Sin Nature and the Law - Introspection

So I've entitled this section, we're gonna finally finish up verse 13 today, and then after next week, Mike's gonna give a Christmas message, of course, and then the following week, we're gonna start back into verse 14, which is kind of a continuation, but it actually has a little bit different focus.

So Paul comes at this question about the sin nature and the law just from so many different perspectives. So today's lesson, I'm gonna review a little bit, but then get into the 12 and 13, really talks about the holiness of the law as contrasted with the awfulness, the utter sinfulness of the sin nature.

So I keep updating this section a little bit each time. So these are definitions of the words that you have shown up or are showing up in chapter 7. So one important one, of course, is the sin or the sin nature, Adam's fallen nature. So I decided to just do a little count.

If you count up in chapter 6, you'll see it occurs 15 times. seven, twelve times and then it kind of trails off as we get into chapter 8 which you sort of expect that would happen. So the lion's share of Paul's teaching about man's fallen nature in Adam occurs in 6 and 7. Kind of different perspectives, remember back in chapter 6 where we're freed from the sin nature, we've died to the sin nature. been separated from the sin nature. Now in 7 he's been focusing on the contrast between the sin nature and God's holy law and what that entails.

So I thought it was a little interesting going through and kind of tallying that up. And then also the the law of Moses is mentioned and of course Paul kind of zooms in here the law of Moses well if you look at the totality is the moral law which is the Ten Commandments, the civil law and the ceremonial law that comprises the law of Moses but Paul immediately as we go into these verses especially starting with starting in verse 7 through 13, he focuses on one particular law that kind of did him in, so to speak. This is what really showed him the holiness of God's law and how it has an effect on his sin nature.

And we see that particular commandment is the 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet. And we saw that, you see that if you look in Exodus with the Ten Commandments you'll see that, and I'll record a part of it here. you shall not covet your neighbor's house, and then so on, it continues on, the rest of your neighbor's belongings. And then of course, Paul gives the abbreviated version, if you will, in the last part of verse seven, where he says, you shall not covet, or literally, you shall not desire, and we pointed out in weeks previous the fact that that really is the commandment that speaks to a person's mind, Specifically, how do you think? What do you think? What's your thought life, so to speak?

And that's why it's so impactful. That's why it impacted Paul, and that's why it impacts us as well. And then death shows up quite a few times and in the context it means spiritual separation from God or loss of fellowship if you will. And then we see kind of a new one that shows up this week is something called the good with a definite article. It's going to refer back to the commandments I believe, the commandment, the 10th commandment. Okay, with those in mind, then here's, I thought it would be worthwhile just kind of going through and showing you, we'll look at 7-13, I'll kind of show you the transition between the law and how the law focuses in on the 10th commandment.

So it starts out as Jim read, the very last part says, for I would have not have come to know about covening if the law had not said. And so now he has a general statement about the law and then he says this is a particular part of the law that caused me to covet. Thou shalt not covet.

And then he takes that and each successive verse he's going to say the commandment did something. In A he says the commandment produced in me covening of every kind. Then in 9, he says, but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died. Then in 10, this commandment still focused on thou shalt not covet, which was to result in life proves to result in death for me. Then in 11, the commandment deceived me and it killed me. Then in 12, and so now he kind of switches gears. I mean, you know, you begin to think, well, Paul, you're just, you're hammering this 10th commandment.

Is it bad? Is that a bad, is that a oops, God doing oops, as Courtney says sometimes? No, of course not. The commandment is just like the law. It's holy, righteous, and good. And then he finishes off the very last part. He talks about the fact that so that the commandment through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful. So we're going to trace through this, review a little bit and trace down to 12 and 13. Okay, and now going back to Macaulay's outline of 7 through 13.

The law is a teacher, but we're going to see in Paul's case it taught him through the commandment, thou shalt not covet. So it's a teacher via the commandment. I have come to know thee sin, through the commandment thou shalt not covet. The law is an agitator, the commandment produced in me coveting of every kind.

It's a terminator and the way it did that, he died, he was separated from God because of what it said and what he didn't do. He coveted when it said don't covet. He said, when the commandment came, I died, it resulted in death for me and it killed me. And what I thought, I mentioned last week too, the commandment killed all his hopes. It brought him to the end of himself.

He could not see how he, and this is where he cries out in the last part, you know, who will deliver me? I can't do this, Lord. I can't live this life. I can't live and obey thou shalt not covet. I can't do it. It's impossible. And that's where we are too, mate. Lord, I can't do this.

