Law & Gospel – Part I
Part 1 of the “Law & Gospel” sermon series. This week is an exegetical sermon on Romans 7:7-12 addressing whether or not the law is good or bad and how it relates to Jesus. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on February 18th, 2007 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
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:: The Resolved Church :: February 18, 2007
duane matthew smets
(pastor/overseer/evangelist)
Romans 7:7-12
7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
“Law and Gospel – Part I”
I. The Charge: “Law is Bad”
II. The Defense
1. Law Uncovers Sin
2. The Example of Coveting
3. Sin and Opportunity
III. The Jesus
introduction
Good morning. Good to see you all. Hopefully you got a chance to enjoy our nice hot summer day in the middle of February yesterday…if you didn’t go to the beach today because it is amazing outside here in San Diego while the rest of the nation east of California is covered in 10 feet of snow. Actually, I’d probably rather be there because snow is fun and you’ll never see it in San Diego because the last time it snowed here was 1967 and I don’t think any of it even started to stick.
So welcome to church. Today we are starting the first of a few sermons on law and gospel from Romans 7:7-12. Which is really exciting because there is nothing funner to talk about than law and sin and death right? It sounds about as fun as reading the dictionary or doing laundry or digging ditches or something. Sorry if those are things you do for fun…I didn’t mean to offend you. J
Here is what is going on. We’re studying this book, Romans, which is about how God is glorious and that is shown to be most glorious not only because he created everything but because he saves people who don’t love and adore Him for making such beautiful things for us to enjoy. The First five chapters of this book talk about how we are in a terrible mess because of this because we have offended God and there is rightly hell to pay for it but the good news is that Jesus came and died and rose again so that we can get a clean bill of health on his account and start new or fresh through believing in him…that means having faith that he died in our place paying the hell we owe. He can do that because he is God and we can believe in that because there is good reason to think Jesus is real, that He is really God, that He really died, and He really rose again, and that this kind of viewpoint really makes a lot sense with what we know about ourselves and what we know about this world.
What’s happened in the book is that presenting this gospel has kind of upset some people because then does that mean that since Jesus takes care of our problem for us does that mean that we can just live however we want and do whatever we feel like? So in chapter six, Paul addressed this issue and told us, no, that is abusing grace. He said that is like being given a brand new life and then shooting yourself to death right away, it is like being a slave that is freed but just going back to your old abusive slave master, and he said it is like cheating on your brand new spouse.
So in chapter six he dealt with this issue of abusing grace. Now in chapter seven he has another problem to deal with and that is this thing called “law.” And that is where we are today. So let’s read the text and pray.
God, I thank you for these people here today. I pray that these words of your Bible would make sense to us and would help us to understand and know and love the gospel. May your law makes sense to us, may we know our depravity and the way it messes with us, and most of all would we know our great need for your Son Jesus. Amen
I. The Charge: “Law is Bad”
Paul, the human author (God’s the author behind the author), starts this new line of thought with these words, “What then shall we say? That the law is sin?” He’s a smart dude and he anticipates the reactions of the people reading or listening to him. So he writes in this sort of dialogue or conversational manner and he brings up this question. Is the law sin? Based on all that stuff I’ve said already, what do you think? Is the law sin? What do you think? In the verses we’ve been studying for the last month, verse 4-6, he said some pretty harsh stuff about the law…that we need to die to it, that it arouses sinful passions, that it held us captive, and that it is old and now instead there is new life in the Spirit. That’s pretty intense. It seems like the natural answer is yes. Well, I guess so, the law sucks and is bad. It sure sounds like it. Right?
But then the lawyer in Paul, he was trained as a professional lawyer from the time he was a little kid, and so the lawyer kicks in right away and makes us feel real stupid because he cries NO! By no means! And then he gives us seven reasons why the law is not bad. And that is too much for us to cover in one sermon. It’s bad enough that I gotta try and make stuff like law and sin and death sound interesting to you J and so I can do justice and honor to God’s Bible and not preach for the next 3 hours straight I’m going to break these verses up into 3 weeks. And it is going to be good. I joke about law, sin and death but the truth is that this is really good stuff for us as Christians…because the more we understand these things the more we will understand the why we feel and act the way we do and the more we will come to love and adore Christ our savior.
