Romans 7:11-14 - Seizing the opportunity

7:11,12

This is clear evidence that Paul is using death in the spiritual sense. The Law is good and holy, but sin seized the opportunity. How did sin do this? The root and heart of sin is rebellion against God, it is not just a series of moral infringements. See Psalm 51:4. When we see sin as only a matter of breaking some rules, even rules which have serious consequences for others, we miss the heart of sin. The root of our problem is our rebellion against God. Sin is also deceptive, which is why we must not listen to it, and every time we do we get in a mess.

7:13

So now Paul states clearly that it is not the Law’s fault that we died, it only highlighted the nature of our predicament. The Law is good, but it only tells us what is good, it cannot change our heart, our nature. So why did God send the Law and make it so central to Israel when it was not going to save them? He did this so that the nature of sin might be made abundantly clear. Having the right laws is not enough, we need to have the right heart. For sin is active within us, it needs to be put to death, and we need to receive new life.

7:14

The Law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual. This is the root of the problem. The Law is good and its commands are good, but we, by nature, are not good. We were sold as slaves to sin. Now this verse is one which causes some to say Paul must be speaking of the unregenerate man, not the saved person. For we are no longer slaves to sin. But that is not the whole story. We do not yet enjoy complete freedom. We are hopefully better than we were, and are moving in the right direction, but we are not yet perfect. So we all experience the conflicts that Paul speaks about in this chapter. We should also remember that chapter 8 is to come. While we experience defeat, we are not destined to always experience defeat. We can overcome, but we need to understand the nature of the battle. We need to know what we have been saved from. We were slaves to sin, we need to realise how serious the situation was.