Does the Law Aggravate Our Sin Nature?

00:00:00.000 | Well, does the law empower our sin nature?

00:00:08.080 | Are we more sinful after the law arrives?

00:00:10.920 | It seems like that's the case from what we read in the New Testament.

00:00:14.280 | The question is from a listener named Sam to Pastor John, who joins us over Skype today.

00:00:18.440 | Pastor John, the more I read Paul, the more I think I see that the arrival of the Mosaic

00:00:23.560 | law did not weaken sin, but actually empowered and inflamed sin within us.

00:00:29.280 | Is that right?

00:00:30.480 | Can you explain this?

00:00:31.480 | How does the law make sin more alive and potent inside of us?

00:00:35.480 | I'm thinking of when Paul talks about how our sinful passions are aroused by the law,

00:00:40.840 | Romans 7, 5.

00:00:42.480 | He says the law came to increase sinning in Romans 5, 20.

00:00:45.760 | Of course, the number of our sins increases as sins are named.

00:00:50.160 | But Paul seems to be talking about a new influence when he writes, "The power of sin is the

00:00:55.600 | law."

00:00:56.600 | That's 1 Corinthians 15, 56.

00:00:59.480 | Then he says, "Apart from the law, sin lies dead."

00:01:03.760 | That's Romans 7, 8.

00:01:05.240 | Or where there is no law, there is no transgression.

00:01:08.520 | Romans 4, 15.

00:01:10.000 | Maybe most provocatively of all, Paul speaks autobiographically in Romans 7, 9 when he

00:01:15.880 | makes this claim, "I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came,

00:01:21.920 | sin came alive and I died."

00:01:26.400 | If this is true, it's an incredible argument against legalism and any law-centered attempts

00:01:31.600 | to defeat the sin within us.

00:01:33.480 | We'd need a far greater power.

00:01:35.720 | How do you explain Paul's understanding of law and its empowerment of our sin?

00:01:41.840 | Wow.

00:01:42.840 | That's huge.

00:01:43.840 | Yeah, it is.

00:01:44.840 | That's huge.

00:01:45.840 | Good.

00:01:46.840 | I was so many parts.

00:01:49.920 | The issue of the role of the Mosaic law in Paul is big and it is complex.

00:02:00.880 | So let me begin with a book recommendation because I can barely begin to dig into all

00:02:07.880 | those pieces that he just strung together.

00:02:12.200 | Thomas Schreiner, good friend, teaches at Southern Seminary.

00:02:17.480 | His book, Forty Questions About Christians and Biblical Law.

00:02:21.920 | So go get that book and then my little attempt here can be just a taste of what feast you're

00:02:30.040 | going to find in that book.

00:02:32.480 | So what I think will be helpful for me to do here in this limited scope where people

00:02:37.920 | write volume after volume of books on this issue is to make seven kind of summary statements

00:02:46.640 | about the Mosaic law with a couple or maybe one or two supporting Bible verses so people

00:02:54.280 | can actually hear where I'm getting the statements.

00:02:57.840 | And then I'll try to end by showing practically how this makes a difference.

00:03:04.880 | And now keep in mind that when I say Mosaic law, law of Moses, I don't mean the whole

00:03:12.840 | Old Testament and I don't even mean the whole five books of Moses, the Pentateuch it's called,

00:03:20.520 | the five books.

00:03:21.960 | The law has a distinct role to play within the Pentateuch.

00:03:28.240 | This is important to see.

00:03:30.160 | It's not synonymous with the first five books of the Bible.

00:03:35.280 | Paul saw justification by faith being taught in Genesis 15 and he points out that 430 years

00:03:47.760 | later the law came in, Galatians 3.17.

00:03:53.240 | In both of these realities, justification by faith and the Mosaic law, they're both

00:03:59.360 | in the Pentateuch.

00:04:01.040 | So the Old Testament has its own way, the Pentateuch has its own way of teaching justification

00:04:10.000 | by faith apart from works of the Mosaic law.

00:04:14.400 | So don't equate law, as I'm about to talk about it, with the Old Testament.

00:04:19.600 | And don't equate law, as I'm about to talk about it, with the Pentateuch.

