Sin Exposed by God’s Holy Standard – Romans 7:7–13

PRAY: Holy Triune God, we dependently seek your help. Let us rightly understand your word and rightly apply it to our daily worship of you. Because of Christ, Father, may your Spirit apply it to our hearts, to our relationships, and to our circumstances. Amen.

Our text for today is Romans 7:7-13. Let me read aloud this portion of God’s verbally inspired and inerrant revelation translated into our own language.

Romans 7:7–13 ESV

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.

Intro & Context: How are these verses connected to what Paul has been arguing in Romans? And how is this important to how we understand and relate to God’s law?

Consider the following illustration: Your engine breaks down, so you begin looking for the source of the problem. You investigate the engine part by part. In this investigation you find that a certain part doesn’t accomplish what you thought it accomplished, so you are inclined to throw it out. I wouldn’t recommend that. A better solution would be to find out what it does and how it fits. Such is the case with God’s law in relationship to the gospel.

We find out in the NT, and especially from Paul here in Romans, that the law itself can’t sanctify us (make us holy before God) because our efforts will necessarily fall short. We are all sinners and we are therefore all sinning. We need a relationship to God that is by faith in his promise and not based on our efforts to keep the law (which was always the case, Paul says). Enter Christ to accomplish the righteousness we need to be right with a righteous God. Jesus lived in sinless perfection, bore our sin in his atoning death, and rose in vindication of his power and position to forgive and restore us to God. It is therefore faith in him which justifies, and it is relationship to him which sanctifies, by submission to the Spirit whom he has given us.

But if the law cannot justify or sanctify, what then is the purpose of the law, especially for the new covenant Christian? We are covenanted to God through Christ and are no longer under the Mosaic law as a system (not under the civil and ceremonial law of the old covenant for Israel). Should we then pitch God’s moral standard because we don’t know what its use is? No, we should figure out the purpose of the law.

Maybe it will help us to look at it another way, from a new perspective. Try thinking of the law as an example of God’s holy standard written down for us, and you’ll be heading in a helpful direction. We need God’s holy standard to break our self-deception and expose sin’s devastation, so that we will take sin seriously and seek God himself to sanctify us.

Let God’s holy standard expose sin and its devastation.

If you wonder if God’s revealed law has any value, Paul might even say to you: Apply God’s holy standard to see sin for what it is. Acknowledge its devastating work in your members. Paul wouldn’t say that the law has no use, has no purpose. The law is set up as a clear marker that exposes our sin in contrast to God’s holiness… in order that we might turn to God for mercy and help.

So Paul shows us in theses verses specifically how God’s holy standard exposes sin and its devastation. He defends the law’s goodness while describing it’s impotence to produce holiness because of the nature of sin within us. Although the law is impotent to produce holiness in us, it is not the law which is the problem but our inability because of the nature of sin at work in our members.

Again, we should let God’s holy standard expose sin and its devastation, so that we will take sin seriously and seek God himself to sanctify us. From this text we can highlight four ways that sin is exposed in relationship to God’s holy standard: definition, desire, deception, and the cause of our death. God’s holy standard defines sin and uncovers our depraved desire. Having deceived us about God’s standard, sin is unveiled in its true wickedness as the perpetrator of our death.

Note first how the law relates to the definition of sin. 

Definition: God’s holy standard defines sin. 

“… 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.””

What does Paul mean that without the law he “would not have known sin”? Clearly his intent is that the law exposes sin as sin by giving it a name and explaining or illustrating it.

The example of coveting is particularly appropriate because it is uniquely a commandment from the table of the law that is more inward than outward. While the other commandments are more behavior-focused in their expression, coveting highlights the heart and motivation behind what leads to our behaviors. - How would one know that such an internal issue as coveting is sin without the law describing it as sin?

For Paul, God’s holy standard provides the key for deciphering the sin in our lives. It acts like the Greek text on the famous Rosetta Stone. We don’t mean the popular language learning curriculum, but the archeological stone from which the name comes.

The Rosetta Stone [image] is a fragment of an ancient Egyptian stele (an upright stone), inscribed with a decree from 196 BC. The find was significant because the decree is written in three different scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script, and Ancient Greek. Since Greek was understood, scholars used it as a key to decipher the previously unreadable Egyptian scripts, a breakthrough that unlocked the study of ancient Egyptian civilization. 

