Romans 7:13-20

13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. [c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.


Dig Deeper
Nearly seventeen hundred years ago, a church leader named Athanasius penned one of my favorite pieces of theology that I have ever read. Athanasius was dealing with many critics, including Jews, who were critical of the whole idea of the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, who the early Christians claimed to be the promised Messiah of God. His work, known as “On the Incarnation,” defends several Christian concepts including the ideas of his divinity, his incarnation as a human, his death on the cross, and his resurrection. In that brilliant essay, Athanasius argues that Jesus had to die publicly and cruelly and that he simply could not have died a private death to fully realize God’s plan. In dying such a public and horrible death and then resurrecting from the dead, the early church author compares Jesus to championship wrestlers from his day. He says that in order to be the grand champion one has to be willing to take on the very best opponent that is available and defeat him. This is what Jesus did, says Athanasius, in humbling himself to a violent and public death. He took on the very best attack that Satan and the world had to offer. He took on a cruel death and walked out the other side, thus defeating the very best opponent that could ever be mustered against him. In drawing out the most potent attack possible and defeating it, Jesus left Satan without any other options and had defeated him once-and-for-all.

This isn’t quite Paul’s argument as he continues his exploration of the role of the law within God’s covenant purposes in enacting a new exodus and creating a new humanity but it’s pretty close to what Paul is thinking. The law, the very thing that God gave to his people and told them to follow, seems to be the precise conduit through which sin and death had utterly enslaved God’s people. It seems as if God intentionally gave Israel something that would draw sin to a head and, as Romans 5:20 asserted, cause sin to increase in Israel. This brings up an obvious question, though. Why would God do this? Paul’s point, similar to Athanasius, is that God was drawing out the full potential of the enemy in order to defeat it decisively once-and-for-all.

As we begin this section, we have to admit that it can be one of the most difficult to read and follow in the entire New Testament. Many people have clung onto this passage as one of their favorite passages in the whole Bible because, according to a certain interpretation of this section, it encourages them to think that Paul is describing his own struggle and failure in overcoming sin. Many people see a similar struggle in their own life and so they find great comfort in supposing that none other than the Apostle Paul would find similar difficulties in overcoming sin. Paul will deal with the struggle with sin for the new humanity in the next chapter, but quite frankly, he doesn’t appear to be doing that right here. That, at least is not his primary concern. Paul has already demonstrated in the previous section that when the law arrived in Israel it caused them to do exactly what Adam had done by sinning against God and showing that Israel was sinful just as the rest of the world was. In this section Paul now moves to examining what happens when Israel, having been given the gift of the law, tries to actually live under it and according to it.

If the law is good, as Paul claimed in verse 12, why then has it become death to Israel? Why is it that the more Israel embraces the law, the more it seems to be thrust toward death rather than life? Paul says that the problem is not with the law but with sin. Israel wasn’t mistaken in clinging to the law, that’s exactly what they should have done. Yet, it must be understood that God allowed sin to used what was good to bring about the spiritual death of Israel. He let sin take the opportunity of the giving of the law so that sin could be brought to its full power. When the law came to Israel, showing that Israel was completely sinful, sin, Paul says, became “utterly sinful.” It was, in other words, seen in its fullest state. Paul doesn’t explain here why God would use Israel in such a way but he will begin to deal with that question in chapter 9.

But, Paul is clear, Israel was right to embrace the law. Paul seems as eager here to exonerate Israel as he was to previously exonerate the law because there would be an obvious question. If the law was good but sin brought death through the law in Israel then was there some inherent problem with Israel. Did God perhaps just pick the wrong people. No, says Paul, God knew what he was doing all along. The problem was that the law is spiritual but I, Israel in Adam, was made out of flesh (the TNIV’s rendering of verse 14, “but I am unspiritual” rather than “but I am in the flesh” is entirely misleading and seems to imply that there is a defect in Israel in that they were just unspiritual). Israel was in Adam so when the law came it had no power to free them from that state, only to highlight their current residence there (This is basically an expansion of the same point that Paul introduced in 2:17-24 while chapter 8 is an expansion of the thought he introduced in 2:28-29, which is why Paul will return, in chapter 9, to the same question he asked at the beginning of chapter 3).

