Original Meaning
PAUL’S NEGATIVE EVALUATION of the effect of the Mosaic law reaches its crescendo in 7:1–6. He accuses the law of arousing sin (v. 5) and of keeping those who are under its authority from coming to know Christ (v. 4) or experiencing the new life of the Spirit (v. 6). The believer’s release from the power of the law is just as much good news as her release from the power of sin (ch. 6). No wonder, then, that Paul asks, “Is the law sin?”
Paul again anticipates the direction that readers of Romans will take his argument and seeks to head them off from drawing what might seem the logical conclusion. “Certainly not!” he responds; rather, “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good” (v. 12). The law may have had a disastrous effect, but the fault is not the law’s. The fault, as Paul explains in 7:7b–11, is sin, which uses God’s good law to bring death.
“What shall we say, then?” resumes the dialogical style of chapter 6 (cf. 6:1, 15). As he did there, Paul anticipates a key objection to his presentation of the gospel. For he seems to imply in verses like 5:20 and 7:5 that the law is an evil thing. But if this were really his view, he would forfeit any claim that the gospel is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. As some of the later Gnostics did, the Old Testament would be severed from the New and the God of Israel from the God of Jesus Christ; the gospel would replace, not fulfill, the Old Testament.
Thus, Paul resolutely denies any such idea, restating the point positively in 7:12. This does not mean, however, that he is retreating from what he said about the negative effects of the law. The word translated “indeed” in the NIV in verse 7 is alla—an adversative conjunction with the sense “though indeed”: “No, the law is not sin, although it is indeed true that the law and sin are related.” What is this relationship?
Paul claims he came to “know” sin through the law and uses the tenth commandment to illustrate: “I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’ ” Paul’s coming to know sin might mean that he came to know what sin was—the law defined it for him. But Paul usually uses the verb “know” (both ginosko and oida are used here) with a simple direct object to mean “come to understand” or even “experience.” The latter meaning is illustrated in 2 Corinthians 5:21, where he says that Jesus did not know sin, while Romans 11:34, “Who has known the mind of the Lord?” illustrates the former. This “come to understand” meaning is the more common in Paul and is probably intended here. The Mosaic law helped him come to understand clearly the extent and seriousness of his sin.
Why does Paul quote this particular prohibition? The verb he uses is epithymeo, the Greek word for “desire.” Some interpreters think it has a sexual connotation here and that Paul is referring to his own personal experience of awakening to sinfulness at the time of puberty.1 But Paul rarely confines “desire” to the sexual sphere. Rather, in keeping with Jewish tradition, he gives an abbreviated citation of the tenth commandment (Ex. 20:17; Deut. 5:21) as a fit summary of the Mosaic law as a whole.2
In the first sentence in verse 8, Paul takes the argument one step further. Not only did he come to understand sin through the law; he also was led into greater sinning through that same law. Just how this happened Paul does not explain. But he probably has in mind the power of a definite prohibition to stimulate in sinful people a rebellious reaction. Told not to do something, we desire all the more to do it. Thus, paradoxically, the very prohibition of a sin leads to even more of that same sin. In this way, Paul says, sin uses the law as an “opportunity” or bridgehead (aphorme; cf. also 7:11; 2 Cor. 5:12; 11:12; Gal. 5:13; 1 Tim. 5:14) to accomplish its purposes in people. Note how Paul continues to picture sin as a power.
Until now, we have avoided identifying the experience Paul is describing. But what he describes in verses 8b–10a requires us to deal with this controversial question. The law became a bridgehead for sin by portraying the contrasting fates of “I” and “sin”:
“apart from law” | “when the commandment came” |
“sin is dead” (v. 8c) | “sin sprang to life” (v. 9b) |
“I was alive” (v. 9a) | “I died” (v. 10a) |
The seemingly obvious explanation is that Paul is referring to an experience in his own life. He understood that he was, indeed, “dead in his sins” when the true meaning of God’s law came home to him—perhaps at puberty,3 perhaps just before, or as part of, his conversion.4 But this interpretation has a serious snag: We must interpret the key verbs subjectively. Paul “thought he was alive” before he understood the law; he “came to realize that he was dead” afterward.
This problem is neatly avoided if we were to use a different interpretation, namely, that Paul is describing the experience of Adam in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are the only human beings who ever truly passed from “life” to “death” “when the commandment came.” When they disobeyed the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they passed from spiritual life to spiritual death. Paul has already emphasized the corporate significance of Adam’s actions in this context (ch. 5). So he may be continuing that line of thought, showing how he, and all people, came to experience spiritual death.5 But this view also has a problem: Paul is not speaking here about “law” in general, but about the Mosaic law—a law that came long after the time of Adam and Eve.