Similarly, giving sin a name and explaining or illustrating it provides a key to our understanding of sin.

Think with me briefly about why defining sin is important. God’s holy standard exposing sin by definition is critical in at least the following three ways: awareness, accountability, and affirmation.

1. Defining sin creates greater awareness. Remember that Paul has already clearly explained that all of us are incurring God’s wrath by our unrighteousness. Most of the world was living in sin by ignoring God’s wisdom and power evident in creation. Those who do not have God’s law, his written code, are far from innocent. They are more ignorant, but not innocent. However, those who have the law have far greater detailed testimony to their depravity.
2. Along with creating this greater awareness, defining sin promotes greater accountability. Again, we are all accountable to God for ignoring the glory he deserves. But God’s holy standard teaches us to avoid what opposes God and to pursue what promotes God’s glory for our good. When we do not do these things stated in God’s holy standard, we know with clarity that we are guilty of not honoring God as he deserves. Defining sin therefore draws attention to our accountability to God for such sin.
3. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, then, God’s holy standard announces and affirms the holiness of God. The prescribed law affirms that God’s holy character is the basis and goal of the written code. God’s holy standard affirms God’s holiness.

All of these matter—awareness, accountability, and affirmation of God’s holiness—so that we acknowledge sin and seek merciful forgiveness and help from the holy God himself.

So first we have seen that God’s holy standard is a tutor that teaches us to see our sin by defining it. Paul continues on with his example of coveting to show that the heart of sin is in the heart. The way sin responds to God’s holy standard reveals that it is rooted in wrong desires. Sin is not just our actions; sin begins as wrong desire in our hearts, unleashing more sin into our lives.

Desire: God’s holy standard reveals that sin’s root is wrong desire.

Romans 7:8 “But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.”

Paul introduced this concept at v. 5 with the statement that our sinful passions were awakened by the law. Here, as an example of this, he says that the commandment not to covet thoroughly produced in him all kinds of covetousness.

We’ve already explained that coveting is a matter of the heart, a matter of the inward man, of wrong desires. Add to this now that if knowledge of God’s standard incites more sin, that means the root of evil desire is already present. The pilot light of this furnace is always lit. The rebellious spirit, already existing, is stoked by the fuel of the law telling it not to do something. 

God’s holy standard incites our appetite for more sin because of our natural posture of rebellion against God’s authority. “By nature rebels oppose restrictions. … The response of [our] sinful passions is to rebel against authority.” (Robert Mounce, NAC Romans) 

To make this point vivid, Paul uses a military word for the favorable opportunity sin seizes through the commandment. It refers to a starting point as a base of operations for launching an attack. - We can picture our rebellious inclination using the law as an access point to open the gates, granting a bridge for sin to storm the city of our hearts and lives.

So in Paul’s example the commandment not to covet produced substantially more coveting because the nature of sin is that it is a rebellious usurper, twisting that which is good for its own evil purposes. Rather than seeking to obey the law, sin uses it as bridge of opportunity for more sin to pass over it into our lives.

In a summary of verses 7&8, Paul says that apart of the law, sin lies dead. It would seem he means that the sin only appears to be dead. It appears to be nonexistent, until the law exposes it by definition. And in so doing, the sinful desire within is awakened and incited in its rebellion.

God’s holy standard is defining sin and exposing the root of sinful desire, leading to an all-our rebellion.

Now we also observe the devastation of sin’s deception.

Deception: Sin destroys through deceiving us about God’s holy standard. 

Romans 7:9–11 “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.”

Verses 9&10 connect to Paul’s last statement in v. 8. It would seem Paul is saying that he perceived himself as alive until the point that he truly recognized God’s holy standard and his sin. This made him also acknowledge his spiritual deadness, a death which was caused by sin.

On the other side of true conversion, Paul now realizes that “the commandment that promised life proved death to me.” IF Paul, or anyone else, could live up to God’s law, he would merit the righteousness God desires. But when Paul realizes that the law incites more sin in his heart, he knows he is dead in his depravity. - Before understanding his deadness, Paul the devout Pharisee would have thought he was good with God in acknowledging the law and meticulously keeping it. But spiritual conviction (from the example of coveting) has made him realize that sin is alive and he is dead.

