Romans 7.10-The Tenth Commandment Was Intended To Produce Life In Paul Instead Brought Death
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Thursday September 4, 2008
Romans: Romans 7:10-The Tenth Commandment Was Intended To Produce Life In Paul Instead Brought Death
Lesson # 221
Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 7:1.
Thus far in our studies of Romans chapter seven, we have noted that in Romans 7:1-6, the apostle Paul uses the analogy of marriage and argues that the Christian’s bondage to the Law has been severed because they have died with Christ and have been freed from the Law and placed in union with Christ.
Romans 7:1-6, “Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.”
Then, we noted that beginning in verse 7 all the way to the end of the chapter, Paul speaks of his own personal experience with the Law in relation to his sin nature.
In verse 7, Paul poses a rhetorical question that anticipates the false inference from his teaching in Romans 5:20, 6:14b and 7:5 that the Law is equivalent to the sin nature.
He empathically rejects the idea that the Law is sinful but rather that it made him aware of his sin nature.
He then presents an example with the tenth commandment that prohibits coveting and identifies it as a sin.
Romans 7:7, “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COVET.’”
Then, in Romans 7:8, Paul teaches the Christians in Rome that because the sin nature seized a base of operations through the tenth commandment, the sin nature produced each and every kind of covetousness.
At the conclusion of the verse he begins to explain why this is the case.
Romans 7:8, “But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.”
Then, in Romans 7:9, Paul teaches that when the tenth commandment became a reality in his life, his sin nature suddenly became active and consequently, he died spiritually.
Romans 7:9, “I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died.”
Next, we will study Romans 7:10, in which Paul communicates to the Christians in Rome that he surprisingly discovered through his own personal experience as a Christian that the tenth commandment prohibiting coveting, which was intended to give life instead resulted in his experiencing temporal spiritual death.
Romans 7:10, “and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me.”
This passage “explains” Paul’s statements in verse 9 in another way.
“This commandment” is the noun entole (e)ntolhv) (en-tol-ay), which refers to specifically to the tenth commandment that appears in Exodus 20:17 that prohibits coveting.
“Which was to result in life” is composed of the nominative feminine singular form of the definite article ho (o() (ho), “which was” and is followed by the preposition eis (ei)$) (ice), “to result in” and the accusative feminine singular form of the noun zoe (zwhv) (dzo-ay), “life.”
In Romans 7:10, the noun zoe refers to eternal life.
The Scriptures teach that if a person obeys perfectly the Law, he will live.
Leviticus 18:5, “So you shall keep My statutes and My judgments, by which a man may live if he does them; I am the LORD.”
Galatians 3:10-12, “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY ALL THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF THE LAW, TO PERFORM THEM.’ Now that no one is justified by the Law before God is evident; for, ‘THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.’ However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, ‘HE WHO PRACTICES THEM SHALL LIVE BY THEM.’”
The Lord Jesus Christ taught the Jews that if they obeyed perfectly the Law that they would obtain eternal life (Luke 10:25-29).
Matthew 19:16-17, “And someone came to Him and said, ‘Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?’ And He said to him, ‘Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’”
The Word of God is life thus if a Jew kept the Law, which is a part of the Word of God, then he would experience eternal life.
The Law required perfect obedience because the Law is the perfect expression of God’s perfect character and integrity and His holiness.
However, the Jew did not have the capacity to render perfect obedience to the Law because they like all men are sinners by nature.
Only Jesus Christ was perfectly obedient to the Law.
Romans 8:3-4, “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
Therefore, in Romans 7:10, the noun zoe refers to the eternal life that would be experienced by anyone who could obey the Law perfectly.
In Romans 7:10, the preposition eis is employed with the accusative form of the noun zoe, “life” as a marker of “purpose” indicating that God’s “intention” for giving to Israel the commandment prohibiting coveting was life.
God never intended the Law to be a means of salvation according to Galatians 3:21, which that “if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.”
However, the Law did come with promises of life as a result of obedience as we noted in Leviticus 18:5 and Matthew 19:16-17.
The Law would have given life to anyone who obeyed it perfectly.
However, as we noted before, man had no capacity whatsoever to render perfect obedience to the Law since he possesses a sinful nature.
Thus, we can infer that the Law would have given eternal life had it been perfectly obeyed.
So in this sense the Law promises life even though God did not give the Law with this intention since man’s sinful nature makes it impossible for him to obey the Law perfectly.
Romans 7:10, “and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me.”
“Proved” is the verb heurisko (eu(rivskw), which means, “to discover” since the word denotes learning something previously not known, involving an element of surprise.
It is used figuratively expressing Paul’s surprise in discovering something that he never knew as an unbeliever, namely that the commandment that was intended to give life instead resulted in death for him.
This surprising discovery was based upon Paul’s own personal experience as a Christian according to the dative form of the personal pronoun ego, which is the expressed agency for the passive verb heurisko.
This discovery was surprising for a Jew like Paul since they considered themselves superior to the Gentiles and accepted by God because they possessed the Old Testament Scriptures, were circumcised and were given the Law.
Thus, it was surprising that as a Christian, Paul discovered that he was unrighteous like the Gentiles when prior to his conversion to Christianity he thought himself superior in every respect.
“For me” is the personal pronoun ego (e)gwv), which refers to the apostle Paul and functions as a “dative of agency” meaning this surprising discovery that the commandment resulted in death was made by the apostle Paul “through his own personal experience.”
The word emphasizes that this discovery was through Paul’s own personal experience as a Christian.
“To result in death” indicates that Paul’s surprising discovering concerning the commandment through his own personal experience was that it resulted in him experiencing “temporal spiritual death” or in other words, “loss of fellowship with God.”