So first off, what does law mean here? When I hear the word “law” I almost immediately want to start cussing and shouting and throwing things because I hate those stupid street sweeping parking tickets, I hate getting pulled over for speeding or not wearing my seatbelt or whatever. And most of all since I was in high school I’ve been hassled for skateboarding and have been kicked out of a hundred million skate spots always by some jerk cop who is overwhelmed with his sense of authority and can’t find anything better to do than bother kids who are trying to do something useful and positive with their time. J That’s why whenever I watch “Cops” on TV I’m always rooting for the bad guy. I just want him to sock the cop in the face and then run and get away or something. J
Now, Romans was written almost 2000 years ago and the church in Rome that it was written to had a mixed audience, some Jews and some native Greco-Romans. The Jews loved “law” because it was what made them special. They were the people who were given God’s supernaturally inscribed law on tablets of stone called the ten commandments. Jewish children at age five began to be taught how to read and write by writing the law in honey so that they would know that God’s law was sweet and good. So if you are a Jew and you’re hearing what Paul is saying, you are pissed.
Greco-Romans had their own pride for their law. They were the most powerful nation on the planet at the time, and stayed so for over 1500 years. Any country they encountered they would easily defeat because they were so powerful. They had a the biggest and strongest army. They had the most affluential philosophers, artists, and religion. They would come in and immediately impose their law and structure after taking over a city, demanding alligience and taxes to Ceasar, the emperor, and all who opposed it were crushed.
In the book of Romans, Paul has taught us that law is not only what God physically wrote in the ten commandments and the rest of the Jewish Torah but is also the inner sense of right and wrong that is written upon the heart of every human being throughout time. That sense of “ought” and sense inside of us where we all know that it is wrong to steal cars, murder babies, and have sex with strippers and pictures of them and other people we are not married to.
So here is the charge or the question, is law bad? Apparently it has some pretty bad effects on us as human beings apparently and so Paul is going to try and help us understand that and how that works. There are seven reasons he gives why the law is not bad and today we’re just going to look at the first three.
II. The Defense
1. Law Uncovers Sin
After crying out, “NO!” the law itself isnt’ bad, he says, “…if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” This is the theme of this paragraph that continues throughout the whole thing. The argument is that the law is not the problem but it is us, that we are the problem, it’s us, we are bad…the law just shows us that, it uncovers or exposes what is really going on inside us, sin.
So, Paul’s proposition is that the reason we need to die to law, the reason law arouses sin, the reason law holds us captive…is because we are sinful, not the law. The law just functions to show us that we are sinful, that we have a condition, that there is something wrong with us.
It is an experiential question about the depth of who we are as human beings. And not just before we become Christians. Everything after chapter five includes the post-christian. After you become a Christian or sometimes ways down the road after becoming a Christian is when you really start to realize how messed up you and how much you really do need Christ.
I started studying Romans about nine years ago now. And when I first started studying it I listened to a whole class on Romans being taught by an old professor named Dr. Eno and I remember he said before you are a Christian you are like this dead body and if you drop a one ton weight on the dead body it doesn’t feel anything, but once you begin that new life in the Spirit that’s when you begin to feel the weight of your sin. That’s when the real struggle begins.
I’ll tell you what, after following Christ for a while now…now I know what I am capable of. I had no idea how deeply depraved I was when I first became a Christian. I knew I needed Jesus but I had no idea how much. We are capable of such horrendous evils…yes, even after you become a Christian.
But we don’t like that do we? To be told that we are sinners. It violates this supposed universal law of niceness right? Where you never say anything negative to someone. Of course, unless it’s behind their back. But it is true. And we need to know it. And that is what the law does for us.
This is the way the law works…for everyone. The picture here is sort of like the catscan machine they use at the hospital. You lay on it and your head goes in under this coffin like thing filled with light and somehow it can look inside your body and find out what is going on underneath your skin. We all have this disease, sin, and the law uncovers and exposes that disease laying dormant in us and shows us that it is there and that it needs a remedy.
2. The Example of Coveting
In order to help us understand, Paul gives us this example of coveting. He says, “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” What does it mean to covet? Here is a definition: To have a strong desire to posses something that belongs to somebody else. Here is another definition: Living in America. Houses, cars, boats, surfboards, guitars, shoes, pants, jackets, tattoos, cd’s, books, cell phones, computers, plasma tv’s, money to buy more stuff, and especially that new iphone that’s coming out. I want it. J Christmas here is ridiculous. We make our wish lists while kids in Africa cry because their hungry. It’s crazy. We are coveting gone rampad and I’m guilty. There’s no question.
