Continuing his reflections on the Torah and on its authority over the living and the dead, Paul...
Continuing his reflections on the Torah and on its authority over the living and the dead, Paul asks the question: if the Torah reveals a person's sins, does this mean that it is the cause of sin (v. 7)? The apostle answers this question in the negative, for the Torah does not produce sin; it only points sin out to the one who strives to keep the commandment. He draws attention to the paradox of the righteous person's way: in order to come into the Kingdom and receive the fullness of life, one has to pass through death. For Paul, the Torah is not so much food as medicine, and a radical medicine at that. It is capable of killing a person who lives by sin (vv. 9-11). But sin, in one way or another, kills a person anyway; the measure of life it leaves to fallen humanity can be called life only in part.
And this concerns not only spiritual life, a person's relationship with God, but also physical life, which moves inexorably toward its end precisely because it has been damaged by sin. The apostle again returns to the theme of death, which can be either a departure into Sheol or a transition into the Kingdom. But if death as a departure into Sheol is a natural process and depends little on a person, then the death that leads into the Kingdom is open to a person: one need only follow the Torah, allowing God, acting through this instrument, to heal one from sin.
It would appear that such a medicine is more capable of killing than healing, but if the knife is in God's hand, it ceases to be an instrument of death and becomes a scalpel in the hand of a surgeon, bringing not death but healing. Thus the Torah becomes an instrument in God's hand that heals a person. One can, of course, avoid it, but then one must also renounce the Kingdom. As can be seen, fallen humanity cannot be helped even by the life that God places into its hands; it only kills. But in God's hands even death, by which He cuts off sin through His Torah, becomes life-giving, opening the road into the Kingdom for the one who has been healed. That is why the apostle calls the Torah and the commandment holy and good for a person: they are good just as every instrument that helps a person receive the fullness of life is good, and they are sanctified as everything God touches is sanctified.
7
7:7 What shall we say then - This is a kind of a digression, to the beginning of the next chapter, wherein the apostle, in order to show in the most lively manner the weakness and inefficacy of the law, changes the person and speaks as of himself, concerning the misery of one under the law. This St. Paul frequently does, when he is not speaking of his own person, but only assuming another character, Rom 3:5, Co1 10:30, Co1 4:6. The character here assumed is that of a man, first ignorant of the law, then under it and sincerely, but ineffectually, striving to serve God. To have spoken this of himself, or any true believer, would have been foreign to the whole scope of his discourse; nay, utterly contrary thereto, as well as to what is expressly asserted, Rom 8:2.Is the law sin - Sinful in itself, or a promoter of sin.I had not known lust - That is, evil desire. I had not known it to be a sin; nay, perhaps I should not have known that any such desire was in me: it did not appear, till it was stirred up by the prohibition.
7:8 But sin - My inbred corruption. Taking occasion by the commandment - Forbidding, but not subduing it, was only fretted, and wrought in me so much the more all manner of evil desire.For while I was without the knowledge of the law, sin was dead - Neither so apparent, nor so active; nor was I under the leastapprehensions of any danger from it.
7:9 And I was once alive without the law - Without the close application of it. I had much life, wisdom, virtue, strength: so I thought. But when the commandment - That is, the law, a part put for the whole; but this expression particularly intimates its compulsive force, which restrains, enjoins, urges, forbids, threatens. Came - In its spiritual meaning, to my heart, with the power of God. Sin revived, and I died - My inbred sin took fire, and all my virtue and strength died away; and I then saw myself to be dead in sin, and liable to death eternal.
7:10 The commandment which was intended for life - Doubtless it was originally intended by God as a grand means of preserving and increasing spiritual life, and leading to life everlasting.
7:11 Deceived me - While I expected life by the law, sin came upon me unawares and slew all my hopes.
7:12 The commandment - That is, every branch of the law. Is holy, and just, and good - It springs from, and partakes of, the holy nature of God; it is every way just and right in itself; it is designed wholly for the good of man.