It has to be your life, your life and me that lives the Christian life. And then lastly, the law is a revealer. It brings light, it brought about light, and it's the idea, it shines a spotlight on the sin nature, it shows the utter sinfulness of the sin nature. And as I mentioned before, I think that's one of your, maybe at least my journey in the Christian life, is coming to realize the force of the sin nature in your life. First of all, that I have a sin nature. Step one, I have a sin nature. I just don't, I don't lose it when I become a Christian. I still have it. And then it impacts my Christian walk. And then what's God's solution for that sin nature? And that's what this is all about. Six, seven, and eight are all that journey through that path. of man and his sin nature and what God has done about it.

Okay, so now, so a review here from last week. Okay, and there's a word that they didn't include in the translation. It kind of connects with the previous verse, with verse 8. And I once was alive, so the idea I, myself, was living to be alive, the course of life, the conduct of life.

And this is in this tense that's continuous action and pastime. So Paul talks about a time in his life, and it's a real time. It happened in his life. It continuously happened in pastime. He says, Paul's speaking about how he was continually living in pastimes. apart from the law, so even though, and I was kind of thinking, I was trying to think of the mechanics of this.

So here's Paul, and he's come to trust Christ as his savior. I mean, he knew the law. I mean, he was a Pharisee of Pharisees, right? But somehow, when he became a believer, somehow, I don't know, there was a period where this happened, apparently. He was living apart from the law, separated from it.

So Paul had apparently in times past not yet had the experience to know sin via the law. And it's gonna be via the commandment, via this commandment. So Paul's talking about his condition, not his position. He's living his Christian life and God's word through the commandment is speaking to him, is convicting him. Paul apparently didn't have awareness of this type of sin at this point in his life. And Merriman says he had freedom from conviction in his conscience, basically. He wasn't being convicted.

But that's gonna change. That changes as he described what happens here in these verses. Then he says, but when the commandment came, or having come, so in the context, the commandment we know from verse seven is, thou shalt not covet, Sin became alive and I died.

So the sinful nature, I like what we say, the sinful nature regained its strength and vigor and I died. The sin nature is there, it's always there. That's the battle between the flesh and the spirit. Will the sin nature come alive? And God has remedies for that. became alive to be living again it you can say it sprang into activity I told you about my my my struggles with driving on the interstate I don't think Ingrid was here driving the interstate and things happen there right and your sin nature just springs into action just like that Or I'm at a restaurant and the waitresses or waiter don't seat me where I want and it springs into action.

There are a hundred other cases. So we all walk that walk and see that happen. So Paul was no different than us. Here's a great apostle with all his understanding, with being with the Lord, as his teacher personally, face to face, and he still struggled with this. Wow. Amazing. And I died. So he didn't die physically, obviously. He realized he was separated when he sinned. He realized he couldn't, he coveted and he shouldn't covet. He experienced separation from God. Okay, so that's verse nine, verse 10.

This commandment, this kind of commandment, thou shalt not covet from the context, which was the result in life, The idea is toward life. And life here is this word, zoe. It's life as God has it. It's God's life, you know, like in the verse I mentioned last week, too. I am the way, the truth, and the life. That's zoe. That's life as God has it, not man's view of life. Man says, I'm living a good life. I'm having all this wonderful things happen. Well, if it's Christ's life, that's wonderful.

If it's not, then you're not really living true life. This is real life, and it's used for eternal life in Scripture. So Merriman points out that this command was toward the highest form of life, in contrast to bios, which is mentioned in Scripture a few times in terms of physical life or physical existence.

And it proved to result in death for me. And this is life found to be toward death. So the contrast here is toward life versus toward death. And death here is, again, separation from God. So the commandment, God's commandments promise, it's His view on life. They promise life. But when I follow Him, I found myself in the area of death. And Mary had this statement, which I copied down hopefully faithfully.

Paul's former state, I like this, of happy innocence, I don't know how, has given way to his realization of his actual position before God via the commandment. So this is something that happened to Paul in his Christian life, and he gave it to us in Romans chapter seven, a really unusual chapter in scripture.

Okay, so now he goes on in 11, it got even worse, right? So here's how, the sin nature was responsible, I say two catastrophic results in his life. The first one, for the sin nature deceived me, or it beguiled me. And the idea is to deceive completely, to beguile, to lead out of the right way into the wrong way. And it's in the Aorist tense, so it happened at a point in time. He was led out of the right way to the wrong way. And what's really interesting is this is the same word that describes how Eve was deceived. And I was kind of thinking about this. I'm not trying to be a sexist or anything. I'm not trying to be a... What's interesting is that here we have Eve.

She was deceived in the same way that the apostle Paul was deceived. And I thought, well, wait a minute. Paul's learning his abilities. It's like he's way up here and Eve is down here. I mean, you know, sort of. But they're both deceived the same way. They both were deceived. I thought that was really interesting. Man is man, woman is woman. Mankind is all the same, there's no difference. They all have sin natures, they all need a savior, and they are deceived in similar ways. And here's a verse that talks about that.

