Sin Nature and the Law - Deception

So we're going to continue on from last week. This is really a cool section. I've labeled this section the commandment. Now be careful here. I actually, in studying this, I actually wasn't real careful sometimes. It's not the plural. It's the singular. It's the commandment.

And that's going to be kind of important as we get into the verses. In fact, I went back and looked at and what I did, and actually one of my charts is a little bit off, but bear with me here. Okay, so basically we're going to compare the verses we're going to talk about today. I'm going to do a little review.

I'm just going to focus on the commandment, and that's going to be actually just one singular commandment, the tenth commandment, and Paul summarizes that in, Thou shalt not covet. So he's going to focus on that. That commandment is what really got to him. It really showed him that he needed to walk with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. But we're not going to see that until chapter 8.

But he's going to show his struggles With his fallen nature from Adam his sin nature So it's really the the singular commandment versus the sin nature not the commandments all the commandments Which all of them can do it, but he really focuses on that one commandment Thou shalt not covet and actually I was in so you'll see as we get into this.

So let's go back I'm going to kind of look at definitions again from last week. I had one or two more here. So first of all, I You know, you're going to see in your Bibles, it's just going to say sin singular, but in the original it's the sin or the sin nature, Adam's fallen nature. And we're not going to see this today, but in previous lessons we saw just the law without any article, meaning a law system or man-made laws.

But in particular, I want to point out here, we're going to see What I noticed was, as I started to study this more, verses 4-6 talk about the law, the entire Mosaic law, and how we're free from that, right? It says in the early verses that were read, the fact that we've been made to die to the law, we've been released from the law, and that's the whole Mosaic law system.

But then he gets to the commandment. He starts in the commandment. The transition verse is actually verse 7, where he starts talking about specifically the commandment, the 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet the neighbor's house, wife, male servant, females, and so on.

And covening is not, we're going to answer the question also, is there any good covening? And covening is used a few times, the word in the Greek, a few times about good things, and we'll talk about that briefly, but Paul's going to talk about his struggles with his one commandment. And then we're going to talk about death or separation. And death never means annihilation. It always means separation in scripture. Separation from God many times is separation in terms of fellowship.

So we'll see that quite a bit. So hopefully this definition is going to help you. And if you have notes, you can have the handout or whatever. You can look back on the notes here. OK, so let's look at Macaulay's overview again here. The law is a teacher in verse 7. I have come to know thee the sin nature The law is an agitator in verse 8 the commandment produced in me coveting coveting in me It's a terminator, you know, like that's my word. I think of the Terminator, right?

These are all the movies and stuff like that so actually, you know in those three verses it talks about I died I It resulted in death for me. It killed me and he's all talking about the commandment how this one single commandment thou shalt not covet Just really I use the word wrecked havoc. I don't know whether that's a popular term anymore wrecked havoc that really that really got to him and and Macaulay kind of points out he says the commandment of He lost all hope when he saw that the Lord wanted to have a commandment about how he thinks. He said, well, I can't do that. I can't control what I think. And I imagine it's true. The Lord says, no, I don't want you to covet in a sinful way, is what he's saying.

The law is a revealer. We're going to see next week. Through the commandment, the sin would become utterly sinful. Okay, so let's go back and look. I want to look at the last part of verse 7. Let's just read it. And this actually is kind of a mixture. I apologize. I took a little bit of the New American Standard and put together with the Weiss translation to bring out a point here.

On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin, the sin nature, except through the law. for I had not known evil desires except that the law kept on saying to me you shall not desire evil and that's actually the desire evil is actually the idea of covening so there are some good senses about covening so the law is speaking of the tenth commandment here and it's saying it's this picture if you will it was saying to Paul so you can almost imagine as he It's God's Word speaking to you. And that's what we know. We read God's Word and it speaks to us. It kept on saying to me, the law kept on saying to me this. You shall not covet. I didn't put the 10th commandment. I didn't include the whole thing in there. So the commandment, Macaulay says, is the only one addressed to your thought life, how you think.

And actually, after class last week, or after the service last week, Jim came up to me and said, wow, I never saw that. And I never saw that either. That was something that, in my study, I kind of came across. Wow, think about that. This is a commandment that speaks to our thought life.

