Revisiting Law: The Power of Sin

REVISITING LAW: THE POWER OF SIN
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 CORINTHIANS 15:56-57

So now that we have inherited God’s righteousness through faith in the completed work of Christ and are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, are we done with sin? The answer is yes and no. In truth, sin is alive and well within our flesh and always will be until we are no longer in this flesh, but we have a choice of whether or not to feed it. 

The Law of Sin and Death

Paul discovered an odd truth about sin; it feeds on the law. The choice we will have to make every day for the rest of our lives is not “will I sin or not?” but “will I walk in grace or under law?” Am I “the old man or the new man”, as Paul would say? This is a critical decision because it will determine our relationship to sin and to God. In Romans chapter 7, Paul explains that “apart from the law, sin lies dead.”[1] He then goes on to explain the correlation between sin and law in the life of a believer.

First, as Paul did, we must dispense with any notion that the law is sin. The law is holy and the commandment is holy, righteous and good[2].

“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means!”[3]

What Paul discovered was not that the law itself was sin, but that when we try to keep the law the sin within our flesh seizes the opportunity to do good which is afforded by the law, and creates in us the desire to do exactly the opposite. Though we acknowledge with our minds that the law is right, we cannot carry it out because the sin within us wages war against our minds and causes us to break the very law we are trying to keep. In Romans 8:2, Paul labels this principal as ‘the law of sin and death’. This spiritual principle is every bit as binding as any physical principal, such as the laws of gravity or inertia. Just as I always expect a heavy object to fall downward and not upward, I should expect that any attempt I make to try to please God by my performance will fail because “when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”[4]

“The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.”[5]

What this means is that we cannot defeat sin by our own efforts, or even ‘with God’s help’. If you search the New Testament, you will find that while we are told to flee sin and to count ourselves dead to sin, we are never told to fight it. Jesus said, “And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”[6] He does not say “Train your hand or foot not to sin.” Why? Because, as Paul discovered, we can’t fight sin. The good news is that we don’t have to. Paul makes this clear in Romans 8:3-4:

“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Skipping a Step

By trying to face the sin in our flesh head on, we are skipping a step. While it seems intuitive that a Christian indwelt by the Spirit should have the willpower to keep the law and please God, we cannot precisely because of the law of sin and death. The answer, once again, lies not with us but with the atoning work of Christ.

This is a familiar scripture passage that is frequently misinterpreted:

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”[7]

We often assume that Paul is telling us that Christ has freed us from the yoke of sin, and that we should refuse to fall back into it. But it is not sin that Paul is speaking of. It is the law. As he continues, he has strong words for the Galatian churches:

“You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.”[8]

The churches had come under the teaching of those who demanded that believers must be circumcised. To submit to circumcision, Paul insisted, was to be severed from the Savior and placed under obligation to keep the whole of the law. As with unbelievers, the instant we try by the flesh to keep any part of the law as a means of pleasing God, we bring ourselves under obligation to all of it. Many will argue that Paul was speaking only of the ceremonial law (including circumcision and the sacrifice of animals for sin atonement) but in Romans 7 the law he uses to illustrate his principle of ‘the law of sin and death’ is the tenth Commandment, part of the moral law.

Here is the choice we have to make:

“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.”[9]

The last verse seems oddly placed, but with it Paul equates living under the law with walking in the flesh. The ‘flesh’ is that which is of human origin, that which we do by our own power. When we try, under our own power, to satisfy God by what we do (or don’t do) we come back under the law of sin and death. Regardless of our intention to do right, this amounts to self-righteousness, the very sin that Jesus was constantly speaking against in the Pharisees. When we do this we are in effect saying that Christ is not sufficient – the greatest of insults.

Self-righteousness is the underlying ‘disease’ that manifests itself in myriad sinful symptoms. Addictions to wealth, sex, power, work, possessions, and human approval (co-dependency) are actually an outgrowth of the self-righteousness of a heart that does not trust the sufficiency of Christ as expressed in the scriptural gospel. These are signs that deep inside we are still struggling to ‘get’ something we don’t have, not walking in the all-encompassing grace that we already have. Ignorant of, disregarding or unwilling to submit to the righteousness that is already ours in Christ, we re-double our efforts to establish our own righteousness, which brings us under deeper subjection to the law of sin and death. This creates a vicious, confusing and frustrating cycle, which Paul describes perfectly in the latter part of Romans 7.

