Romans 7:7-13
God’s good law reveals sin; sin corrupts and brings death.
7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be! However, I wouldn’t have known sin, except through the law. For I wouldn’t have known coveting, unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.”
8 But sin, finding occasion through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of coveting. For apart from the law, sin is dead.
9 I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.
10 The commandment which was for life, this I found to be for death;
11 for sin, finding occasion through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.
12 Therefore the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and righteous, and good.
13 Did then that which is good become death to me? May it never be! But sin, that it might be shown to be sin, was producing death in me through that which is good; that through the commandment sin might become exceedingly sinful.
God’s good law reveals sin; sin corrupts and brings death.
To defend the goodness of the law and to show that sin, not the law, produces death by exploiting the commandment.
Romans 7:7-13 follows Romans 7:1-6, where Paul taught that believers died to the law through the body of Christ and now belong to the risen Christ in order to bear fruit for God. He also said that, in the former realm of the flesh, sinful passions were aroused by the law and bore fruit for death. Romans 7:7-13 now defends the law from the charge that it is itself sinful or evil. Paul explains that the law reveals sin, while sin uses the commandment as an opportunity to produce rebellion and death. This prepares for Romans 7:14-25, where Paul will further describe the conflict between the goodness of the law and the power of sin in the human person apart from the liberating power of the Spirit.
Paul writes after teaching that believers died to the law through Christ’s body and now belong to the risen Christ. Because such teaching could sound as though Paul were attacking the law, he pauses to defend the law’s holiness while exposing sin as the real culprit. Believers in Rome, including Jewish and Gentile Christians who needed clarity about the law’s goodness, sin’s misuse of the law, and why believers must serve in the new way of the Spirit This passage stands between the believer’s release from the law in Romans 7:1-6 and the fuller cry for deliverance in Romans 7:14-25. It shows why the old written-code regime cannot produce life in fallen humanity and prepares for Romans 8’s declaration of life in the Spirit.
Released from the Law, Exposed by the Law, and Crying Out for Deliverance
The law is holy and good, but sin uses the commandment to expose and intensify human bondage, so deliverance must come through Jesus Christ and service in the new way of the Spirit.