And then Merriman adds, Paul is saying, I have not naturally known the specifics of coveting, except that the law says you shall not covet. And we're going to see that Paul was, some have said, Innocent naive He's gonna express he's gonna tell us about his life or he didn't really he didn't really think much about his thought life But then when he read the commandment the lights went on boom Wow, I can't keep that I can't do that and that's actually a wonderful place to be when you come to realize That you can't quote be a good Christian. You cannot do it You have to rely upon God you have to put on the Holy Spirit to guide you you can't by your own efforts Improve yourself to be a good person. It takes your your walk of faith in our Savior to accomplish that So actually in in 8 through 13 tells us about the commandment And how it wrecked havoc in his Christian life.

I Alright, so now let's go on to verse 8. And you know, 7 is a transition. We transition from the law, the entire Mosaic law, if you will, to narrow, to do tunnel vision in on just that one commandment. So then through 8 through 13, you'll see the word commandment used in every verse. The commandment. And this one has, but the sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind.

For apart from the law, sin is dead. So the central thought, and I've underlined it there, is the subject with the verb. So that's it right here. You have, but the sin, the sin nature, produced in me coveting of every kind. So it wasn't just a little bit, this just really got to Paul here. Now I'm going to share some things in a minute here about, maybe a little more personal here. The sin nature is the subject and the source of this. So the main verb is produced. To affect, to produce, to cause. And the idea here is, and we also see it can be brought across as brings about.

You produce or brings about in this verse here in Romans 4.15. For the law brings about wrath. So the sin nature is the author of covening or lusting in me. It's the author.

This idea about the sin nature and the commandments, we're going to see that talked about in various ways. In various ways, we're going to see how the sin nature and the commandment, how they affect one another. And what we're going to see, the gist of it is that the commandment is holy and righteous and good. And it's the sin nature that's the issue. But Paul is going to make sure we understand that.

So it produced in me every kind of coveting. Coveting, the base word, epithumia, is desire, craving, longing, lusting. So I looked up, I said, well, you know, I wonder, in fact, I was talking with Vani, is there any good, is that word ever used in a good sense? And a couple of verses I have, Christ said in have earnestly desired so this that's our word earnestly desired to eat the Passover passer with you before I suffer and then Paul said in Philippians 123 but I am hard-pressed from both directions having the desire to depart and be with Christ for that would be much better so those are legitimate there are good uses that word Epithemia, so it has some good uses but the majority of the time it has this idea of a craving a lusting a longing for evil desires And what Paul says it wasn't just a few it was every kind every flavor every color if you will Brought about in me every kind of evil craving so I put the I put the Weiss translation in here at different places to kind of show you a lot of times I want to show you that About how the translation for the sin nature comes about but I put in here other for other times just to kind of clarify some things So the main verb has two modifiers in this in this passage It's taking opportunity through the commandment the sin nature doing that and For apart from me the law is dead.

We'll look at both of those now. I Okay, so the first one is the sin nature. So the sin nature is the actor here. It's taking opportunity through the commandment. So actually there's two words that's going to show up in verse 8 and also in verse 11. They kind of go together. So you're taking, taking hold of, having taken. It happened, it's an event, Aoristens.

And it's this idea of A starting point opportunity is a starting point, a base of operation. So the SIN nature is a launching pad. It was a launching pad and I think about my my kids. I had two boys. I have two boys And they always got their guys out They got their army sets out and they had a quote a base of operation and they would build their guys This is my base dad. I'm gonna go out here and get these guys over here.

I'm gonna go out this way So they had a base that was their base and the sin nature. That's the base of each and every person that's the launching pad for their evil desires or their lusting and and it's by means of the commandment, the 10th commandment in this case. So it was the sin nature taking as a base of operation or a starting point through the commandment.

So think about this, this is what we see in almost all of God's Word. God's Word comes along, it's a righteous standard. Here's God's Word and then here's man. Man looks at that standard, he has an option as an unbeliever He can say, I'm a sinner and I need a Savior. Or he can reject that. And then as believers, when we're told, like Paul, thou shalt not covet, he can say, oh forget about that. Or he can say, woe is me, there's something wrong.

I can't do it. I can't control my thought life. And that's why Paul is so exercise, if you will, through this whole chapter. It's because his thought life is just all over the map and he realizes it's sinful and it's not pleasing to God. And we can identify with that. It's a tough world out there, right? To have a holy mindset, but a proper mindset.

