Romans 7:7-8 - You Have Been Raped By Sin (Conciliation Series, Part XXXIV)

 Part IV: God’s Conciliation, Confirmed

What, then, shall we declare? That the law is sin? May it not be coming to that! But sin I knew not except through law. For besides, I had not been aware of coveting except the law said, “You shall not be coveting.”

We’ve firmly established what the question is asking, and its potential lie. We have covered the relation of God to the law, as well as the law’s penalty. We have covered our Lord’s relation to the law. We then finally read Paul’s grand declaration of, “No! Thou art wrong!”

First things first: there’s an issue with the Concordant version, here. The term ‘sin,’ in the fourth sentence, (“But sin I knew not…”) has a definite article in front of it, giving it a proper name. So, it should say, “But Sin…” as we have not left Sin’s personification throughout this portion of Romans. It is not merely a concept, but an enemy that we are free from.

Why does this matter? Because it educates us on how Sin, the personified enemy of the last chapter and this one, wields the law. Here, Paul cites an example, being “coveting.”

Ugh. Now I have to talk about “coveting.”

“Coveting” has been bastardized, twisted and turned by modern theology. Let’s get one thing out of the way, right off the bat: the term “covet” here is epithumia, and its Greek elements are “ON-FEELING.” It is typically translated “desire” in English, and as such, holds no immediate moral connotation to it.

Do you need examples of this? Sure. Here’s the same Greek word, in Phil. 1:23–

Yet I am being pressed out of the two, having a yearning for the solution and to be together with Christ, for it, rather, is much better.

Hehe. Here’s ‘yearning,’ which is undoubtedly desire, used in a positive sense of the term, as it is a very positive thing to yearn, that is, desire, to be together with Christ.

Here’s a fun one for you: Christ also desired. Don’t tell the Jewish – they may revise His trial. Check out Luke 22:15–

And [Christ] said to [the disciples,] “With yearning I yearn to be eating this passover with you before My suffering.”

The spirit indeed desires. Here, in Gal. 5:17, the word is translated ‘lust’:

For the flesh is lusting against the spirit, yet the spirit against the flesh. Now these are opposing one another, lest you should be doing whatever you may want.

There’s a reason I’m sharing all of this with you. It is a common error to go, “Oh, covet is greed.” Not so. The term “greed” is pleonexia, which is not ‘desire.’ Paul is not saying, “I didn’t know the power of ‘greed’ until the law told me, ‘don’t be greedy!’” He’s saying, “I didn’t know the power of ‘desire’ until the law told me, ‘you shall not desire.’ Moreover, the law itself is not saying never to want, but not to desire what God is purposely withholding. Paul does not quote the entire verse from the Old Testament, here, but the rest of Ex. 20:17 says,

You shall not covet the house of your associate. You shall not covet the wife of your associate, his field, his manservant or his maidservant, his bull, his donkey or anything which is your associate’s.

The reason Paul doesn’t quote the rest of the verse is because Paul is zoning in on the core of the issue. The issue is not ‘the house’ that the associate has, or ‘the wife’ that the associate has, or ‘the field,’ etc. None of these things, in and of themselves, are ‘evil’ (last I checked, the field won’t magically become destructive.) The issue is the desire of these things. This is rooted in doubt – do you see why? In your perpetual desire for things you don’t have, you can’t appreciate what you do have. In this, instead of appreciating what God has willed for you, you are instead dwelling on what He hasn’t willed for you, and moreover, you’re questioning it.

Philosophers have argued over the use of ‘desire’ for generations. If we are not paying careful attention to the words, we will mix ‘coveting’ with ‘desire.’ Here, ‘desire’ is the focus, and not merely desire in general (like lust, or want,) but desires of the flesh. This desire is listed as the last of ‘The Ten Commandments’ because it’s not focused on individual ‘actions’ anymore. It’s one thing to keep yourself from murdering; the general population can do without this for the entirety of their lives. We’re not talking about ‘bearing false witness,’ here, because that’s a conscious choice that you choose whether or not you’ll commit. But desire is not just an individual action (hence, why God cited some examples.) Here, we’re dealing with the heart of a matter.

Here, the human nature is challenged, and called out for being apart from God. This is what Paul struggled with; he explicitly references this concept of desiring something God has kept from you, as it is because of this desire that love is withheld, and the other commandments can take effect. Now you do have a heart to murder, because you want your associate’s wife. Now you do have a heart to bear false witness, because you want your associate’s house. Now you do have a heart to steal, because you want your associate’s field. This is the commandment that Paul references because it was indeed the ‘killer’ for him – pun intended. Why do you think Paul was going around murdering Christians? Could it be, perchance, that they genuinely had a faith that he wanted?

Now Sin, getting an incentive through the precept, produces in me all manner of coveting.

Sin is personified as the villain in the immediate context. Here is another reason why “Sin” must be personified – it is displayed as an enemy, that gains an “incentive.” Today, “incentive” roughly means “motivation.” This modern meaning of the term is not completely lost here, but you could argue that this term can be more roughly defined as a “base of operations,” per the blue letter bible’s definition. I appreciate this definition as it almost treats the ‘precept’ discussed (being ‘desire’) as a ‘base,’ or ‘platform’ by which it begins chipping away at the conscience. The law, then, is not literally sin, but the ‘command center’ that Sin operates from, in order to produce all manner of coveting.

Notice that Sin is the one committing the action, in producing the coveting. Paul (then Saul) is not the cause of his coveting. We had discussed this briefly, back when we established in Rom. 1:18 that God’s issue is not ‘man’ ourselves, but ‘irreverence’ and ‘injustice’ (the two components of sin.) The production of coveting by Sin is producing anger from God – nothing else.

