NOTES for Rom 7:7-12
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. |
8 But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. |
9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. |
10 And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. |
11 For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. |
12 Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. |
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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.
Readings for 21 March 2025
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