A number of you came in after the announcements were given, so let me just ask again that those of you who had a part in calling in homes for stewardship enrichment, would you plan to stay after the evening service tonight for just a very few minutes? We'll meet in Fellowship Hall downstairs. Thanks for doing that. Would you take your Bible now and turn with me please to Romans chapter 7.
This chapter deals with the law of God, its work in the life of the sinner as well as in the life of the believer, what our relationship to it is or isn't. By the law of God, we're referring primarily to the moral code contained in the law, which is summarized in the Ten Commandments.
There was an occasion when Jesus was confronted by some Pharisees, and one of them who was skilled in the law seeking to trick him into saying something wrong said, Master, which of the commandments is the greatest? And Jesus' response to him was, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength, and the second one is, love your neighbors yourself. He did something interesting there. The Ten Commandments are basically negative, aren't they?
Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not. But when Jesus responded to the Pharisee, he said, You shall, you shall. Jesus said the Ten Commandments can be condensed and boiled down to just two. Love God with your total being and love your neighbor as yourself. If we have learned anything about the law as we have gone through the book of Romans, I hope we have learned two truths. Number one, the law cannot save or justify the sinner.
And number two, the law cannot sanctify or make holy the life of the saint. The law cannot do those two things. I wish a lot of people could grasp those truths and understand them and apply them to their lives. There are many people in the world today who think that they are going to be made right with God by keeping the law, obeying the Ten Commandments.
And then there are genuine Christians who think that they are going to get their lives cleaned up in their act together by obeying the Ten Commandments or keeping rules, legalism. And both are false. The law cannot justify the sinner. Turn back with me, before we read the text, to Romans 3 verse 20. The apostle says, by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. That's kind of all-inclusive, isn't it?
He says, by the works, by keeping the law, no flesh, no man, no woman, no one will be justified in his sight. Drop down a few verses to verse 28. We maintain that a man is justified by faith, apart from works of the law. Apart from what? The works of the law. So a man is justified apart from the law. It has nothing to do with his being made right with God. The apostle Paul uses two words over and over and over again beginning in chapter 3. And those two words are grace and faith.
Grace is God's kindness toward those who do not deserve it. His unmerited favor, some people say. Faith is man's response to God's grace in trusting him. And the apostle tells us that man is saved by grace through faith. Those two words stand out over and over and over again. That stands in contrast to what the rabbis were teaching in Jesus' day and in Paul's day. Their emphasis was upon law and works.
Now God had given the law to Israel in the beginning, not so that Israel would be saved by the law, but so that that moral law would make them realize the necessity of faith, which would be evidenced by their keeping the ceremonial law, bringing the sacrifices, and so on. You see, the law in the Old Testament was never given to Israel to save the people.
It was given to show them their sinfulness, to bring them to faith, and that faith would be evidenced by their bringing the proper sacrifices at the appropriate times. But it degenerated to the point that they emphasized the law and the standard and the works and forgot about the faith. And so this was quite a message for the Jews to accept, which Paul preached, of salvation by grace through faith. Very difficult for them.
Even when they became believers, it was difficult for them to understand it. And that's why so many of them, though they were able to understand salvation by faith, they were unable to understand how sanctification worked apart from the law. They said, okay, we're saved by grace through faith, but we surely have to keep the law in order to be holy. And the apostle attacks that here in the book of Romans. He says it's not true. We're not under the law anymore, he says in chapter 6.
In chapter 7, we have seen him say we have died to the law. We've been released from that by which we've bound. We have no relationship to the external law anymore. Now there were some Jews that said, now Paul, you preach that kind of a message and people are going to be lawless. There will be no end to their sin. You're really putting down the law, aren't you? Well, Paul will answer that when we get to chapter 8.
But that's essentially the argument that comes up as we begin our text now in Romans 7 verse 7. He says, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? He says, Paul, you're putting the law down. Does that mean the law is actually sin? He says, never. May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet.