The best explanation, then, finds Paul in these verses to be describing the experience that he and all Jews have gone through as part of the people of Israel.6 Jews in Paul’s day had a lively sense of their involvement with the great acts in the history of Israel (see Bridging Contexts section). It would be natural for Paul to merge his own experience relative to sin and the law with the experience of his people Israel. As he has made clear throughout Romans, the coming of the commandment (= the giving of the law of Moses) meant for Israel not “life” but “death.” Their sin was exposed and magnified, and greater wrath came on them (4:15; 5:20).
To be sure, the law held out within it the promise of life (7:10). As Leviticus 18:5 (quoted by Paul in Rom. 10:5 and Gal. 3:12) teaches, “Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them.” But the power of sin already at loose in the world through Adam kept this good intention from being realized. People were unable to obey the law (see Rom. 3:9). Thus, the law imprisoned Israel in their state of sin (see Gal. 3:23) and led, in fact, to her “death.”
Verse 11 reiterates the same point about sin, using the law as a “bridgehead” that Paul made already in verse 8a; the two then act as a kind of “frame” around the narrative of verses 8b–10. With the “so then” of verse 12 Paul comes back to his main point. Sin has indeed used the law to bring death to Israel. But the law is innocent; it provides the “opportunity” only. Thus, it can be concluded that the law is not sin (v. 7); it is “holy, righteous and good.”
Bridging Contexts
“KNOWING” SIN AND Greek vocabulary. Anyone who has read books or commentaries on the Bible has run into arguments that go something like this: “Although the same English word occurs in both verses, the Greek (or Hebrew) words are different. The one means ‘x’ while the other means ‘y.’ Therefore the verses have different meanings.” Such arguments are often valid. There are words in Greek and Hebrew with slightly different meanings that we render in English with the same word. I have pointed out a number of these in this commentary.
The problem, however, is that there has been a long history of overemphasizing these kinds of distinctions. Some interpreters wrongly assume that two Greek words with similar meanings in English always have a different nuance. Especially, then, when a biblical writer shifts from one of these words to another, it is automatically assumed that he intends a difference in meaning. Verse 7 is a case in point. When Paul says, “I would not have known what sin was,” the English verb “know” translates the Greek ginosko. But when he goes on to say, “I would not have known what coveting really was,” the word “know” translates oida. Commentators therefore argue that Paul has a different nuance in mind in the two statements. The first, Sanday and Headlam claim, refers to “an intimate, experiential acquaintance,” while the second connotes “simple knowledge that there was such a thing as lust.”7
As contemporary linguistic studies have shown, however, words with a similar meaning (i.e., synonyms) may have distinct nuances but are sometimes used with exactly the same connotation. A moment’s reflection on how we actually use English will make this point clear. For instance, I refer throughout this commentary to “interpreters,” “scholars,” and “commentators.” At times I deliberately choose one word instead of another because of a difference in meaning. I may, for instance, choose “interpreter” rather than “commentator” because I refer to people who have written on Romans but not in the form of a commentary. Or I may choose “interpreter” over “scholar” because I am referring to a writer whose “scholarship” I am uncertain about! But in the majority of cases, I intend no distinction in meaning. I may, for example, be aware that I have used “scholar” in the previous two sentences and so I should vary my language by choosing a synonym.
The point, then, is this: Speakers and writers often vary their vocabulary for reasons of style and not just for reasons of meaning. In an article on the two Greek verbs for “know” (ginosko and oida) Moises Silva has noted that the two do seem to have different connotations at times. But he also points out that the one verb was used far more often in certain kinds of constructions than the other verb, suggesting that authors sometimes used one or the other simply because of the syntactical situation.8 What is ultimately decisive, therefore, is context: Does it make sense in a particular context to think that the author intends a difference in the words? In verse 7 we, along with most other modern interpreters, doubt that Paul intends to use these two Greek verbs to connote two different kinds of “knowing.”
“I” in Paul’s world. Modern readers of Romans 7 can be excused for wondering what all the fuss is about. Why do scholars debate the reference of the word “I” in verses 7–25? Is this not another example of the way scholars waste their energies working on problems that do not exist? The text says “I”; Paul wrote Romans; “I” refers to Paul. What could be clearer?
Of course, we are familiar with situations in which we use the first person singular pronoun in a rhetorical sense to refer to a person in general. Paul himself uses the pronoun this way earlier in the letter: “Someone might argue, ‘If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?’ ” (see also 1 Cor. 13:1–3). But we usually signal this use of “I” clearly, often with a conditional construction (note the “if” in Rom. 3:7 and 1 Cor. 13:1–3). Paul does not use that kind of construction in Romans 7; he speaks directly of this “I” in the past tense in 7:7–12 and in the present tense in 7:13–25. What possible basis could there be for any reference except to his own experience? In fact, there are two.
(1) The former may be quickly mentioned because we have dealt with it in the Original Meaning section above: In verses 8–10 Paul describes an experience that he could not have had. He had never been “alive” (in a spiritual sense) apart from the law because he was born a sinner condemned because of Adam’s sin (5:12–21) and as a Jew “under the law.” Nor, for the same reason, had he “died” “when the commandment came.” So we have at this point impetus from the text itself to ponder just what Paul might mean by “I” in Romans 7.