We're bombarded constantly by things that we know are not right. They're wrong. They're evil. They're awful. And Paul had the same struggles that we had. We have. Okay, so the commandment, as Merriman says, the commandment pushed the sin nature into operation. It was a launching pad. It kicked it off. And then this last part, I want to cover this again too.

For apart from the law, sin is dead. Okay, so it's for expressing the reason for what's happening. In the sense of because, it's for because Apart from the law without separated from it. So we see that the power of sin is the law from first Corinthians 15 56 It's the dynamics of the law is the power source And the law has no definite article here, so it's a principle of the law. That's the power source So I want to go on this last part. I really wanted to talk about a little bit more here again, so So we see that This idea that sin is dead you think wow that sounds that sounds that's not right that can't be right sin is dead That's what well sin can only be dead. We're going to find out here only by only by one situation Here's the situation will fight first of all we find that sin is never dead really in reality Sin is a principle because we have Satan is the prince in power of the air sin is at work in this world And we see many verses that talk about that and Be sure your sin will find you out. Sin is crouching at the door. And here's the part that really helped me to understand this.

Is that God's commandment, without God's commandment, sin is not realized. And God's commandments are so important because they put the spotlight on what sin is. It's anything that's contrary to who God is and what He's done. Because without God's standard, everything is relative. And that's what we see in our world. Everything is relative today. Without God's standard, we have no absolute marker.

And the other part is that man is accountable to God. Every man is accountable to God. Every man has some understanding of who God is and what He's done. And it's interesting that in, we studied this later, earlier in chapter 2, we talked about the fact that the works of the law, not the law, but the works of the law are written in their hearts, talking about Gentiles in this case, that the works of the law are written in their hearts. So man is accountable to God. He understands right and wrong to some level. And he's without excuse.

So the conclusion here is that with conclusion without the law sin as a principle is dead we must have the law and God is so gracious in giving us the law to show us what is right and what is wrong okay so today's verses if you notice I've highlighted the the commandment again each of these verses shows up and it will show up in them through 13 as well I once was alive apart from the law But when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. This commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me. For sin, taking opportunity through the law, through the commandment, deceived me. And through it, the commandment killed me." Pretty strong words.

All this is going to talk about a central idea here, which we will see shortly. Okay, another little overview of these verses here. This comes from our brother Hal. The nature and purpose of the law. What the law is not. We learn from verse 7. It's not sin. What it does. It's a standard of right and wrong.

It reflects the sinfulness of the sin nature. And then here's the part for today, provides realization of our separation from God. And Paul's going to focus on that because when he saw God's standard, he died. He was separated from God, not permanently, but he realized that he could not stand before God with a conscience like that. What it is? It's holy. God's law is holy, righteous, and just, or good. So another little view of these verses we're looking at. So now on to verse 9.

So actually there's a part in the American Standard, I don't know why they didn't translate an and or a but at the very beginning. It's not the end of the world, but it should be there. So it says, but or and, I once was alive apart from the law. So I chose and and it's where it's where death death or butter and and I myself Was living so Paul's going to talk about he was living in the state of what some have called innocence or not realizing about the gods all of God's commandments he was alive doing his daily thing if you were conducting his life and Paul is speaking of how he was continually living his life in past times. That's what the imperfect tense is.

And he was living his life, he says, apart from the law. And it's without or away from. So he wasn't really considering God's law in his discussion. So Paul had apparently, in time past, had not yet had the experience of coming to know the sin nature via the law.

Paul's talking about his condition, not his position. He's saved. He knows the Lord. He's a believer, if you will. But his condition is not matching his position, as we'd say. Paul did not have a consciousness of this type of sin, of this type of thinking, if you will. He had freedom. He had the freedom from conviction of his conscience.

And those are from Merriman. Okay, so let's go on to the second part. So here's what happened. So when the commandment came, so this is this idea of he reads it, he sees it one day. It's in the Aorist Tense. It's an event in Paul's life when he encountered the commandment, you shall not covet. Sin became alive and I died. The sinful nature regained its strength and vigor, and I died. So I was trying to think of some examples. So I have two examples of this sin becoming alive. And I'm sure you all can relate to this.

