Romans chapter 7

vs 1

Paul starts on a new argument here. It's not entirely new - he primed us for it earlier - but now he goes into it in detail.

The idea is that dead people are not covered by the law.

vs 2

This most obvious example is a good one, because it picks a law which directly relates to the relationship between two people.

vs 3

Having just started reading a book which gives feminist critiques the time of day, it is interesting that this verse focuses on a woman doing the wrong thing - as almost always seems the case in adultery. Men seem to just end up marrying another woman, as if polygamy is ok - but women are always adulteresses.

vs 4

In effect, Paul is saying that we do not live under the law - that God has redeemed us both from death, and by death from the law, so that instead he's got people who can serve him. Now the law is good - I think that argument happens in a few verses - but it's still interesting that God removes its weight from our shoulders and the reason is so that we can bear fruit. Almost as if the law limits what can be done by God's servants.

Which sounds pretty sensical, because laws by nature are a limiting thing.

vs 5

Again Paul primes us for another argument - that of the law arousing sin in us. But the idea is that while under law, sinful passions rise, and so we can't help but be producing only death-fruit.

vs 6

I wonder if the term "new way" is at all idiomatic - after all, Christians were called "followers of the Way" for a while. It's interesting that Paul also describes the law as a binding, from which we are released.

And just a quick thought for those scholars who don't like calling it the "Old Testament" because they think old is parochial or somehow uncool (I'm looking at you Goldingay) - Paul calls it the old way, 'cause that's what it is.

vs 7

So here we go. The concept being that without the law, we cannot recognise sin for what it is. However, just because law allows us to recognise sin, doesn't make it sinful. It would be like blaming radiation on a geiger counter. But Paul makes it clear that just because the written code is old, and is being done away with, doesn't mean it was sinful.

vs 8

It is sin that is sinful. It looks for the opportunity, and strikes at our poor sinful fleshliness. The law says "no lollipops" and suddenly all you've ever wanted was a lollipop to call your own. Sneaky.

Interestingly, Paul makes this statement about sin being dead without law. The idea that if there's no rules, then you can't break them. That may be how sin relates to law, but there's more to capital S Sin than just breaking the law (sin is about not following the rules, but it's also about disobedience, and also about missing the mark, not coming up to standard etc). However, since we're talking about law and sin and how they interact, that's a reasonable statement.

vs 9

Why is this in the first person? Paul wasn't around when the commandment was written. Is he perhaps talking about some sort of jewish Bar-Mitzvah type thing? (Mitzvah in Hebrew means commandment - I've no idea what Bar means, although I can tell you that midbar means desert.)

If we take away the first person problem for the moment, we see that there was life before law, but then when the law came, sin lived, so people died.

Now we know (and Paul knows,and he actually said earlier) that sin reigned between Adam and Moses, so there's obviously more to this beast than just simple life or death.

vs 10

Here's another curly one - Paul says that the commandment was "intended to bring life". Intended by who? If it were intended by God, and it did not happen, then isn't that like saying that God screwed up? What sort of omnipotence is that? If God wanted everything to be solved by law, he could have made that happen, right?

Perhaps again this is talking about the nature of Judaism - that in the Judaism of Paul's time, the commandments were seen as the life-giving word of God, and that this is a position thrust on them by man, not established by God. So when a Jew (like Paul) goes looking for life in the commandment, all he finds is something that instead brings death via sin.

vs 11

The idea being that sin uses the commandment to create sinful desires in order that you might then break the commandment. Just like JD in Scrubs - we want what we can't have. Of course, a large portion of the commandments hold a death penalty, so that could also be what Paul's talking about.

vs 12

It's not the law or the commandment that are evil - it is sin that is evil. They take the good thing and corrupt it, or more correctly corrupt us so that the good thing isn't good for us anymore.