Lesson 15: The Law and Sin – 7:7-25
 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.
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,


23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

We finish this chapter in Romans in this lesson by learning to understand God’s main purpose for giving the Law – to make people understand what sin looks like in our actions. Please remember, Jesus restated what sin looks like in our thoughts in His Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew chapters 5-7. For example, the Law says we are not to murder, but Jesus said we are not to hate, because that is the same as murder. One is the action, and the other is the thought leading to the action. The Law says we are not to commit adultery (action) while Jesus said we are not to look at someone with lust (thought leading to action).

God gave the Law so people would recognize sin for what it is. It is one thing to trust our instincts or our conscience to tell us what is right or wrong. Both can be changed by circumstances or peer pressure. From earliest history until today there are people who believe they have a right to murder someone under certain circumstances – and this is not the killing that happens when a government sends a soldier into war (which Romans 13 does not call murder).

But God calls all murder sin. He calls all lies sin (even if we call it a little “white” lie because we did not want to hurt someone’s feelings). He calls idolatry sin (even if we consider it an illness, like addiction to alcoholism). He calls coveting sin (even if we call it need). He calls taking His name in vain sin (even if we call it a habit). We can go through the entire list this way, finding excuses for why something is really not that bad, or at least it is not sin when WE do it.


In Verse 24 we read about a “body of death,” and to understand this, we need to understand capital punishment in the days when Paul wrote this letter. Someone who was convicted of murder was not killed outright in punishment. Rather, the dead body of the person they had killed was tied to their back in a way the person could not remove it. This decaying body would eventually kill the person, but it was a slow, awful way to die.

Now Jesus asks us to live at a different level, as we read in the last verse of our Scripture today. He alone can remove this “dead body” of the knowledge of our sin from us. He alone can set us free from slavery to sin.

*Do you feel today as if you are a slave to your own sin? How strongly do you wish to be free?