word there for passion or desire with a prefix that intensifies it. And what's going on here is this that the specific sins, or what we call actual sin, makes bare and makes plain the root of those sins. Sin, for the most part, was sleeping, until the law comes along and awakens that sleeping giant and fills us with the horrible resolve of wickedness. Apart from the law, sin was dead. I was alive once without the law. But when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. Again, these difficult metaphors that Paul is using here. I was at peace, I was happy. I was getting along fine without the law. When the law was asleep, my conscience was clear. I was having a good time. I was being one of the guys. I didn't go to sleep at night wallowing in guilt. I was Happy? As long as you kept the law away from me. I was alive, I was having a great time. But when the law came, sin was revived and I died when the law came. Paul says that joy is living without guilt, without remorse, without ruining my behavior. I was feeling great and then I died when the law revived sin in me. Do you relate to that? Think back to your pre Christian days. Were you really overburdened by a sense of sin and guilt? Not until the Holy Ghost brought his conviction on you, quickened your conscience, made you alive to the law, did you feel for the first time in your life the weight of your guilt. That's what drove you to Christ. That's what gave you a new life, a life of the Spirit and the commandment which was to bring life. I found to bring death again. For sin taking occasion, by the commandment deceived me and by it killed me. Listen to that. Sin taking occasion by the commandment deceived me. Sin deceived me. Isn't it interesting that Satan in the Scriptures is called the great deceiver who distorts the truth. What is so attractive about sin? Why would any creature made in the image of God even ever be tempted by sin? Why would you ever be inclined to steal what belongs to somebody else? Why would you ever be inclined to to bear false witness against your neighbor? Because in the temptation there was the offer of happiness. The devil never comes and says, do this and suffer, do this and die. Do this and be miserable. But rather the passions are so excited by sin that you come to believe that unless you act on your passion, you would be denying yourself fundamental happiness. Let me tell you why sin is attractive. Here's what sin brings you. Pleasure. It brings pleasure, but never happiness. That's the monstrous lie of the Father of lies. Do this and you'll be happy. Do this and you will be blessed. No, never. It is impossible for sin to bring happiness to a child of God, cannot do it. And yet we don't believe that. I won't be happy unless I do this. I won't really be happy unless I have that. That's how sin deceives us. You will be as God. You won't die. You don't know what happiness is, Adam. You don't know what pleasure is, Eve, until you taste of the fruit. But God said no. Well, God is withholding from you happiness and you have a right to be happy. The biggest justification morally in the secular culture, in our world for all kinds of monstrous evil is we have the right. I have the Right to do what I prefer to do. I have the right to destroy my baby. Where'd you get that right? I have a right over my own body. Says who? Does God give you the right to do those things? You know better. Every person in the world knows better than that. But they say, but if I don't do this, I won't be happy. If you do do it, you destroy all hope of happiness. Because we can't get in our minds the difference between pleasure and happiness. And this is what the apostle's talking about. Sin deceives me, and by that deception it killed me. Therefore, now here comes the conclusion to this section. Therefore the law is bad, therefore the law is wicked, therefore the commandment is sin. You know that's not what this page says. What does God say? Therefore the law. Law is holy. What else does he say? The commandment is a holy commandment, and it is just and it is good. So the law of God is holy. The law of God is just. The law of God is good. But what happens when a holy law and a just law and a good law is delivered to unholy creatures? They don't think it's so just. Anytime God puts a restraint upon our desires, anytime God says that we ought not to do what we prefer to do, we say, that's not fair, that's not just. As if there were some hint of injustice in the character of God. Beloved, when God says that human life is sacred, you will never hear a more just saying than that. For the law of God is good because he is good. It was designed to bring life, and we turn it into the occasion of death. This brings us to the section of Romans 7, which is one of the most controversial sections in the whole book. If the teaching of predestination were not so strong in chapter nine, this would be the most controversial of all chapters, because what follows from here is Paul's description of of the battle that goes on between the spirit and the flesh, between obedience and disobedience. And there's a large portion of Christendom that believes that what Paul describes in the verses to follow, he is doing so in retrospect, thinking back to his pre conversion era, and is describing the struggles that he had with sin prior to his conversion. Not for one minute do I believe that that's what the apostle is doing here. When the apostle speaks autobiographically Here in Romans 7 of the struggle that continues between the flesh and the Spirit, he's talking about the struggle that characterizes every Christian's life and what this part of Romans 7 does is dash into the dust of all false doctrines of sanctification that promise you perfection this side of heaven, that promise you some kind of higher Christian life than only a Christian elite group experience in this world. Those who are filled by the Spirit, those who have the second work of grace, those who have received the perfecting influence of God, the Holy Spirit. But let's look at the beginning of this section where Paul asks another rhetorical question in the same vein that he has been doing so has. Then what is good? That is the commandment become death to me. Is it the commandment that kills me or is it sin that kills me? Isn't the commandment become death to me? Certainly not. Again, God forbid, no possible way but sin that it might appear. Sin was producing death in me through what is good. Sin was producing death in me, not through something that is inherently deadly, but sin was producing death in me through what is good. So that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. Again, there it is. He can't get rid of this idea of the weight of our sin. We just don't feel it. And that's what happens to us with respect to sin, that the law breaks down the calluses, the law breaks down the normal defense mechanisms that we use to deny our guilt. Because every time we sin and know that we sin, we try to rationalize it, to put it in the best of all possible lights. We don't say I sinned, we say I made a mistake, I made a bad choice. I do all that, not that I offended the holiness of God. That's normal, that's natural for fallen humanity. And that's what Paul is saying to us here, that this is the battle we're in. And now he takes it to the next level. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal sold under sin. There it is, folks. There is the biblical basis, the biblical proof text for the doctrine of the carnal Christian. The law is spiritual, but I am carnal. I am of the flesh. I've harped on this. You've heard me harp on it. There is this pervasive idea out there in the evangelical Christian world of the difference between the spirit filled Christian and the carnal Christian. And the carnal Christian is described as one who has come to Christ and Christ is in their life, but self remains on the throne of life. And Christ, though the Spirit is in the life and the cross is in the life, it hasn't been victorious over self. No, no. That kind of Carnality is a contradiction in terms. What Paul is talking about here is the fact that when you are born again of the spirit, when the spirit regenerates your soul, when the spirit releases you from the dominion of the flesh and carnality, the carnal disposition of your original nature is not destroyed. You have to fight against it from the day you're converted till the day you enter the gates of heaven. In that sense, in the sense that each one of us has a residual force of the fallen nature, the sarks, the flesh, that each one of us fights with that, in that sense, every Christian is a carnal Christian. Make that clear. There's no such thing as a carnal Christian who is completely carnal. They're completely carnal. They're not a Christian. Nor is there such a thing as a Christian who is carnal less, who is so spirit filled that he doesn't have to still struggle with the remnants of his own carnality.