00:04:24.200 | I'm talking about the Mosaic stipulations, especially in the book of Exodus, that come

00:04:30.320 | in 430 years after the covenant made with Abraham with its distinct purpose to play

00:04:37.160 | in the redemptive history.

00:04:40.320 | So here are my seven statements.

00:04:41.640 | Number one, through the law comes the knowledge of sin, not the deliverance from sin.

00:04:50.120 | Romans 3.20, for by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight since

00:04:58.240 | through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

00:05:02.720 | Or Romans 7.7, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.

00:05:10.280 | Statement number two, the law, therefore, secures and increases the accountability of

00:05:18.800 | all the world.

00:05:19.800 | Romans 3.19.

00:05:22.560 | Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that

00:05:29.240 | every mouth may be stopped, every mouth may be stopped, not just Jewish mouths, and the

00:05:35.880 | whole world made accountable to God.

00:05:40.880 | Statement number three, without the law, sin lies, quote, dead.

00:05:48.200 | That is, unrecognized and unstirred by the aggravations of commandments.

00:05:56.480 | Romans 7.9, apart from the law, sin lies dead.

00:06:00.760 | I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, stirred

00:06:07.800 | up by those commandments, and I died.

00:06:12.680 | Statement number four, the law turns sin as a power into sin as a transgression, actual

00:06:21.800 | breaking of a specific commandment.

00:06:25.040 | Romans 4.15, the law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there's no transgression.

00:06:33.200 | Or Romans 5.20.

00:06:35.880 | Now the law came in to increase the trespass.

00:06:41.320 | So the specific commandments of the law turn sin into commandment breaking.

00:06:48.360 | Number five, the law doesn't just turn sin into trespasses of specific commandments,

00:06:53.560 | it actually aggravates sin itself and makes it more active.

00:07:01.240 | See that in the rest of Romans 5.20.

00:07:03.960 | Now sin came in to increase the trespass.

00:07:07.480 | That's the part we had just seen in statement number four.

00:07:11.120 | And then it adds, but where sin increased, not just where transgressions increased, but

00:07:16.720 | where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

00:07:21.760 | So the effect of the law is not just to turn the power of sin into specific law breaking,

00:07:27.320 | but actually aggravates sin into greater virulence.

00:07:31.960 | Number six, so we see that sin is a power, a kind of slave master or ruler that turns

00:07:41.400 | commandments into aggravated incitements to transgress.

00:07:48.000 | Chapter seven, verse eight of Romans, sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment

00:07:55.200 | produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

00:08:02.480 | It's a kind of slave master that takes a hold, reaches out and grabs a commandment instead

00:08:07.880 | of humbly submissively obeying it.

00:08:10.920 | Sin uses that very commandment to multiply sinning.

00:08:15.800 | And then finally statement number seven, the law pointed toward Christ.

00:08:22.040 | But until Christ came, it functioned mainly to show the hopelessness of salvation by law.

00:08:31.360 | So the law functioned, you could say it negatively, as a prison, or you could say it positively

00:08:37.880 | as a guardian.

00:08:39.240 | Paul uses both in Galatians, until Christ came.

00:08:43.440 | Here's the key text, Galatians 3.23.

00:08:46.560 | Now before faith came, that is before faith in Christ preached in the gospel came, we

00:08:54.960 | were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

00:09:03.160 | And then he says it a little differently.

00:09:05.640 | So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by

00:09:13.120 | faith.

00:09:14.880 | Now I think that to benefit from these statements, we need to get at the essence of what sin

00:09:23.360 | is.

00:09:24.360 | We've been using, I've been saying that word over and over again, but I haven't ever defined

00:09:28.360 | it.

00:09:29.360 | What are we talking about?

00:09:30.360 | What is this awful power that takes this beautiful thing called holy, good, just law, as Paul

00:09:36.960 | says, and makes it and prostitutes it and turns it to such evil uses.

00:09:43.680 | It's clear from these statements that sin is the underlying force that takes something

00:09:51.000 | essentially holy and just and good, namely the law, and makes it an instrument of evil.

00:09:59.900 | So we really won't make much progress, it seems to me, in holiness or freedom or right

00:10:06.080 | use of the law if we don't get at what sin is and how it works.