(2) The second basis for a broader use of “I” is the context of Paul’s world. As we argued in commenting on 5:12–21, Paul’s culture was far more alive to the corporate dimension of life than we are. People were viewed less in isolation and more as parts of units—family, tribe, nation, and so on. One’s own nature and destiny were often seen to be a product more of participation in these corporate structures than of one’s own personal decisions. Jews in particular emphasized the importance of solidarity with the nation. In the Passover ritual, recited each year, every Jew confesses that he or she was a slave in Egypt and was redeemed through God’s mighty deeds.9 The individual Jew is in solidarity with the nation as a whole; what the nation has experienced, the individual Jew has experienced.
Several Old Testament passages suggest that “I” can be used to denote the nation of Israel. Note, for instance, Micah’s description of the judgment of Israel in Micah 7:7–10 (see also Jer. 10:19–22; Lam. 1:9–22; 2:20–22):
But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD,
I wait for God my Savior;
my God will hear me.
Do not gloat over me, my enemy!
Though I have fallen, I will rise.
Though I sit in darkness,
the LORD will be my light.
Because I have sinned against him,
I will bear the LORD’s wrath,
until he pleads my case
and establishes my right.
He will bring me out into the light;
I will see his righteousness.
Then my enemy will see it
and will be covered with shame,
she who said to me,
“Where is the LORD your God?”
My eyes will see her downfall;
even now she will be trampled underfoot
like mire in the streets.
I am not suggesting that Paul uses “I” here to refer to the nation of Israel per se. As most scholars today recognize, the style of Romans 7 requires that “I” include reference to Paul himself. But I do think the corporate way of thinking so typical of Paul’s world opens the way for us to take seriously the possibility that in this chapter he is not always referring to experiences from his own personal life but to experiences he has had in solidarity with his people Israel.
Contemporary Significance
DEATH, THE LAW of Moses, and us. Our interpretation of 7:7–12 in terms of the experience of the Jewish people with the law of Moses poses a challenge to contemporary application. Here is another text in which “homiletical expediency” may well push us to adopt a view more easily applied in our day. If Paul, for instance, were describing the experience of human beings in general with law or command, we could apply what he says to the situation of every person.10 But how can Paul’s narration of the way sin used the Mosaic law to bring death to the Jewish people help the contemporary reader in Romans? In two ways.
(1) This paragraph, considered overall, is “an apology for the law.” What Paul has said about the baneful effects of the law in the life of Israel may give the impression that the law was itself an evil thing or, at best, a wrong turn in salvation history. A Bible widely used during much of the twentieth century was the Scofield Reference Bible. The notes in this Bible, representing a strongly dispensational slant, suggested that Israel’s acceptance of God’s law was a mistake. Most dispensationalists today disavow this interpretation of God’s law in the life of Israel. But this negative view of the law is still alive and well in some parts of the church.
This present passage reminds us, however, that the law comes from God and bears his own character of goodness, holiness, and righteousness. Because of the particular place he found himself in salvation history and the specific problems he had to deal with, Paul tends to focus on the negative side of the law. But he would never doubt the value of the law as a revelation of God’s holiness and character. Nor would he ever suggest that the law cannot still be read with profit. We may not be “under” its direct authority any more, but we must continue to meditate on his law both as a means of better appreciating just who our God is and what he values and as a means of understanding our own place in the plan that God unfolds in Scripture.
(2) A second application of this paragraph stems from a hermeneutical point we made in the Bridging Contexts section on 2:1–16. Paul presents the experience of Israel with the law of Moses as a paradigm for the experience of all people with “law” of any kind. Israel, in a sense, stands as a test case. God acts in history to create Israel as a nation and to give the Israelites their own land. He displays his power on their behalf and constantly showers them with blessing. In response to his merciful acts, he asks Israel to obey the law he gave them.
Yet, though faced with the undeniable evidence of God’s reality and power and the promise of blessing for obedience, the people do not keep that law. Rather, Israel keeps turning away from God, ignoring his laws and spurning his grace. Thus, eventually God sends his people into exile in judgment and promises a new arrangement for his people in which he will enable obedience to his law. What the history of Israel with the law reveals is the inability of human beings to obey God. If Israel, with all her blessings, could not obey the law God gave directly to her, no person can hope to obey whatever law they put themselves under.
Most people have their own code of morality they try to live up to. Sometimes that code, via God’s grace in natural law, reflects his own standards; sometimes it is far from divine law. But whatever the law may be, this text suggests, the sinful condition of all people renders it impossible to obey. We always fall short of the law, and the law therefore reveals the power of sin, our own helplessness, and the need for someone to liberate us from our miserable state. Truly law, in whatever form, brings death. By realizing this, we can appreciate the good news of Jesus Christ all the more. Some churches have the practice in every worship service of reading a portion from the law followed by a text from the gospel. The practice in many ways reflects the place of law in Paul’s own teaching.