St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. I

by Charles Gore

[[2]] Eph. v. 22.

DIVISION III. § 6. CHAPTER VII. 7-25.

The function and failure of the law.

The somewhat confused passage just dealt with, in which several moral ideas and metaphors are struggling for the mastery, is followed by a famous passage of luminous power in which St. Paul expounds, with a profound insight into human nature, the function and failure of law.

The close alliance into which St. Paul constantly puts 'the law' with the reign of sin, an alliance hardly suggested by any other New Testament teacher, suggests inevitably the idea that St. Paul, like the later Gnostics, regarded the law itself as 'sin,' that is, as owing its origin to the power of evil and working for its ends. Such an idea he of course repudiates. But all the same it is law, written or proclaimed, and law only, which both awakens the sense of sin in man and stimulates sin itself to put forth its power. Let me take myself, we may imagine St. Paul as saying (for the 'I' of this passage is very far from being strictly autobiographical), as representing man in his moral history. I was alive apart from any law once. That is to say, I lived as suited me best, according to my instincts, asking no moral questions and troubled by no scruples. And all this time sin, considered as a moral tyrant, was as if dead. I had no defined moral ideal and consequently no struggle and no failure. Then comes the law with its 'Thou shalt not covet' (or do this or that). It imposes limits in the name of God on my life of instinct. It cries 'Hands off!' At once I find opposition between me and the law. I do covet this and that which the law says I must not have. I find myself in the eye of the moral law a transgressor. And there is something more than my own lawless desire in opposition to the law. I become conscious of a great power of sin at work in the world and in me—something greater than myself, which intervenes in the struggle and reinforces the opposition to the law. The tyrant Sin rouses himself on the pretext afforded by the hostile commandment, and exercises his power both by stimulating my desires, like Eve's (ver. 8), and deceiving my intelligence, like hers, to believe that good is evil (ver. 11), and so brings me by means of the commandment into a state of flat disobedience to the law, which is death. For the law was given for life—'This do, and thou shalt live'; but there is the necessary converse—'This transgress, and thou shalt die' (vers. 7-11).

The law then, it is quite plain, is the expression of the will of God. And the particular commandment is holy and righteous and good. Is the good then my poison? No. But what has happened is this—the expression of the good in the law has brought the tyranny of sin out into the light. It had me in its power before, but I did not know it and I did not struggle. But as soon as the law aroused in me the beginning of moral consciousness, sin used the commandment as its knife to kill me; and so showed its hideous character—which indeed it was the divine intention to uncloak by means of the law (12-13).

For this it is that we must recognize as the true state of the case. On the one hand a spiritual law proclaimed over me. On the other hand a man who in virtue of my fleshly nature have been sold to be a slave of sin, and who as a slave find myself doing acts by force of circumstances, the true nature of which I do not understand, and which, so far from choosing, I hate (vers. 14, 15). For I am not only of this fleshly nature; I have also a conscience which responds to the claim of the law and recognizes it as right. But my wish to obey the law is not strong enough to carry my flesh with it. Thus my actual practice is in flat contradiction to the ideal of my choice. But henceforth my will is on the side of the law, and myself is in my will[[1]]. What runs so uncontrollably to evil is, it appears, not myself at all, but the alien tyranny of sin which has taken possession of me and made my flesh its haunt and instrument—the haunt and instrument of evil only and not of good. So I can only wish good and practise evil, and become more and more conscious that I am not my own master. The law of God, accepted by my will, becomes the law of my mind or inner being; but when I seek to impose it on my limbs and act accordingly, I find another law—the law of the tyrant Sin—holding sway in my lower nature; my authority is defied and I myself am dragged in humiliating captivity to sin in my lower nature (vers. 16-23). My body has become the death of my spirit. It is my prison-house. I cry out in my misery for deliverance. And it is this deliverance which I praise God for having given me through Jesus Christ our Lord. (By union with Him my higher self is reinforced, and I can control my lower nature and become my own master.) But in my isolated, unassisted self, the best that I can get to is a flat contradiction between the service of the law of God in my mind and the service of sin in my flesh (vers. 24, 25).

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Howbeit, I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shall not covet: but sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from the law sin is dead. And I was alive apart from the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died; and the commandment, which was unto life, this I found to be unto death: for sin, finding occasion, through the commandment beguiled me, and through it slew me. So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good. Did then that which is good become death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might be shewn to be sin, by working death to me through that which is good;—that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I know not: for not what I would, that do I practise; but what I hate, that I do. But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that it is good. So now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. For the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practise. But if what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. I find then the law[[2]], that, to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.