So what happens on a practical level when God’s good and holy law runs smack into a sinful Israel? Paul describes it using not only the common technique of the first person singular to stand for a general group but he also grabs onto a discussion that was apparently fairly common in his time among Greek philosophers. Why can humans see the good that they should do and be well aware of what they shouldn’t, but still wind up sliding towards the bad anyway? This, then, puts Israel exactly where Paul said they were in chapter 2. They share the same plight and struggle with the same things that the Gentile world does, only more so because they have the law to also point out their shortcomings. Although Paul has already mentioned the advantages to having the law it still does not leave Israel any further along when it comes to their need for the gospel and the new humanity in Christ which is unleashed when one responds to the gospel in faith. Even with the law, Israel winds up standing on the same ground that the pagan world did. Regardless of how much they tried to cling to the law, it would not free them from sin because it was not designed to do that.

This is an important tightrope that Paul is walking because he wants Jews to understand their need for the gospel rather than the law to justify them as the true people of God but he also does not want to give the impression that the law was not godly or that Israel was inherently any worse than anyone else. Paul will explore this topic of Israel’s role further in 9-11 but to this point he has cleverly accomplished his dangerous walk. The law was good but was used by sin because Israel was in the same sinful, Adamic state as everyone else. Yet, the “I’ is cleared in a sense as well. Israel was right to embrace the law. There was nothing wrong with them doing that as it was part of God’s plan. What Israel didn’t see, though, was that in embracing the law they weren’t fulfilling the part of God’s plan that they thought. God was drawing the full measure of sin to one place. That was the purpose of the law that Paul is addressing now. To accomplish the vocation of being the light of the world and being a blessing to all people, though, God would no longer use ethnic Israel. For that he needed a representative from the family of Israel who was not in the same Adamic state as everyone else. Thus, Paul has brilliantly shown that Israel was part of God’s plan but, at the same time, that they needed the Messiah.

The problem for Israel in this passage is that they have sin indwelling or living within them as do all humans. This is not something that humans can overcome, law or no law, and so the “I” is reduced to doing precisely what it does not want to do. Paul is setting the stage for the next chapter by showing that Adamic humanity has a seemingly incurable problem of indwelling sin. The only solution to that is to die to the Adamic self and enter into the life of Christ where one can come into contact with the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. He is demonstrating, then, that God has drawn out the sin in the human heart so that he can show it for what it is and show all humans their need for something to deal with that sin.

This drawing out of sin is what Paul meant in verse 13. Sin was used in order to bring about the death of Israel so that it might be seen and recognized in its most virulent state. First, we must ask who used sin? The obvious answer is that God did. Sin used the law but God was using sin all along to achieve his own purposes. God does not sin, nor does he cause sin, but he can certainly use it to further his purposes. It’s not that God gave Israel the law with an understanding that sin would reach its full measure when he did so. He gave Israel the law so that sin would reach its full measure. That was part of his purpose all along. Paul will give the complete answer as to why God did this in 8:3 where he will use a similar line of reasoning that Athanasius would three hundred years later. God gave Israel the law so that he could draw it to one location, deal with it, condemn it, punish it, and defeat once-an-for-all. God didn’t give Israel the law so that they might become a sin-free haven. Rather, the law was given to draw sin out to it’s fullness and then defeat it.


Devotional Thought
Compare what Paul says about Israel (the “I”) in this passage to your time before you became a Christian. Do you see any similarities? Spend some time contemplating on the incredible need that you had at that time for a savior as you prepare yourself for Paul’s stunning description of the victory of the cross and the resurrection in chapter 8.