00:10:13.160 | And I think the best place to get at what sin really is, at its essence and power, is

00:10:18.440 | first Romans 3.23 and then Romans 1.23.

00:10:23.280 | Romans 3.23 is real familiar.

00:10:25.760 | It says, "All have sinned and fall short."

00:10:29.000 | And that literally means, "Eustereo," the Greek word means "lack."

00:10:34.080 | They lack the glory of God.

00:10:36.880 | Sinning is, whatever it is, it involves a lacking of the glory of God.

00:10:42.800 | Now what does that mean?

00:10:45.360 | And I think Romans 1.23 gets at the essence of what it means.

00:10:50.640 | Describing all of humanity, Paul says, "They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for

00:10:58.880 | images."

00:10:59.880 | Now that, I think, is what Paul means when he says, "We've all sinned, and the essence

00:11:05.760 | of it, the heart of it, is we lack the glory of God."

00:11:09.640 | That is, we've traded it away.

00:11:12.440 | We've looked at it.

00:11:13.600 | We've despised it.

00:11:14.640 | We've demeaned it.

00:11:15.760 | We've preferred other things to it.

00:11:18.040 | We've taken the infinite value and beauty and greatness of the glory of God, and we've

00:11:23.640 | said, "I prefer cars," or, "I prefer food," or, "I prefer family," or, "I prefer fame,"

00:11:29.280 | or, "I prefer sex," or, "I prefer alcohol," or, "I prefer just a good name in the community,"

00:11:35.560 | whatever.

00:11:36.560 | We've just put the glory of God aside.

00:11:38.480 | It's not our primary pleasure.

00:11:40.920 | It's not our treasure, and we have thus despised, blackballed, committed treason against the

00:11:48.040 | glory of God.

00:11:49.440 | So I define the essence of sin—it's the heart of every human being born into this

00:11:56.440 | world—as the powerful condition of the human heart which prefers other things over God,

00:12:07.840 | prefers anything, any other things, over the value and beauty and greatness, the glory

00:12:15.880 | of God.

00:12:16.880 | And that preference for other things, especially our own exaltation and our own authority,

00:12:26.000 | is the power that takes hold of the commandment, say, the commandment not to covet.

00:12:30.960 | And I think there's a good reason why Paul chose that commandment to illustrate the point.

00:12:35.700 | It takes hold of the commandment not to covet and necessarily produces all kinds of covetousness

00:12:43.560 | through that very commandment, because the command not to covet is the very command not

00:12:52.340 | to desire anything in a way that shows we are not satisfied in the supreme value and

00:12:59.660 | beauty of God.

00:13:01.940 | So the law itself can be an aroma that stinks and kills, and it can be an aroma that is

00:13:13.500 | sweet and precious.

00:13:16.720 | The psalmists in their best moments said, "I love your law.

00:13:20.540 | It's a delight to me."

00:13:22.900 | The difference is whether we have trusted Christ, turned to Christ, who's called the

00:13:29.860 | goal of the law in Romans 10, 4, and have received forgiveness for our sins, have been

00:13:37.660 | born again, so that now we don't use the law in our sin, preferring other things to God.

00:13:46.900 | We don't use the law as a way of exalting ourselves through moral performance in the

00:13:53.700 | hope that we might get ourselves right with God by our own bootstraps and thus present

00:13:59.980 | ourselves in some acceptable way that preserves our own ego and our own self-exaltation.

00:14:04.660 | No, no, no.

00:14:07.060 | In Christ, we are already, through the blood of Christ, already right with God.

00:14:15.240 | Our old, proud, arrogant, self-sufficient selves are crucified.

00:14:21.420 | We no longer exchange the glory of God for the glory of self-exaltation.

00:14:25.380 | Instead, now, we treasure the glory of God, and his law then becomes a pleasing reflection

00:14:37.540 | of his character and his will, which we delight in.

00:14:42.460 | And maybe the way to draw it all to a close would be to use Romans 7, 6.

00:14:49.060 | Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive so that we serve

00:14:59.340 | in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the written code.

00:15:07.180 | Man, what a precious little survey of the law.

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Does the Law Aggravate Our Sin Nature?

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