Introduction
My family and I had to make a trip to Lowe’s Hardware while on vacation to Oak Island in July. Despite it being hot enough to fry an egg on the asphalt, the store had already begun displaying its fall outdoor decor. As you walked through the automatic sliding doors, your eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to the gigantic 12′ lighted animatronic scarecrow and his other scary friends on display with him. My four-year-old son’s bright blue eyes enlarged to the size of baseballs as he exclaimed, “Daddy, we need these!”
My wife and I have tried to teach all of our kids the differences between needs and wants. I think, for the most part, our three oldest children know the difference between a need and a want. Gavin’s young and developing mind still has a way to go to have an understanding of the differences, so when the opportunity arises, like at Lowe’s on a hot summer day, I try to lovingly and clearly explain the differences.
If we are honest, the struggle with trying to accurately discern the differences between needs and wants isn’t limited to children but extends to us as adults. Just a few months ago, I tried to justify my wanting a kayak as a need when a commercial client needed some pond maintenance done. For a brief moment, I thought I could take what I knew was a want and justify it as a need (and even a tax write-off)! You can imagine my disappointment when I discovered a kayak wasn’t needed for the scope of work being requested.
In Romans 7, Paul covers three aspects of how the follower of Jesus should relate to the law of God. When understood and applied to life, these three truths about the believer’s relationship to the law keep the disciple in the middle of life’s lane, preventing them from drifting towards license or legalism. When believers think they can sin at will because God’s grace covers everything, it misrepresents Jesus and His work on their behalf. The believer who lives as if they have to preserve their salvation by keeping God’s law well will find themselves bound by a rigid prison of fear, discouragement, and defeat because, as time passes, they realize that they still can’t live up to God’s standard perfectly and thus doubt the surety of their salvation.
Our main thought in Romans 7:1-5 described our relationship to the law. We have been freed from the law, not to go on breaking the law, but to serve the God of the law in love. In other words, we are under grace and not law, for the law has lost its penalizing power over us! So, in this passage, we ask the question, “Do we need the law today?”
When Jesus taught about the law in Matthew 5:17-18, this is what he had to say.
“Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved.
Jesus stated that not one dot of God’s law would disappear until its purpose is accomplished. We have yet to reach the events John describes in Revelation 22, so the law still has a purpose for us today. Paul blatantly makes his stance known in Romans 7:7-13 concerning modern-day disciples and God’s law. In conclusion, both Jesus and Paul agree and make us aware of our need for the law today. These verses reveal why we need the law as God’s children.
Study Notes: Romans 7:7-13
Why do we need God’s Law?
God’s Law shows us our sin. (7:7a)
Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin.
Paul clarifies that the problem is not with God’s law. Later, he will describe God’s law as holy, right, and good. God gave humanity His law, His standards to show us how to live rightly with Him and others. His instructions define what is right and what is wrong and by doing so, reveals not how good we could be but how good we can’t be. Psalm 18:30 tells us that God’s way is perfect. Since His way is perfect, it reveals our imperfection and results in conviction of believers and non-believers alike.
Paul says that the law did this kind of work in his life. On his way to Damascus to persecute Christians, Paul encountered the risen Lord. While in His presence, Paul realized his sinfulness because of encountering Christ and His sinless glory coupled with his knowledge of the law and his self. From this experience, the Holy Spirit used the law of God, kept perfectly by Jesus, to convict Paul of his sin. Notice that sin is not in its plural form in verse seven. Sins focuses on outward actions because of our inward condition and sin focuses on our state of being. Paul had many outward acts of righteousness but inside, he was Romans 3:9-19. Paul along with others held to and lived up to outward and observable expressions of rabbinical interpretations of the law and because of such believed they had a right relationship with God. This spiritual condition described by Paul earlier before a sinner places their faith in Jesus (Romans 3:22) is what the law shows us. This is Paul’s reason for using the word sin instead of sins.