But I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve in his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. So pretty amazing comparison here between how Paul was deceived and we're gonna find out what deceived him, right? It's his sin nature that deceived him. That's what deceived him. And the second part is it killed him.

For the sin nature killed me through the commandment. So here we have, I mentioned before, here's God's holy and righteous law, perfect in every aspect, and it comes up against man's sin nature, and something has to happen. Something did happen, and that's God's desire. Something does happen when that comparison is made. Killed me, the idea, it's a metaphor, certainly. Spiritual separation from God. And again, Aristans, so it's an event in Paul's life.

And then the middle part of the verse, I kind of covered the beginning and the end of the verse. The middle part of the verse kind of tells us how this happened. And it's this kind of very colorful phraseology, for the sin taking an opportunity through the commandment.

It's sort of like the sin nature's lying in wait, ready to pounce, right? Whoop, it's gonna pounce. As soon as you, whoop, it's gonna do it. And that's the picture. There's these two words that they were used back in verse eight to lay hold of, to take, and then this word that talks about a starting point or a base of operations. It's the launching pad, if you will. The commandment was the launching pad for the sin nature. When that holy commandment came up and impacted Paul's life, thou shalt not covet, that was it.

He realized he couldn't handle it. He couldn't do it. And that's a good thing, and that's what God desires. He desires that man come to realize that he cannot live a life that pleases him without Christ living his life through you. It's impossible. So here's some more thoughts. These are from Merriman.

Paul expected one thing out of the commandments. As a Pharisee, wouldn't he expect only good things could happen? I study God's law, shouldn't good things happen? Well, no. I start going bonkers in my mind. I covet even more, it gets even worse. Paul expected life by obeying the commandments, but he found himself in death or separation from God. God did not give the law to deceive Paul. It is a sin nature that caused the law to be deceptive, not the law. It's a sin nature that deceived Paul, not the law.

So we see that theme coming over, it comes back, when everything else is said and done, every path you take, every logic you go through, it comes back, it can't be God, it has to be you. Okay, so today. 12 says, so then the law is holy, remember look again it's the singular, it's not all the commandments, it's that one commandment, the commandment is holy, righteous and good, Therefore, that which is good became a cause of death for me, may it never be. Rather, it was sin in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting death through that which is good. So that through the commandment, sin will become utterly sinful. I found this verse, you know, it's kind of a word puzzle, if you will. Hopefully we can sort that out. So actually I relied upon a couple of different approaches here. So let's, here we go.

So the law is, first, this is the easy one. So the law is holy. So his conclusion is, it's my sin nature, the law's gotta be holy. The conclusion is, so the law, so Paul, actually there's two conclusions if you look carefully here. He says the law is holy, and then he says this commandment that's just raking me over the coals, it's holy too. Both God's entire law is holy, and this commandment that I'm struggling with, it's holy too.

Thou shalt not covet. The law is holy. Haggaios means morally pure, upright, blameless. And what's cool is, Mike's gonna cover this in a couple weeks, we see that the law is not only holy, But it's good, the law is good, confessing that the law is good in Romans 7, 16. So the law is holy and it's good.

Good is the idea of quality, good is quality in character, by implication, choice, and excellence. And I was thinking about the fact that someone asked, Christ was speaking and he said, basically, only God is good. The source of true goodness is only God. Only God is good. So the law is not only holy, but it's good.

And the constable says it's good because of its purpose to produce blessing and life. That's really good. Okay, so now, the law is holy, so now he's gonna make sure, he doesn't wanna make sure that Because he struggled so much with this one commandment, he had to testify in a way that God is true to what he is. He doesn't have lesser things about his law that aren't at the same level.

So then he says, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. The commandment is, and again, it's you shall not covet. Since the commandment is a subset of the law, you would expect that it has identical characteristics, and that's exactly what he says. The commandment is a direct application of the law.

So it's holy, righteous, and good. We've covered most of these words already except for righteous. So hagios again, morally pure, upright, blameless, righteous, just, without prejudice or partiality, and then good, the same word as before, good, excellent, choice, good is quality and character. So it's kind of interesting, Constable had this thing, so the mark of a saint is that he upholds God and condemns himself. So Paul basically said, God can't be unfaithful. He can't be unholy. It has to be me. I have to be the source. It can't be God. God's word is a reflection of his character. It can't be. It has to be holy. So I have to be the one that has a problem. Okay, so now 13. So 13 starts off, this is a very typical thing for Paul, he starts off with this thing, therefore that which is good became a cause of death for me. So he poses a question, and then he answers the question, he gives his short answer, if you will, and I like to say his gut response.

