Back at the beginning of chapter 6, Paul had responded to the potential objection to his teaching on grace, “does that mean we can keep on sinning?” with the emphatic “surely not!” Now he responds to a potential objection to his teaching on “the law”. If knowledge of the law leads to sinful behaviour, does that mean that the law itself is sin? Again, he responds “surely not.” The Law does though, draw our attention to sin by describing what is sin (v7). Then what sin does (note the personification) is it “seizes the opportunity. The Law is not itself sin but sin makes use of it. (v8).
Paul then describes how he was once “alive apart from the law”, he describes a point when he could enjoy life without the knowledge of wrong doing. That has changed. Note though that this language opens up some questions. Is it really possible for Paul to talk about a point of full innocence in his own personal experience? It seems unlikely apart from perhaps a short moment in infancy in his case. This has led to some discussion. Is Paul offering personal autobiography, thinking about the general unbeliever prior to salvation or something else. This has led to the suggestion that he might be talking in the first person to identify with a personification of Israel. God’s people enjoyed an innocence together before they were given the Law. Personally I wonder whether or not we might get ourselves tied up in unnecessary knots. Rather than attempting to work out who the subject of Paul’s biographical note is, we are meant to pick up on what he is saying about the relationship of sin to the law and therefore the Law’s role. It cannot sanctify or save but it can and does teach us something about God’s righteous standards in order to convict us (v9). We might reverse Jospeh’s famous phrase and say “What God intended for good, Sin intended for evil.” So sin, with the assistance of The law awakens wrongdoing within me (v10).
Sin is a liar and murderer, through temptation it deceives us and kills us by bringing us under the penalty of death (v11). However, Paul want’s to insist that sin has misused the Law. The Law is God given and therefore “holy, righteous and good (v12)/.