This means that Paul was a victim. Everyone is. We talked about that when speaking of the ration of Sin at the end of Romans 6. You need not be afraid to talk openly about this, of yourself or others. It has been told to me by some that, in recognizing this, and treating it as a core matter of doctrine, that I am victimizing myself and refusing to take accountability for my actions. Yet this is not the case; responsibility and reckoning are two different things. God never asks you to take responsibility for your actions; man does. He asks you to reckon. Accept that events have occurred in your life, accept that you have been the vessel for both the good and bad that has manifested as a consequence of your relative actions. You are not responsible, but you are accountable.

There is a relative one “responsible” for actions, and an absolute One “responsible” for actions. The Absolute, you should know by now, is God. The relative is dependent on The Absolute’s placement of you in the story. Currently, for example, the President of the United States is dominated by whatever spirit is dominating the U.S. (Deut. 32:8-9.) Given the state of the nation, that spirit is dominated by Sin (Ps. 82,) which is dominated by Satan (2 Cor. 4:4.) In contrast, Christ is responsible, for now, for calling out His body, and we will learn more of this blessing throughout Romans 8.

The tragedy of Sin is not that it is dominated by man, but that it dominates man. Paul is a survivor of abuse. So are you. To put this strongly (and I use such strong terminology to drive the point home,) your spirit has been unequivocally raped by Sin. That you are the ‘worst of sinners,’ or the ‘lowest’ of the world is not because ‘you did the worst actions around,’ but because your spirit has suffered, either through the flesh being cushioned and propped up, or starved by Sin (Rom. 6:23.)

Paul is clearly speaking of this experience clearly here, and he will elaborate on the truly horrifying nature of Sin throughout the rest of the chapter. The ones committing the worst sins around us are not in control, but are ideal creatures of God (1 Tim. 4:4) who have been corrupted by extreme, internal doubt.

You may have heard it said that “Doing the right thing is good, but boring. It’s much more exciting to break the law.” And, indeed, while there’s merit to this (having sex in a park can be far more exciting than the bedroom, if given the opportunity,) it’s not the entirety of the truth, considering the beginning of Paul’s (God’s) argument here. The argument itself is that the law is not sin. Sin is the one producing the coveting, here, not the law itself. The above tenth commandment is absolutely not wrong in nature, or precept. It’s not law’s fault that Sin is using it! But it’s Sin working in you that’s producing the desire, in recognition of the law.

Let’s look again at that whole situation with Adam and Eve. Notice that Sin did not work from within. Neither Adam nor Eve had the desire to Sin until it frontally assaulted them, to enter the (then) current system. Recall Romans 5:12–

Therefore, through one man sin entered into the world…

Sin was not working in them, the way Paul openly discusses Sin operating in his members. In us, Sin works internally, not externally, and because this curse is hereditary, transmitted through death, this precept, to “stop coveting,” is quickly and easily discarded, because it’s in your nature to do so, thanks to Sin raping your mind. Notice that, the moment your resolve is, “Okay! I’ll stop desiring things outside of my control!” You are almost immediately presented with something to desire? I propose now that this is not because “something new” happens in your life that you didn’t expect before (though it may feel that way.) It is because your mind, which is already corrupted by Sin, will be drawn to something you did not previously notice. You may not act on this newfound desire, of course, but it is there. Moreover, you’re not alone. Sin is inherent in every man, and has been working within for generations, now.

This also casts a new light on our Lord’s earthly sojourn. Sin could not corrupt Him from within, as you can read in the four accounts. Adam and Christ are the perfect contrast, because neither one had Sin immediately working in them. You can look back at Matthew 4, at Christ’s journey in the wilderness, and read it in a whole new light, seeing Sin’s outward assault against our Lord, trying to work its way in, attempting to rape the Son of God.

For apart from law sin is dead.

One more quick grammatical note, and then we’ll wrap it up with a discussion of this earth. “Sin” here in this verse does not have a definite article, and I find two potential reasons for this. The first reason is that Sin may be personified here, but as it is correlated effectively with death apart from law, we are to consider Sin as its own dead corpse, here. While I don’t believe this is the intent Paul had when writing this sentence, it is an interesting thought, and is not out of line with established truth.

The second reason (and the one I suspect to be the case,) is that Paul is communicating the same ‘sin’ here as the initial objector’s question, which also did not have a definite article in front of it. This means that he is not personifying it, but speaking of the action of sin, as opposed to the enemy we’ve considered.

Sin’s internal attack cannot be understated, and its bastardization of the law will not go unrequited. The statement above should conclusively prove two things:

1)    Though there is more to the argument, Paul has shown that logically, sin and law cannot be the same, as one is a precept, the other an aggressor

2)    The power of sin is the law (1 Cor. 15:56)

Sin, apart from law, is powerless. If there’s no law to rebel against, man’s rebellious nature is… wasted, in a sense. It still exists, sure; again, it’s a curse. But it’s like bringing a bat to a baseball diamond, with no team, no pitcher, and no ball. There’s nothing to invite the competition, see?

Death is the perfect figure, as, literally, one who is dead is powerless. It can’t be literal, because if it’s literal, then when Sin dies, so does law. But that’s the thing; law isn’t “erased” in the mind of a believer, or removed. It’s sustained (3:31.)

Isn’t it funny? Sin gains power through recognition. When you know you’re doing or about to do something wrong, the brain actively makes note of the wrongdoing (conscience accounts,) and quickly justifies it with some perspective (flesh’s reasoning.) To attempt to follow each and every aspect of the law, then, is to continue allowing Sin to reign in the flesh, because it’s only going to stir up Sin’s issues in you. When one realizes they are in an abusive relationship, they either accept the abuse, or seek a means of rescue. What is our rescue out of this horrific, abusive relationship with our corrupted heart?

Grace.

- GerudoKing