“You shall not covet.” What’s he mean when he says we wouldn’t know what it is to covet if the law didn’t say it. Does he mean, Jewish law, the ten commandments or does he mean the moral law written on our hearts? Does it matter? They both come from God and they both say the same thing, right? We know there is something wrong with always wanting. Our lack of satisifcation. That immediate thing inside us that springs up when we see something new that someone has and we want it. And it only seems to get worse the older you get.
But his point is clear. If God never wrote that in our hearts or made it one of the ten commandments it wouldn’t know it was wrong. Our sinfulness would not be uncovered…the sin beneath the sin.
It is interesting that he picks out coveting, the last of the ten commandments, as his example. It is interesting because it is the clearest commandment that deals with the desire of our hearts as oppossed to exterenal behavior. Coveting is an affection…a want, a desire. The other commandments assume desires behind them. You steal because you desire to have something that you can’t afford. You commit adultery because you desire to have sex with someone who is not your wife or because you don’t want to wait for marriage. Coveting relates directly to the desires and is behind every one of the commandments.
And on top of it all coveting brings everything back to the issue of God because coveting says my desires, not God’s, my desires are the measure of right and wrong, what is good and bad and true and false. Coveting says says my will and desires are the standard, what I want things to be. And what is that but the desire to be our own God. It is the root of rebellion and the commitment to be our own god to ourself, where we are the final authority in our life. Where what we decide is what happens. Where i am god. And is nothing other than a violation of the first commandment starts out by God saying “You shall have no other gods before me (Ex. 20:3).” That is why Jesus said all the commandments are summed up in this one phrase, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Mt 10:37).”
Do you get it? Law shows us that we don’t love God but that our hearts are naturally disposed toward rebellion against him. Nothing is ever enough for us, we are never satisfied, because what we really want is to worship ourselves rather than God. The law isn’t the problem. We are. We have a sin problem and we need a savior. We need Jesus.
II. The Defense
3. Sin and Opportunity
Coveting is a strong example of our natural inward disposition toward rebellion. But Paul adds even more to it with this word “opportunity.” The word “opportunity” in Greek is the word, aphorme, which means a military base of operations for an attack. So an opportunity would be an outpost where a camp is set up not too far from the front lines and from there it sends out soliders to attack and seize their unsuspecting victims.
So get the picture. Sin is this thing in us, it’s part of us, and it is lying dormant like a sleeping dog…but the moment it hears law it springs up, roars to life, and grabs law and turns it into a military base of operations to kill and destroy.
How does sin do this? How does it work? Know yourself. It works one of two ways, it either says “you could never keep all the commandments perfectly so why even try, just do what you want and have fun, that is all that matters. Or it says, “you can do do this, just work really hard and be really disciplined and have strong willpower and you can beat this, you are better than everyone else, so just do good and when judgment comes you will be fine.” Do you get it? Sin kills both ways, it takes the law and makes it a base to either make you self-indulgent or self-righteous.
It’s Anna Nicole Smith tweaked out on the floor and it’s Ted Haggard saying he’s better because he’s not gay. It’s crack babies and the prozac life and it’s church kids who think they’re better because they go to “christian” school. It’s dancing and drinking till you puke and it’s refusing to ever let alcohol touch your lips because you say your body’s a temple. It’s spending every dime you’ve got on anything you want and it’s never spending anything because your above materialism and greed. It’s no desire left unfufilled and all restraints cast off and it’s only desiring perfection and thinking you’ve got what it takes. Sin takes coveting and hits both marks by either letting desire run wild or by letting you think you are good because you don’t covet, which is really just another form of coveting…it’s just coveting a pat on the back.
The Jesus
Alright. So that’s all a pretty big downer and we only got through three of Paul’s seven reasons. We’ll do another three next week and talk about his Paul’s personal life that’s wrapped up in his use of the word “I” and we’ll talk about how decption works and how this all relates to death and the promise of life. And then in two weeks we’ll spend a whole sermon on chapter twelve on how the law is holy, righteous, and good.
But we did three reasons and I don’t want you all to go home depressed and have to shoot up or something so let’s talk about Jesus for a few minutes. The point of the passage isn’t to get all sad bastard anyway, it’s to help us love and appreciate and long for and adore Christ and his grace. Romans 7 is a deep chapter. It’s not a long chapter, only 25 verses. The longest chapter in the Bible has 176 verses. But Romans 7 goes deep into the psychology of how sin works in us. It takes a hold of any and every thing and corrupts it.