But sin taking opportunity through the commandment produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the law, sin is dead. And I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. And this commandment which was to result in life proved to result in death for me. For sin taking opportunity through the commandment deceived me and through it killed me. So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Therefore did that which is good become a cause for death for me? May it never be. Rather, it was sin in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good. That through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful. We are not going to get through the entire paragraph in this hour. As you look at your outline, we'll probably get through the first half of it and then pick it up next week and finish it.
We want to talk this morning about what good is the law anyway? If the law doesn't save and the law doesn't sanctify, what's its usefulness? What's it supposed to do? The Jews believed that by the works of the law one was justified and that one procured holiness by keeping the law. Paul's teaching seems to turn people to lawlessness. What's the purpose of the law, Paul? Well, in this paragraph he shows us that the law has four works to accomplish, all of them in the life of the sinner.
You will notice at this point in verse 7 that the apostle begins using a personal pronoun, I. He is relating to us, beginning here, his personal experience with the law. This is his testimony. Now frankly, I'm glad that we have these words from Paul. If we had only the record of his conversion as it is related to us in the book of Acts, we would think that his conversion was totally apart from anything going on in his own life.
For here's this fellow with his party tooling down the road to Damascus in order to put Christians into jail, and all of a sudden Jesus Christ appears to him and he's converted. It seems to be all external. It emphasizes the sovereign act of God. So was anything going on in Paul's life to bring him to that point of conversion? The answer is yes. He tells us what it is here in this paragraph. He gives us an insight into his heart in that period of time leading up to his conversion.
I don't know how long it was, but it was at least days or weeks so that he inwardly was prepared for what happened on that road to Damascus. The first work of the law in the sinner is that it reveals sin in him. It reveals sin in the sinner. Notice Paul says in verse 7, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. Paul was a trained theologian. He knew what sin was theologically. He could define sin. So that's not what he means here.
What he means is he would not have come to know the experience of conviction for sinfulness if it had not been for the law. He would not have had a sense of his personal sinfulness before God. It wasn't that he suddenly began to do things he had never done before. It was that at this point in his life, whenever it was, he began to be under conviction inside. Outwardly everything was fine.
Paul says in Philippians chapter 3 that as far as the righteousness which is by the law is concerned, he was blameless up to this point before he was saved. In other words, the external righteousness, he calls it their self-righteousness. He did all the things he was supposed to do. He was doing his thing as he understood it, but it was all external. That was the emphasis of it.
Nobody could point a finger at Paul externally, but there came a day when that law that he knew in his head and had studied began to reveal to him personal inward sinfulness. It put up a standard before him which exposed something on the inside of Paul he had not seen to that point. Maybe I can illustrate that by something that happened to me back in high school.
I was on the basketball team, not one of the stars by any means, but I was on the team, and I had a certain shot that I thought was pretty good. I mean it went into the hoop more often than it didn't. It was a jump shot and I used one hand to get it up there and lob it in. I well remember the day the coach came to me and said, call, that'll never work. He said, make that shot, and I tried, and he slapped the ball right out of my hand.
He said, you've got to have both hands on that ball when you jump so that you can release the ball then and it's under control and it'll go in the hoop. Don't think I ever made as many baskets again in my life with his method, but he had a point. I couldn't make it with a good defense using one hand. Up to that point it didn't bother me, but after that point I could never do that shot again the same way because the weakness of it had been exposed to me.
The standard of the way it should be done was revealed. You see that's what Paul is saying. Up to a certain point in his life he felt he was okay, but then he says, the law revealed my sin. That's the purpose of the law, isn't it? Look back again at chapter 3 verse 20 and let's read the last part of the verse this time. By the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. The law isn't meant to justify.
The law is meant to reveal sinfulness. Chapter 4 verse 15 says a similar thing. The law brings about wrath, but where there is no law neither is there violation. He doesn't say there's no sin where there's no law, but he's saying that there's no way of measuring it because there's no violation.
For example, there was a day when you could drive through Nevada any speed you wanted to and because of the nature of the state of Nevada people usually drove as fast as they could just to get through the place. 80, 90, 100 miles an hour, whatever you wanted to do, but then there was a law passed that limited the speed in Nevada. After that it was a violation to go that fast.
