“What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.” Romans 7:7-12 ESV
What is the purpose of God’s law? Historically, Adventists have placed a strong emphasis on the “keeping” of the law–especially the Sabbath–believed to be a distinctive mark of God’s “chosen” or “remnant” people. As illustrated in the testimony of Carlyle B. Haynes, no amount of law-keeping can erase the unrighteousness found in the heart of man. In fact, the more we attempt to bring our life into alignment with God’s law, the more our transgressions stand in bold relief, amplifying the previously-hidden sin found in the dark recesses of our lives.
Paul penned the words in Romans 7:7-12 to his readers whom he anticipated would jump to an incorrect conclusion about God’s law. In the preceding verse, he says, “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” Paul realized that some would read this and conclude that the law serves no purpose at all. Before the reader can finish this thought, Paul counters with a question and an answer, “[Is] the law sin? By no means! If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.”
Here is what noted theologian Charles Hodge said in his commentary on Romans 7:7-12: “The law, although it cannot secure either the justification or sanctification of men, performs an essential part in the economy of salvation. It enlightens conscience, and secures its verdict against a multitude of evils, which we should not otherwise have recognized as sins. It arouses sin, increasing its power, and making it, both in itself and in our consciousness, exceedingly sinful. It therefore produces that state of mind which is a necessary preparation for the reception of the gospel .... Conviction of sin, that is, an adequate knowledge of its nature, and a sense of its power over us, is an indispensable part of evangelical religion. Before the gospel can be embraced as a means of deliverance from sin, we must feel we are involved in corruption and misery.” -Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, p. 22
If the law is about making sin exceedingly sinful, on the one hand we should not cling to the law to as a means for justification, but we should also not discard the law as having no purpose whatsoever. Clearly Paul is arguing in this passage, as Hodge does above, that the law must stand to convict the world of sin. By the law comes the knowledge of sin and the law acts as a schoolmaster to bring sinners to Christ (Rom. 3:20, Rom. 7:9-11, Gal. 3:23-26). Anyone who looks to the law for justification or verification of their “chosen” or “remnant” status, therefore, doesn’t use the law in the way God intended. Furthermore, whoever attempts to obtain righteousness through law-keeping risks completely missing the Person (Jesus) to whom the law points.
On the other hand, those who minimize the value of God’s law as a schoolmaster to bring sinners to Christ have disarmed themselves of the tool that prepares the soil of the sinner’s heart to receive the seed of the gospel. As George Whitefield said regarding preaching that does not use God’s law before presenting the gospel, “That is the reason we have so many ‘mushroom’ converts, because their stony ground is not plowed up; they have not got a conviction of the law; they are stony-ground hearers. First, then, before peace can be spoken to your hearts, you must be made to see, made to feel, made to weep over, made to bewail, your actual transgressions against the law of God.”
Read more in part II.