The End of the Law for Righteousness

There is a particular and peculiar way in which Christ defeated the power of sin on the cross. He completely fulfilled the law so that we don’t have to:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”[10]

It is important to note that the law was not abolished but fulfilled. The law still has work to do in convicting the unsaved and expressing the moral will of God, but once it has driven us to Christ it cannot work righteousness in us and need not as Christ has already done so. As believers, we need to recognize the foolishness of trying to keep the law as a means of establishing righteousness before God. Paul states:

“For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”[11]

Here it is again:

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’…”[12]

And again:

“Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.”[13]

You might be recognizing a pattern here. Paul says that apart from the law, sin lies dead. The gospel tells us that Christ defeated sin in a very counter-intuitive manner; he fulfilled the law by his perfect life and death so that when we identify ourselves with him we also die to the law, setting us ‘apart from the law’ so that ‘sin lies dead’. Paul describes this process with clarity in Colossians 2:13-14 (ESV):

 “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”

In effect, when we walk by faith in the righteousness of Christ and not by trying to observe the law, sin is deprived of its power and starves to death. If we set our minds on fulfilling the law by the flesh, sin will grow stronger in us day by day. As he expounds the law of sin and death in Romans 8, Paul states:

“For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

He makes no distinction here between believer and unbeliever, only on what the mind is set on. We all have essentially the same choice to make; will I try to please God by my performance of the law (which Paul says is impossible) or will I accept, by faith, the fact that Christ has fulfilled the law on my behalf and receive life and peace? Will I be a Romans 7 or a Romans 8 Christian? These are the wide and narrow gates that Jesus spoke of.

Oddly, we accept the fact that we need the grace of God to be saved when we realize that we can’t keep the law, and then after we’re saved we begin to try to please God by struggling to keep the law. Jesus kept the law for us, which means that the law is fulfilled in us only as, by faith, we receive what he has done on our behalf on a moment by moment basis. We need the gospel as a constant reminder of who we have become so that we continually recognize the futility of establishing our own identity apart from Christ. This alone can keep the monster of self-righteousness at bay.

We will readily believe that Jesus defeated death and sin on the cross, but shy away from his fulfillment of the law. We are, by nature, creatures which gravitate toward legalism. We want everything in a box; to know where our boundaries are because we expect to be rewarded or punished based on how well we stay within bounds. Grace demolishes that box. It says that we are not graded based on performance, but on relationship, free and unmerited. Grace is absolutely uncharted territory for us, so wild and undomesticated and counter-self that we are terrified of it! It truly frees us from the law of sin and death so that we might begin to fulfill the law in the new way of the Spirit.[14]

The Law of the Spirit of Life

Paul instructed the Colossians:

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”[15]

How did we receive Christ? By hearing and believing the gospel. How then ought we to walk in Christ? By hearing and believing the gospel.

Walking in the Spirit, keeping the law of the Spirit of life, consists of constantly bringing into remembrance the truth of the gospel. We need to understand as completely as we can the depth and the breadth of what Christ has already secured for us. It means an end to trying to perform well enough to garner God’s blessing or avoid his punishment by recognizing that Christ’s performance on our behalf has pleased God. A few verses later, Paul tells the Colossians what it is that they walk in:

“May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”[16]

There is no need to strive to qualify ourselves before God. Christ has qualified us. There is no need to struggle free of darkness. Christ has delivered us and transferred us to his kingdom. There is no need to try and redeem ourselves by our own works. Christ has redeemed us. There is no need for condemnation or shame. We are forgiven.

We have to make a choice daily whether we walk in all of this, which has already been accomplished, or whether we seek by the flesh to please God. When we focus on the box – rules, laws, principles and regulations – we lose sight of the truth that we are absolutely, positively, unashamedly, unreservedly free to draw close to and please God by faith in what Jesus Christ alone has accomplished. This, also, is the gospel truth.

None of us expects that by our own force of will we can achieve eternal life; that we can defeat death. None of us expects to be able to defeat sin by our own willpower, though we try without even realizing it. But many (if not most) of us expect that we can and assume that we must try to keep the law, which is the very power of the sin that we struggle against. These three things are actually interrelated in a domino-like fashion, death is dependent on sin, and sin is dependent on the law:

“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[17]

Apart from the law, the power of sin is gone; apart from sin, the sting of death is gone. In a very real way, our redemption from sin and our victory over death are largely accomplished by Christ’s fulfillment of the law. When you dismiss the truth that the law was fulfilled for the believer at the cross, you have a very difficult time reconciling the other two.

Conclusion

Scripture shows us that to keep the law by our own righteousness is impossible. The biblical answer to sin is to trust in the completed work of Jesus Christ and stand firm against the temptation to walk in your own righteousness, the worst of all sins. As we do this, we will begin to realize something really wonderful about the gospel; it is not just the door to Christian life, it is life itself.





[1]Romans 7:8 ESV


[2] Romans 7:12 ESV


[3] Romans 7:7 ESV


[4] Romans 7:21 ESV


[5] Romans 7:10-11 ESV


[6] Matthew 18:8 ESV


[7] Galatians 5:1 ESV


[8] Galatians 5:4 ESV


[9] Galatians 5:16-18 ESV


[10] Matthew 5:17 ESV


[11] Romans 10:4 ESV


[12]Galatians 3:13 ESV


[13]Romans 7:4 ESV


[14] Romans 7:6


[15] Colossians 2:6-7


[16] Colossians 1:11-14


[17] 1 Corinthians 15:56-57 ESV