You see the apostle is telling us here that the law brings about wrath and judgment because it sets up the standard and exposes what is right and wrong. Now friend, God has a right to tell us what is right and wrong. If we're only evolved out of some kind of an ape-like creature and there is no God then who are we to say that a so-called God sets a standard? Let's just set standards the way society says they ought to be set.
Now that's what's trying to be passed in our state legislature this week. But if there is a God who created us, he has a right to say what is right and what is wrong and we as his creatures, whether redeemed or not, had better abide by his law. He tells us what is right and wrong. Now I got that off my shoulder. Turn over to James chapter 1 a minute. James of course was very Jewish. He was a half-brother of our Lord Jesus. He was devoted for his early years to the law.
And you see an emphasis here in James that concerns some people, but it shouldn't. Nonetheless he says in verse 22, chapter 1 verse 22, prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror once he has looked at himself and gone away. He has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.
The one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does. What is he saying? He's saying that the word of God, or we could say the law, is like a mirror. As we look into it, it exposes us. And if we see where we are failing, where we are sinning, just close the book and walk away, it does us no good. There's no blessing in that.
We are hearers only and only bring upon ourselves greater judgment. Rather he says we ought to see what the law of liberty reveals to us and be doers of the word. In fact, in other words, you see the word of God is given to us to expose us. It's like a mirror that shows the dirt in our face. It's like a spotlight that reveals the perverseness of the heart. The apostle says, I would not have come to understand my sinfulness if the law had not done its work.
Do you know what the problem is with the unregenerate? He does not understand the truth about sin. Oh, the unregenerate man may have a moral code of his own and a certain grasp of sin as he defines it, but he does not understand the sinfulness of sin. He does not comprehend how sin offends a holy God. And because he lives up to his own personal standard, his own code, he feels he's all right. I mean, God wouldn't send a good guy like him to hell, would he?
That's the problem with the unregenerate. Paul was unregenerate and there was a day he felt just like that. As far as the righteousness of the law was concerned, who could point a finger at him? But then the law did its work of revealing his sinfulness, and when he began to see his sin, he was troubled in his soul. And so it is with the unregenerate.
A man can feel pretty good about himself until he understands what God says in the Bible, and when he begins to understand how sinful he is, he's troubled within. Paul's personal experience was with the sin of coveting, he says. He says, I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet. Now, why did Paul pick on coveting? Well, undoubtedly, he's telling us the truth. That was the particular commandment that exposed him.
But I think there's genius in this for another reason, because coveting is invisible. You can sit around and be very self-righteous and covet every hour of your life, right? Because it's inward. It's an attitude. Not only that, this sin of coveting is kind of basic to all of the other sins. What about stealing? Does it not begin with covetousness? What about murder? The word covetous here means lust or desire. What about adultery? And on and on you go.
This sin is inward, and it is the basis out of which come so many of the actions that we may see and measure and call sin. The apostle says, the law said to me, you shall not covet. And his heart was just exposed. It was filled with covetousness. Turn back to Mark chapter 10 for a minute. We see here a pathetic young man. It says in Mark 10 beginning in verse 17, as Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him. Now here's a fellow who is running.
He wants to find out the answer to a question. And he knelt before him and began asking, good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Now, you know what a lot of Christians would have done at this point? They would have said, well, sit down. Let me share the Roman's road with you. Man, if there's ever a sinner who's prepared to get saved, this guy is it. He's hot. I mean, he is ready to pray. Right? What shall I do to get saved? What shall I do to inherit eternal life?
So how did Jesus respond to him? Did he get out the Roman's road? Romans wasn't even written yet. He says, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Now Jesus wasn't denying he was God here. He was testing this man to see if he really understood he was talking to. He says, you know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother. Did you notice the one Jesus left out?