But how did it happen that Paul ended up dead, spiritually separated from a holy God? Verse 11 explains. Just as happened to Adam and Eve in the garden, sin deceives us (as the Serpent deceived Eve) that the commandment is not as good as God says. Disobedience results in confirming our death.

This, of course, Paul applies to himself, and was echoed throughout the experience of Israel, and is the human condition at large. Because of Adam’s fall, all people are sinners who sin from birth (Rom 5:12ff). In our flesh we are incapable of winning the war against sin within us because of wrong desires (Rom 7:5). When God’s holy standard clearly labels and brings clarity to sin, the rebellious character of our desire is such that it entices our passions to do more of the same, asserting our autonomy from accountability to God and his boundaries.

But the great deception of sin is that God is withholding something from us. The truth is that God’s command is good and is for our good. But we are deceived by our sinful desire that God is withholding something good from us. - Notice again the connection we have seen: God defines sin, which arouses existing wrong desire, which is sin at work in us that is based on a deception that God is withholding something good, and that we would be better off to do it our way.

Now finally, the transition to our last emphasis has already begun in v. 11 and continues through vv. 12&13. Not only does sin deceive us about the law, but it also twists the good law as a weapon against us to ensure our death. Sin is the cause of our…

Death: Sin exploiting God’s holy standard to kill us proves its extraordinary depravity.

Sin deceived me about the law and through it killed me. (that was verse 11) Paul now wants to be abundantly clear. It is not as though this is the fault of the law. Romans 7:12 “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”

The law is holy because it comes from the character of a holy God. Everything he commands is holy and righteous and good. Paul uses three interconnected words for emphasis, like when Dick Vitale would exclaim announcing college basketball: "super, scintillating, sensational, baby!"

Only Paul’s three words have much greater bearing in their depth and effect: What God commands is holy—set apart, not tainted by sin. It is righteous—legally and ethically right. It is good—not only proper and fitting (righteous), but also positive and desirable (good).

-Application: I urge you to meditate on the reality that everything God commands is good and is for our good because He is good.

Again, Paul aims to be certain we see that God’s holy standard is good, and therefore the standard itself cannot be the true cause of our death. The law may be the smoking gun, but it is our own sin which has pulled the trigger.

Paul concludes this part of his argument by answering another rhetorical question that an antagonist might raise. Romans 7:13 “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.”

Sin’s exploitation of God’s holy standard to kill us exposes sin’s extraordinary wickedness. Remember what Paul had said at v. 5? “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” Every single sin only serves to confirm that we have merited death.

We must understand that in our sin we are opposing God, and opposition to God inevitably ends in death. Paul adds: such an outcome—our death apart from God—is an extraordinary evil.

Sin separates from the life of God, leading not only to our physical death but to our eternal death. Nothing could be a more tragic outcome of unmatched evil—eternally separated from the holy God who created you to enjoy him forever.

Paul does indeed want to be sure that we do not think of our sin as good or even acceptable, or tolerable. We must not belittle sin as harmless. Sin is the grotesque perpetrator of our own death, separating us from relationship to God and from fellowship with God.

Instead…

Conclusion: Let God’s holy standard expose sin and its devastation to shatter self-deception.

Paul has shown us that although the law itself is good and gives clear definition to sin, the internal wrong desire and deceptive nature of sin produces a rebellious uprising in us against the law, ensuring our condemnation of death. The fact that sin leads us to death through the law only brings full exposure to the true nature of sin.

So should we throw out God’s moral law in ignorance, not knowing what it’s use is? No. …

Understanding and hating your sin are necessary steps toward justification and sanctification.

God’s holy standard exposing sin is a needed instrument to shatter self-deception and lead you to trust Christ alone for your justification. Only his righteousness can make you right with God, which you receive in submissive faith.

So too, God’s holy standard exposing sin is needful so that, through union to Christ, you will submit to the Holy Spirit to sanctify you. You cannot trust in the efforts of your flesh to grow in holiness. Paul continues this specific thrust in the section which follows.

Ask God then, to help you meditate on the good and right use of the law. Let God’s holy standard expose sin and its devastation, so that you will seek God to save you from your sin by Christ Jesus, and so that you will seek God to continue sanctifying you by his grace through his Spirit.

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