Now you may be thinking “Well Dave, if the Law is what arouses selfishness and rebellion within us, what does that say about the Law?” If you are here and that question is running through your mind, I want to let you know you are not the first person to have that question, as we see in Romans 7:7. Let’s look at it together:
What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, "YOU SHALL NOT COVET." But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.Here we see the members of the church at Rome ask a question: “is the Law sin?” In other words, “doesn’t that fact that the Law arouses selfishness and rebellion reveal that the Law does not meet up to God’s divine standards of what it means to be right with God? Doesn’t the Law depart from what God’s standards are?” And it is in this question that we see the Apostle Paul reveal for us the second of three timeless temptations that followers of Jesus must wrestle against as we become more like Christ in character and conduct. And that temptation is that we must wrestle against the temptation of license.
By license here, I am referring to followers of Jesus who view that law as worthless. And since the Law is worthless, we do not need to follow its principles; since we are saved by grace, we have license to live life however we want to. This is the exact opposite temptation of legalism. While legalists try to force other followers of Jesus to obey the commandments as the means by which we become more like Christ, license believes that we can simply ignore God’s commands in the Bible as being outdated, irrelevant and worthless.
Paul responds to this question with the strongest negative response that is possible in the language that this letter was originally written in and explains that the law points out selfishness and sin. It was the Law is that enabled Paul to arrive at the knowledge of the destructive and evil power of selfishness and sin that was within him. Paul then points the readers of this letter to a section of a letter that is recorded for us in our Bibles called the book of Exodus. In Exodus 20:17, God as part of the Ten Commandments, commanded the Jewish people “you shall not covet”. Coveting, simply put, is a desire for something that is forbidden. In other words, God commands that we should not desire something that is forbidden.
However, in verse 8, Paul explains that the law not only pointed out selfishness and sin; the law also provokes selfishness and sin. The evil and destructive power of selfishness and sin that was present within Paul took hold of the opportunity, through God’s commandment to not covet, to rebel against God’s command in a way that produced a selfish and rebellious desire to covet. And we all have experienced this principle at work in our lives, haven’t we? Let me just give you an example to help refresh your memory. Have you ever been at home waiting for dinner and have your parents or your spouse say the following: “I’m going out to run an errand and we will have dinner when I get back. But don’t eat any of the cookies that I baked this afternoon, they are for work tomorrow.” Now what desire almost immediately popped in your mind? “Hey cookies sound good. I want a cookie”. Prior to that conversation, you had no desire to have a cookie; but once you were commanded not to have a cookie, something deep within you selfishly desired to rebel and violate that command.
Paul then explains in verse 10 that prior to his encounter with Christ, he lived under the notion that it was what he did for God by keeping the commandments that made him right with God. However, it was the commandments of God within the message and teachings of the Bible that caused the destructive and evil power of selfishness and sin to spring to life and drove him to rebel against those commandments. Thus the commandments, which were given by God as a standard of what it means to be right with God, actually resulted in condemnation as Paul selfishly rebelled against those commands, which resulted in separation from God. The law produced death as the destructive and evil power of selfishness and sin deceived Paul into accepting the false idea of desiring something that was forbidden to him. And it was the deception of selfishness and sin that deprived Paul of the relationship with God that he was created for.
Paul’s point to the members of the church at Rome, and us here this morning, is the destructive and evil power of selfishness and sin desires to deceive us into thinking that following Jesus gives us license to view God’s commands as worthless and irrelevant. That is why, in verse 12, Paul explains that the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. The message and teachings of the Bible are pure, perfect, just, and fair. The message and teachings of the Bible meet the highest standard of worth and merit. You see, the Law is not the problem. And to view the message and the teachings of the Bible as the problem is to fall into the temptation of license.
But this raises a third question that reveals a third temptation, which we will look at tomorrow. In the meantime, do you find yourself wrestling with the temptation of license?
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