All of these are outward actions. And so the man responds as the apostle Paul would have. Teacher, Rabbi, I have kept all these things from my youth up. And that young man was not saying that insincerely because as far as he was taught and was concerned outwardly, he had kept these commandments. Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, one thing you lack, go and sell all you possess and give to the poor and you shall have treasure in heaven and come follow me.
Now was Jesus giving a works answer to this question, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Is Jesus saying, well if you sell everything you have and give it to the poor, you will inherit eternal life? No. The Lord Jesus very wisely brought to this young man's attention the sin which possessed him and it was covetousness. It goes on to say, at these words his face fell and he went away grieved for he was one who owned much property.
Now most evangelists today would have had that man's soul notched on his belt before he could have counted to ten because he had been down on his knees, he was already on his knees, he had prayed a prayer and he had been saved, right? But not Jesus. Because Jesus knew that this young man had never yet come to understand his personal sinfulness and my friend, a man, a woman, a child cannot be saved until he or she comes to that place. I said cannot be saved.
This young man went away as unregenerate as when he came. He was not willing to repent of the sin of covetousness. The apostle Paul had the opposite reaction. For when he began to understand the covetousness in his heart, he did repent and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see he came to an inward understanding of his own vileness.
He saw the corruption of his heart, the wretchedness of his soul, before a person can be saved he must experience the agony, the shame of exposure of his inner wickedness before a holy God. Now there are many people who are convicted these days about outward things. There are people who are convicted about their drinking or about their smoking or whatever. And it's possible to get cleaned up outwardly without the means of grace. Man can go to AA and get victory over alcohol.
I have an uncle who are seven days unconscious in their house because of alcoholism. Terrible sin. It's not a disease my friend. I know it affects the body but it is essentially a sin. They got their lives cleaned up. They no longer drink. They were spared from death but they have never yet given their hearts to Jesus Christ. You can clean up your act outwardly without the Lord's help. But there's one thing you can't clean up without the Lord's help and that's your heart.
The Apostle Paul became aware of the inner sin and he could not escape it. Your problem is the heart too. Some of you here today. You say well I think we just ought to live according to the Sermon on the Mount. You know the golden rule. Well the golden rule in other terms is found in the Sermon on the Mount. But you know what else is found in the Sermon on the Mount? I mean there are people who base their whole religion on the Sermon on the Mount.
They say I don't like all this stuff about the cross and all that. Let's just talk about the Sermon on the Mount. You know what the Sermon on the Mount says? You look at chapters five and six. Jesus says you have heard it said to you, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you if a man commits adultery in his heart, in his mind, he's guilty of the act. You go right down through the chapter and again and again Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount points to the inner sin of man.
It's fine to me if they want to live by the Sermon on the Mount because it will bring them to Christ if they mean it. And today we hear it said do this, do that, everything will be fine. You'll make it with God. And Jesus Christ would say to us you've heard it said but I say to you there's the problem. It's your heart. That speaks to some of you here today who have not yet trusted the Savior or who have trusted Him superficially, culturally, socially, have never been born again.
The law reveals sin in the sinner. A man may know how to define sin but when the law does its work it reveals that corruption, that vileness inside. And a man is brought to the end of himself. And he's a candidate for salvation. Let's go back to Romans 7 again and look at verses 8 and 9 and we'll just talk about the second work of the law in the sinner. Not only does the law reveal sin but it does something more than that. It revives sin in the sinner.
The apostle says but sin taking opportunity through the commandment produced in me coveting of every kind. Apart from the law sin is dead and I was alive apart from the law but when the commandment came sin became alive and I died. Have you ever noticed that prohibitions tend to create a desire to do the things that are forbidden? Wet paint, do not touch. The worst way you just want to reach out and see if it's dry yet, right? Do not walk on the grass.
Is that real grass or is that just carpeting? I wonder. Reach out and touch it. I was on an airplane this week and was reminded again how scared some people are of flying because we had some people who were just creating clouds of smoke in the airport lounge. And then the young lady said we're ready to board. Please put out your cigarettes. You may not smoke until you are allowed to by the captain after you're airborne.
