Rom 7:7-12, Gal 3:21 | JFB | STEP | 7, 8. What . . . then? Is the law sin? God forbid! —"I have said that when we were in the flesh the law stirred our inward corruption, and was thus the occasion of deadly fruit: Is then the law to blame for this? Far from us be such a thought." Nay —"On the contrary" (as in ; Greek ). I had not known sin but by the law —It is important to fix what is meant by "sin" here. It certainly is not "the general nature of sin" [ALFORD , &c.], though it be true that this is learned from the law; for such a sense will not suit what is said of it in the following verses, where the meaning is the same as here. The only meaning which suits all that is said of it in this place is "the principle of sin in the heart of fallen man." The sense, then, is this: "It was by means of the law that I came to know what a virulence and strength of sinful propensity I had within me." The existence of this it did not need the law to reveal to him; for even the heathens recognized and wrote of it. But the dreadful nature and desperate power of it the law alone discovered—in the way now to be described. for I had not known lust, except, &c.—Here the same Greek word is unfortunately rendered by three different English ones—"lust"; "covet"; "concupiscence" ( ) —which obscures the meaning. By using the word "lust" only, in the wide sense of all "irregular desire," or every outgoing of the heart towards anything forbidden, the sense will best be brought out; thus, "For I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not lust; But sin, taking ('having taken') occasion by the commandment (that one which forbids it), wrought in me all manner of lusting." This gives a deeper view of the tenth commandment than the mere words suggest. The apostle saw in it the prohibition not only of desire after certain things there specified, \ but of "desire after everything divinely forbidden "; in other words, all "lusting" or "irregular desire." It was this which "he had not known but by the law." The law forbidding all such desire so stirred his corruption that it wrought in him "all manner of lusting"—desire of every sort after what was forbidden.

Romans 7:7-12

7, 8. What . . . then? Is the law sin? God forbid!—"I have said that when we were in the flesh the law stirred our inward corruption, and was thus the occasion of deadly fruit: Is then the law to blame for this? Far from us be such a thought."

Nay—"On the contrary" (as in Ro 8:37; 1Co 12:22; Greek).

I had not known sin but by the law—It is important to fix what is meant by "sin" here. It certainly is not "the general nature of sin" [ALFORD, &c.], though it be true that this is learned from the law; for such a sense will not suit what is said of it in the following verses, where the meaning is the same as here. The only meaning which suits all that is said of it in this place is "the principle of sin in the heart of fallen man." The sense, then, is this: "It was by means of the law that I came to know what a virulence and strength of sinful propensity I had within me." The existence of this it did not need the law to reveal to him; for even the heathens recognized and wrote of it. But the dreadful nature and desperate power of it the law alone discovered—in the way now to be described.

for I had not known lust, except, &c.—Here the same Greek word is unfortunately rendered by three different English ones—"lust"; "covet"; "concupiscence" (Ro 7:8) —which obscures the meaning. By using the word "lust" only, in the wide sense of all "irregular desire," or every outgoing of the heart towards anything forbidden, the sense will best be brought out; thus, "For I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not lust; But sin, taking ('having taken') occasion by the commandment (that one which forbids it), wrought in me all manner of lusting." This gives a deeper view of the tenth commandment than the mere words suggest. The apostle saw in it the prohibition not only of desire after certain things there specified, \ but of "desire after everything divinely forbidden"; in other words, all "lusting" or "irregular desire." It was this which "he had not known but by the law." The law forbidding all such desire so stirred his corruption that it wrought in him "all manner of lusting"—desire of every sort after what was forbidden.

8. For without the law—that is, before its extensive demands and prohibitions come to operate upon our corrupt nature.

sin was—rather, "is"

dead—that is, the sinful principle of our nature lies so dormant, so torpid, that its virulence and power are unknown, and to our feeling it is as good as "dead."

9. For I was alive without the law once—"In the days of my ignorance, when, in this sense, a stranger to the law, I deemed myself a righteous man, and, as such, entitled to life at the hand of God."

but when the commandment came—forbidding all irregular desire; for the apostle sees in this the spirit of the whole law.

sin revived—"came to life"; in its malignity and strength it unexpectedly revealed itself, as if sprung from the dead.

and I died—"saw myself, in the eye of a law never kept and not to be kept, a dead man."

10, 11. And—thus.

the commandment, which was, &c.—designed

to—give

life—through the keeping of it.

I found to be unto death—through breaking it.

For sin—my sinful nature.

taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me—or "seduced me"—drew me aside into the very thing which the commandment forbade.

and by it slew me—"discovered me to myself to be a condemned and gone man" (compare Ro 7:9, "I died").

12, 13. Wherefore—"So that."

the law is—"is indeed"

good, and the commandment—that one so often referred to, which forbids all lusting.

holy, and just, and good.

Galatians 3:21

21. "Is the law (which involves a mediator) against the promises of God (which are without a mediator, and rest on God alone and immediately)? God forbid."

life—The law, as an externally prescribed rule, can never internally impart spiritual life to men naturally dead in sin, and change the disposition. If the law had been a law capable of giving life, "verily (in very reality, and not in the mere fancy of legalists) righteousness would have been by the law (for where life is, there righteousness, its condition, must also be)." But the law does not pretend to give life, and therefore not righteousness; so there is no opposition between the law and the promise. Righteousness can only come through the promise to Abraham, and through its fulfilment in the Gospel of grace.