Understanding the Law, Sin, and Freedom in Christ

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The arrival of the Mosaic Law did not weaken sin but actually empowered and inflamed sin within us. Paul talks about how our sinful passions are aroused by the law. He says the law came to increase sinning. Of course, the number of our sins increases as sins are named, but Paul seems to be talking about a new influence when he writes, "the power of sin is the law." [00:00:05]

Through the law comes the knowledge of sin, not the deliverance from sin. Romans 3:20: "For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin." Or Romans 7:7: "If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin." [00:04:42]

The law therefore secures and increases the accountability of all the world. Romans 3:19: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God." [00:05:11]

Without the law, sin lies "dead," that is, unrecognized and unstirred by the aggravations of commandments. Romans 7:9: "Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, stirred up by those commandments, and I died." [00:06:15]

The law turns sin as a power into sin as a transgression, actual breaking of a specific commandment. Romans 4:15: "The law brings wrath, but where there is no law, there's no transgression." Or Romans 5:20: "Now the law came in to increase the trespass." [00:07:37]

The law doesn't just turn sin into trespasses of specific commandments; it actually aggravates sin itself and makes it more active. Romans 5:20: "Now sin came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." [00:08:25]

Sin is a power, a kind of slave master or ruler, that turns commandments into aggravated incitements to transgress. Romans 7:8: "Sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness." It's a kind of slave master that takes a hold, reaches out, and grabs a commandment. [00:09:23]

The law pointed toward Christ, but until Christ came, it functioned mainly to show the hopelessness of salvation by law. The law functioned negatively as a prison or positively as a guardian. Paul uses both in Galatians until Christ came. [00:10:41]

Sin is the underlying force that takes something essentially holy and just and good, namely the law, and makes it an instrument of evil. We really won't make much progress in holiness or freedom or right use of the law if we don't get at what sin is and how it works. [00:11:53]

The essence of sin is the powerful condition of the human heart, which prefers other things over God, prefers anything over the value and beauty and greatness of the glory of God. That preference for other things, especially our own exaltation and authority, is the power that takes hold of the commandment. [00:12:29]

In Christ, we are already, through the blood of Christ, right with God. Our old proud, arrogant, self-sufficient selves are crucified. We no longer exchange the glory of God for the glory of self-exaltation. Instead, now we treasure the glory of God, and his law then becomes a pleasing reflection of his character and his will, which we delight in. [00:14:44]

Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the written code. [00:14:44]

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