And so those people waited the last minute and put out the cigarettes and walked onto the plane. Have you ever seen anybody practically die of a nicotine fit between that point and the time that they're in the air? And you know it's not just the 20 minutes or 15 minutes whatever it is between put out the cigarettes until the no smoking sign goes off. But it's the fact it says up there no smoking. That just creates a great desire to pull out one of those things and begin choking your lungs.
Isn't that right? Prohibitions make us want to experience it. We say well if that's so bad I wonder what it's really like. We hear about this or that and people sometimes I think make a mistake in saying well this or that. No, stay away from that. And people say hmm if it's that bad he's talking about it maybe I should go. Right? You see the law fans the spark of rebellion into a blaze. It causes the desire to explode into a forest fire within the person.
The apostle says apart from the law sin is dead. Now that's a general principle what he's saying here is that sin is present but it's virulence. Its power is not apparent before the law. But he says the law's presence gives sin an opportunity. You see that? Sin taking opportunity through the commandment. In other words when the law is present it gives sin a beachhead. It gives it a base of operations. This is a military term. Right now there's something going on in Nicaragua.
There is a band of people who are trying to overthrow the Sandinistas. I wish them well. Their base of operations apparently is back in Honduras. They're using that as the launching point for the attack. And what the apostle is saying here is that sin used the law, the prohibitions, as a launching point to attack. And so that sin then becomes not only present but it becomes a consuming monster in the life. He elaborates on this in verse 9. He says I was alive once apart from the law.
In other words there was a time, Paul is saying, when I was unconscious of my rebellion, my alienation from God. In those days before I really saw the law, I deemed myself all right, he is saying. I was in good standing with God as far as I was concerned. But then he says when the commandment came, probably that specific commandment he's mentioned, he says when the commandment came sin became alive. In other words it was revived. It sprang to life within me, he says. It became powerful.
And he says it created in me every kind of coveting. He said instead of just having a little problem with coveting, sin began to explode within me and there was coveting for everything. And he says as a result I died. In other words he became conscious of his condemnation of his spiritual deadness. My friend, a person cannot be saved until he comes to death to his self-righteousness as did Paul.
Until he comes to the place where his well-being is destroyed, he's not going to reach out in genuine repentance and faith and trust the Savior. These days we hear an awful lot about self-esteem and self-actualization and self-realization and all that is, is sin. Not that there's not a place for esteem, self-esteem, but there are so many people who think that's the essence of salvation. Even a popular book these days written by a popular preacher boasting that heresy.
The real need is not for self-esteem, but is to see one's unworthiness before God. The apostle Paul in Philippians chapter 3 lists for us all the things that he could brag in. He was a Hebrew and he was of Benjamin's tribe and circumcised the eighth day. He had been through all of the things that made him right with God as far as the external law demanded. But he says, when I measured up all of those things, I counted them but lost.
He says all of that self-esteem that I had was worthless compared to what I have found in Jesus Christ. In a verse so further down the chapter he says, those things were bedung. Literally says those things were like manure to me. He says I have found real self-worth. What life is really all about in coming to Jesus Christ and trusting him because I have received his righteousness. It may be that you have been seeking to establish your own righteousness before God.
Dear friend, will you listen to me a moment? You will never do that as long as you live. If you had eternity to try to establish your own self-righteousness, you could never do it. What you need is to realize your self-sinfulness and repent of that and trust the Savior. That's what the law wants to do. Will you let it have its work in your life today? You say, well I am a Christian. We know the law of God is his moral standard and that standard doesn't change.
The law does a work on us every now and then too, doesn't it, in that sense? Because it shows us where we are coming short. It may be as a Christian today the law is convicting you because you haven't been living as you ought to be. Your need today as a Christian is to repent and confess your sins to the Lord and get back to that place of obedience so that you are abiding in the vine. Will you do it?
I pray that the law will do its work today in some life and that some friend here today would recognize his hopelessness in establishing his own righteousness with you and would receive by faith the Lord Jesus and the righteousness that comes by that faith. Heavenly Father, may those of us who know Christ also be aware of what your moral standard is and be living holy lives through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.