Romans 7:7-13 New Living Translation
“Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.”But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power.At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life, and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me. But still, the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good.But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.”
Paul is taking this time to expand on the thought that the Law reveals our sin to us simply by our inability to abide by the commandments given us. He asks an interesting question: Is the Law of God sinful? Of course it isn’t. As I mentioned yesterday, it shines a light on those things we ought not do. Our natural man makes them all very enticing to us thru various justifications. When people pull out of scripture that which seems good and right and do not take scripture in its entirety, they end up deceiving themselves. They use that which is incomplete to make a more agreeable presentation for themselves.
Therefore, the Law is not sinful, but only shines a light on those things we ought not do. Prior to redemption we are nothing more than walking dead people, dead in our sins. The Law didn’t cause our death; our disobedience to God’s Law was what caused us to die. The Lord knew this would happen. He knew our propensity to go the wrong way, to do that which we know we shouldn’t do. Down thru the ages no one except Jesus Christ has ever been able to live a life void of all sin. We have a tough example to follow, but God’s grace saves us from our sinful tendencies and enables us, thru the Spirit, to imitate Christ’s life.
The world doesn’t grasp the concept of sin and how it is disobedience to a higher standard. They do what they please without thought of their eternal destination. They sugar coat serious issues and choose to believe that a God of love wouldn’t send them to hell. In their mind the only ones destined to go to hell are rapists and murderers … people who do radically uncivilized and immoral things to others. But this is their definition of non-acceptable behavior, not God’s. I believe there will be an awful lot of very surprised, perhaps even shocked individuals when Judgment Day comes. Until next time, walk with the King and be a blessing!
No comments:
Post a Comment