Or, Sin’s Insatiable Life of Coveting
Scripture: Romans 7:7-12
Date: September 18, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
This paragraph should be among those first pulled off the shelf when beginning to explain why men act the way they do. The implications of these truths spread out slowly like maple syrup from an overturned semi-truck coming from Canada. We see some of what’s wrong with us, and in particular how we can be expected to respond to external fixes. We are not tomato plants; tying us to straight sticks makes us mad.
This paragraph is probably not a typical choice in evangelism, but it could be. It points to the need for Christ and grace and gospel without using any of those words. It’s the previous paragraph, Romans 7:1-6, which explains that we can only bear righteous fruit when we’re dead to the law in union with Christ. Apart from union with Christ we’re still slaves of sin (as Romans chapter 6). Apart from union with Christ we’re still bound to the law, which only makes us more irritated by the law. The law doesn’t deliver anyone, we need deliverance from the law.
The law must be no good then, right? But isn’t it God’s law? The Lord Himself gave it. The Lord Jesus didn’t abolish the law He affirmed it (Matthew 5:17). He showed the law to be more relevant (Matthew 5:21-48) than most thought. The law distinguished Israel from the pagans (Romans 9:4). The law should be our delight both day and night (Psalm 1:2). The rules of His law are more desirable than gold and honey (Psalm 19:10). Why do we need to be dead and released from it?
A consideration of anthropology concerning the law of aggravation in three parts.
The moral character of the law is so beyond question that its righteousness can be assumed by rhetorical question. Paul uses this formula to emphasize the obvious. What shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! There are some parallels in Paul’s language about our being dead to sin and dead to the law, but that isn’t because sin and law are equal or that the law has anything sinful about it. The law can’t be said to cause sin. So is it tainted? μὴ γένοιτο!
The law reveals sin, but we’ve known that (Romans 3:20 and 5:13). How is the argument advancing here? There’s more than the surface apprehension. Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. This is true, technically. Men like to be technical. Men have the work of the law written on their hearts so that their consciences excuse or accuse (Romans 2:14-15), but those feelings of confidence or guilt are subjective without an external standard, or at least they are difficult to pin down. A law stands still long enough for everyone to see it and measure conduct by it.
Paul illustrates his own experience with a particular law, one what wasn’t hidden in a footnote; it’s the tenth of the 10 Commandments. But there’s something extra about this one. A jury can decide if you’re worshiping idols; you were caught on camera kneeling before Buddha’s belly. Or you flamed on about your parents on Facebook at it went viral. The police found your neighbor’s tools in your garage and other neighbors saw his wife sneaking out of your bedroom window. But like Smokey the Bear, only you can tell the truth about what’s happening in your chest.
And, it turns out, there is a law about what you’re prohibited from wanting. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ (A quote from the LXX of Exodus 20:17) This is what happened to Paul, this is the way among all flesh.
Life is full of wants. Life could be described as a series of wants and then work to get those wants fulfilled. God says some wants are sin. As Christians have known for a long time, we’re only allowed to covet prayers.
Now we can’t make excuses for our sin, and sin gets even more ideas. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Sin took the law like an open door; the word for opportunity is ἀφορμή, the “starting-point or base of operations for an expedition” (BAGD), “that from which an attack is launched” (Morris). Paul talks about sin like it’s a person, and it’s not a pretty personification. The commandment didn’t stop the coveting, the commandment fueled it. The law aggravated sin.
Augustine’s Confessions has become well-known:
It is certain, O Lord, that theft is punished by your law, the law that is written in men’s hearts and cannot be erased however sinful they are. For no thief can bear that another thief should steal from him, even if he is rich and the other is driven to it by want. Yet I was willing to steal, and steal I did, although I was not compelled by any lack, unless it were the lack of a sense of justice or a distaste for what was right and a greedy love of doing wrong. For of what I stole I already had plenty, and much better at that, and I had no wish to enjoy the things I coveted by stealing, but only to enjoy the theft itself and the sin. …our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden.
It’s the law of aggravation.
