NOTES for Rom 7:9-11

When parents impress on children, "Help Grandma, sweep the floor," or "You may not play until you have done your homework," they are hardly trying to turn sweeping the floor or doing homework into the child's main daily occupation. That is not their goal at all. The main thing they want to pass on to their children is a system of priorities, an understanding of what is less important and what is more important: in particular, that sweeping the floor is one way to help Grandma, and that studying is more important than having fun, since education will help them in the future to feed their own children. Ideally, we hope that our grown children, having absorbed the system of values they receive from our prohibitions and encouragements, will learn to determine for themselves exactly how best to help someone who needs help right now. And not even because someday we will not be there with them, but simply because we want their personhood to grow in the fullness of freedom and responsibility.

Now imagine this situation: a grown grandson comes to his grandmother, who is waiting for him eagerly, but instead of sitting down and talking with her, listening to her health complaints and telling her about his life, he starts washing dishes, cleaning up, and so on. One cannot say that this is wrong; it appears that he is helping her. Yet in reality, the importance and value of his visit for her do not lie in this at all. She expected something completely different from him: involvement and support. And what is the result? An upset grandmother and a grandson offended by her ingratitude.

And here we see how an important and correct rule, intended to strengthen the bond between generations, becomes a blank wall between them. In a certain sense this is what the apostle Paul means when he says that "sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me." This does not in essence cancel the holiness of the commandment itself, but it shows us how easy it is, by distorting its essence, to turn what is holy into something sinful.

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.

Modern European consciousness is very fond of using the categories of “legality” and “justice.” We have inherited—both from the Jews and from the Romans—a clear idea that human life should be governed by certain ordinances and laws. Life should be arranged so that our actions do not cross the boundary established by law; this is what we are so fond of calling “legal consciousness.” Its roots run deep, and one cannot say that it is altogether wrong. After all, the Law of which Paul speaks was given by God to the Jews and, with and through them, to all humanity. For the multitude of commandments that the Pharisees knew and observed so well were originally based on the ten most important commandments of Moses’ tablets. Their role was great: they helped the chosen people remain united, not fall away from God, and await Christ. Yet—as is inevitable for humanity—their meaning was reduced to rituals, to literal reproduction without understanding. It is precisely this attitude that Paul calls service in the “old letter.”

The coming of Christ, His death, and His Resurrection bring humanity liberation from the “burden hard to bear” of many human ordinances: the renewal of the Law through Grace. It was not the Law that died, for it is from God. We died to the Law because above it came the New Law, the Law of Grace.

This is joyful and at the same time very frightening, because it lays an enormous responsibility upon us. We can no longer comfort ourselves by saying that we have carefully observed every ritual precaution and fast and recited all the prayers. Our salvation lies precisely in direct communion between the human person and God, in our ability to participate at least in part in God’s love for the rest of the world. This is what the Lord speaks of in the parable of the Last Judgment (Mt 25:31–46), where we will be judged not by how many times a day we prayed, but by whether we fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, and welcomed the stranger.