Well, first of all, I'm out driving an I-25, right? I'm driving along, and some person comes right across, cuts right in front of me, and then he comes right back across me again, And what do I say? Have a good day? No, I typically don't say that when that happens. When somebody cuts me off and then they come back and do some crazy maneuver, do I say? I don't.

What happens is, right? Sin becomes alive. I have a sin nature. It goes into action. Example number two. I go into a nice restaurant. Actually, this one I occasioned with Wayne and Sue. There's nobody in the restaurant. The waiter, or waitress, I'm not sure what it was, escorts us past all the best seats in the restaurant over to the corner next to the kitchen with all the clanging pots and pans.

Did I say, have a good day? I said, would you please receive this? I'm not sure I actually said it that nicely. But there's some good opportunities for the sin nature to come alive. There's hundreds of others of those. But you can see, Paul's being very personal here. He's talking about how our sin nature can You know, there's a way to approach both of those situations. Both the car incident and the waiter incident. But many times we don't.

And I'm certainly right there at the top of... I found with waitresses now it's best if I tell them where I'd like to sit before we ever... I say, okay, first of all, I'd like to sit here. And they can tell before we ever start walking. Because if we don't, I'm in trouble.

So anyway, that's my... I'm sure you can all relate to your particular ones that kind of get to you. Okay, so the sinful nature regained its strength, vigor, and I died. And what that means is, what happens when we sin, when we do something we shouldn't do? We're out of fellowship, right? But the Lord has provided for that. Alright.

And so what happens here, the picture here is that the sin nature became alive, it lived again, it sprang into action, it sprang into activity, and I died. Paul realized his separation from God. And at this point, in this narrative that Paul is going to show through the rest of chapter 7, he's going to take the whole rest of chapter 7 to explain this situation that he had with the law. He's going to spend a lot more time with this. We're just about halfway through right now.

Okay, verse 10. This commandment, again, it's the commandment, Thou shalt not covet. The same one. You notice he says, it's the commandment or this commandment. It's not like, you know, if you're not a careful reader, which I am not many times, I'll look at it and I'll put the plural on there. All the commandments, all the commandments are getting to him. No, he's zeroed in on this one guy. That's the one thing you take away from it. All Roger said was this one commandment, one commandment.

That probably would be good, right? which is the result in life so what Paul said here's God's holy and righteous law this is this should really make my day if you will this should really get me on the right track I'm gonna have what God has said and that's gonna but it didn't it had the opposite effect it caused him to realize his need so he said the commandment which was a result in life the idea is toward life and it's this word Zoe Life and this is Zoe is used in scripture in a really marvelous way.

It's a life that God has You know the verse that says when Christ said I'm the way the truth and the life that that's Zoe So it's it's life. It's God's life It's real life. You know we have a life outside of Christ, but true life is life in Christ. It's Christ's life and So the commandment was toward the highest form of life, Zoe.

In contrast, we also see Bios in scripture, and this is physical life, and life of existence. So two words, Zoe is the highest form in scripture, and Bios is the, and you can find, you know, as you look through, you can find out which one it is, you know, but with a little work. So actually this is a comment. I appreciate your thoughts on this. This is by a guy named Moo. I'm not sure. I'm not real familiar with this guy, but I think actually others have quoted him too. Constable is quoting him here.

He says, it seems fair to conclude that the law would have given life had it been perfectly obeyed. Well, I thought my first thought was there's only one person, the God-man, who perfectly obeyed the law, and that's our Savior. So, I don't know, I haven't given my full, let me know what you think about that statement. It seems fair to conclude that the law would have given life had it been perfectly obeyed. I think it's more conjecture than, it's certainly not reality. It's only reality for our Savior. Alright.

So, and this commandment which was to result in life proved to result in death for me. And again, it's toward death. We brings it across this life I found to be toward death. So the contrast is toward death and toward life. Death is again, 9, 10, 11 are all about you could say loss of fellowship, loss of communion with God.

Here was a commandment that promised life. When I followed it, I found myself in the area of death. And this is a statement that Merriman made. I like this. I'm listening to this on the tape. I had to play it back a bunch of times to get this. Merriman says here, Paul's former state of happy innocence has given way to his realization of his actual position before God via the commandment. And that's what we want. We want to see where do we really stand. Where do we really stand with God? And we know by scripture where we really stand. And so Paul realizes where he really stood.

