The Law Shows Sin

…Paul says, “The mind of the flesh is hostility toward God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor indeed can it” (Romans 8:7).

If the mind of the flesh fights against the law, how is it not senseless to think that things so opposed to the law are stirred into action through it?

What then does Paul say? He speaks to those who have been buried with Christ through baptism (Romans 6:4) as to people who are dead to sin, and as to people already rich in the deadening of the passions. It would be fitting for them to go outside the law, since they have been freed from the passions that the law condemned.

So, he says, while we still remained in the mind of the flesh, the passions that the law denounced and named were at work in us; and at that time we were also answerable to the law, because sin was still alive in us.

“But now we have been released from the law, having died to that in which we were held captive” (Romans 7:6).

We were liable to the law, he says, because sin had made us subject to it. But if we have died to that in which we were held captive, that is, to sin, then the law too will surely cease to act, together with sin; for the law was decreed because of sin, to convict those who transgress.

So those who have been put to death to sin no longer need the law. For we have come to belong to another (Romans 7:4), and let us serve him in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter (Romans 7:6).

“What then shall we say? Is the law sin?” (Romans 7:7).

See how wisely he frames what he says about the law. He had said, “When we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (Romans 7:5).

But that statement would by no means have been free from suspicion. Someone would at once have replied, “Is the law, then, the director and author of sin? For if it is true that the passions of the flesh are at work in us through the law, how could it not be thought the very origin of sin?”

What, then, does the teacher of the mysteries do? He meets the objection sharply. He denies that the law is the father of sin, and instead lays the blame on human nature, as weak and, through the law, falling under penalties.

This is why he says, “What then shall we say? Is the law sin? By no means! Yet I would not have known sin except through the law” (Romans 7:7).

Notice his sober care. He did not say, “I would not have had sin except through the law,” but rather that he would not have known it.

So the law is not the occasion of sin, but rather points it out, making it plain to those who did not know it. It does this not so that, having learned of it, they might commit it, for even before they knew it they were surely committing it anyway, “for there was none righteous, not even one,” as the Psalmist says (Psalm 14:3; Romans 3:10), but so that, knowing what is wrong, they might turn to better things.

It seems to me that something like this happened to the people of old through the commandment of Moses.

For the sake of the argument, let us suppose a broad road leading somewhere. Let many stones be scattered along its middle, and, if you like, let pits be dug in it as well.

Then let there be some who walk along it by night and in darkness, stumbling very often over what lies in the way, and falling into the pits against their will.

With matters standing so, someone took a torch and, right at…