The law shows us our need for a Savior because at the core of our very being, we are sinners. It serves as a spiritual X-ray to show us what is goin on beneath the surface. I took a trip up to New Bedford, Massautcehts last summer with a few of our people from church to see if God might have us partner with a church plant there in the city. The trip didn’t go anywhere near as planned for several reasons but one was that I spent a good portion of that Saturday in a local emergency room. Light and uncomfortable chest pains increased until the team that was with me insisted that I go to the doctor. Once admitted, I eventually saw the doctor who asked me what I thought might be going on. I was hopeful and said that I figured it was an extreme case of indigestion. The doctor didn’t share in my optimism and did a thorough job of running several tests which included an X-ray of my heart.
I was having outward symptoms because something was inwardly wrong. The X-ray showed the current condition of my heart. Fortunately, the x-ray showed that my heart was healthy and that whatever was going on, my heart wasn’t the issue. To this day, after all the tests that were performed at the hospital that day and the followup with my primary care doctor when I returned home, I have no idea what caused my epsiode on that weekend in May of 2022. While I am grateful and relieved that the X-ray revealed my heart was in good condition and working properly when God’s perfect law spiritually scans our lives, it shows that we have a terminal heart problem – our sinful nature.
God’s Law shows us our current condition. (7:7b-11)
I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.” 8 But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power. 9 At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life,
To illustrate how the law reveals our inward condition, Paul takes the one commandment that focuses on an inward attitude that leads to the outward actions that break the other nine commandments. Adultery is committed when we covet someone who is not our spouse and we act on that strong desire physically or by fantasizing about that person. When a person covets something that belongs to someone else and they act upon that strong passion for the possession, they commit the outward action of stealing. When we covet our will over God’s will and act to satisfy our will, we make ourselves a god and break the first command. All these visible violations of God’s law begin with an invisible attitude that is exposed by the living and powerful Word of God (Hebrews 4:12).
When face to face with the One he was persecuting, the law that He was so familiar with and committed to observing was used by the Holy Spirit to reveal his sinful condition by expsoing his sin of coveting. What did he covet? Paul confesses what he had so strongly desired and pursued before knowing Christ. In Philippians 3:1-6. Paul was zealous in keeping the rabbinic traditions and progressing in the Phariserical ranks. Yet, once Paul realized the depth of his sinfulness and the limitless dimensions of God’s holiness, grace, and love he saw his depravity and turned from his sin by placing his faith in Christ. The result, those things that he once coveted have lost their appeal compared to the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord (Philippians 3:7-8).
God’s law reveals our condition because it reveals our sin and also our tendency to act upon those sinful leanings. Paul declared that once he knew that coveting was wrong, his sinful nature was awakened within him and he acted rebelliously against God’s commands. My youngest will do things because you have told him not to do it. There is a common experience that we all share with Paul and that commonality is not just confined to my preschooler.
The Flagship hotel in Texas is built right on the water. It sits on or so close to the water that the hotel management was afraid that people would fish off the rooms’ balconies. Predicting that this could be a problem, they installed signs on the balconies prohibiting fishing from the balconies. As you may have already guessed, people fishing off the balconies was commonplace despite the sigange. It was a regular occurance for guests to be enjoying a meal in the resturauant on the bottom floor while enjoying a scenic view of the ocean through the large windows when an angler’s fishing weight would come crashing through a window as it swung through the air instead of sinking into the surf below. Eventually someone had a novel idea in order to solve this ongoing issue. The idea, you ask, was to remove the no fishing signs from the balconies. The result of removing the signs, fishing off the balconies stopped. Once the command not to fish off the balconies was removed, the idea and temptation of doing so seemed to cease to exist. While Paul has already explained all humanity has a moral compasss, when we know an explicit command of God, sin will use it to arouse a desire within us to rebel against it.
10 and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. 11 Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me.
God’s laws which lead to life and blessing when obeyed have been sabotaged by sin to bring death to law breakers as our pride is demonstrated in acts of disobedience. Paul restates a spiritual truth that he has already touched on several times. The wages of our sin is death (6:23) because we are under the law’s jurisdiction apart from being in Jesus. So we see that the law reveals and awakens our sin but also ruins and destroys the sinner.