For apart from the law, sin lies dead. Paul is changing references with his analogy, and it’s vital to keep up. Usually we are dead in sin, numb and unresponsive to righteousness. The deadness here is different. Here sin is dead, as in, sin is quiet and lifeless-ish. The law bangs on the coffin and brings sin to consciousness.
I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. Paul’s not claiming that he was truly alive when sin was dead, as if ignorance was a place that needed no salvation. He shows that sin isn’t good when it’s ignorant and even worse when it’s aggravated. There is a sort of self-referencing bliss without rules, a lack of trouble. With the law in town, when the commandment came home, sin wants to fight, and every game with sin in ends in death. It is an end to “self-flattery” (Calvin), “self-confidence, self-satisfaction, self-reliance” (Morris).
The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. Righteousness was revealed in the law, and the end of righteousness is life. But that promise didn’t resonate. It stirred up want in the opposite direction.
Verse 11 finishes what verse 8 started with the same imagery. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. Now that we know we’re wrong, sin even deceives us into thinking that the law can fix it, which stabs us in the back of the conscience.
Christ alone saves us. The law, by itself, or even with a general work of the Holy Spirit, only makes it worse.
Is the law sin? No. All he’s said proves otherwise. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Holy means separate and excellent, righteous is without wrong, and good is of high and useful quality.
This is the conclusion of the paragraph: Provocation to more coveting proves that the law about coveting is pure. Breaking the commandment validates that the problem isn’t with the commandment. The law of God has the character of God. The law of God demonstrates sinful men do not.
The law aggravates. It stirs up longings that may otherwise have hibernated through the winter of ignorance. Sin doesn’t need provocation, but it will respond to being bossed. It’s the nature of sin.
Paul is talking about the Mosaic Law, and it’s another angle on the truth that the law can’t save. Rules don’t make anyone righteous in the heart, rules aggravate men into wanting what isn’t righteous.
There is wisdom needed. It’s not an automatic formula but an abiding principle among post-Adam men.
Does every law cause every person to want to break the law every time? No, but this is an exception to the rule. In general, because of sin in us, we naturally are bent toward wanting what we’re not supposed to have. For however much law restrains it aggravates. If we all lived in our sin consistently, we would always reject the rules, always be aggravated to greater rejection by the rules. Changing our behavior to avoid consequences means there are competing wants, not that we’ve eliminated unrighteous wants.
There are implications here for our rule-making homes, our policy-making institutions, and our legislation-making governments.
As good as God’s Law is (inspired and inerrant and true and good), state laws and school policies and father’s commands cannot make anyone love them.
A righteous, Christian home will have rules. Those rules will provoke disobedience, as well as occasionally provide previously unconsidered ideas, without grace. Resistance and resentment toward the rules and rule-makers is typical. When hypocrites enforce the rules, then there are two reasons to hate the law. When the rules are petty, it’s a trifecta of bad.
Would a nation be better with righteous legislation? Of course it would be; “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” (Proverbs 14:34). Unrighteous laws are supposed to be a better alternative? Where are righteous laws rooted? Not in common human experience but rather in standards that are transcendent; morality is defined by the Creator. As such, any laws that repeat or echo His laws will aggravate others toward the opposite, just because sin. A nation can be governed in righteousness but a nation will only be righteous by gospel.
Again, is it better to avoid law because it makes some men mad? Is it better to avoid law because some mad men make them? The old Latin tag: abusus non tollit usum, “abuse does not abolish use.”
What is necessary? Look to Christ. Only in Him is freedom from sin’s insatiable life of coveting and contrarianism. We need new hearts with His law written into our hearts (Psalm 40:8; see also Jeremiah 31:33). This doesn’t remove externals, it teaches us how our relation to them and what to expect.
Brothers, hate your sin. Sin lies about what is good. Sin will take what is good and beat you up with it. Sin deceives, sin desensitizes. Keep believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and You will share in His joy. Let grace take up its base of operations for thankfulness, holiness, righteousness, and good.
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3:12–14, ESV)