Romans 7 is like this song that builds and builds and builds and then climaxes with this great release at the end in verse 24-25 where it cries out in frustration saying, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” and then answers “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!.”
So here is where Jesus fits in this whole deal. The charge or question has been that law is bad. It sure seems to cause a lot of problems. But Paul’s point has been that the law isn’t the issue it’s us. We have something wrong with us called sin and what law does is it uncovers this reality, it expresses itself in coveting and takes every opportunity to kill us whenever we encounter law. So how does Jesus change things?
Jesus changes things because when the law hits him it uncovers nothing evil. 1 Peter 2:22 says, “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.” The scalpel of the law cuts Christ open and exposes nothing but purity and genuine love of God flowing from his heart. Never coveting, always satisfied with the glory of God, nothing but a desire for the perfect will of His Father. The law finds nothing in Christ but complete fulfillment. That’s why Jesus said, “I did not come to abolish the law…but to fulfill [it] (Mt 5:17).” And yet our faultless and flawless Christ was led to the slaughter to die a lawbreakers death as our substitute.
That’s the gospel. That’s why Christ is so good. We get his excellence in exchange for our infirmity. We get his lawfulness for our lawlessness. His fulfillment for our failure. His comfort for our coveting. His consolation for our contempt. His joy for our anguish. If you are a Jew you love this Jesus because He is the perfect depiction of the law you love so much. If you are a Greco-Roman you love this Jesus because he is the most magnificent emperor or Lord you have ever served.
In chapter six of Romans Paul showed us that Christ is great because he is the resurrected King and the worthy Master. Here in chapter seven, Paul has shown us that Christ is the perfect spouse and how he is the perfect Lord and Lawkeeper.
This is the message today, Jesus Christ is glorious. And we need him…desperately. Because the law shows us our sin and we need a savior and Jesus is sufficient!
conclusion
Let’s conclude this morning with some application. Knowing what we now know about the law and how it works in us, how should we then live? I think the answer must go like this: When we hear the law, whether it is the prick of our conscience in our hearts or when we read it in this book or hear it from the preacher…rather than allowing our sin to seize an opportunity for ruin we need to seize the opportunity for redemption in Christ.
So when the command do not covet is heard, what we do is realize our sinful desire to covet and then turn to Christ and cry, Lord save me. You do not covet. Make me satisfied with you and you alone. Help me to trust you for my needs. Help me to make wise decisions with my money that will honor you and your kingdom. Help not to be jealous of others prosperity but rejoice that you died for me. Help me not make my own desires the ground of what is right and wrong for me but humbly submit to your law and your fulfillment of it in my place. Help me to neither be self-indulgent or self-righteous. Help me not to rush your will and bring about what I think I want and need but provide for me in your time and in your way. Christ, you are my treasure. You are my sole source of hope for salvation from my sin. Jesus you are good and you are everything. May I love you with my whole heart, soul, mind and strength.
I think that is how we do it. We recognize our inability and accept Christ ability and accomplishment on our behalf. And this has a real practical outplay for us as well. Have you ever wondered how you are supposed to read or understand all those laws you read in the Old Testament? If the Bible is sort of new to you, I’m talking about the rest of the 637 commandments that are in there in books like Leviticus and Numbers. How is some of that crazy stuff like sacrificing three tenths of an ephah of fine flour once a month (Num 28:12) supposed to make any sense to us? What do you do with that? Go outside and start throwing flour into the wind? J
No. When you read that be thankful for Christ who fulfilled all the law perfectly for us. Think of him, who was the last sacrifice, given up to God on the cross on our behalf. And now we get to be part of the new covenant provided for by his blood.
And lastly, spread the news of the goodness of Christ. The gopsel really is good. Jesus really is amazing and people are not going to know about it unless you tell them. Don’t be afraid to tell people that they are jacked up lawbreakers, if they’re your friends and you’ve earned their respect they’ll listen to you. They know it’s true about themselves. They just don’t know about Jesus other than him being some sort white bearded dude in a robe that wierdos like and want you to come to their church so he can take their money. J
For the kids here, this is what God wants you to learn from His Bible today: when mom or dad tell you to do something and you don’t want to do it, that’s because you are a sinner and you need Jesus to save you. Jesus always loves to do what His Father tells him and if you love Jesus he will help you love to do what you know you should. So believe in Jesus and he will always take care of you.
