What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. Romans 7:7-13
In this rich but complex few verses, Paul continues to lay out the relationship that sin has with the law. The Law handed down by the Lord through Moses put boundaries on what man could and couldn’t do. It was for our protection. The Law came at a time when man desperately needed something written down and enforced.
Fast forward 4000+ years and we really haven’t learned our lessons about sin and the law. We go way beyond the boundaries that God set forth to the point of mockery. The Lord gave 10 laws; the Jewish leaders gave the people a few hundred laws to protect those ten, and our governments create hundreds if not thousands of laws to empower their own careers. I daresay very few of the laws created today actually help the people they were supposed to protect.
Even with all these laws, mankind is still a mess, incapable of seeing his sin, incapable of even believing he might have a problem. Jeremiah 17:9 states, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
There are people around you like this. Friends, relatives, acquaintances. They’re know-it-alls and have it all figured out.
Don’t believe a word of it!
Pray for those same people. Pray that God will reveal Himself in the middle of them patting themselves on the back. Pray that God will use your words and actions to draw them closer.