May it never be, you know, God forbid in some translations. So I took the interlinear here because it helped me kind of point out a couple words here. So the interlinear says, for the first part of that up to the question mark, says, then the good to me became death. A little bit simpler phraseology, then the good to me became death.

Okay, so the good in the context, that's why I gave the definition earlier, if you look at the good in the context has to be, we go back, what is good, right? It's gotta be the commandment. You could say it's the law possibly, but I think it's the commandment. So the commandment is good. It became, ginome, ginomai, to come into a new state of being. So the commandment, which is holy, righteous, and good, became death, spiritual separation from God. So here's gonna be another conundrum, if you will.

He's gonna say, well, how can the commandment, how can I be separated, why is it causing me to be separated from God? So this is Paul's rhetorical question, and his answer is, may it never be. Away with the thought, God forbid. So as I say, Paul's gut reaction is, It can't be, it's impossible. Bad can't come from good. But he's gonna give, as he always does, he'll give a detailed explanation of why that's his answer.

Okay, so it says, rather it was sin in order that it might be shown to be sin. So I highlighted the it was, that's been supplied, that's a verb there. So the first little sentence there in that after the exclamation point may never be is rather it was sin. And it actually has the definite article again.

So rather it was the sin, the sin nature, So the cause of death, Paul says, right out of the chute, so to speak, the cause of death was the sin nature. That was the cause. That caused my separation, my spiritual separation. Rather, as a strong contrast, It means strong contrast.

And then we have a couple of, in this verse, the rest of the verse, we have a couple of clauses. And there are these clauses that it starts with in order that or so that. So it says in order that it might be shown to be sin. And that's modifying, both these modify it was.

In order that it was, so it tells us the purpose. that it, the sin nature, might be shown to be brought forth, to bring to light, and this is, again, a fact, it happened, it might be shown to be sin, and this time it means what was responsible for the sin, it was the sin nature was responsible for the sin.

Not the law, that's what Constable says. The responsibility for death belongs to sin and not the law. So Paul kind of goes around the block, makes another argument, and comes back to the same conclusion. It's the same sin nature with another line of thought. And he has one more line of thought in this verse.

Okay, by affecting my death through that which is good, So interlinear has it here, by the working death to me through the good. And that's why I kind of like this interlinear, because it had the definite article there, I can show you that. Through the good, and it's working, to work out, to achieve, to toil, death or separation. Dia, by means of the good, the commandment.

So this is at the heart of Paul's question. Can the good issue evil? And that's why he's struggling. Good, it can't be. Good can't produce evil. It can't. Okay. So, and we continue. So then the next, the last part, the last modifying phrase here. So that, so that through the commandment, sin will become utterly sinful. Another introductory of the conditional purpose here. So that, by means of, the commandment, you shall not covet, again it's a sin nature, would become, come into this new state of being, come exceedingly sinful. So you could say, so Paul's desire, Paul's desire by going through this logic here is that that the sin nature would be shown for what it really is, utterly sinful, and if you recognize that verse, Jeremiah 17, nine, most of you may have it memorized, for the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it. So he nails it down, it's gotta be the sin nature as a cause, it can't be God, it can't be his law, it can't be his commandments.

Okay, so to kind of sum up those thoughts, the law and the commandments are just like the God who gave them. They reflect his essence, that's who God is. God's law, what God has said in his law reflect who he is. That's how he's communicated to us. The law and the commandment are perfect for what he wanted them to accomplish. God has a purpose in everything he does.

He wasn't caught by surprise that Paul struggled with the 10th commandment. That wasn't an, whoops, Paul, you shouldn't have done that. I taught you better. Didn't you learn the three years I was with you? Didn't you learn? No, he wasn't surprised by that.

They make all mankind realize they are sinners. Paul's question, can good issue or cause evil? But the evil is a sin nature, not the law and the commandment. The law and the commandment were given so that the exceeding sinfulness of the sin nature might be seen. Just read that again, the last bullet there. The law and commandment were given so that the exceeding sinfulness of the sin nature might be seen. And these are from Merriman. So pretty interesting things. And Paul's gonna keep going here. He hasn't finished. This isn't the end of it.

Okay, so let's close in prayer. We thank you, Father. We thank you so much for your word. just the incredible grace that you provided for us, Lord, and your holiness, that you're a holy God, and everything about you is holy. Everything in your word that has come from you is holy, righteous, and good, and it reflects who you are, and it also shows us that our need for a Savior, our need that we're a fallen creature, that we have Adam's nature, and that we need your life, to live a life that's pleasing to you. We ask this in Christ's name.