And he's going to realize that it has to be through the Holy Spirit. That's kind of the end of the story. It can't be through... He cannot, of his own efforts, live a, quote, Christian life as pleasing to God. It has to be through the power of the Holy Spirit.

And it's the same for us. Then in verse 11. So again, I'm going to look at the main part. In this verse we have a subject and a compound verb. And the compound verb is deceived me and through it killed me. So let's look at the first part here. And we see here that the sin nature was responsible for these two, I call them, catastrophic events in Paul's life.

First of all, the sin nature deceived me. So you see, he's given us all the flavors, if you will, all the awfulness of the sin nature, how the sin nature is deceptive, it does all the things that are contrary to what God is. For the sinful nature beguiled me, the weast has it. So you notice the weast, he brings a cross, he puts sinful nature in there many times, for sin nature, he puts sinful nature in there.

For the sin nature beguiled me, So deceived here is the idea to deceive completely, beguile, mean to lead out of the right way into error. What's really interesting, this word deceive, if you look at other Paul's writings, you'll see that it's used in a very interesting passage in terms of Eve being deceived by Satan. And I'll read the passage here.

In 2 Corinthians 11.3 it says, But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray for the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.

So this deception was not a new deception. It was an old deception, right? And you could argue that Satan never changes as well. This deception of the sin nature, influenced by the world, the flesh, and the devil, is the same deception that Eve had. And it is. Things haven't really changed.

And the second one is, for these sin, these sin nature killed me through it, the commandment. For the sinful nature through it killed me. That's the translation. So kill me is a metaphor obviously. Again, it's spiritual separation out of fellowship you could say. And the middle part gives us, how did that happen? Sin taking opportunity. So we actually have the same set of words that we had earlier.

It's this launching pad approach. These two words. Taking opportunity. To lay hold of. The starting point is the space of operation. So the sin taking opportunity. Through the sin nature. That was the launching pad for the sin nature. Same pictures we had back in verse 8. Yes, back in verse 8. Okay. And a few more comments here. Here's some just some neat comments like Listen to Mary money.

This is some things he had to say about this passage And he I expected one thing out of the commandment, but I experienced another so and that kind of fits right Paul expected to see God's He I want to see God's holy and righteous standard and he did see that but he didn't realize what that would have on him and I expected life by obeying the commandment, but I found myself in death or separation from God. And it's important to remember God didn't give the law to deceive Paul. He gave it to Paul as a standard. It's the sin nature that causes the law to be deceptive, not the law. It is the sin nature that deceived Paul, not the law.

Alright. So now a few final thoughts. This is from Newell. Newell's Romans. He starts off, let's get it settled firmly in our minds. What Paul is here exercised about. This is a comment that's in the Romans section 7 of what he's writing. So he says, Paul is exercised about something. So let's get it straight here.

It's not about our position, if you will, about the penalty of sin, our pardon, but it's about the power of sin, our deliverance. The whole question is concerning indwelling sin as a power, not committed sins, plural, as a danger. Mark also that while the indwelling Holy Spirit is the Christian's sole power against the flesh, the sin nature, He, the Holy Spirit, is not known in this struggle, but is Paul himself against the flesh.

So what we see, all through chapter 7, we see nothing of the Holy Spirit, Paul is struggling with himself. He's trying to solve this problem on his own. But then we see when chapter 8 begins, he realizes that the Holy Spirit is his solution. And then lastly, while the law prescribes a holy walk, it furnishes no power whatever for it.

Alright, so next we're going to continue and pick up on verse 12 and 13 and kind of finish out this section. And then Mike will pick up, well actually Mike's gonna, by that time we'll be ready for Christmas Eve. Mike has some things we were talking about, what he's gonna do for Christmas Eve.

So, stay tuned. Alright, so let's close. We thank you Father, we thank you so much for your word. Thank you for your care for us, for the fact that you have given us a righteous and holy standard. And you haven't left us just to try to do the best we can and try to work hard and memorize and all kinds of things. Well, I'll just do this or that. But you've given us your spirit, your Holy Spirit to live within us, to guide us into the truth, Lord. We ask this in your name. Amen.