April 30

Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. — Rom 7:9 BSB

The Apostle Paul describes how men view the law before it enters their hearts as a condemning sentence. “I was alive without the law once,” he says. The law hung over him as a condemning force, as a minister of death, a messenger of wrath, and a consuming fire—but he didn’t feel it. It was like hearing the distant rumble of a thunderstorm, far off from Sinai’s fiery mount. He might see the distant flashes of lightning, but the storm had not yet reached him. He lived without thinking, feeling, or caring whether the law was his friend or enemy. In fact, he likely thought of it as a friend, using it to build up his own righteousness. He knew its letter but not its spirit, its outward commands but not its inward demands. Thus, he says he was “alive without the law,” meaning he had no knowledge of it as a ministration of condemnation and death.

But in God’s time, “the commandment came.” It came with power into his conscience. Paul realized that he could keep all the commandments outwardly except the tenth: “You shall not covet.” This commandment struck at the core of his heart, prohibiting even the inward desires of the heart, and it carried with it a dreadful curse.

When the commandment came, sin, which had seemed dormant, revived like a sleeping serpent and stung him to death. He says, “And I died.” The commandment, which he had thought would lead to life, instead led to death. Sin could not tolerate being restrained, so it rebelled against God’s authority. When the guilt of sin fell upon Paul’s tender conscience, it killed him spiritually.

This wouldn’t have happened if there were no spiritual life in his soul, but the presence of light and life made him able to feel God’s anger revealed in the law. When the law came into his conscience as a sentence from a holy and just God, the result was death within himself. The experience Paul describes is what the law does when it is applied to the conscience by God’s power. It kills and condemns the sinner, leaving a sentence of death that will be carried out on the day of judgment.