God’s Law shows us our need for rescue and refining. (7:12-13)
But still, the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good. 13 But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.
How does God’s law show sinners their need for rescue and saints their need for refining? The law shows people their need for rescue and refining because of what the law is. Paul describes the law and its commands as holy, right, and good. The only reason Paul can describe the law as these things is because the Giver of this law is holy, right, and good. Isaiah six describes God as holy, holy, holy. God is holy in two ways. One, God is holy because He is sinless and secondly, because He is completely other than and higher than His creation. This holy God has disclosed His holy standards of practical living through His law. In His law He tells us how to correctly do life with Him and others. God is also righteous (Psalm 11:7; Zechariah 8:8). God being righteous means that He alone defines what is right and wrong and always acts accordingly. Finally, God is good (1 Chronicles 16:34). He is the standard of all that is good. God’s person, these attributes are shown to us in ways that we can relate, that we can understand, through His law as He provides guidelines on how to live with Him and one another.
The ten commandments can be broken into two sections. The first section tells us how we are to relate to God and the second on how we are to relate to one another. This understanding of the ten commandments is why Jesus could say that the two greatest commands were to love God supremely and your neighbor as yourself. As you are well aware, we cannot keep these two commands all the time in attitude or action. When going through the ten commandments with our students, it didn’t matter who was teaching what commandment, we all had to confess to breaking that commandment, of being unable to live up to God’s standard of holiness.
The Defense Innovation Unit, in partnership with the private sector, has developed a wearable device that was highly successful during the COVID-19 pandemic in identifying infections. Through the combined efforts of all involved, they have devloped a self-wearable device that detects viral infections at very early stages. This device is the product of the Rapid Assessment of Threat Exposure project, also known as the RATE program. By using algorithms and monitoring a person’s biometrics the Department of Defense hopes to detect virus infections like Covid-19 before it is able to spread and infect a unit.
In a similar way, the law helps sinners see their need for rescue and saints of their need for refining (growing in Christlikenss) as it tracks and assesses our spiritual vitals (Romans 3:18-124; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; Hebrews 4:12-13).
Application
Several years stephanie had cleaned out the car. When my wife cleans the car she uses two trash bags. One bag is for trash and the other is for items that need to come inside. On this one particular cleaning, Stephanie placed two trash bags at the back door of the house. On trash day, I tried to be a good husband and take the trash out to the curb for pick up. Later that evening, Stephanie asked me about the two bags. When I told her that I took them out to the road for pick up, a look of dismay came across her face. I had mistaken what was in the bags! Instead of worthless garbage, the contents of the bags included the car’s dvd players, clothes, pacis, cups, and some sentimental items belonging to our oldest daughter. I had mistakenly thrown out items of importance and still useful! In these verses, Paul has told us that we still need God’s law today. When we mistakenly think that we do not need the law of God as Christians today we are gravely mistaken and are throwing away something of value and use.
Since the law shows us our sin, we are gently reminded that we needed a Savior and that we have been saved, not because we deserve it or because we earned it but by God’s grace through faith alone! This truth ought to keep us humble as the Holy Spirit reminds us that we are all continually falling short of God’s holy standard (Romans 3:23). We haven’t contributed anything to our right standing with God but God alone has done everything needed to make us right with Himself. Scripture teaches us that God opposes the proud but exalts the humble and when we remember this fact, we remain humble before the righteousness of our God.
Secondly, we need the law of God today because the Holy Spirit uses it to show people their sin or their need for the Savior. The law helps us explain and reveal people’s sin and their need for a Savior. When we neglect the law when sharing the Gospel, we nullify the need for the Gospel and Jesus who kept the law perfectly on our behalf.
Thirdly, the law is used by the Holy Spirit to convict us of our sin and lead us to repentance resulting in Him refining us and helping us become more like Jesus as our current spiritual condition is revealed through the scan of God’s Word. We also need the law to serve as guardrails that lead us to life and protect us from destruction from unknowingly living against God’s design and desires. (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).
Resources for Further Study
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What does it mean that God is good? by Gotquestions.org
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